Let’s talk about the long game.
Let’s talk about reader
expectation, and delayed gratification, and exacting scenes placed amidst a vivid
big picture.
Let’s talk about the long game –
and in the spirit of spring, let’s talk about it in garden terms.
If you walk through a flourishing
garden in the middle of summer, you might see a trellis heaped with climbing
roses; waving stalks of purple salvia; thriving gardenia hedges and bright cosmos
and zinnias. All of it’s working together to create a complete, harmonious
picture…but at the outset of spring, they all emerged from the soil at
different times. Some plants need more time to grow before they bloom. And in
the case of the climbing roses, it took at least three years before the canes
reached the top of the trellis: first they sleep, then they creep, then they
leap. Some plants reseed naturally, and some have to be dug down deep, and
watered thoroughly. Some die off and need replacing each spring, like the tulip
bulbs, and some are perennials that reappear every year on their own. The garden
as a whole is lush and wondrous, but each individual plant requires a different
sort of care. Be it seed depth, water amount, or soil ph, every stalk of that
garden needed special attention so that it could contribute most beautifully to
the overall portrait.
So too, when writing a series,
does each character need his or her own special care so that they can
contribute most beautifully to the overall story arc. A book series is made up
of dozens upon dozens of smaller story arcs, and trust me: I am ALWAYS playing the
long game.
With rare exception, I don’t
write standalones. Whether it’s Dartmoor, or Sons of Rome, or Hell Theory, or
the Drake Chronicles, I’m always deeply-invested in the small, intimate moment
at hand, and highly cognizant of the chapters and books that lay ahead. Each scene
for each character is steering them toward those larger moments of growth and
self-actualization. Some characters arrive as potted plants, already thriving,
simply in need of a little maintenance. And some characters are the most unlikely-looking,
potato-esque bulbs that need to be dug way in, watered heavily, and which
finally surprise you at the end of summer. Some characters resolve most of their
issues in a single book, and others take a whole course of books to end up
where they’re going.
But for me, they were ALWAYS
going there. Some stories take longer to germinate, that’s all. And if readers
are thinking that I am – for some unknown reason – writing tidy, standalone romances,
and nothing else, that delayed gratification is going to be a pretty bitter
pill to swallow. Because, see, I haven’t changed my approach. It’s the long
game or bust for me. But sometimes, if that long game isn’t what readers are
searching for, they wind up disappointed.
So, let’s talk about that.
Let’s talk about Fox.
We first meet Fox at the beginning
of Snow In Texas, when Colin walks into the Texas clubhouse and finds a
rather unassuming man with very blue eyes sitting on a bar stool. At that
moment, I knew that Fox had been trained up as an assassin, that he was cold,
calculating, and peculiar, and that, of his eight half-siblings, he was the
most like their father. I think the thing that readers found immediately
fascinating about him is the very thing that makes him such an unlikely lead
POV character: to put it bluntly, he’s mysterious. It becomes quickly apparent
that he isn’t like the other Dogs. Local boys who were mechanics, or brawlers,
or teenage runaways, all of whom found a home amongst the club. For all that he
can blend into any situation, Fox sticks out like a sore thumb by comparison.
He’s fine with this. For all that he does love the club, he thinks of himself
as a bit extraordinary, if he’s being honest.
When I announced that I was
beginning work on a project called White Wolf, people began clamoring
for a book about Fox. In the case of many angry emails and messages, they
demanded a book about Fox instead of White Wolf. Thus began the ongoing
four years of gaslighting and insult from people who enjoy telling me they won’t
read or don’t like anything I write that isn’t about bikers.
I didn’t want to write a book
about Fox. Why? Because his story was part of a long game that I didn’t think
people were going to go for. I was being emailed plot “suggestions” for a Fox
book, most of them involving Fox shacking up with a single mother and settling
down. Finally planting his wild roots. But Fox doesn’t HAVE wild roots. He isn’t
aimless; isn’t a broken man waiting to be made whole by the love of a good
woman. He isn’t wounded. Fox is shockingly well-adjusted. He isn’t repressing
his feelings – he just doesn’t feel things all that deeply. Fox loves, and Fox protects,
but he doesn’t have that inner, aching loneliness that mark Walsh and Albie.
Fox is, in fact, a bit empty – a condition that we see him grappling with in his
own quiet, subtle way over the course of Prodigal Son, Lone Star,
and Homecoming.
I told everyone I wouldn’t write
his book, and after some of the hate and abuse I received, I felt pretty okay
with that decision. I don’t write books according to prompts or suggestions. I
write books that follow a character’s journey. Character first, character
first, character first.
But then in 2016, I went to see Captain
America: Civil War. Thus began my long, slow realization that, despite
adoring some of its characters, the MCU was more focused on plot than any kind
of meaningful and deep storytelling. Also, in light of the writers saying that
Bucky had to go into the deep freeze because, quote, “he deserved it after
killing all those people,” I reconsidered writing a book about Fox. More
accurately: a book about Fox’s family. About his father, and his siblings, and
his new, lost, tenth brother, who wasn’t a boy at all, but a weapon. I was
never going to write a book about Fox melting when he found the love of his
life. But this – this tale of authority using pawns for their dirty work…this
was a story I could tell, and wanted to tell.
