New Release - Long Way Down

 Lean Dogs Legacy Book Four

Long Way Down 

Long Way Down is finally live! I say finally because I’d originally hoped to release it at the end of July; was in fact racing to complete the first draft because I found out in June that my new puppy had been born and would be ready to come home the first weekend in August. I wrote 75k words in July, but alas was unable to finish LWD (that had been a foolish hope, anyway.) Strider came home, and it’s been chaos ever since. But I did manage to finish, and then, with painstaking slowness, work through my edits, fold in my editor’s edits, and finally put the book on sale. Woohoo! (I say with a yawn, because sleep deprivation is my closest companion these days.)

Some of my series, like Sons of Rome or the Drake Chronicles, have a pre-planned overarching plotline, the finish of which I’m always working toward. But Dartmoor is much more of a gardening project. As I work on a book, I decide which characters I want to highlight next, and start building toward their featured stories. Sometimes, like with Tango, that process unfolds slowly over the course of several books. With LWD, I introduced our main couple in the previous book, and was so charmed by them that I decided to feature them next.

The novel picks up in New York, right where The Wild Charge left off. With Abacus toppled, there’s rumblings of a shakeup in the underworld. Nathan “Pongo” McCoy has spent the last few years working more or less solo in Manhattan, keeping tabs on the club’s various dealers and gleaning intel with his sunny personality while the rest of the club stays stationed in Albany, where the clubhouse is located. In TWC, we learned that he has a “working” relationship with a Vice detective, Melissa Dixon, that’s turned romantic, and LWD starts with Pongo offering to help her locate a rapist. He’s coincidentally asked to investigate the very same rapist by an angry pimp who’s heard that the Lean Dogs are in the white knight business these days. The underworld is talking about the Dogs. Their reputation is shifting, and that leads Pongo toward new potential allies in the city. It also draws some unwanted attention from other powerful criminal organizations.

This tale is mostly Melissa’s, though. We learn the story of her past one memory at a time as the novel unfolds, a dark secret from her childhood that haunts her still, and which has been the driving force behind her law enforcement career. I couldn’t help but think of one of my earliest female leads, Lisa Russell, while writing Melissa’s story. She’s prickly, and foul-mouthed, and doesn’t want anyone’s help. She’s clothed herself in Hardass to keep from revealing any weakness, and, at the end of the day, isn’t sure she trusts her own instincts at all. Her dynamic with Pongo is one of my favorites to write: grump and sunshine, with Pongo providing the sunshine – and sly charm – in spades.

Along the way, we see more of Toly – who I love and will be writing a book for (next, hopefully) – and meet two new characters, Kat and Prince, who were especially fun to bring to life. I also really enjoyed Melissa’s partner, Rob Contreras, who is such a dad and a genuinely good guy.

Typical trigger warnings apply here, since Melissa and her partner are Sex Crimes detectives investigating a serial rapist. Tread lightly if that sort of violence hits too close to the bone.

I love mysteries and police procedurals, and so this book, while an unexpected addition to the saga, was a blast because I got to dabble in one of my favorite genres. My editor said it reminds her of Whatever Remains, which is one of her favorites in my catalogue. She also says it reads like a standalone, so thumbs up for that. And for my part, I think it moves the needle on the overall club plotline in an interesting and genre-bending way.

I hope you’ll all enjoy it! Thanks so much for your patience and support.

~Lauren

Dartmoor Series On Sale

With Long Way Down arriving soon - I'm working on edits as we speak! - it seems like a good time to venture all the way back to 2015, to the very beginning of this saga, fourteen books ago. When a biker princess came home from college and reunited with her beloved monster. 

Fearless began in Knoxville, took us back in time, and traveled all the way to the swamps of New Orleans. We started with Mercy and Ava's star-crossed, fated romance, and seven years later, a young New York Lean Dog is getting overly involved with an NYPD investigation. The club's expanded; grown richer, more powerful, and gained even more powerful enemies along the way. Babies have been born, alliances forged, and the family built up into a motley crew of wildly gray characters who love one another in all their own, weird ways. 

Amidst the daily grind of writing, and editing, and advertising, and feeling far too behind, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. When I stop to consider it, I'm still floored by the way y'all responded to that first, oversized adventure. The way you loved Mercy, and his love for Ava. It's been one hell of a ride, and it's still going!

In the spirit of more rides to come, and to celebrate the release of Lean Dogs Legacy book four, I've put the entire series on sale for 99c until October first. That's fourteen books, the whole Lean Dog saga, novellas included, for less than $14. You can't even buy two coffees for that. After October first, all the novels will be $4.99 each, so if you've thought about starting the series, or have a friend you want to try it, now's the perfect time. 

Start with book one, Fearless. From there, check out the whole series, and its tie-in novels, in the following order (all are 99c):

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

Long Way Down (coming soon)

#ReadingLife - Locked Tomb Reread

 Nona the Ninth drops tomorrow! I've been madly anticipating it since I first read the last line of Harrow, and decided, after discussing the Locked Tomb series with someone I'd recc'd it to, that I'd forgotten far too many pertinent details since Gideon first came out in 2019. The central mystery of it all, concerning God, and his lyctors, and the twisted timeline demanded a reread. I embarked on one amidst my newfound duties as Doberman-Beagle referee and finished up Harrow last week. 

