#TeaserTuesday - 12/19

 

Probably, he should have felt this distant, nagging kinship for Colin, more than any of them. Colin was the only other other son, like him. An accidental son. A son not permitted to carry the Lécuyer name in the stamped fronts of library books, or the captions of yearbook pictures, or on official government-issue IDs.

But it was Felix – it was Mercy – who occupied most of the real estate in the No Good Can Come From This region of his brain. A region floored with damp, swampy tangles of vine and sucking mud, that reeked of home in a bad way, and which seemed to pulse sometimes, when he was trying to sleep especially, like the living, breathing wilds beyond New Orleans.

When he glimpsed his reflection in the wide windows of the HQ hallways, he wondered if Mercy had ever needed to wear a suit, or a collared shirt under a sweater before. When he dumped Crystal hot sauce all over his eggs, he wondered if Mercy took them the same way. When the wind shoved at the cracks of his office window, whistling like a ghost, and he lifted his head from paperwork to see the world blustering by outside, he wondered what it felt like to ride a bike, and feel the excoriating strike of that wind on your face going eighty on a Tennessee four-lane.

When he clicked through slides in class, with the lights dimmed, and slide after slide of heinous crime scenes splashed up on the board, he wondered how it felt to do something about that sort of violence. To be the one to pull the trigger and send a criminal to a watery grave.

He wondered when he’d stopped thinking of Mercy as a criminal, too, rather than some avenging angel who didn’t have to live by the rules that were slowly, slowly choking him each day he stood up in front of his classes and told them about doing something after. After the murder was committed; after the killing was done.

Dimly, he was aware that he was beginning a slow, inexorable slide toward the kind of depression that eventually turned into addiction, but he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about stopping it.

Right Book, Right Time: On Rereading

 

It’s the Lord of the Rings, I think, where one of the characters says that “way leads on to way”; that you could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go…well, anywhere at all. It’s the same way with stories. One leads to the next, to the next, and to the next; maybe they go in the direction you wanted to go, but maybe they don’t. Maybe in the end it’s the voice that tells the stories more than the stories themselves that matters.

It turns out that finishing Lord Have Mercy Part II dovetailed neatly with finishing my reread of the giant Clown Book, and that is in no way a coincidence. I spent six months on both, though one was a considerably more arduous task.

I’ve always thought it’s important for an author to reread their favorite books. The first reading is an unconscious effort – or, we’ll say less conscious. You’re riding the suspense, you’re turning the pages quickly. You’re reacting. And at the close of the story, you’re left with an impression that’s more emotional than cerebral.

The reread is where, now that you know what happens plot-wise, you can linger. You can dig into the mechanics of the story, highlight your favorite passages, and try to understand why this particular book left such a lasting impression, and then use those answers to further and better your own work. Rereading is an active process, and it’s also where the details shine especially bright.

I don’t really know what possessed me to pick Stephen King’s killer clown doorstop up late this summer – nostalgia, most likely, a repressed need to seek comfort in the words of someone who helped to shape my author voice – but it turned out to be the best decision I could have made while tackling Lord Have Mercy.

I decided I’d treat myself to a new paperback edition to give my screened-out eyes a breather, and in a twist of rather delightful kismet, it arrived on an afternoon when it was bucketing rain, and the cover’s got some permanent water damage. I was dismayed for about a nanosecond, and then chuckled over it. Maybe every copy of It should come with a wet, crinkled-up cover. Because I like to keep my books as pristine as possible – I’m one of those annoying nerds who doesn’t want the spines to get cracked – I usually copy all my favorite quotes down in a notebook as though I didn’t have better and more pressing things to do. But I took the highlighter to this one, and now, flipping through it, it becomes obvious, picked out in bright yellow, that this is one of those books that has managed to capture the whole of the human experience. It’s too long? It drags? Well, amongst its pages you’ll find some of the silliest, dumbest passages you’ve ever read, and you’ll find fear, and loss, and heartbreak, and absolute unfairness, and then you’ll come across lines that are absolute gems, that represent not just a deft hand with a typewriter, but a beautifully-subtle stroke at the deeper human feelings we so often, like Pennywise’s true form, cannot define in their exact shapes, and so we couch them in simpler, more wholesome terms.

