What's coming next: publishing roadmap for 2025-2026
April author update
Hi everyone,
I wanted to give you all a quick breakdown of what is coming next for my book releases.
First off, I am working hard on the first draft of Book 2 of The Lays of Athewain, which is tentatively titled Rage of the Raven Queen. This book picks up right where Son of the Thunder Goddess left off and deals with the troubled aftermath of Athewain’s heroic victory. We’ll see a lot more of the gods, especially Gaillag, goddess of thunder, and the Bodtha, goddess of war.
Several readers have mentioned to me that they really enjoyed Briana’s character in the first book, so you’ll be happy to hear that this story features a lot more of Briana and delves much deeper into her backstory.
As a discovery writer, I write a very rough first draft, and it’s not fit to be seen by anyone until about the third draft. After that, I’ll be excited to start getting it into the hands of early readers.
Right now, the word count is sitting at 43,000. This is already twice as long as Son of the Thunder Goddess. I’m guessing the final draft will clock in at around 55,000 to 60,000 words, which is crossing over from novella to short novel territory. I want to do the story justice while still delivering a short, fast-paced read like the first book. The rest of the series will continue to come in short installments of 20-60k words.
My plan is to publish Rage of the Raven Queen in the fall of 2025, hopefully in September. It should be ready for beta readers by June. If you’re interested in being a beta reader, be sure to watch your inbox. I’ll be sending out a call for signups over the next couple of months.
While this book is with beta readers and then in the hands of editors, I’ll be working on final revisions for my medieval fantasy novel, War of Princes (see the roadmap below). More detail on this in later months!
Recap
2025 has been the year of publishing! After spending nearly five years developing my fantasy world and honing my craft, I’ve finally taken the step this year to launching my stories out into the world.
Son of the Thunder Goddess came out on March 5 and it currently has a 4.8 star rating with 8 reviews. If you haven’t picked it up already, you may be interested to know that I’m currently running a $0.99 promo until May 5 (US and UK markets only). Click the cover below to check it out.
I also had a short story published in March — “The Songweaver” which came out with the SFF magazine Baubles from Bones. You can read it for free on their website here.
Elyse, one of the magazine’s editors, also created this incredible portrait of Banilur the White Eagle, the antagonist of “The Songweaver.”
Roadmap: 2025-2026
Finally, for those of you who like to have a roadmap, so that you can see where things are headed, I’ve included a timeline for 2025-2026. Items already completed are in bold.
The Lays of Athewain, Book I: Son of the Thunder Goddess (March 2025)
“The Songweaver,” published by Baubles from Bones (March 2025)
The Lays of Athewain, Book II: Rage of the Raven Queen (Fall 2025)
War of Princes (Spring 2026)
The Lays of Athewain, Book III (Fall 2026)
That’s all I have for writing updates. Let me know if you have any questions. And if there are any topics you’d like me to cover in future posts, let me know by replying to this email or leaving a comment.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew LiVecchi