"We do bones, motherf*cker."

Rereads are, in general, risky things. We return to a book at one time thought beloved, only to find that, in the intervening years, we've grown older, grown wiser; found that our tastes have changed, or that the book was one of those "book of the moment" phenomena, and that we got caught up in the thrill of sharing it with so many people; right place, right time, very relevant for the day of its release. I don't reread very often, mostly because there's so many books I want to read for the first time, and so little time in which to read them. I've had rereads that were disappointing because I realized that it was wanting to know what happened next that colored my impression of the book on the first read, but that, upon return, the prose fell flat amidst a cast of unremarkable characters. The first read was a headlong rush to know; once I knew, the meat of the book turned out not to be meat at all, but some addictive, mindlessly consumed carbohydrate snack that left me ultimately unsatisfied and vaguely nauseated.  

I'm pleased to report that Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth not only hold up, but were, at least for me, even more enjoyable on a second read. 

Ignore all the publisher's kitschy, trope-centered marketing of this series. I love tropes, and I understand why they make for such effective marketing bullet points, but I think the snappy little taglines utterly fail to capture the magic of books like these. I reviewed Gideon back when I first read it, so I won't rehash all that. The second book, Harrow, turns everything that happened in Gideon on its head - in a fun way - and expands on the universe Muir created in wholly unexpected, fantastically weird fashion. This is my current favorite ongoing series, and that's all down to its author. 

So much of this series shouldn't work on paper, but it works delightfully and beautifully in Tamsyn Muir's hands. If I had to pin down a genre for it, I'd call it horror. I'd forgotten how gory and bloody so much of the action is. Big yikes. But also, as horror, it tackles fear, primal instinct, and so many of those big questions about autonomy, and ethics, and the afterlife. It's Gothic spooky, but also sci-fi spooky - I stand by my Alien comparison - and deeply unsettling, at moments. The characters are what sell it. They are so vivid, and real, and complex, and human, and loveable in all their fucked-upedness. 

The end of Harrow is ?????, and so I can't wait to dive into Nona.This is the sort of series that raises two questions for every one that it answers, but through its deft characterization, its overflowing life amidst relentless death, its tangents of pure poetry, you know that you can trust Muir to bring it all home in the end. 

Cannot reccomend this series enough. 

#ReadingLife - No. 8, 9, 10.

There are stories that are hidden gems, and stories that have their day in the sunshine; stories of the moment, stories of the year. And then there are those stories that become so deeply, inextricably linked to, not simply pop culture, but culture in general, that refences become shorthand. Become part of the daily vernacular. For instance, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone today who wasn't familiar with Hannibal Lecter. Lob that name as an insult, and everyone knows just what you mean by its use. He's as mythic and renowned a figure as Santa Claus, and just as fictional. 

My introduction came - like most of my introductions to the monsters and horror landscapes of fiction - at an early age. (Dad used to let me watch Tales From the Crypt with him when I was four.) Visits to Blockbuster video were a weekly affair, along with stops at the bookstore. The bookstore was always a chance to discover a new story; Blockbuster, on the other hand, was the place to repeatedly rent the VHS compilations of Ghostbusters cartoons and buy Sno-Caps. While our parents browsed the non-animated sections, my brother and I played a game: we walked through the horror section and tried to find the scariest box. Oh, Blockbuster, with rows of plastic, rentable cases lined up like dominoes behind the shrink-wrapped VHS boxes. No streaming service will replace the joy of picking up that crinkly, lightweight box and turning it over to read the blurb on the back. 

There were indeed some scary boxes to find in the nineties, Hellraiser leaps to mind, but it was the drama section, rather than the horror, that held the box that frightened and fascinated me the most. There was something indescribably riveting for young me about the front of The Silence of the Lambs. That cool-color scheme shot of Jodie Foster's face, her eyes red like Hannibal's, her mouth covered by a death's head moth. It was neither gory, nor explanatory, instead a simple, subtle image that could only be understood by someone who'd watched the film. And yet it was provocative; obscene, almost. I walked past it week after week, curiouser and curiouser, like Alice. 

When I asked my dad about it, he said, "Oh, man. Boy. That's a scary movie." Followed by that forced-air laugh he uses for emphasis rather than actual amusement. 

"Why is it scary?" I wanted to know, envisioning haunted house jump scares, monsters slithering from beneath beds, the reaching, webbed hands of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

"It's about a serial killer," he said, and my mind thought 'cereal' instead. "And he eats people." Now there's an alternative to the cardboard marshmallows in Lucky Charms. 

Cue my poor mom telling him not to relate such details to a five-year-old. 

The poster for the 1991 film based on Thomas Harris's classic novel is still one of my favorites. I so love a simple, statement-making piece of cover art that doesn't clutter the messaging of the story. At this point, I'm extremely familiar with Dr. Lecter. First the '91 film, and then, first binged in 2019 and binged again a number of times, Bryan Fuller's TV masterpiece, Hannibal. 

But up until a few months ago, I still hadn't read any of Harris's novels, aside from The Red Dragon. Since I knew i was going to tip the cap to and hang a lantern on Lambs for Long Way Down, I decided to dive in - not just to Lambs, but to Hannibal and Hannibal Rising as well. Looked at artistically and impactfully, I think Lambs is the most successful of the novels, but disagree with the critics who claim that learning Hannibal's backstory in the latter two diminishes his fearsomeness or appeal as a character. More on that later. 

