#ReadingLife - No. 6

 

After the All For The Game trilogy, I was definitely in need of another sports romance fix, so I picked up Coming In First Place by Taylor Fitzpatrick. I read Thrown Off The Ice last year, and really enjoyed it, and Fitzpatrick's writing style, so I already knew I'd enjoy this one, too. As good as Thrown is, it ends on a tearjerker, and First Place is thankfully a little more hopeful at the end. Supposedly there's a book 2 coming, also 👀

One of my favorite tropes is "Character A is so emotionally oblivious they have no idea Character B is a total goner for them" and this book has that in spades. Our POV protagonist, David, is pretty hopeless. Very strapped-down, withdrawn, rightfully nervous, given he's in the NHL, and emotionally constipated in general. He's an unreliable narrator in that sense, and it's at times funny and painful reading about the way he sees himself and the world. 

My favorite thing about Fitzpatrick's narrative voice is its understated sense of reality. No overblown melodrama or purple prose fits of passion. There's doubt, and awkwardness, and a day-to-day sincerity about the way life unfolds that feels grounded and accessible. 

A quick read, entertaining, touching, and one that kept me up past my bedtime. 

Bookshelf 411

 

Greetings from a very rainy and stormy Friday here on the farm. I'm getting new followers across all my SM accounts, and am frequently asked about my series: reading order, number of books, content, that sort of thing. I thought I'd create a master post for organizational purposes. So, in no particular order, here's the 411 on (almost) all of my books:

The Dartmoor Series

By far my most popular, this series is an ongoing saga about an outlaw Motorcycle Club based in Knoxville, TN. Book one is an intentionally sprawling character epic told in a meandering, lush manner reminiscent of the classic Southern authors of decades past. But, centering around a criminal enterprise, it's full of action, graphic violence, and explicit sex. A family saga at its heart, though, each book features a central romance - or two - and a plethora of family drama and interactions. It has a three-book spinoff series, "The Lean Dogs Legacy Series," that ties back into the main storyline in book seven, and is included below. Each book is meant to be read in the order of publication date, as follows:

Fearless

Price of Angels

Half My Blood

The Skeleton King

Secondhand Smoke

Snow in Texas

Tastes Like Candy 

Loverboy

American Hellhound 

Shaman

Prodigal Son

Lone Star

Homecoming

The Wild Charge (in progress)

The series must be read in order and the books are not standalones. 

Sons of Rome Series

This series is my big, loud, freaking stressful baby that I love so much. It started as a collection of drabbles in the margins of my high school algebra notes, and turned into over a decade of research, dreaming, and finagling. It finally premiered in 2017 with book one, White Wolf, and it's safe to say this series was not what my established audience was expecting from me. Book five is taking five forevers to write, but it's still my favorite series. 

I call it "paranormal fantasy," because it's a blend of paranormal and urban fantasy told on the grand scale of an epic fantasy series. The books are fat, unhurried, and very character focused. The premise, in short, is that certain important figures from history - Romulus and Remus of Rome, Rasputin, Alexei Romanov, Vlad Tepes, Richard I - are vampires, immortal, still living (some of them anyway), and werewolves and mages serve as their Familiars. Vlad Tepes, his brother Val, and their merry band of misfits are on a (somewhat) reluctant mission to save the world from the machinations of their Uncle Romulus. The main action is contemporary, but there are lots of historical scenes; the stories of how our immortals found their way to the modern world is every bit as essential as the overarching plot. 

While the series definitely can't be classified as genre romance - don't come looking for another BDB - the slow-burn love stories throughout the series are important and focused-on. M/F, M/M, be prepared for explicit sex and darker themes, like sexual abuse, child slavery (Ottoman Empire, you know?) and bloody, gory violence in general. The series leans hard into the paranormal elements, with all the erotic blood-drinking, brain-washing, and wolf-shifting you could want. It's ongoing, with at least eight planned books, though I'm leaving the door open for more.

White Wolf

Red Rooster

Dragon Slayer
Golden Eagle 

The Winter Palace (in progress)

Lionheart (in progress)

Hell Theory Trilogy

You mean I actually wrote and completed a series? It's a trilogy, really, but, who's counting? This is an odd, niche little post-apocalyptic erotica series which features a rift in the heavens, a rift in hell, and a battle taking place on the mortal plane, all of it loosely inspired by the King Arthur legends. Featuring an eventual OT3, and a winged, horned anti-hero, it also includes a side-story novella. 