I’d already told a half-dozen
stories about gruff bikers finding true love. Fox’s book was always going to be
a part of the long game. We’d seen what happens when broken men carve out their
own kingdoms and set up shop in the underground. Now it was time to explore the
other side of the underground. You don’t live and work in hell without
running afoul of other demons. Who better than a criminal organization to tackle
a government organization?
To put it bluntly, Prodigal
Son didn’t go over well with readers. Most people seemed not to like it,
and the sentiment continually expressed was that readers had “expected more”
from Fox. On the one hand, I didn’t want to write the book for exactly this
reason: it was never going to be a mushy romance and I knew that could be a
problem. On the other hand…I’m not sure what anyone did expect from Fox personally,
as a character, given what I’d already revealed about him. From the start, he
was presented as irreverent, a little tone deaf, blunt, and downright rude. He shared
the hard truths, and he didn’t sugarcoat them, but he wasn’t trying to be an
asshole. He just didn’t have use for tact. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was deadly.
Expert with gun, blade, or martial arts, he could also speak a dozen languages
and don any accent, any persona, any facial expression at the drop of a hat.
His skillset isn’t normal amidst the MC. From the beginning, it was quite
obvious that Fox had been trained. That he’d studied, and practiced, and
was a master chameleon.
I’m honestly not sure why the spy
angle was a shock. He was always a spy. Any story focusing on him and his family
was always going to go the spy route.
Because I don’t claim to
be a writer of standalone romances, I didn’t feel compelled to force Fox into a
role that would egregiously damage his character integrity. I always say that I
have to know what makes a character most vulnerable before I can write his
story, and in Fox’s case, it wasn’t his love for Eden – and he does love her,
in his own Foxy way, as we slowly learn going forward – that left him most
vulnerable, but his hatred of his father. His fear that he was too much like
his father; his resentment of all of Devin’s secrets, which all get dragged out
into the light in PS.
Is the whole assassin bit, with
Tenny, and the underground facility, and Devin’s past over the top? Sure. The
whole series is over the top. I mean, come on. Mercy? Freaking IAN? Yeah, the
assassins aren’t a stretch. And it HAS to be over the top in order to explore
some of the topics we get to with Reese and Tenny, and even Fox: that of
autonomy, and personhood. Of killer skills, and dark impulses, and the wearing
of masks. We’ve explored the concept of one-percenters about as deeply as we
can, and PS – Fox’s backstory, the intro of Tenny – launches us on a
road to a whole new way to explore the Dogs and their underground empire. Prodigal
Son isn’t your favorite? Cool. Everyone has favorites. But I’m always
playing the long game, remember, and it’s a necessary seed in the garden, one
with deep roots that needs time to germinate.
Which brings us to the present.
To the moment of blooming. And once again, I find myself hesitating. Because
all that “spy shit,” as one reader so nicely put it (the review was later
amended) isn’t going away. It’s still there. It’s still Fox’s history. Tenny is
still a boy raised as a weapon struggling to find the human underneath. And
even though I teased a book about Reese and Tenny, and it would take place on
US soil, it’s a book that will address and draw upon both those boys’ skills. Reese’s
efficiency and Tenny’s masks will be in full deployment. Lone Star and Homecoming
rolled the ball forward on the long game, and the plan for the next book involved
lots of big, twisty, action-and-angst heavy stuff. A long and involved story
that would challenge the club like it had never been challenged before, and put
Reese and Tenny to the ultimate test. Lots of sex and romance, sure…but lots of
that long game, too. Lots of spy and assassin stuff.
I’ve already received some messages/emails/comments
from people who say they won’t read it, or who want me to write about other characters
instead. I will once again remind that I don’t write to order. This isn’t
Burger King, y’all. I don’t take a survey before I sit down to write a book. It’s
the long game or bust, and I think a Reese/Tenny book could be really cool.
But I have to ask myself: If Prodigal
Son was such a let-down for readers, what’s to make me think a Reese/Tenny
book wouldn’t be also? Am I opening myself to more DM abuse a la Prodigal
Son vs. White Wolf? I was told in no uncertain terms that writing
about Fox was the ONLY way to please certain readers, and now I can see that
the same thing is already happening after simply teasing Dartmoor 9.
I’ll be real honest with y’all:
it doesn’t give a gal much hope for a different outcome. I took the teaser
chapters down off the blog, and, as of now, I’m thinking that if I’m going to
play the long game, it’s best played in other fictional arenas.
Sons of Rome, Hell Theory, and
now the new Drake Chronicles are all playing the long game too. The Drake
Chronicles are more like a genre romance, with lots of steam in each volume.
Sons of Rome plays a much longer long game: all those little seeds of Nik and Sasha
from White Wolf didn’t bloom until Golden Eagle, but, oh, wasn’t the
delayed gratification worth it?
I guess it just feels, sometimes,
like I’m trying to tend this garden. Carefully, slowly, patiently, giving each
plant its own special care. But that it’s expected that I just shove a
shoddily-wrapped carnation bouquet across the counter instead. In an impatient
world, I don’t really know how Dartmoor fits into the garden equation, but I
won’t go down a familiar road when the warning signs are already flashing.
What I can say, though, to the
supporters, is thank you. If you’ve left a review, or dropped a kind note, or liked,
or shared, I honestly can’t thank you enough. You always brighten my days, and
make all the garden-tending worthwhile.
