Empathy

Over the holidays, I took advantage of my Amazon Prime membership and finally started watching a show that's intrigued me for a while, but which I'd been too chicken to start. I'm happy to report that Bryan Fuller's Hannibal - based on the novels about pop culture-notorious cannibal Hannibal Lecter - lives up to the hype, and then some. The show is DARK. The show is GORY. It's given open-minded me a nightmare or two, and, at this point, halfway through season three, I'm not ashamed to admit that I often pause the stream, and peek ahead on the progress bar so I know when to close my eyes or skip an especially icky moment. It's not a show for the faint of heart - nor for the close-minded. You see, I could wax poetic about Mads Mikkelsen - who I was a big fan of prior to watching this - for pages and pages, but this post isn't about the show. Not really. It's about the ways fiction offers us these special, exclusive windows into hearts and souls not our own...and the ways a lack of nuance, hate, and cancel culture are currently eroding all the benefits of dark fiction. 

In the first moments of the first episode of Hannibal, we meet Will Graham, a professor and special agent in the employ of the FBI. He's a profiler; he's also what's called a "pure empath." Will's gift is empathy: he - through artfully done segments of the show's narrative - has the ability to put himself wholly in the shoes of the criminals the FBI is trying to catch. He can follow their logic, and therefore anticipate their movements, thanks to his unique ability to let go of his own thoughts and biases. He himself doesn't have murderous impulses - though it's a theme Hannibal seeks to exploit in the show - but he's able to think like a murderer. He's wildly empathetic. 

What struck me from the first was this: authors have to be empaths, too. Oh, how often I beat the war drum of empathy. It's my constant refrain: a fiction author's job is to think like other people. I'm not putting my whole life and truth on the page, but I'm putting someone's life and truth there, and if anyone can read my work, and identify with it, and find something special in it, then I've done my job well. 

This week, in our Dartmoor Read-Along, it's Loverboy's turn. And, quite honestly, given the policing that's been happening in the book community over the past year, I knew some trepidation going into it. Tango's experience is not my experience - do I have a right to tell his story? That's just one of the things being debated on social media. In the past year, I've watched the same book "influencer" target two women authors I respect and admire greatly with Twitter callout posts. In one case, challenging a three-year age gap between characters as "pedophilia," and in another challenging an author's previous fanfic stories as "pedophilia," in the latter case, without any nuance or clarification as to the fic's actual intent. These are two specific, high-profile cases, but it happens all too often: someone on the internet using a cartoon avatar, a name that may or may not be real, and boosted by the safety of anonymity, launches a callout post in the name of "protecting" and "informing," but with the clear intent of harming an author's name and reputation. The conversation starts as "concerned" members of the book community wanting to limit who can tell which stories - but ends up, in truth, demanding that certain stories not be told at all. Both sentiments are appalling to me. In both cases - in any case - a reader has the choice to not read something he or she finds upsetting. Determining what's allowed to exist, however, is a form of censorship, and, unfortunately, it's alive and well amongst authors, bloggers, influencers, and plenty of insulated, cartoon-avatar social media users. 

The sad part? In NO cases that I've witnessed have any of the authors actually been promoting harmful behavior. All of this is the result of particular whiny consumers wanting to control every aspect of the art being created. "Don't Like Don't Read" is something in which I believe in wholeheartedly. There are plenty of books out there you couldn't PAY me to read. 50 Shades? NO THANK YOU. Catch me enjoying that never. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist; that doesn't mean an author needs to be bullied, called-out, etc. 

If we limited a person's "right" to write about certain topics based on their own experiences, we'd be cutting fiction-writing off at the knees. For example: I don't write about my own issues, for the most part. I can't. There are stories that I've had family ask me to put to paper...and I just don't know how. It hurts too much. But there are other people who can tell those sorts of stories, and who have, and who will. I don't care if they've lived any of it - I just care that they portray the issues thoughtfully, empathetically, in a way that resonates with others. And if they don't...? I simply move and read other books.

I'm terribly afraid nuance is dead. And all I know to do is to push back against the loud, ignorant, hateful - potentially paid - voices, and keep striving for art. The only way art survives is if we insist upon it. 

#SecondhandSmoke Read-Along: Tango

Today marks the start of Loverboy week in the Dartmoor Read-Along - you can grab if HERE for 99c - and though most of you have already read it once before, and know what it entails, I think it's only fair to remind everyone that, given the book's dark themes, the discussion from here on out is going to cover some difficult subject matter. I want to start with one last look back at Secondhand Smoke, because the events of that book are what set Tango down the dark path he travels during his own book.

Here goes. 

What happens to Tango in Smoke is no one's fault except Don Ellison's. He's the villain here; he's the one who kidnaps him, imprisons him, and lets his thugs torture him. Aidan feels terribly guilty - because his own drama prevented him from being as tuned-in to Tango's spiraling depressive state before the kidnapping happens - but Aidan's certainly not to blame for what happens. 