King Among the Dead

Night In A Waste Land

Mystic Wonderful (novella)

Vanish Into Light 

The Drake Chronicles  

Epic fantasy in its purest form, the Drake Chronicles take place in an imaginary realm where dragons, shifters, and other forms of magic rule the day. There's several main romances and more to come, M/M and M/F. Despite its "softer, gentler" feel compared to my other work, this is most definitely a series meant for adults, with explicit sex and graphic violence. It's ongoing (currently working on book four), and I don't know how long it will end up being - could be 8, 9, 10 books, who knows. I'm having fun with it. 

Heart of Winter

Edge of the Wild 

Blood of Wolves

Demon of the Dead (in progress)

I have other series, yes, but they were published so long ago they feel like an entirely different person wrote them. I won't talk about them here, but the Walkers and Russells are out there for some sweet (Walkers), and salty (Russells) family drama action.

#TheProcess - Prose

 

Prose

Prose is the language through which we tell a story. As a reader, it’s the thing that makes or breaks a story for me. A concept can be unique and interesting, but if the prose is sloppy, dull, or difficult, I’m out. When I talk about how important craft is to me, I’m talking about prose: about imagery and metaphor, subtlety and nuance, unique character voices and diversity of sentence structure. All of these things working in conjunction are what make a book accessible and interesting. Too purple, and it sounds ridiculous; too abrupt and there’s no spark; too repetitive in its structure, and it’s just plain annoying.

It takes lots of reading, lots of practice, and lots of time to develop a signature style as an author. It’s a long process of consuming the written word, figuring out what you like best, and then putting it to paper, over and over, until your authentic voice starts to shine through.

For me, writing is a very cinematic experience. By that I mean, the scenes play out in my head like movie reels, and then my goal with prose is capturing those exact images. In my mind I see specific camera angles: close-ups, and fade-ins, those nifty focus shifts. I see a shot focused on the elegant movement of someone’s fingers; or the slanted, early morning light illuminating half of someone’s face in blind-shaped stripes. I spend time studying favorite actors’ facial tics and head tilts, and then translate that on the page so that those motions are alluring, or threatening, or melancholy. Lighting plays a tremendous role in film, and so I write it into all my work. Little visual details like a swirl of dust motes, or clouds scudding across the moon, or the lonely sway of a rotting window shutter. Those are the elements, the details, the little things that make a movie or a TV show feel real, and I write those things because I want my readers to see my stories come to life, not merely scan through a summary of actions.

This focus on prose is the reason it takes me so long to write a book. Book Twitter likes to scoff at anyone who claims they edit as they go, so I won’t say that. Instead, I’ll say that I fiddle with things as I go. That I don’t abide by the “just write it all down and fix it all later” rule. Some things need fixing right away. I don’t believe in rushing through scenes to “get them done.” I’m trying, at all times, to capture the exact imagery or tone of a scene in the moment I write it. The book will need and does get edited later, but it’s very common for me to delete or tweak a sentence immediately upon writing it. Some days the word flow is good and smooth, and I can knock out 2, 3, 4, even 5-thousand words in a couple hours. Other days, those two hours are spent endlessly fiddling with one page until I’m happy with it.

Writing, for me, is a very purposeful exercise. I used to not-so-jokingly say that I was like Horton: I said what I meant and meant what I said. It’s never a matter of “getting the gist across.” Not only do I genuinely enjoy playing around with language, but I think that play, when purposeful, is essential to creating an engaging and dynamic prose-reading experience. Whenever anyone asks about my influences in that regard, I feel a bit full of myself saying that Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe are my two biggest inspirations, but that’s the truth. When Irving described Ichabod as “a scarecrow eloped from a corn field,” that blew my little kid mind. That word “eloped.” It’s so eloquent. Not “a scarecrow who jumped off his stick and went walking around,” but something much cleaner and more evocative. While Poe is considerably darker, and Irving likes his long, early Americana ramblings, both use prose in a way that is richly descriptive and clever. Both can be cheeky; both can spin a metaphor like nobody else, and both can give you goosebumps with their knife-sharp specifics.