First, we walk with Clarice Starling down, down, down into the cold underbelly of the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane, through the clanging, barred doors, past the cat calls and raving of its inmates...to the last cell on the right, where a trim, poised man sits at a table bolted to the floor. 

Your mileage may vary, but I find that crime fiction and thrillers fail all too often to engage me on an emotional level. I love the genre when it's handled in a way that drops you right into the middle of the stress and fear of the case; or, even better, when the crime becomes a frame that allows the characters' inner journeys to play out in grand scale. Tana French is masterful in this sense. Harris is, too, but, at first blush, his novel feels more clinical, less lyrical. But after a few minutes, you find those absolute gem lines that so cleanly, perfectly paint you a scene that feels photographic, if not textural. And once mired within its pages, you begin to read the bravery, stoicism, and depravity not of Hannibal, but of Clarice, in all that she holds back from thinking and saying. Harris writes Clarice with a restraint that speaks to a determined repression, and relies wholly on reader interpretation, rather than outright telling. Buffalo Bill's crimes are horrific beyond comprehension, yes. but it's Clarice and her internal dilemmas, her journey, that dominate the narrative in the reader's mind, just as, to my mind anyway, it should be. She's tough, and fascinating, and sympathetic, capable and admirable. I love Hugh Dancy's Will Graham, and his relationship with Hannibal, so much from the show that I worried I'd have trouble with Clarice. But I found the opposite to be true; I found her instantly relatable...though maybe that says more about me than about her as a character, who knows. 

The Silence of the Lambs feels as though it was meant to stand on its own, without sequels. But, author intent aside - I haven't researched whether Harris planned the two follow-ups all along, or if they were later creations - I don't think Hannibal or Hannibal Rising detract from what we already know. Critics have charged that the line "Nothing made me happen. I happened" is then retconned by the reveal of Hannibal's backstory. That knowing about Mischa, and the copper bathtub, and the boy who wandered up to a Soviet tank with a chain around his neck "ruins" the whole concept of Hannibal Lecter. Some readers are in love with the idea that he simply was. A monster birthed whole cloth, without reason; a full-fledged demon unhampered by memory or trauma. But if you read my books, you know me: a person's upbringing always informs their adulthood, to some extent. It would be unreasonable to think a character like Hannibal had no backstory. To assume his wickedness was only the result of some genetic flaw, or a tic of his personality; in fact, that would be far less interesting to me. Given his predilections, his civility, the traceable backstory heightens his "realness." You could put a hundred, a thousand people in those circumstances, and they would live with trauma, sure, but none of them would turn out like Hannibal. And there is something in him that is twisted; some flaw that galvanized him, so that the horror he endured became a horror he inflicted on others. In that sense, his statement in Lambs is true: nothing made him happen. He happened. Circumstances beyond his control unleashed a side of him that happened to be monstrous. It forces the reader to ask the question: Do I have a monster inside of me? If pressed, if given the proper motivation, would it come out? 

Will I ever tire of this opera-loving, cannibalistic sophisticate? Unlikely. Film, literature, and pop culture still haven't tired of him, after all. 

Cover Reveal - Long Way Down

Happy Teaser Tuesday! Here's our cover and blurb for the next Dartmoor release, Long Way Down. Hoping to have it out by the end of the month! 

When she was six, a horrific crime against a family member determined the course of Melissa Dixon’s life. It eventually drove her away from her tiny, Mississippi home town, away from her family, and into a career in law enforcement. Living and working in NYC, she keeps the past locked away tight, memory relegated to rare nightmares.

That all changed, however, when her Lean Dog CI, Pongo, involved her in the takedown of an international sex trafficking ring. Now, freshly-transferred to Sex Crimes, disturbed by what she glimpsed on the fringes of the Abacus case, memory and old trauma crowd her mind and cloud her judgement, as she and her new partner, Rob Contreras, tackle a serial rape case in which their suspect is paying tribute to an incarcerated rapist with a similar MO. Albeit reluctantly, Melissa turns to Pongo for help, and as the case grows murkier, she begins to understand the allure of the club in an ultimately lawless world.

Long Way Down is a mystery/thriller centering around a main m/f romance intended for adult audiences. It’s the fourth installment of the Lean Dogs Legacy series, a spinoff of the Dartmoor series, and references events that took place in the most recent Dartmoor novel, The Wild Charge. It is not a standalone. 

Lionheart Update

 

Remember this teaser? 🦁 One of my favorites.