The thing about Tango is: that depressive spiral has been slowly happening throughout the course of the series. There's a sadness to him in Fearless, even though the source isn't revealed. Price of Angels is where things really start to go downhill; he's lived for years with a band-aid slapped over his trauma, but seeing Ian again, so unexpectedly, and seeing Ian as this villain who's causing trouble for the club, shatters the fragile peace he's constructed for himself. Tango is not just a club nickname, but a new identity; a shield to hide behind. Most of his club brothers know him as Tango, but here's Ian, who knows every intimate detail of his life as Kev. Who endured all the same trauma and hardship alongside him - and who he left behind. That moment in the funeral home in PoA is the start of everything going sideways for Tango. He begins a slow retreat into a dark headspace, and, through SS, his coping drug of choice is sex. It's all tangled for him; his sense of self-worth, indeed his whole sense of self, is tied up in sex, and so when he feels vulnerable and uncertain, thats' his got-to. That's a part of his identity he's certain of, and so it's become a crutch. 

At the beginning of Smoke, though, we see that it's a joyless vice for him, at this point. He's getting an immediate thrill and gratification, sure, but he's feeling hollow and aimless and pretty bleak. Jasmine has been a source of comfort for him for a long time now; she likes to have a good time, and doesn't feel ashamed of it. In their time together, that attitude has helped him to let go of some of his own shame surrounding sex. But things have shifted, now, and he feels disconnected from her - evident in the way he takes a big step back and lets Carter take his place. He's drowning, and there's only one person who can remind him of who he really is; the person who loved him at his absolute worst. He goes to Ian. 

At this point, Ghost is the only one who knows Tango is spending time with Ian outside of necessary club business. And Ghost is worried; at the beginning of the book, Ian's just asked to be "given" Kev, a favor Ghost refused outright, and with good reason. He doesn't know all the details of their relationship, but he knows Ian has a vicious streak, and a careless streak, and he can see the danger signs flashing for Tango. One could argue that Ghost should have taken a more active role, here; told Tango to keep away from Ian, inserted himself more firmly into the situation. After all, look what he did to break up Mercy and Ava.

But this is a very different situation. For starters, Tango isn't his biological child - not that he loves him any less for it, but he doesn't feel like he has the "right," so to speak, to be dictatorial. The other aspect is, Tango's personal history of abuse and addiction give Ghost pause; he doesn't ever want to say or do anything to put Tango back into his darkest of places. He can see that something is badly wrong, but, given Ghost has the emotional intelligence of an old tree stump, he doesn't really know how to go about helping without causing further harm. And I think there's a part of him, deep down, that thinks Ian might - just might - have a point. Ghost knows that, despite all the love, support, and relative stability of the club, Tango isn't happy, that he doesn't feel safe - evidenced by the way Tango acts nearly frightened of Ghost when he hands over the map. They've tried it this way; what if Ian's life of luxury and insulation, of imported cars and bodyguards, is a better approach? Ghost doesn't know. 

And then Tango is abducted. 

Here's another moment for the audience to hate Ghost! Rest assured I hate him here, too. I remember being actively angry when I wrote the scene where he turns down Ian's offer. But, once again, I see it as my job to adhere to the characters as they are; to write them consistently. The thing about Ghost is that, except when it comes to Maggie and their kids, he doesn't ever operate while wearing just one hat - though we see a shift in that with Loverboy. I think Loverboy is the book where Ghost finally takes a long, hard look at himself. Up to that point, he's always looking at every situation from a variety of angles. It would have been a really feel-good moment for him to jump on Ian's offer and set everything else aside in the effort to rescue Tango. But that's not how Ghost operates. He still doesn't trust Ian, and he's certainly not going to essentially sell his club to the man without thinking things through. Ian would have them at an incredible disadvantage, and he isn't ready to concede to that.

His hesitation, though, provides a chance for Aidan to act on purely emotional impulse - and for the better, this time. I've seen readers say Aidan was "dumb" for staging a rescue attempt without Mercy leading the charge, but Mercy, loveable and lethal as he is, is a wrecking ball of a human being. Instead, Aidan turns to the precise, knifelike skills of Fox. And, in a lot of ways, Fox is the smart choice, because he doesn't get emotionally involved in things. If Fox agrees to the scheme, and comes up with it, even, then Aidan feels like at least someone is thinking this through, as opposed to merely reacting. 

This situation with Tango is really the most complex of the whole series. There's lots to unpack. And the thing is, I think there could have been a version of the story in which Tango stayed with Ian, and you can't know how tempted I sometimes am to write an AU of my own story - but it would have gotten much darker before it got lighter, because they're both so damaged, and it would have taken a long time for them to learn how to lift one another up, rather than drag one another down. 

We'll talk about it, and so many other things, this week as we crack open Loverboy and tackle Tango's demons. Terrible things happened in that basement in Secondhand Smoke, but Tango also met Whitney there, and she's a vital part of his recovery. 

#SecondhandSmoke Read-Along: Part Two

The title of this book is a nod to the ways a person's actions have potentially damaging repercussions for the people close to them. Aidan's decisions don't just impact him, but those around him. 

Sam

The very first time Sam ever laid eyes on Aidan Teague, she was fourteen, and he knocked the breath right out of her. 

That impression of him had stayed with her, had held him captive in her fascination longer than any man she'd met as an adult - girlhood had a way of sharpening fascination to something dark and deadly. 