Specifics are important: I’m not trying to create a universal moment, but a moment that is so crystal clear as to be easily visualized, and one which, for one or two readers out there, is going to feel painfully true to life. I don’t want to write a general truth, but I’m writing somebody’s truth.

Next time, I’ll talk about editing – proper editing – and proofing, and what goes into finalizing and polishing a book for sale. I’m also going to challenge that weird adage that “all books are terrible until the editor gets hold of them,” so brace yourselves for that.

#ReadingLife - No. 4 & 5

I finished my fourth #ReadingLife book of the year last week, but given it was the second in a trilogy - and given its shocking ending - I wanted to wait until I'd read the trilogy's conclusion to post about it. 

Nora Sakavic's All For The Game trilogy is bonkers. You can read my slightly-more professional write-up on book one HERE. The Foxhole Court piqued my interest, then The Raven King delivered all sorts of delicious plot twists in the way of all great middle books of a trilogy. The King's Men offered a few jaw-drops and a satisfying wrap-up that makes me wish this was a longer series. 

I think my favorite thing about this trilogy is the way all of the development feels earned. The Foxes are a Messed Up bunch of characters, all of them with skeletons - often literal - in their closets; violent pasts, tons of trauma, and an array of bad attitudes. But as Neil slowly grows to like and trust them, so do we as the readers. The team that plays the Ravens for the championship has come a long way from those early chapters, and all that growth was the product of tense interactions, and slow, worthwhile reveals. And, in the end, things are resolved without being tied up nice and neat - not a happily-ever-after, but an acceptable way to leave our characters. Given the darkness of the storyline, it would have felt cheesy and over the top for Neil and Andrew and the team to have completely severed all ties with the underworld. Neil's going to owe the Moriyamas for the rest of his life...but the conclusion is satisfying all the same, and felt visceral and real given all that had happened. 

Two thumbs up and a big recommendation from me. I've got a book hangover now - nothing else I've tried to start has held my attention. A good problem to have, all things considered. If anyone has any similar recs, I'm all ears! 

#TeaserTuesday - TWC

 

I make quite the face when I remind myself that I started posting The Wild Charge last July, and it's still an ongoing manuscript at 102k words as of this morning. Ugh. 

But, however slow and inconsistent, progress HAS been made, and we've finally come to the third act. Today's #TeaserTuesday post is actually more of an author update. Chapter 35, which I hope to have up in the next day or so, kicks off the final, bonkers block of action in the novel. I have a sinking suspicion the word count is going to get a little nuts, but there are lots of moving parts to this thing; lots of plots and plans and actors to make their moves. If the first two thirds of the book felt more like traditional, Knoxville-based Dartmoor, this last chunk - I'm gonna go with "chunk," because this is a fat portion of the book - is going to feel more like an action/spy thriller. 

The resolution of the Abacus plotline - which has been going on for three books now - demands heavy involvement from our whole ensemble. It needs lots of scene breaks, parallel action, and I'm determined to work a Daredevil style hallway/stairwell fight in there, because I can. It's this section of the book, with its tense meetings in Italian restaurants, its uber-powerful villains, underground auction blocks, and corrupt fed involvement that was planned from the first, and which inspired all my original misgivings about writing the book in the first place. Not because I think it won't work; not because I think it will be "bad." But because it doubles, nay triples down on the "spy stuff" from Prodigal Son. It also delivers the resolution that Prodigal Son doesn't re: Devin Green and his "Foxy" sons.

I included that photo of two red foxes in my teaser this week for a reason. This book is two stories. Like all Dartmoor books, it touches on lots of characters and teases glimpses of other relationships, yes. But at it's core, it's about two things:

1) Tenny and Reese. Their struggle for personhood and humanity. Their integration into a family, and their understanding of what that means. And their love story. 

2) Fox. Though he wasn't raised like Tenny, and though he isn't self-pitying, he has demons, too. This is about him learning how to lay those to rest in his quest to show his brother - and his brother's boyfriend - that they're worth more than their violence. 

That's why there's three wraiths in black on the cover. It's a story about all of them; about three half-formed, highly-trained, badly-in-need-of-love people figuring their stuff out. 

I didn't want to write this book, but I'm pretty darn proud of it. I'll publish it formally (after edits and proofs) when I'm finished, but if you want to dive in now, the first 34 chapters, and beyond, are available HERE on Wattpad.