Maybe, he thought, there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends – maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

It is the best and the worst of humanity laid out on the page, and in that sense, thirteen-hundred pages is quite the feat of restraint.

Reading it in a post-It: Chapter Two (2019) world definitely shaped the way I interpreted certain scenes.

“Put him down,” Beverly said. “He can stay here.”

“It’s too dark,” Richie sobbed. “You know…it’s too dark. Eds…he…”

“No, it’s okay,” Ben said. “Maybe this is where he’s supposed to be. I think maybe it is.”

They put him down, and Richie kissed Eddie’s cheek. Then he looked blindly up at Ben. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Come on, Richie.”

Richie got up, and turned toward the door. “F*ck you, B*tch!” he cried suddenly, and kicked the door shut with his foot…

“Why’d you do that?” Beverly asked.

“I don’t know,” Richie said, but he knew well enough.

(He knew well enough is the line that sent me sprinting to ao3 in 2019, where there is some impeccable fix-it fic from some insanely talented writers.)

I had a moment, near the end, when I knew what was coming, and nearly skipped over Eddie’s death, but didn’t. That didn’t seem fair to leave him in the dark, even if the Losers had to. Also, I’m not a skipper. I don’t “skim” anything I read, and that’s what this post is really about.

Taking 500 words to get to the point? Me? No.

I don’t post about the books I read as often as I’d like, but when I do post about them, it’s not simply because I like chatting about books. I do, but, also, I feel like it’s an opportunity to help readers, or potential readers, understand my approach to writing so they know what to expect when they pick up one of my books.

The whole idea that anyone does skim a book they’re reading for supposed pleasure is anathema to me. I know everyone reads differently, but I genuinely can’t imagine just reading parts of a book, if I truly enjoyed it, to “get to the point” so I could move on to the next, and the next. I hate the ways Goodreads has turned the incomparable pleasure of reading into a beauty contest, a footrace, and a high school lunchroom. It’s provided me with the sad realization that there are people out there judging and rating books who genuinely do not like the act of reading. Who don’t read each and every word. Who don’t savor the imagery, and the play of language. The way a sentence can punch like a fist, and the way a sentence can trickle slowly and musically like a clear, cold stream burbling over smooth pebbles in the deep of a forest. I love words. I love what human beings – singular, unique, creative human beings, not AI users – can accomplish with the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet. It is astonishing.

Some of my favorite moments in It are when King goes on his about-Derry tangents. Talk of topography, and vegetation. The history of the Standpipe, and the glass umbilicus connecting the adult to the children’s libraries. The imagery of the Barrens, and the trainyard, and the sunflowers nodding on their stalks in the yard at 29 Neibolt Street. Watching the bloody rags slosh and froth through the glass door of the washing machine in the laundromat. Fidgeting in the chair in Mr. Keene’s office, the milkshake dashed to the floor when Eddie learns what a placebo is.

That level of detail is what makes me love stories. It’s what makes me want to write stories. It’s…me.

I knew before I began Lord Have Mercy that it was going to put me through the wringer. I spent three years and five books building up to it, because I knew it would be a heavy commitment, and because I honestly didn’t want to deal with the skimmers and scanners whining about it when its monstrous, detail-heavy final form slumped out into the world. But rereading one of my absolute favorite books proved the shot in the arm I needed. It helped me take a deep breath and shove the noise aside and write the way I wanted to. The way it needs to be written. Lots of people can write lots of books, but this is my book. These are my brain children, and I’m the only one who can tell their story.

I know not everyone enjoys lengthy, detailed, layered books, but that’s what this is. This one’s for the deep-dive readers. For the lovers of words. For those who want the full Dartmoor experience. I crawled through the sewers of Derry, Maine, and came out in Knoxville, Tennessee, smiling. This one’s gonna be good.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Richie repeated. He looked up at Bill, and Bill saw tears cut slowly through the dirt on Richie’s cheeks.

“Except maybe for love,” Ben said.

…

They walked into the Town House on a wave of laughter, and as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a moment she saw their reflections in the glass – only there were six, not four, because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little half-smile on his face.

#TeaserTuesday - 12/12

 

I finished! I completed Fortunate Son yesterday and ordered my proof copies last night so I can begin edits. Hallelujah. Between covid and equine death, it took six months, but I finally, finally got it done. 