For Sam, Aidan represents the kind of deep, innocent longing that comes with being a hormonal teenager. He was beautiful, and in a lot of ways, more grown up than the other boys her age. There was that edge of danger that's always magnetic at that age. But she knew he was a cocky brat, too, and she still knows that. 

Now, as adults, since becoming friends with Ava, she's started to see beneath the very distracting outer veneer to the real person beneath all the tats and swagger, and she's realized that, inwardly, Aidan is terribly self-conscious, uncertain, and, most of all, sweet. At this point, Sam isn't just infatuated, and isn't blind to his faults because she thinks he's hot - Sam knows him, by the time we get to this book. Understands how his brain works. She loves him, and she sees his flaws as areas in which he needs help, rather than as reasons to leave him. She's no stranger to hard work. I don't see it as her "fixing" him, or her being "stuck" with him; she loves him, and it's worth it to her to offer her love and acceptance in return. People like Aidan do need a helping hand, and where so many would have turned away from him, because he was inconvenient, Sam's willing to make the effort. She's the first woman outside Maggie or Ava who's really loved him, and he knows that, which is why he's so distressed that he hurts her.

His problem with Sam is a common one: because he didn't tell her about Tonya's pregnancy immediately, it gets harder and harder to know when to fess up. He doesn't want to scare her off - though the longer he waits, the more hurtful the omission becomes. He expects her to walk away - in his mind, it's a matter of when, not if - and that's testament to the way most of his relationships have played out. Sam knows that; once she gets over her initial shock and anger and hurt, that's what brings her back, and keeps her in Aidan's corner. 

Greg

The Greg Situation is a good example of Aidan's innate kindness. Aidan can be rude, and inconsiderate, and definitely not politically correct in lots of small ways - generally with his careless language and his preconceptions ("chick soap"). But when it comes to actions, and big decisions, he's good at heart. He's an outlaw, so he's not worried about coming across as polite amongst polite society. But he does have a strong moral compass when it comes to what he deems important. He's not a killer. In Fearless, when Ghost sent him to the cattle property to kill Greg, he couldn't pull the trigger. He disobeyed Ghost not only as his father, but as his club president, and put the Dogs at risk - but for him, it was a worthy sacrifice. This wasn't a mistake, but a conscious act of mercy. He thought Greg would run far away, never be seen again, and that the problem was over. 

Often, in counter culture stories, we see characters disobeying their clubs or gangs in nefarious ways that impact the whole group later on. I wanted to turn that theme on its head: what happens when a biker does the right thing? How does that hurt the club? For  me, it's maybe the most fascinating element of the book.

The answer here is that Greg shows up again, his presence and his actions set to harm the club deeply. He doesn't see himself as "owing" Aidan for that act of mercy. Rather, it gave him a chance to seek his fortunes elsewhere. 

For Aidan, it forces him to examine his own life in uncomfortable ways. What's more important? Looking after the club by any means? Or standing by a personal moral code? The answer is muddled, and complicated, and Aidan's realization is that life is perhaps even messier than he's always thought. If you call the club your family, you can't stand on the fringes; at some point, you'll have to get your hands dirty. 

Tango

Tango I'm going to blog about tomorrow, because there's lots to look at there, and I want to take my time with it. Our poor Tiny Dancer has it rough in this book. But his rescue provides some of my favorite moments in the whole novel. 

Scenes From Buffalo Part Six

Major Golden Eagle spoilers ahead! And our Unlikely Triumvirate. 

Severin had an audience in attendance before he managed to get the bag open, this time. Finches, and chickadees, and even a few woodpeckers, their checkered black and white feathers fluttering like playing cards as they alighted on the snow in the gathering crowd around him, looking up with expectant, black bead eyes, waiting for him. The cardinals were his favorites, the males in their brightest red, and the females in their muted browns and oranges, their rust tails, both genders sporting the little feather hats for which they were named. 

#SecondhandSmoke Read-Along: Part One

The first half of Aidan's arc in book four of the Dartmoor Series is a bit like a car crash: terrible things are happening, you know people are going to get hurt, but you can't look away, as fascinated as you are horrified. Aidan's the sort of guy who's skated along in life, with little regard for the consequences, never over-taxing his moral compass, and in Secondhand Smoke, those consequences hit him in a major way. I've always looked at it like this: he's not someone who was going to have an epiphany one day and decide to get his act together; his transformation was always going to be a reaction to an outside stimulus. In this case, stimuli: three major catastrophes unfold for him here, all of them demanding that he take hold of his life and become - at least in the ways that an outlaw biker can be - a better man.