Remember when I thought I could have Lionheart out by December of 2020? 😭

Been really itching to work on Sons of Rome lately, but have lacked the time to dedicate to it. I’ve had several questions about it across multiple platforms, and I wish I had a release date. But! The series is most definitely not done with. I have *several* more installments planned. There was a period of time, right after Golden Eagle released, when I was furiously working on Lion, that I began to panic a little; I thought, in order to maintain reader interest in the series, I’d have to fast track the rest of the books, cutting some of the slower storylines along the way, reducing flashbacks in favor of a quicker-driving plot. But that’s not what this series IS. This is my passion project, a creative dream that’s haunted me since high school, and it NEEDS to unspool slowly, richly, indulgently. I knew that if I caved, if I narrowed and winnowed and cut back, the final end product result of the complete series would be but a ghost of the series I’d set out to write. With this series, I’m not aiming for mass appeal; not trying to “tighten” it into more manageable chunks for the skimmers, scanners, or GR keyboard warriors. It’s a slow burn by design. It took Nikita more than 2k pages to confess his love. We haven’t BEGUN to see what the mages can do. Newly-immortal characters like Adela and Mia are OF COURSE not as fascinating as Val and Vlad; give them time, don’t expect them to be as interesting as a centuries-old vampire at first blush. We’ve still got kings and gods to meet, after all. Lionheart will be even more challenging to write than Dragon Slayer. Do I really want to shift from modern day Bucharest, to the siege of Acre, to the reimagined legend of Robin Hood? To tie it to Rus’, and a Norse god, and meet a mage who broke bread with Julius Caesar in a Gallic campaign tent? Yes, I really do. The scope of this series as a whole is tremendous; y’all ain’t ready.

So I’ve taken some time to tackle more manageable projects since GE’s release, but trust that our immortals are always on my mind. I can’t wait to return to them soon. With a little luck, and a lot of puppy cooperation, I’m hoping to have the NY pack-centric novella, The Winter Palace, out before the end of the year 🤞🏻

This was yesterday's Instagram photo and caption, and I wanted to expand upon it a little, if I may, and offer a glimpse into our illustrious, titular king. 

#TeaserTuesday - Long Way Down

Sleep-deprived, but checking in for another #TeaserTuesday. If you follow me on Insta, you'll know I got a new Dobie puppy. He's adorable, and cuddly, and just the sweetest...but going through the new-puppy, crate-training blues. I'm happy to report that he, and therefore I, got five hours of sleep last night. Woo freaking hoo, y'all. So now I'm trying to get back on track with writing as he settles into the routine around here. 

Today's teaser is from the next Dartmoor (Lean Dogs Legacy, really) offering, Long Way Down, in which a book finally presents me with the chance to write one of my all-time-favorite tropes: heinous criminal helps detectives get inside the mind of the monster they're hunting. It's a shtick I will never get sick of. 

In general, I'm excited for y'all to read this book. Though not a spy novel, like Prodigal Son, it has a bit of a different feel than the rest of the series. Melissa is one of those prickly, walls-up, defensive leading ladies with a backstory that gets peeled back like onion layers as we go along. It's her story, truly, with Pongo being the adorable-but-badass emotional support character. Plenty of romance, a splash of club action, and a whole lot of crime thriller. 

“What about former associates?” she pressed. Leaving here with nothing felt like losing; she hated the idea of him smiling at her retreating back with the simple satisfaction of knowing he’d been unhelpful. “Relatives? Any cousins? Nephews?”

He put his head to the side, smile serene, now. “Come on, Detective. You have my file. You already know I don’t have any family or friends.”

#ReadingLife - No. 7

 

I'm lagging behind on #ReadingLife posts - for lack of blogging time, rather than lack of reading time. I try to squeeze a little reading in every day, even if it's just a page or two; my brain works best when it has books to chew on. Let's see if I can get caught up on posting about them. As I mentioned at the start of the year, I don't read anything I'm not enjoying, so I'll only be sharing winners. 

This was a soul that he knew, gifted and eager and generous; beloved of many; destined surely for fame; and determined, as Robin was, to follow a man he thought worthy. A noble child of his race, Francis Crawford of Berecrofts. Francis Crawford of Templehall, it would be, one day. 

But this was not the piercing spirit, clear as a snowfield in sunlight, for whom Nicholas de Fleury was waiting. A being fiercer than this, he had been told: far more passionate, far more vulnerable, with far more to give a world which would not know, at first, how to receive it. A spirit that would always lead; that could never be a disciple.

The other half of his being, come again.

 

Thus ends the eighth and final installment of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolò series, which she wrote after Lymond, but which falls before it on the historical timeline. Looking back at my posts, I noted that I began this series - with book one, Niccolò Rising - in December of 2019. Obviously, it took two and a half years to finish it, which is, one, not unusual for me, given my reading habits, and two, understandable given Dunnett's writing. Rich and dense as the finest chocolate torte, at times less decipherable than the King James bible, references layered into references into more references. At many points throughout the reading of these two series, I wondered if I ought to pause so that I could read Dante, or venture down the Nostradamus rabbit hole. Ultimately, I plowed on, reading smaller, easier to digest books in between volumes, returning always, as if stepping through the looking glass. I'm currently more than halfway through King Hereafter, her Macbeth retelling, and when I'm done, I suppose I'll have to pick Lymond back up and start all over again; reading Dunnett - actively reading it, spending just a little time each day with it - has honed my writing over the last few years. Reading Dunnett leaves me excited to open a Doc and get back to work. 

I've called Dorothy Dunnett "incomparable" before, and I can't think of a better word for what she achieved with her two main series. She wrote historical fiction, yes, but type "books similar to the Lymond Chronicles" into your search bar, and you'll be AI-suggested novels that pale in comparison. A few that even curdle in comparison. I read one chapter of Follet, quietly X'd out of it on my Kindle, and said, "Well, that's enough of that." Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books, while completely different in tone, are the closest comparison I can think of. Even so, there's no one who does what Dorothy did with seemingly effortless flair. 

