🌌 The Weekly MAsh | Written Author Interview

Stephanie Pass — The First Sin

✨ Getting to Know the Author

1. Let’s start at the beginning. Who is Stephanie Pass in your own words?

Before 2025, I probably would’ve introduced myself as “a wife and mother,” like that was the headline. But no. I’ve been a working professional for almost 15 years. I am a wife and mom, and I’m also a writer, a creator, and a woman who’s been living in a fantasy world since I was in the second grader tearing through chapter books like Narnia.

I started my writing career as a blogger sharing crafts and recipes, then became a content creator working with brands in 2012. But in 2020, I developed a severe chronic illness, and it forced me to rebuild my entire life from the ground up. That was the turning point, the moment I realized life was too short to keep shrinking myself for everyone else.

So I started doing the things I’d been postponing. I went to concerts. I fell back in love with reading. I started dancing at goth clubs, and laced up my rollerskates again like I was reclaiming a version of me I’d misplaced. And somewhere in all that living, the creativity cracked open, and the stories that had been haunting my brain finally got out.

By 2022, I was writing romance nonstop, learning the publishing world, and building the kind of life I actually wanted.

---

📖 About the Book

2. The First Sin mixes romance, fantasy, and myth. What inspired the story and its celestial themes?

What inspired The First Sin was honestly a lifetime of not buying the story I was handed.

I grew up in an evangelical home and graduated from a Southern Baptist high school, and I was the thorn in everyone’s side. I kept thinking, How does this add up?

Then one day I saw Alexandre Cabanel’s painting The Fallen Angel, and it was Lucifer’s eyes. Those eyes didn’t look like someone hungry to replace God. They looked betrayed. Like he couldn’t understand why he’d been cast out. Like he felt every sharp edge of not being wanted. And that single look became the seed of the story.

3. The premise flips the classic story of Lucifer. How did you develop this fresh take on a well-known myth?

I started playing the most dangerous little game, what if. What if it was all a lie? What if the “villain” wasn’t the villain? What if the real sin wasn’t pride, but love, and what if that truth could crack open into a romance?

For two or three years, I carried the idea around, turning it over in my hands, talking it out with my oldest daughter and my husband, letting it grow teeth and tenderness. And when I finally asked readers what they thought, they loved the concept so much that I stopped circling it and wrote it.

4. Evie Grace is sharp, independent, and full of attitude. How did you craft her character to stand out in a world of gods, angels, and devils?

I wanted to make Evie Grace the kind of woman who could go toe-to-toe with the Devil and actually intrigue him, not because she’s louder, or sexy, or trying to prove something, but because she’s unbreakable in the places that matter.

When the story opens, she literally gives no fucks, because life already took its swings. She doesn’t have much left to lose, and that makes her dangerous in a way Lucifer doesn’t expect. She’s cautious, not cold. She’s learned the hard way what it costs to trust the wrong people, and she knows exactly how it feels to be the one nobody chooses, the one nobody stays loyal to, the one nobody protects.

So Evie doesn’t hand out her softness like free samples at Costco. She makes people earn access to her. 

5. Las Vegas is such a vivid setting for The First Sin. How did the city influence the story and the characters’ interactions?

It is Sin City, after all. And it’s the perfect place to make a deal with the Devil. Where better could the Devil hide in plain sight? 

6. Forbidden love is central to the book. How did you balance the romance with the high-stakes, mythic conflict?

Usually, I write pretty steamy romance, but The First Sin needed restraint. Lucifer would’ve jumped in with both feet, and honestly, he tries in the opening scene. But this book isn’t about instant gratification, it’s about tension, anticipation, and everything that stands in the way before touch ever becomes safe.

---

⚡ Characters & Worldbuilding

7. Lucifer is portrayed in a new light, with his love driving the plot. How did you explore his complexity while keeping him relatable?

I stripped him of the things that usually keep him at a distance, the spectacle, the mythology, the untouchable power, and leaving him with the most human wounds imaginable.

At his core, Lucifer isn’t driven by evil, he’s driven by abandonment. He was cast out, misunderstood, and rewritten by a story he didn’t get to tell, one he doesn’t quite remember. He’s lived with betrayal, anger, and the ache of not being chosen, not believed, not defended. And it’s gone on for so long, he’s now apathetic. Those are emotions everyone recognizes, even if they’ve never ruled Hell. I didn’t soften him, I humanized him. I let him be proud and wounded at the same time. Defensive. Lonely. Furious that love feels dangerous and furious that he still wants it anyway.

He’s also deeply out of practice with real connection. He’s used to devotion and worship from the worst of the worst, which isn’t intimacy, it’s transactional. Fear. Obsession. Control. So when Evie doesn’t worship him, doesn’t fear him, doesn’t try to use him, it disarms him in a way nothing else ever has. 

Most importantly, I let him fail emotionally. He doesn’t always say the right thing. He reacts instead of reflects. He wants closeness and then panics when he gets it. That push and pull, the wanting and the retreat, the fear of being known, that’s relatable. He’s not the Devil because he’s cruel. He’s the Devil because he’s been carrying loss for so long that love feels like another exile waiting to happen.

And that’s where readers recognize themselves, not in the wings or the power, but in the question underneath all of it: What if the worst thing they ever said about you isn’t the truth, and you’ve been living like it is anyway?

But my favorite little tidbit was adding a little humor. I imagined the Devil trying to date with the dating apps and seeing his frustration with how ridiculous it’s become in this day and age. 

8. Angels, demons, and other celestial beings populate your story. Which character was the most fun—or challenging—to write?

Lilith. She’s the match that hits the gasoline, the one who jumpstarts this whole debacle with pure impatience and razor-confidence. But what made her fun is that her hunger for control isn’t random, it’s rooted. In her myth, she was cast aside by Adam because she wasn’t willing to be a simple helpmate. She wanted agency. A voice. A life that didn’t come with someone else’s hand on the steering wheel.