Readers typically hate Tonya, and I can't say I blame them. She's a spoiled rich girl brought up in a very different world from Aidan; she has everything she could ever want, and treats Aidan like garbage. For her, sleeping with him was a walk on the wild side, a careless fling just to see what it was like. She thought he was hot, but there's a part of her who loathes herself for "slumming it." Mix physical attraction, revulsion, and shame, and you've got one wicked affair. The thing about Tonya, though, is we never get inside her head. We never walk through the story with her - and that's very much on purpose. We're privy only to how she behaves toward Aidan and his family, so our view of her is heavily skewed. I've had readers argue that it seems "out of character" for her to have carried the baby to term rather than terminate the pregnancy, but the simple fact of the matter is, readers have seen only one side of Tonya. They don't know her. Aidan doesn't even know her. While a woman's right to choose is an important topic, this book isn't about that. In SS, she does make a choice. The question here isn't "well, if it were me, I would have..." because this book, as with every other that a write, is not examining instances of "what would most people do." it's what would these particular people do. Tonya has her reasons, but because she's so guarded and vicious with Aidan, and because we never slide into her POV, the audience doesn't get to hear them. The audience doesn't need to hear them, frankly. 

The important thing here is: Aidan's about to be a father. That was always the plan for him, giving him a baby; giving him a baby birthed by a mother who thought she was too good for him, and who didn't want to be involved in any of it. There could have been a story there, of Tonya softening, growing, of loving Aidan. I think there's a part of her deeply saddened by the whole thing; a part of her who knows that, had she let her guard down, could have loved Aidan, and that terrifies her. That's the thing about writing characters as if they were real people: there are always different paths you could have taken. There were the makings of an Aidan/Tonya endgame, however slow and painful it turned out. Just like there could have been an emotional, angsty endgame for Ian and Tango - albeit one very different from what we end up with in Loverboy. 

There's a theme I go back to again and again with this series: that of history repeating itself. Because history does repeat itself: on a large scale, and on a small scale, among families. In Fearless, Maggie reminds a furious Ghost again and again that Mercy and Ava's relationship isn't so different from their own. In fact, Maggie was a year younger when they first got together. Ghost's anger is commonplace in the real world. The hypocritical anger of "do as I say, not as I do." He wants his kids to be smarter and more successful than he was. But Ava fell in love young with a dark man, just like her mama.

And Aidan set his sights on the wrong woman the first time around, just like his daddy. Aidan's in the same boat Ghost was in, back then. A single father, his child's mother going off to live her own life with a different man; she's going to have children that she mothers and cares for, but doesn't want his child - just like Olivia. 

It's that repeating history that has Maggie and Ava so furious and dogged in their insistence that Aidan keeps the baby rather than put it up for adoption. It's a purely emotional mama bear response from both of them. Maggie remembers little eight-year-old Aidan asking her for help with his homework. And Ava remembers the baby she lost to violence, without her having any say in the matter. Every character involved brings his or her own experiences and prejudices to bear on the situation. 

Not to use a child as a plot device, but...The baby is the root of the conflict. She's the impetus for change. Fatherhood is going to make Aidan grow up fast. The baby will force him to grow, and it will create friction for him and Samantha, who's everything Tonya couldn't be for him. 

The two other big fiascos in the book are very different. If getting Tonya pregnant was an act of thoughtless irresponsibility, then the reappearance of Greg, by contrast, is the result of an act of mercy. And juggling these two things, Aidan's caught in his own drama, and not aware that his best friend is slow sliding into darkness. I'll talk about those two issues in the next post. 

Scenes From Buffalo Part Five

“I think he’s afraid.”

#TheSkeletonKing Read-Along: Part Two

Today's the last day to get The Skeleton King for 99 cents, friends! The price goes back up tonight, and then it will be sale time for Secondhand Smoke, which we'll start tomorrow. 

I had a great question yesterday on Instagram about process, in response to a Tweet I shared in which I stated that Dante from the Sons of Rome series was only supposed to appear in one scene, but has now officially become a part of the pack. The reader asked if, in cases of minor characters becoming major characters, the older, original character voices were drowned out by the new. The answer to that is no. 

When I'm writing a series, I'm always looking at it as a complete ensemble. I have a hard time writing standalones because I so rarely see a story as a discreet set of happenings between just a few people. It's very much like an ornate tapestry, one of those wall hangings from the Middle-Ages in which a hundred things are happening all at once in great detail. You step in closer, at moments, to take an intimate look at one vignette, but then you step back and look at the whole again; focus on another vignette. For me, the series as a whole is the story; I'm always looking at the big picture, rather than trying to make connections between discreet, individual stories, if that makes sense. If a new character is added, it doesn't detract from the existing characters; I just have to look closely at the new character as well. New threads woven in, made a part of the whole. Some voices inevitably grow quieter over time - for instance, I don't feel anything urgent or front-and-center happening for Mercy and Ava anymore - but there's always the potential for a shift. When something happens within the course of the series, it will affect different characters, well, differently, and so there's an ebb and flow in "main character stories." It isn't a case of ending one story, tying if off with a bow, and never returning. 

I have no idea if that made any sense. But! It seemed a good moment to mention it as we take a closer look at two important subplots in TSK that have great bearing on the series as a whole.

From the beginning, Aidan has been a bit of a stereotypical bad boy: handsome, always down for a joke, a ladies man...but, ultimately, an immature douchebag. "Aidan needs to grow up" is a refrain not just within the series, but among readers, and he most certainly does. From a writer perspective, Aidan is an immature clown because, let's face it, we've all known men in their thirties who acted eighteen. That's true to life. From a textual standpoint, Aidan's main weakness is, oddly enough, that he was born into the club. 