(I know it took effort. I know she toiled over these books. That they kept her up at night and broke her brain dozens of times. I know this because writing about Vlad Tepes did that to me, and it's the reason I keep bundling my loud, rowdy English king off into the corner rather than wrangle him and his crossbow to center stage where he belongs. Writing this sort of book is nothing but effort, but damn did she do it with style.)

Dunnett's writing feels as though it could have been penned in the age in which it was set. Weighty, at times convoluted, veiled with subtle understatements, it's fully-grounded in its setting. Historical fiction in the hands of the unimaginative or undedicated can read a bit like a glossy summary of events long past; with Dunnett, you are transported. Though they never cross paths, Nicholas de Fleury is a contemporary of Mehmet the Conqueror, with whom my readers will be familiar. Cue the tiny violins because there's not a single mention of Wallachian/Ottoman drama here, but shoutout to my boy Skanderbeg in Albania for getting name-dropped several times. Good on you, John Castrioti, and your goat-head helm. 

I digress. 

With Dunnett, you're getting a dozen stories for the price of one. Very Serious Political Machinations, Historical References, Troop Movements and Conquests, along with the beating heart of the books, an amalgamation of High Family Drama, Romance, Devastating Losses, and Silly Flights of Fancy (Nicholas rides an ostrich in one such, and lands himself in a deadly game of cat and mouse dressed as Guinevere for a play in another). Multi-faced, complexly woven stories full of fully fleshed, complicated characters, told with exquisite attention to detail. None of her books are easy reads, but they're more than worthwhile, once you settle into the rhythm of her style. 

I'm not sure I'll be able to pick between Lymond and Niccolò as favorite until I've done a full re-read. These are the sorts of books that demand re-reading. I will say that, written later in her career, the Niccolò books feel more accessible. The prose is a little less dense, for the most part, the novels more readable in a practical sense. I also like Nicholas better, as a character. His evolution from dye yard assistant to the banker he is by the end is truly remarkable, but while he's a complex character, I also feel like he's more knowable. There's a maturity in him lacking in Francis. 

But Francis is...Francis. Just as his creator is incomparable, so too is Francis Crawford of Lymond. At times I hated him. Wanted to reach into the book and slap him. He's hilarious, and tragic, and infuriating, and is so obviously the model for many dashing, beautiful, foppish, fiendish, freakishly intelligent characters who came after him in popular media. You see shades of Lymond in Lestat de Lioncourt, and most obviously in Laurent of Vere (C.S.Pacat's love of the novels is what inspired me to pick them up in the first place). 

Gemini was full of shock, and sadness, and revelations long-awaited. When I finished it, I sat for a moment and thought to myself how lucky I was to have heard of the late, great Dorothy Dunnett, and felt gladness to have had the chance to read the product of her wild imagination. 

#TeaserTuesday - Fortunes of War

 I think one of the reasons the Drake Chronicles continues to be such fun to write is that it started as a whim. I wanted a change of pace and took a gamble on chapter one...and then each successive chapter, and by the time I'd finished the first book, the whole convoluted story of a series had unspooled in my head. It's wildly self-indulgent; draws on classic fantasy tropes and story structures, but with prose, plot twists, and character analysis that asks those tropes and structures to go the extra mile into "damn, she went there" territory. I think it has a bit of a fanfic feel to it, and for me, that's never an insult; fic takes the bones of a story and layers on the satisfaction that so often is sacrificed in the name of all that has come before it. I'm having fun with it, the little series that could. 

Here's a look at the opening of book five, Fortunes of War, which picks up directly where DOTD left off. 

1

 

Most nights, Oliver was so exhausted after a day of politicking, organizing, strategizing, and going for at least a quick ride on Percy that he barely had the energy to return Erik’s kisses, much less dream once he fell asleep. When he did dream, it was a vision of dragon-sight, sharing the view with Percy from up in the clouds. Sometimes it was through Percy’s eyes, memories or drake imaginings. Other times, like tonight, he was in his own skin, helmeted and armored, astride Percy as they plunged through clouds that shredded around them like damp parchment.

#TeaserTuesday - Long Way Down

A couple of scenes from Long Way Down, Lean Dogs Legacy Book Four, for #TeaserTuesday.  

Seemingly from two different worlds, Pongo and Melissa (Detective Dixon from TWC) have a lot more in common than she first thinks - namely, their willingness to do the difficult, right thing, whether or not it's the legal thing. A police procedural thriller gets a Lean Dogs twist in the next Dartmoor installment, coming soon 

When she sat down next to him, water glasses on cork coasters in front of them, she saw that he was mindlessly flipping through channels.

“Was I right?” he asked, ice pressed to his face.

She frowned. “About what?”

Paperbacks!

 I feel the exclamation point is necessary. 

I've always made sure my books were available in both print and eBook formats, but after the two months it took to make Golden Eagle available, I threw up my hands in defeat. The Amazon paperback interface just plain sucks, let me tell you, and the GE debacle nearly cost me my release day. Pair that with the pandemic mail situation, and I decided to release my first book of 2020 in eBook format only, with plans to get back to the paperback later...Plans that I put off for something like seven more books. I tried getting Lone Star uploaded on multiple occasions, and each time was stymied by error messages, and the Incredible PDF Altering Capabilities of the web interface. 

