Category Archives: Children of The Fire

“The Angel Brings Fire” : Now available in audio-book format!

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I’m very proud to announce that the entire Angel Brings Fire series (Angel of Mailànkh, Doubt Me Not, Angel and The Empire and Children of The Fire), is now available in audio-book-format! 😀

These audio-books can be purchased from the Rakuten Kobo service… surf to this URL and then do a search for “Marcus Shields” and you will see all four books* in audio-book format.

The Angel Brings Fire series is, in total, a little over 80 hours long (as dictated) in audio-book format, which represents a fantastic entertainment experience for sci-fi , super-hero and modern fantasy enthusiasts with busy lifestyles or for who, for whatever reason, would prefer to listen to a book as opposed to reading it.

The impetus for this project occurred some time ago, when we were advised by a family friend, who commented “You know, Marcus… I’d love to read these novels of yours, but I work 18 hours a day as a long-haul trucker, and I simply can’t spend time reading books… but if they were available in audio-book format, I could listen to ’em as I’m cruising up and down the Interstate.” We were also advised about people with visual challenges who cannot comfortably read an ordinary book, but who love this genre of literature. There are many other, similar use cases, obviously.

For both technical and financial reasons, until very recently, it was completely impractical to even consider doing what my friend suggested; but advances in technology have changed that situation, and in mid-summer 2025, I set out on experimental effort to convert the first novel (Angel of Mailànkh) of The Angel Brings Fire series, into an audio-book.

I was, frankly, astounded by the quality of the final product… it was on orders of magnitude better than I had expected. At that point, I knew that I had to do the other three books of the series, as well! 😉

Converting The Angel Brings Fire to audio-book format has required a huge amount of labor on our part.

To give you some idea of what’s involved, as a rough estimate, for every one hour of voice output, we have had to invest at least two and sometimes four hours of careful post-production editing work. This involves everything from correcting the pronunciation of words associated with Karéin-Mayréij (after all… she natively speaks a language unlike anything found on Planet Earth) to fixing awkward cadence to evening out the volume levels so that they do not vary inappropriately from paragraph to paragraph.

We have tried very hard to make the final product as perfect as possible (and we believe that overall, we have succeeded), although there may be isolated cases of mispronunciation, odd tone changes and so on. But we’re sure that the final results well justify the effort involved, and we’re proud of what you’ll hear when you listen to these audio-books.

The Angel Brings Fire audio-books are available on Kobo as downloadable volumes, broken into numerous chapters, each of which is in standard .mp3 file format. We have tried to retain the structure of the corresponding printed books as closely as possible, with only very minor adjustments (for example verbal notification of scene changes, where applicable) to accommodate audio-book mode.

Also, each of the Kobo The Angel Brings Fire audio-books includes a sample chapter that can be freely accessed by anyone with a Web browser, so you can experience a little of the audio-book in question, before making the commitment to buy it.

These audio-books range in price from the $15 to the $20 range (per book), which of course is roughly equivalent to what a conventional printed paperback book would cost, albeit somewhat more than the e-Book versions of each volume of the series costs. Basically, as is the case with all audio-books, you’re paying for the convenience of having someone else read you a story. If you’re on a budget, then just get the e-Book version and read it for yourself!

We believe that having these creative works in audio-book format, will make The Angel Brings Fire accessible to entirely new classes of readers, who are interested in the novels but who, for whatever reason, can’t commit to reading a long conventional book (or e-Book). We hope you’ll agree. Stay tuned to The Angel Brings Fire blog, for updates and further details!

* As a side-note, work is now underway on converting the successor series to The Angel Brings Fire, namely The Future Burns Bright, to audio-book format. According to our current schedule, which is very subject to change, we expect this project to be done by late 2nd Quarter 2026 (or thereabouts). Bonnie’s New Auntie and Bonnie Billings : Superhero will hopefully follow shortly thereafter, perhaps by the end of summer 2026.

 

Jerry has a new war-song! (And… a note about his abilities.)

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As many of you already know, the more powerful characters in the Angel Brings Fire novel series, have a “war-song” — a mysterious type of half-psychic, half-real “music” that sometimes plays when these characters energize or use the alien-powers that they have inherited from the Storied Watcher.

In previous editions of the blog I have added posts that try to describe (in a very general way) what these “war-songs” sound like. The information provided earlier on is still valid, but as time goes by and as I encounter more popular music, I reserve the right to amend the allocations of “whose war-songs sound like what ‘real’ song”.

Today’s one such day… in the last “war-songs” posting I had the following remark about Jerry Kaysten, the former Chief of Staff to the (original) President of the United States :

“Jerry Kaysten : Calgary by Bon Iver, but only the short part beginning at the song’s 1:50 mark; this melody predominates when Jerry uses his “killer joke” ability. When running at high speed, his war-song sounds more like Time Turns Around by the Spoons.”

This is still accurate but there is a different piece of music that much better replicates what the quick-footed Mr. Kaysten’s personal war-song actually sounds like : the fantastic “My Decision” number by the Netherlands pop-rock group, Moss. (Not to be confused with the U.K. heavy-metal band of the same name.)

Make sure you check this one out on YouTube… it’s not only what Jerry sounds like when he gets going, but it’s a crazy good song anyway! (And it’s available for sale on iTunes, so do the right thing and pay these innovative musicians for the use of their creative works… I did.)

As an aside… it may at first seem that Jerry Kaysten’s alien-powers are relatively mundane compared to those of some of the other “post-humans” (particularly ones like Cherie Tanaka and Wolf).

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Jerry’s hyper-speed abilities, although they can only be used for a relatively short amount of time between resting-periods, can render most opponents — either “more-than-human” or just plain old Homo Sapiens — next to defenseless.

Only a very few other characters, for example Misha or Minnie Chu (and of course the Storied Watcher herself), have the reflexes and quick reaction time to adequately defend themselves against Jerry’s rapid-fire attacks. Others, such as Bob Billings, have abilities that somewhat erode Kaysten’s advantages but are still not a complete defense against him.

So give our friend Mr. Kaysten some respect… he may look like an “also-ran”… but he’s anything but! 😉

Marcus Shields