This club - like real-life clubs - is made of up societal misfits. They didn't wake up one day and decide to become bikers. They don't fit in, but they've found a place with the Lean Dogs. Aidan, though, grew up around the Dogs. He never intended to be anything but a biker. For him, the club wasn't a lighthouse in the dark; wasn't a port in a storm. It was a given. His view of so-called "normal life" is heavily skewed by this. He was a prospect, sure, but he didn't have to prove his worth the way his brothers did. While his mom leaving at a young age was doubtless traumatizing, he's not faced half the trauma of people like Mercy, or Michael, or Tango. While he wants Ghost's approval, Ghost is still more dad than president for him, and there's less incentive to impress his father - a person he rather takes for granted. His complicated relationship with Ghost is a big contributor to his issues - issues he starts to examine in Half My Blood, after the accident that nearly kills him. 

But Aidan's been immature and averse to reflection his whole life; his attempts to turn his life around are, understandably, misguided, naïve, and bumbling. He knows that Maggie has been the greatest and best influence on his dad, so he decides "I know, I'll find me a good woman, and that'll be the thing that helps me get it together." But - misguided as stated - he equates "classy, rich, and expensive" with "good." He's been sleeping with one kind of woman, so now he's going to switch it up.

Oh, Aidan, you fool. 

His disastrous, downright ugly relationship with Tonya, who might be classy, but certainly isn't loving, kind, or supportive, comes to a dramatic head at the very end of the book when she tells him she's pregnant. We'll talk about that when we get to SS, but suffice to say, TSK, and Emmie's farm, provided an opportunity for Aidan to start trying to better himself...while screwing himself over completely. 

The other big "oh no" moment of the book happens for poor Sergeant Fielding. Oh, Vince, buddy - you've become the thing you hate. Despite all the grief I give him, I do like Vince. He's more or less a stand-up guy. He hates the Dogs because they're criminals, but he's not going to resort to any underhanded, dirty-cop scheming in order to put them away. He wants to do everything by the book. For him, the line between Good and Bad is solid and easily defined: do bad things, you're a bad person; do good things, you're good. But in TSK, despite all his good intentions, he kills someone. And there's Ghost, his nemesis, offering a hand to help him up, telling him he can make it all go away. 

So now Vince is stuck: he's done a bad thing, so is he now a bad person? Or, is it as Ghost's been saying all along, a case of life being complicated. 

For Ghost, this is a boon: he's get leverage over Fielding, and now an in with the police.

But for Vince, it's the start of a slow spiral into depression, guilt, and self-doubt. But, though he'd be loath to admit it, it puts something in perspective for Vince: maybe the Dogs aren't "bad" for the sake of it. Maybe this is how they survive in an ugly world. Maybe nothing's as clear as he's always thought it was. 

And, after all, this whole series is about perspectives...

#DartmoorSeries Read-Along: The Skeleton King

"Excitement means nothing, King, my boy. It's a man who comes to the club out of desperation that finds his heart and soul there, on the road, with his brothers. You come to the MC a broken man, and it'll make you whole again, mark my words."

~Phillip Calloway, The Skeleton King

Dartmoor book three is a departure from the first two in several ways. Most notably, Walsh is much milder and less imposing than Mercy and Michael were before him. Not just because of his height (honestly, I'm still a little bemused about the reaction to his and his brothers' height. I just...don't really get it), but because of his personality. He's quiet and thoughtful; if you're lucky, you'll get a snort and an eyebrow lift out of him. He's better with numbers than with breaking kneecaps - though he's got a strong stomach when it comes to violence. He's Mercy's preferred "secretary" when it's sledgehammer time. 

I look at it this way: Walsh is the CFO to Ghost's CEO of the Dartmoor Inc. experiment. The club, like any successful enterprise, requires diverse talents. They can't all be head-bashers; you've got to have some logical, common sense guys in there, too, to stay on top of the financial side of things. That's Walsh - that's the Walsh I wrote into Fearless, and I don't believe in changing characters just because it's time to center a book on them. 

Emmie's a different sort of leading female, too. We had Ava, who was born into the club, and then Holly, running from a family far more terrifying than the club. But then there's Emmie, who's not an outlaw, and who has no interest in becoming one, either. She's a club outsider, and she carries all the fears and prejudices most of the Knoxville civilians do. Still, she's attracted to Walsh, and things are going nearly well - until she follows him over to the cattle property that night, sees something she shouldn't, and is strong-armed into a courthouse wedding. 

In my marathon of MC documentary watching back in the day, I encountered several tales like this: of women who'd "seen too much" having to marry into the club to prevent them from being able to ever testify. (It's better than the alternative, let me tell you). It's a case of pulling a person so far in that they can't get out, and it was something I thought would be fun to explore with Dartmoor. 

In this case, with Walsh and Emmie, it created a really tense dynamic, at least for a little while. There was attraction on both their parts, and even real feelings on Walsh's, but suddenly Emmie is terrified and distrustful. She spends the back half of the book torn between falling for him and fighting everything polite society has told her she ought to think about this situation she's wound up in. 