But apparently, I wasn't the only one with Amazon paperback tales of woe, because they've since streamlined the process, which I discovered Sunday night when I tried yet again. The bad news is that I wasn't able to get my full wrap covers uploaded - but the good news is, using simple Cover Creator backs and spines, I WAS able to make the books of 2020 and 2021 available in print, finally. 

I've still got to format and upload the Hell Theory books, but print-preferring readers can now get caught up with Dartmoor and the Drake Chronicles! 

Dartmoor

#7 - Lone Star

#8 - Homecoming 

#9 - The Wild Charge 

Drake Chronicles

#1 - Heart of Winter

#2 - Edge of the Wild 

#3 - Blood of Wolves 

#4 - Demon of the Dead 

#DrakeChronicles - Looking Back

Each time I start a new manuscript, I ask myself why I don't write standalone books. It's an artform, truly, creating a story that is perfectly self-contained, a complete character journey without need of addendum. Standalones enable readers to pick any book from an author's catalogue at random, without having to have read any previous volumes. In that sense, they're simpler to market, and you have a greater chance of reaching a whole new audience with each book. I've told myself time and time again that I need to shift my creative process and work toward writing those sorts of self-contained stories. 

But then I reflect back on a character's beginning, and I think about where they're going, and even if it's a long slog, and it seems to take forever, writing a series is worth it. The character journeys are so rich when you have the time and space to play things out at your leisure. 

It feels like the Drake Chronicles have only just begun, but book 1 came out in 2020, and it's wild to see how the characters all started this journey. 

She looped her arm through his, and together they walked up to the makeshift gangplank the crew had fashioned of a few loose boards. They were slick and shiny with ice, as was the dock beyond, but the porters who’d come to collect their trunks didn’t seem to be troubled by this – probably thanks to the metal cleats Oliver glimpsed strapped over their boots.

He and Tessa, though, despite the heavy wool and fur cloaks they’d purchased before their trip, wore boots with soft, leather soles. Please don’t let us fall, he prayed, and took the first step.

He managed all five steps across the plank, Tessa clutching at him the whole time. Then they hit the dock, and a patch of invisible ice, and Oliver’s right foot slipped out from under him.

“Oh, bollocks–”

A hand grabbed his free arm. A large hand – a strong one. Somehow, miraculously, he didn’t fall and drag his poor cousin down with him. He was picked up, and set back on his feet, and a deep voice with an unfamiliar accent said, “You all right there, lad?”

He glanced up, startled, a little afraid, he could admit, and laid eyes on the largest man he’d ever seen. Tall, and broad-shouldered, and draped in layers of fur that made him look more bear than man, his hair a long, wild tangle, save for where it was braided down the sides, and, at his temples, shaved in long, thin lines.

“Shit,” Oliver said, before he could think better of it.

The man grinned, revealing one gold canine tooth. “Well. There’s a welcome.”

“Oh, no, no, I didn’t–”

“Are you from Drakewell? The Drakes?”

“I…”

“I am Tessa Drake,” Tessa said. “Lord William’s daughter. And this is my cousin, Oliver.”

And then the boys...

Belatedly, Oliver remembered his manners. “This is the Lady Tessa.” He hooked his arm through hers in a show of support. “I’m her cousin, Oliver.”

Rune’s brows shot up. “The bastard? The one who didn’t want to go to war?”

His brother elbowed him in the ribs. “What did I say about that?” he asked from the corner of his mouth. To Oliver: “Ignore him. Mum dropped him on his head as a baby.”

“Hey!”

“Lord Alfred’s son, right?” Leif asked.

“Um.” Oliver had faced any number of insults about his bastardy from courtiers of both sexes; snide comments and veiled looks. But though the word would always carry a sting, Rune hadn’t sounded rude – and now his face had fallen, his dark eyes guileless and defensive.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, half to his brother and half to Oliver. He mumbled, “Sorry, my lord.”

Oliver took a breath. He’d expected savagery in this strange land, and doubtless it was here, but so far there was nothing coy and cutting in evidence – an unexpected, but refreshing change from home. “No, no, not a lord. I am a bastard. But,” he added, feeling his face heat, “I was ill when the war started, and then encouraged not to come to the front.”

Rune’s nose wrinkled. “Really?”

“Rune,” his brother hissed, “stop asking awkward questions.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m not exactly a soldier,” Oliver said, lifting his arm in helpless invitation for them to examine his absolute lack of a soldier’s physique.

“So?” Rune said, shrugging. “You could learn.”

Leif stepped on his foot.

“Ow!”

Then he bowed to Tessa, the beads in his hair clicking together as it fell in gold waves over his shoulder. “My lady.”

And Erik...

Bjorn fired off a command to one of the men lounging against the wall – who nodded and left – then his hand was back on Oliver’s shoulder, pushing him forward again.

Right to the base of the dais, close enough to see that King Erik’s eyes were blue, but nothing at all like’s Leif’s, with their warm, quiet amusement. The king’s were hard, and flat, and unreadable – the nearest emotion seemed to be disdain.

Oliver gulped, quite against his will.

“These are the Southerners?” the king asked.