So in a lot of ways, she’s in the same boat as Lucifer. They’ve both been rejected, rewritten, and pushed into a role they didn’t choose. The difference is what they do with that wound. Lilith grabs the world by the throat and says, Fine, I’ll build a reality where no one can ever cast me aside again.

And honestly… who doesn’t understand that, at least a little? That’s why she was so satisfying to write. She’s not evil for the sake of evil. She’s a woman who got discarded once, and decided it would never happen again, even if she has to play nice with the god who caused it and burn the whole system down to prove it.

9. The First Sin combines myth, romance, and adventure. How did you balance these elements to keep the story cohesive and engaging?

This is a dark romantasy, so desire can’t be sweet and simple, it has teeth. Lucifer has been living with betrayal, anger, and abandonment issues since he was cast out. He’s spent an eternity being misunderstood, feared, mythologized, and he’s used to devotion and worship from the worst of the worst, the kind that isn’t love, it’s obsession, bargain-making, and rot dressed up as reverence. That history shapes how he moves toward Evie, fast, hungry, defensive, like intimacy is either a weapon or a void to fill.

Evie, on the other hand, isn’t very experienced, and she comes from a deeply religious background, so intimacy for her is complicated, it’s fear, curiosity, guilt, desire, all braided together. If I rushed that, it would’ve flattened her arc. So I leaned into slow burn. There are about two and a half intimate scenes in this book, and each one is deliberate. Each moment of closeness changes the power dynamic, raises the emotional stakes, or reveals something new they can’t take back.

Because this is a series, Book 1 also had to build the world and establish the rules, so I used the relationship as the fuse. The tension comes from what’s unsaid, from proximity without permission, from the fact that wanting each other is dangerous long before it’s physical. Their restraint isn’t absence, it’s pressure, and in a story like this, pressure is everything.

---

🖋️ The Writing Process

10. You’ve had a remarkable journey with writing alongside life’s challenges. How has your personal experience shaped your storytelling?

Well, at the end of 2024, I nearly died of sudden, acute kidney failure, a result of undiagnosed multiple myeloma, and something in me snapped into focus. Now I feel like I’ve turned into Hamilton, living in that why do you write like you’re running out of time energy, because suddenly the clock has a voice, and I refuse to waste a single beat.

This summer, I had a stem cell transplant, which came with a lot, and I mean a lot, of downtime. And that’s where the writing got even louder. I was finishing one book with one hand on the edge of the world, and starting another with the other, because if I’ve learned anything, it’s this, I don’t want to just survive my life. I want to make something beautiful with it.

11. Were there any plot points, twists, or characters that surprised you during the writing process?

Quite frankly, it all surprises me. I had an original storyline I had planned to use. The original storyline was Lilith told him he had to find a certain woman, get her pregnant with the anti-christ and jumpstart the whole apocalypse. Originally, that was the whole story. But then… my characters were like, “hey… that’s not the truth.” And now we’ve gone down a rabbit hole. 

12. How do you approach pacing and tension in a story where romance and celestial stakes are both high?

Pacing is one thing I’ve never struggled with. I basically keep a picture of a line graph in my head of the storyline rising to a climax and where each plot point needs to fit. 

---

⚡ Rapid Fire (Quick Vibes)

13. Favorite fantastical or mythological source material or inspiration?

The Apocrypha 

14. Writing in silence, with music, or ambient noise?

It depends, but Sleep Token music gets me through a lot of scenes when I need heavy emotions. 

15. One word you hope readers use to describe The First Sin.

Unputdownable 

16. Character-driven or plot-driven story for you?

Character driven 

---

🚀 Looking Ahead

17. The First Sin is your first full-length romantasy novel. How does this book set the tone for your future writing?

I have thoroughly enjoyed it. But surprisingly, this is a story that feels a little to close too home for our current political times. When I finish this series, I plan to take a little break from romantasy and write a book I’ve had half-finished on the back burner that is contemporary sci-fi romance about chronic illness and parallel worlds. 

18. Are there any sequels, spin-offs, or related projects you can hint at?

I’m 40,000 words into Book 2, and my ARC readers for Book 1 already know the title. 

19. What excites you most about sharing this story with readers for the first time?

I wanted to humanize the ultimate villain, to let readers recognize familiar wounds in Lucifer and realize how easily a story can change when you finally hear the other side.

---

🖤 Just for Fun

20. If Evie Grace or Lucifer could step out of the book for a day, who would it be and what would they do?

I feel like Evie is just going through the motions, well honestly, they both are. But she’s been on her own so long, just struggling to keep her head above water. She’d love a day to whatever, hang out with her friend Destiny, go shopping, see the sites. Just be a girl for once in her life. 

21. If The First Sin were adapted, would you want it as a movie or a series—and why?

A series. The lore goes deep and there is so much backstory I’d love to give that is written, but there’s just no place to fit it into the story. 

22. What’s one fun or unexpected fact about your writing process or the world of The First Sin?

So one of the things I kind of weirdly focused on was Lucifer’s scent. I imagined it would be this wild, ancient, spicy scent that would be intoxicating to anyone. He is the Devil after all. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So… I hired a chemical engineer to make him a custom scent, and then I hired a perfumer to make it. She’s amazing. She’s worked with other romantasy authors for custom scents. When I got it, it was perfect. Like seriously, it was so him. I could picture the scent on a man’s skin. So…. I infused it into Devil tarot card air fresheners, and if you happen to come see me at a book signing you can get one. 

23. When readers finish The First Sin, what feeling or takeaway do you hope stays with them the longest?

I want them to need book 2 like right now.