Because publishing often requires you to cite books that are like yours for sales purposes, I often tell people that The Driver of Serpents is somewhere between Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff by Christopher Moore with a little bit of Quincy Harker by John Hartness thrown in. Movie-wise, it’s definitely Kevin Smith’s Dogma meets The Boondock Saints, though the Anthony Hopkins-film The Rite is what originally decided the main character would be an exorcist for the Vatican.

But this started, for me, with Brian Augustyn and Humberto Ramos’s Crimson, which was developed from story concepts by Oscar Pinto and the late Francisco Haghenback and released by Wildstorm Comics in 1998. To say that I’m obsessed with this series is an understatement. I can’t really talk about the contents of the comic without spoiling my books, the influence on them is truly that profound. Everything from interfering archangels to badass Nephilim heroines to secret societies to wacky miracles and unlikely victories, Crimson is what Urban Fantasy was to me at the start, along with Buffy and Angel. I didn’t know it was Urban Fantasy back then, but now? It fits in the confines of the aesthetic seamlessly.

I was first “commissioned” to write within John Hartness’s Quincy Harker universe back in 2016, but the first draft I turned in about a reincarnated St. Patrick of Ireland was not good. I tried to write a manuscript to fit what I thought was what Urban Fantasy readers wanted, which to me at the time was snarky characters, which was a mistake to pursue because I hate snark. Being the good mentor John is, he made me start over from page one.

A year later I had The Driver of Serpents, which I had to basically resubmit and have approved to get published at Falstaff Books. Once that happened I had to put it to the side to release A Wave of Lions through Falstaff, then independently publish Atenia, and then Spy|Counter|Killer—the journey of every book is odd. I basically wrote its sequels The Delver of Purgatory and The Saints Come Marching through the pandemic and the first year of my son’s life. Everything was finished in 2022-ish and editing began in earnest in 2023 and is still ongoing.

(We’ll talk about that in another post, as well as how to advocate for yourself.)

The character of Saint Patrick came to me when I stood at the foot of his gravestone when I visited Ireland in 1999. It was part of a school trip, but along with that and another solitary sojourn for a rough weekend, I’ve always had this fascination with a figure who is as much miraculous and mysterious as Jesus Christ is. Truthfully there is a lot of mythologizing of the character that probably doesn’t fit the Roman-born son who was captured by Irish pirates, sold into slavery, and found his Savior while standing in the fields alone watching his master’s sheep. Just him and the world. That’s a baller origin-story, as is the idea that he threw the “serpents”/demons/old gods of Ireland out, or Cashel Rock, or his supposed-entrance to Purgatory—which is not historically true at all and probably much more culturally more-complicated to understand, but for the sake of a great trilogy books, we’ll pretend.

But when I actually sat down to research the historical Saint Patrick of Ireland, I discovered once again that real life is often more complicated than any fiction. St. Patrick Ireland lived in a time of great upheaval throughout all of Ireland, and while legends are fun, the complications around the real man make him a fascinating character. We have records of this person that amalgamated parts of Ireland’s native paganism with the symbolism of Christ, but in that syncretism, we miss the story of a person who had to speak to many people, even his enemies, and find common cause in brutal times.

And Ireland in Patrick’s time was brutal. Moving forward meant ending a lot of violence which some may argue never ended.

But what would someone who lived through that chaotic time feel if they were suddenly reborn in the modern world of the 2020s? How does one handle knowing God is real and still keep the faith in a world that is in many ways more brutal, or hasn’t gotten any better as they were promised it would? What do they do when they have to deal with the contradictions not only in their faith, but in the entire story they’ve been told?

What if the real reason behind those stories makes one question if God is good or not?

In my research on the Catholic rites of Exorcism, one key theory held by the Church to why God would allow people to be possessed by demons is that through the liberation of the possessed, we discover God’s grace—but God is also the one who gives permission to all things, including allowing demons (his fallen angels) to possess mortals.

Think about that: in Catholic doctrine, God gives demons (who he damned) permission to wreak havoc on his mortal children because when the solution will show how merciful he is in providing grace and forgiveness. But he’s going to let them torture you first to make sure you really want it.

Imagine living two lives as a beautified Saint and serving that.

Patrick isn’t an easy hero, but neither is he a simple witness. He’s driven by the idea that goodness is done through acts that serve to spread Christ’s message, but what if Christ is involved in something that muddies that message?

Now we have a story, especially when the unexpected repercussions involve a kidnapped Nephilim—you know, the children of angels and humans God supposedly wiped out in Genesis and the Book of Enoch—and a conspiracy stretching all the way back to fall of the rebellious angels led by Lucifer.

Who appears as a rooster.

I always throw that fact in when I don’t have a good transition.

But as much as God may have found the historical St. Patrick out in the fields while he tended sheep, what I found that surprised me most about Patrick’s voice was the exhaustion in it, but also this unwillingness to be inconsiderate of the world around him. He has a grit I don’t have, as well as a level of patience one probably needs when they are at the Lord’s beck and call. And he possesses real decency—if there is one aspect to the character I found myself enjoying again and again as I discovered him, it was his decency, even unto his enemies.

I hope everyone reading this will see that when they meet him. If you enjoyed this post and want to read more, sign up below for my newsletter and pick up The Driver of Serpents here!