“Aye,” Bjorn said, and shook Oliver. He felt like a puppy in a giant’s grip. “Cousins! Lord Oliver and Lady Tessa.” Oliver was tired of correcting him, at this point. Bjorn laughed. “Say hello to your bride, Erik!”

Echoing laughter rippled through the crowd of bystanders, and Oliver bristled on his cousin’s behalf.

But Erik lifted a ringed hand and the laughter cut off suddenly, and completely. He stared at them – Oliver struggled to keep his shoulders back, and his spine rigid beneath the cold, judgmental weight of that stare – and then finally curled a single finger and said, “Approach.”

The princes stepped apart, their gazes watchful, and Oliver wasn’t going to let Tessa – now trembling – approach on her own. He covered her hand with his own where it rested on his arm, and they walked forward – up the three steps to the dais itself when that finger crooked again.

“Your majesty.”

“Your majesty,” Tessa echoed, softly, and executed a perfect, one-handed curtsy, though she shivered all over with nerves.

The king studied them each in turn, cold blue eyes moving impersonally over them, head to toe. When it was his turn, Oliver felt sure Erik could see how nervous he was – how afraid.

Watery sunlight pierced a high window, a single, white shaft that caught the silver of the heavy ring on the king’s first finger: it was shaped like a stag’s head, antlers and all, Oliver noted.

Finally, King Erik nodded. “Yes, fine. You’ll suit.”

“Beg pardon?” Oliver asked, as Tessa’s hand closed vice-tight below his elbow.

Erik met his gaze, finally, managing to be both disinterested, and piercing. “She’ll do. We can draw up the contract after supper.”

“Contract – your majesty,” Oliver said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “I’d thought you might like to get to know Tessa a little, before you agreed to marry her.” The king was certainly as handsome – gorgeous, his brain supplied, unhelpfully – as his nephews, but lacked all their charm.

Erik tipped his head back a fraction, so he managed to look down his nose at Oliver, despite being the one seated. He snorted. “I won’t be marrying her, Mr. Meacham.”

“But…the letter…” Oh, Gods, had there been some horrible miscommunication? Did Erik not know?

Another snort, this one accompanied by the faintest ghost of a mocking smile. “Do I look like I’m in want of a teenage virgin bride? No. She’ll be marrying my nephew.”

The statement should have been a relief – Tessa certainly relaxed with a sudden exhale – but it was said like a threat, and Oliver could sense nothing like a welcome.

Oh, how far they've come. And oh, how far there is left go. 

Whether it's books, movies, shows, comics, manga...my favorite part of a long, serialized story is getting to watch the cast grow and evolve, or sometimes devolve, whatever the case may be. Gimme the angst, and the revelations, and the hard-won bonds of love or friendship. When I'm writing, that's what I find most rewarding: getting to craft those long-form, hard-earned stories that take a long time, and a lot of obstacles and interactions, to develop. It's a little bit shocking to go back to the first chapters of Heart of Winter as I start Fortunes of War. Everyone's changed - Leif most of all. Poor Leif. I have such plans for him. He started as the stalwart, boring older brother, and now, well...you'll see. 

Big casts are my jam, so it has been - and will continue to be - fun to hear from readers about which character they're most interested in. The beauty of an ensemble, despite its challenges, is the chance for everybody to form a favorite. 

If you haven't snagged Demon of the Dead yet, it's available now! Working on book 5 as we speak. 

#TeaserTuesday - Long Way Down

I've spent the day making excellent progress on the next Dartmoor installment - this one's actually going to be a Lean Dogs Legacy novel, for classification purposes. It takes place in New York (and a little bit of Mississippi) and focuses on Melissa Dixon and Pongo, both introduced in The Wild Charge. In a previous post, I described it as Silence of the Lambs meets Law & Order, and I'm sticking with that comparison for now. It's a bit of a tighter story, if you will, focusing on our main couple and their personal issues, rather than the club action as a whole - though there will be references to all that's happened in the Dartmoor universe thus far. 

It's titled Long Way Down, and here's an unedited look at part of chapter two:

From

Long Way Down
Copyright © 2022 by Lauren Gilley 

She sensed Contreras’s gaze, and turned her head to find him studying her, slight frown plucking downward at the corners of his mouth.

“What?”

He took a beat before responding, and she had the sense he was choosing his words carefully; a sense that left her bristling, because even if she was new to this department, and even if she was younger than the vets who’d been at it a long time, she loathed the idea of being handled with kid gloves.

On Magic

 “You said Erik gave me to you. That I’m to be your slave.”

“That’s right.” The idea still made Leif’s belly squirm.

Ragnar cocked his head. “Then how can I serve you, my alpha, if I’m locked up in the dark down here?”

A reasonable question, one Leif had been pondering for the past month. What good was a war prize chained to a wall for the rest of his days?

Erik had been the one to suggest they proceed by the old ways, but it had been Náli who’d offered the solution for such an approach. A pure silver, magicked torq, he’d said, would fit around Ragnar’s throat and prevent him from shifting to his wolf form, as well as mark him as Leif’s property to every Northerner. Once it had been applied, Leif could, in theory, bring him into his household and, as a strong alpha wolf himself, never need to worry that Ragnar could overpower him.

A tidy fix. But, still, Leif had hesitated to proceed, uncertain, Ragnar’s betrayal fresh in his mind.