They're well-suited, though, and by the end, it's real love keeping them connected. 

I'm always keeping an eye out for a chance to work equestrian sports into my books, and TSK was a perfect opportunity. 

This book also provided plot movement for some of the bigger, overarching, background stories in the series - namely Aidan's misguided redemption attempt, and Vince Fielding becoming the club's lackey. I'll blog about those important plot points tomorrow!

Happy Valentine's Day.  

#PriceofAngels Read-Along Part Four

"You never promised them you'd help get the girl back," Walsh said. Not a question. Not even a guess; an understanding. 

"No." Shaman glanced toward him, sharp-boned face warming, pleased. "Naturally, they assumed that I would, but no, I didn't care about any of that. I'm a fan of many debauched things, but rape isn't one of them."

"But you sent them out to Wynford Chace's farm," Ghost said.

An elegant shrug. "You're looking at it the wrong way, Mr. Teague. I don't care. Not about any of it."

Enter: the villain.

Angels is Michael and Holly's story; it's also another chapter in the ongoing growth and expansion of the Lean Dogs MC. They've all faced rival clubs, drug dealers, corrupt mayors, and law enforcement. But now, here, at the end of this novel, we meet a more classical, archetypical villain: the incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful drug dealer known as Shaman. 

Mr. Ian Byron, originally from London. 

I always wonder what readers think when I tell them that Ian is my favorite character in the whole series. In this big, sprawling Southern epic about outlaw bikers, it's our clever, cutting, complicated villain-turned-adopted-son who I enjoy writing best. The truth is, Ian is the sort of character I like best. A sophisticate; a survivor. Elegant, and learned, and bristling with all the best dialogue. 

He likes the finer things in life. This was the first time I wrote a character like him - and if my Sons of Rome series is any indication, I'm not looking back anytime soon. I love Ian, and I love his journey, but in Angels, he was still a dangerous enigma. 

In any book series, there are stories of the moment, and then there are long game stories. Tango is a long game story. From the first moment we see him, when he's the sweet to Aidan's sour when Ava gets out of the truck at Dartmoor for the first time, it's obvious that Tango is gentler than most of his brothers. It's obvious, too, that he's deeply scarred emotionally: a truth of which we only catch glimpses, here and there. Glances, twitches: we know something terrible happened, but we don't know what. This is my favorite kind of storytelling: showing you a hint, and then peeling the onion of truth down, and down, until the sharpness of it brings tears to your eyes. 

When I wrote this book, I knew exactly who Ian and Tango were to one another; that moment in Ian's office, when he's still just Shaman, and Tango sees him, and chokes, and says, "Ian?" That was exciting to write. That was standing at the top of the roller coaster and knowing all the drops and loops, knowing some would be gut-wrenching, but being excited for the challenge. 

This book was a first in a lot of ways, craft-wise, and Ian's introduction was another example. A new kind of challenge; a tweaking of old skills, and a gaining of new ones.

Also, I just love him. But I said that already. There's lots of great Ian moments in the rest of the series. 

#PriceofAngels Read-Along: Part Three

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the Ghost in the room.

Price of Angels provides a new - and not complimentary - view of outlaw club life. Specifically, we see Ghost in an even uglier light, when he, at first, refuses to come to Holly's defense. In fact, he's A-OK with handing her over to her abusive family if that's the thing that will keep the club safe. Forget being an asshole, that's downright monstrous. Lots of readers hated him after this book, and I don't blame them - but this is also one of my favorite things about writing fiction: the chance to tell a story with different, and often conflicting viewpoints. 

Ghost Teague is not a nice guy. He's the president of a powerful outlaw organization that doesn't hesitate to draw blood when necessary, well-versed in the arts of intimidation and law-skirting. But there's a code of honor within the club, right? And a certain kind of chivalry that pertains to a member's family, their wives and children. So Ghost should have been ready and eager to assist Holly, right? 

Wrong. 

From our perspective as readers, we've met Holly, learned her backstory, and come to care for her, just as Michael has. We feel protective of her, and we rightly hate Ghost for his callousness. 

But Ghost's perspective is very different. He has his own wife and children to look after, and they're his top priority - beyond that, his allegiance and responsibility is to the club as an organization...and to each individual member second. Because if the club goes down; if someone managed to infiltrate it, charges were filed and arrests made, the club would cease to exist. And without the club, what are they all but a bunch of angry guys in leather? From his perspective, Holly is a newcomer; an outsider who's charmed Michael, whom he thought uncharmable. He has no way of knowing, at first, if she's telling the truth about who she is: is she a genuine victim? Or is she a plant? As terrible as it sounds, he has no personal investment in her or her situation; he's not willing to risk his club or his family on her behalf. 

Creatively, I had a choice to make. Do I write what felt like an authentic reaction from an MC president? Or do I write Ghost as an idealized father figure? In this case, I went with authentic - I do that in most cases. Ultimately, I think it makes Ghost a more interesting figure; he's not just the good-guy-outlaw. He's a complicated, violent, ruthless man, capable of love, but capable of great coldness, too. 