Even as he brought him food, and worried over him, and sat here for hours, his wolf taking comfort in the presence of another of his kind.

Gods.

Leif took a deep breath. “I’ll talk to Náli, then.”

Ragnar grinned nastily. “Your little necromancer going to leash me?”

“Yes,” Leif said. “And if you don’t mind me, I’ll cut your throat.”

A beat passed. Leif swore he could hear the leap of Ragnar’s pulse as his expression slowly smoothed. A low, wolfish chuff. Then: “Yes, alpha.”

Demon of the Dead dropped on Tuesday, and it's the most magic we've seen in the series so far. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't started reading yet, but we learn a lot more about the origins of the North's magic through Náli's adventures in the "Between," beyond the veil of the living. Origins that - at least in part - shed some light on his death magic, the Drakes' ability to communicate with dragons, and Leif's newfound - or, er, new-forced-upon-him - shapeshifting abilities. For the most part, it's all magic inspired by that of the Norse gods, most of whom I've named using rare-form, or Danish versions of their names. "Val-Father" for Odin, for instance. Control over weather, and beasts, and death, and shapeshifting can all be found in the Prose Edda, twisted here for our series' universe. 

Drake Verse?

DLU - Drake Literary Universe? 

I'm up for suggestions. 

On Insta earlier this week, I mentioned my love of Tolkien, which has led to my love of Norse mythology, which has thus in turn provided the inspiration for this series (as well as much of what's to come in SoR if I ever get back to that). Middle-Earth is a fantasy realm in which the magic is fading. As the Elves depart for the Grey Havens, as men step forward into the leadership role, magic is shrinking and bleeding away, the landscape studded with old ruins, and ghost stories. We as the audience know that the future of Middle-Earth is a future populated by mortal beings with mortal, non-magical worries. 

I've taken the opposite tack with the DC, one that's common in the fantasy genre: in Aeretoll, magic is returning. In Aquitainia, it's learned that the country's rulers hid the old magics. But with the Sels attempting an invasion, and the drakes appearing, we're seeing a surge of magic across the board. I liked the idea of the series beginning with only the faintest touch of magic, and letting the audience experience its awakening alongside the characters. I'm also dead-set - in this series, and in every fantasy-themed story I write - on depicting magic as having a cost. As taking a toll its users. Just as physical exertion drains a person's energy, so too does magical exertion. Magic is at its most interesting as a story device when it's a challenge for the characters: skills that are ingrained and which much be honed through practice. There's a risk involved. The greater the power wielded, the greater the obstacle it becomes. I want the use of magic to be an integral component of the character's growth and journey, and not merely pretty decoration sprinkled on top of the plot. 

Things will get - you guessed it - even more magical as we continue. Expect Leif and Amelia to step forward with much more page time in book five, Fortunes of War. Oh, and Ragnar. He'll be there too 😏 

New Release: Demon of the Dead

“The blood of the living shall welcome the blood of the dead. I am the keeper of the Fault Lands, and the dead shall keep me.”

For generations, the Corpse Lords of the Fault Lands have watched over the fire mountain of Aeretoll, preventing it from erupting and laying waste to the North. Not yet twenty, Náli is a powerful necromancer in service to his king, a talented swordsman known for his razor-sharp insults…and chained to his destiny as Corpse Lord, doomed since birth to lead a short, painful life; forced to beget an heir so that his essential magic can be passed on to the next Corpse Lord.

War looms on the horizon, but Náli must return to his homeland, to soothe the mountain, and to finally choose a bride. Painfully in love with his Dead Guard captain, Náli sets out to discover the secrets of his power once and for all – to settle the mountain, spare himself a wedding, and finally seize all that he truly wants.

The enemy is lurking, though, and war won’t wait for long. A war in which the heroes of Aeretoll will need the Demon of the Dead on their side.

This is the fourth installment of the Drake Chronicles, an epic fantasy romance series intended for adult audiences. Look for the first three books: Heart of Winter, Edge of the Wild, and Blood of Wolves.

DOTD is live, and you can grab it HERE.

I hope you all enjoy book four of our ongoing Drake saga. I had fun focusing a little more strongly on Náli, and on expanding the lore of the universe. I do want to stress, though, while I have your attention, that, as an ongoing series, and as an ongoing fantasy series, the Drake Chronicles is not formatted as a sequence of standalones meant to exist independently. The books do need to be read in order, and while some books will shift the focus onto certain characters, this is most definitely not a "main couple per book" sort of series. Our characters face challenges, and gain new ground, but the overall story is ongoing, as are their individual stories. Nothing will be "decided," as it were, until the end. Oliver and Erik have much more page time ahead, as does Amelia, teased only in a few chapters so far. The pacing is intentional - I'm writing it as a fantasy series with strong romantic storylines, rather than a romance series with fantasy elements. It's important not to expect tidy resolutions in each book. It's also important not to take what you read on GR as fact. I've seen readers claim they know how many books the series will contain, when I've never given a firm number. I don't have a newsletter, so if someone assures you they "read it in her newsletter," they're lying. Always come straight to the source with questions, y'all!

Book five is titled Fortunes of War, and I'll be working away on it (along with other projects) in the weeks to come.

Happy Tuesday, and happy reading :)