And I also like the chance it provides for the other members to witness that coldness. It's a startling reminder for them all that they are, ultimately, wheels in a cog. It isn't that Ghost doesn't love them, but he loves the club most, and it puts them all on their toes. A sense of uneasiness that's going to follow everyone as the series moves forward. 

The Read-Along is still going strong! I'll be posting some final thoughts on Angels today and over the weekend. Today is the last chance to grab it for 99 cents! We'll also talk about the in-between novella Half My Blood this weekend, and then move onto The Skeleton King on Monday. 

Happy Friday! 

Scenes From Buffalo Part Four

The air smelled of frost, and cold, and pine sap, and prey. Sasha ran with his mouth open, tongue lolling, diving and plunging through the heavy drifts gathered at the edge of the forest. He felt ice crystals digging at his toe pads; felt the wind in his face, sharp and wild. When he caught the scent of a rabbit, he gave a high, excited whine; changed course and plunged past the tree line, hot on the trail. He could sense and hear the other two wolves behind him; the musk of their fur, the bristling of their own excitement. It was almost like having a real four-legged pack again. 

#PriceofAngels Read-Along: Part Two

"I don't take contract hits," he told her. "I don't accept payment for killing."

"What makes you kill, then?" she came back at him, quicker and harder than he expected. "What's it take?"

"Loyalty. I'm not a hitman."

She regarded him a long moment, sitting up with the covers around her waist, sipping coffee with her breasts trying to spill out of her red bra. "Then what are you?"

"Most of the time, I don't know."

At the time of its conception, this book was the most challenging project I'd tackled to date. For all that Mercy and Ava and most of the rest of the club walked on the wild side, there were familiar, easily lovable character traits to be found in all of them. Be it affability, or badassery, or a certain Southern charm, most of them felt recognizable in some way for readers used to this kind of fiction.

Michael and Holly were much less charming, though. Not only that, but their relationship was much quieter; less bombastic, more careful. They circled one another warily, both painfully honest, despite their stark, superficial differences. 

Every time I pen a romance between two characters, I'm playing matchmaker for them. I'm never thinking, "what will make this character attractive to the audience?" It's not a match between character and audience, but between character and character, so the goal is never to create the ideal man or woman. I'm always trying to put together two people who fit. Who complement and challenge each other, who have good chemistry, and who can really come to understand one another. Holly's circumstances were extreme, so I knew she needed an extreme match, and Michael definitely fit the bill. 

While I do enjoy revisiting themes and tropes that I've already explored, usually to try them in a different way, for the most part I'm always looking for a new challenge. I don't want to write the same story over and over with different names slapped on the characters. While Mercy and Ava's relationship was characterized by such drama, Michael and Holly's relationship hummed with a quiet, constant tension, winding tighter and tighter, and then settling into something sustainable and supportive. Their conversations are shorter, fraught with long looks, and body language; nonverbal cues. It was such a change of pace, and I enjoyed that.

The other thing I enjoyed - the most pleasant surprise - was being able, in real time, as I was writing, to see that I'd made progress with my craft. I'd rocked along writing in the same way for a while, but with Angels, my prose took a step forward. The writing was simply better in this book. That's been one of the most interesting and thrilling aspects of my writing journey: being able to see progress. 

#DartmoorSeries Read-Along: Price of Angels Part One

Fearless opens with Ava, with someone born into the club; raised by it, taught to love it, someone unquestioningly loyal to it from her first breath. Mercy comes to the club as a young adult, but without his family - the only two people he loved - and given the level of violence that lives in his bones, he's quick to throw himself fully into the new family the club provides. During all the trials and traumas of their story, their loyalty to the club is never in question. 

Book two flips the script, though. We meet not one, but two club outsiders. In chapter one, we walk through Bell Bar from Holly's POV, far, far outside the Lean Dogs MC. We quickly realize that her perspective is not that of your average, middle-class, nine-to-five Knoxville resident. The guys intimidate her, the women confound her, but she's not thinking "ooh, bad criminals." No, in fact, she's thinking she'd very much like to work up the courage to introduce herself - to one in particular. Because what do you do when you feel small and frightened and someone's after you? You get a big, mean, scary dog. In this case, a Lean Dog. 

Then we meet Michael. He's named for the Archangel St. Michael - it seemed fitting for the Sgt. at Arms. For the club-sanctioned killer. It was St. Michael who put Lucifer in the pit, and the book carries this bit of biblical lore throughout as an extended metaphor. Within the club, Michael is the one who gets his hands dirty; Ghost makes the decisions, decides who lives and dies, but it's Michael who carries out the orders. He's coldly unemotional, and he's willing to do the unthinkable when his president tells him to. 

Michael's first POV scene is rather shocking, and that was by design. It's another of those unpleasant moments that tells the audience "these guys live by their own rules and that means doing some bad things." It's a testament to the utter ruthlessness of the club, to Ghost's brand of leadership, and to Michael's willingness to follow orders. It's ugly. And I think it's an important moment because it reinforces what we learned in the first book: the other guys might not like Michael, but they need him for this sort of thing. 

But why don't they like him? Why would he be accepted as a part of the club if he's not good buddies with everyone else? 

Insert Miranda Lambert's "All Kinds of Kinds." 

The club is a family, and they're all brothers and sisters and friends...but, get down to the nitty gritty details, and the club is an organization. A small country, a business - however you want to look at it, it serves an economic function that must be preserved in order to continue existing - and existing in a position of power. This means two things:

One: the man in charge is going to ruthlessly guard the interests of the organization over that of the individual, which explains Ghost's behavior toward Holly in the book.

Two: There will be members who don't quite fit. Wallflowers and outcasts who aren't as tight with the others. 

I wanted to use this book to explore both those concepts as they might play out within an outlaw MC. Michael being an awkward, socially inept outcast amongst his brothers felt very much like a real-world problem.

We'll work our way through the book this week: here, on Instagram (@hppress), and on my author Facebook page. You can grab it for the sale price of 99 cents all this week. Welcome to the discussion!  

#Fearless Read-Along

This week, I've been hosting a Fearless read-along - you can check the original post HERE for links to FB and Insta to access the discussion - and it's quite the blast from the past for me. There's something I keep coming back to - something I believed strongly back in 2014 when I adapted Fearless into the start of this series, and something I still believe today, even more strongly. 

It's this: no one writes books for everyone. 

But books written for particular readers usually offer tidbits of unspeakable truth for those who enjoy them. 

I think if you sit down to write a book intended to please every possible reader, you'll end up with a story built on tropes, and archetypes, bright colors and flashy taglines...but without any real substance to back it up. We've reached a point in the current book community in which personal taste is often incorrectly conflated with moral righteousness. A readership lens in which the reader's personal background/decision-making process is expected to be reflected in a story's protagonist - or else the author "did a bad job." 

It's my belief that there's no such thing as a "good story idea" or a "bad story idea." There is only consistent, meticulous characterization, thoughtful prose, and emotional continuity. In a time of hashtags, and trends, and market buzz, there's an unsettling push to paint books not as individual efforts of imagination and expression, but as consumer products with mass-appeal. Rather than talk about the nuance and subtlety and complication of capturing a slice of life on paper, books are judged based on checked-off boxes of criteria, like comparing the storage capacity of two laptops you're trying to decide upon. I can't help but feel like this approach actively discourages creativity and risk-taking. It discourages thoughtful discussion about the media being consumed. It doesn't account for taste, and it's individual taste that, at the end of the day, drives book sales and builds book-loving communities. 

Before I was an indie author, I was a fanfic writer. As much as I value original fiction, I will always support fanfics and fic-writing communities. It's such a chance to get your feet wet as a writer; to explore craft, and learn as part of a supportive, wildly creative community of fellow fiction lovers. It was that for me for several years, until the fandom I was a part of, like most fandoms, turned toxic. A new group of fic writers banded together, linked virtual arms, and launched a months' long harassment campaign against every author in the community who they saw as a threat to their own work. One member of this clique in particular harassed me unceasingly, because she was angry that so many readers liked my work, and thought she and her buddies should be the gatekeepers of an entire fandom. I shouldn't write about young, impressionable women like Ava, she said ad nauseum but about older, more mature, responsible, professional women...blah, blah. It got so annoying, so un-fun that I left fandom and started writing original fiction. 

Here was what that clique utterly failed to understand about fiction: not every story is for every reader. Furthermore: We shouldn't want that to be the case. 

It's no secret at this point that I like writing dark fiction. I like taking controversial points of view and challenging readers to feel empathetic toward characters who are criminals, or starry-eyed youngsters, or women more ferocious than their men. Characters who are murderers, who are weapons; characters who are victims, who are struggling, who suffer from anxiety and depression. Characters who are bikers, or Chekists, or who are freaking Vlad the Impaler. 

From the beginning, my goal with Fearless was a specific one. I didn't want to write about a scary, mean outlaw softening for his very soft and law-abiding woman. I researched the heck out of these one-percenter clubs, and I wanted to write about one of the big, successful, intimidating clubs - about the men who chose to live outside of society, and the women who'd turned their backs on society in favor of a life of outlawry alongside their men. The question wasn't "how can I make readers think the way I do?" It was "how can I create characters who feel terribly real, and put their thoughts and feelings on the page?" That's my goal with every book. I try to create a complete picture: of a place, of a group of people, of a lifestyle. 

The thing that surprises me, again and again, is the reader response. I love when readers tell me that they love a character - and that they all love different characters! I love hearing that one reader loves Mercy, and another prefers Aidan. Hearing about all the little, small scenes that left an impression: things as simple as Ghost urging an exhausted Ava to eat a candy bar in the hospital; and as big as Mercy overcome with remembered grief, holding Ava to him so tightly he lifts her feet off the ground. 

Different parts of the story speak to different readers. And, still, there are some readers to whom the story doesn't speak at all - because it isn't a story for everyone. It doesn't have to be, it wasn't meant to be. 

That's one of the major takeaways of my career thus far: an author isn't writing for the world. An author is writing for the people who read their work and say, "I like this. This holds meaning for me." That's been the most wonderful compliment: to know that someone has found enjoyment and comfort in my work. 

Thank you, all! It's been a pleasure, and there's so many more stories to explore.