I can't promise that it'll be available before Christmas, because this is a very busy time of year and I've got lots of commitments, but I'm going to work my hardest to get it to you as soon as possible. And I can promise that SO MUCH happens in this installment. By the time I'm finished, all four parts of this novel will have kicked my butt, but it's offering a chance to deep-dive into the Lean Dogs' world in a way not possible since Fearless. 

I can't wait to share it!

From Lord Have Mercy Part II: Fortunate Son
Copyright ©2 023 by Lauren Gilley 

“I think it was right sweet,” Devin said, on the porch of Walsh’s old place out by the train tracks. Night had fallen, a net of stars hanging suspended above them, and the last train had rumbled past five minutes ago, its roar now a distant, shrinking echo like far off thunder. An open cooler sat between them on the edge of the porch, where their legs dangled over into the weeds, loaded with ice and beer. “Chivalrous. Perhaps heroic…if you’re in the mind to give the boy hero credit.”

#TeaserTuesday - 12/5

 

One of the challenges of Lord Have Mercy, from a writing perspective, is the novel's sheer heaviness. It's going to be physically heavy, in its final compiled form, no doubt, a doorstop to rival Fearless. But it's also, by necessity, heavy in an emotional sense. So very much has happened since the series began, for each character individually, and for the club as a whole, and it would feel cheap to ignore all of that. The last few books and Legacy books have been hinting at the approaching storm; the skies break in this book, finally, and it's "rolling thunder, pouring rain" here at last, as the club's maneuvers and under-the-table deals lead them to a crescendo. Things will get worse before they get better, but I want to gently remind that I have never written a book with a sad ending, and I don't intend to start now. The only way out is through, and so tensions will rise, and that tunnel will narrow, until the light at the end of it seems distant and unreachable. 

That's pretty melodramatic of me, huh? I'm looking forward to writing the debrief posts for this installment of book ten, specifically talking about the themes of parenthood, and legacy, and the strangling weight of being responsible for the destinies of others. Like with all my work, Lord Have Mercy is not a book that seeks to address society at large, or its failings. The themes here are all very individual to the characters and their situations. I'm not writing about what a nebulous "someone" should do in this situation...only what these specific people will do. As challenging as it's been to weave the narratives, to draw back upon the themes and lessons of previous books, it's also proving to be one of the most satisfying things I've ever written. I don't think a group of characters has ever felt more flesh-and-blood alive than these do right now in this moment, penning this book. 

I truly can't wait to share it with y'all. 

I'm knuckling down this week, fingers and toes crossed, and the finish line is in sight. 

Today's teaser is one of those that really does show my personal bias: Walsh is still my favorite special biker boy. 

From Lord Have Mercy Part II: Fortunate Son
Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Gilley 

**Warning for strong language. 

Ghost turned his head to regard the door’s last vibrations, jaw working under a bristle of stubble that had more gray in it than it had just a few months ago.

#TeaserTuesday - 11/21

 

Walsh got up to refresh their drinks, and suddenly Alex was alone with Mercy, the two of them seated across from each other.

Mercy stared at him a moment, mouth unsmiling for the first time all evening, eyes black and flat as a shark’s. Then he shook out a cigarette and lit it with slow, deliberate movements.

Alex had never cared for cigarettes. He’d coughed on a few as a kid, and had one as an adult, occasionally, after sex, after a night of drinking, but he didn’t want to stink like them, or grow addicted to them. So it wasn’t the need for a smoke that made him shift forward and half-reach across the table. “Can I bum one of those?” He didn’t ask if Emmie was okay with them smoking in her dining room; he figured Mercy knew it was allowable.

Mercy hesitated, glancing up through his lashes, then slid the pack and lighter across the table with a scrape that sounded too-loud in the otherwise quiet room.

“Thanks.” He lit one up, and slid the pack back over.

Mercy left it sitting by his plate and folded one arm across his middle, settling back in his chair, taking a long, contemplative drag. “You’re really doing it, huh?”

Alex wondered why the hell it was taking Walsh so long to get those drinks. He could hear the low murmur of the girls’ voices in the kitchen and wondered if they were coming back. “Doing what?”

“Blowing up your career.”

“I’m…if it comes to it, then yeah. I’m here to help,” he said, firmly. “If that blows up my career, so be it.”

Mercy smiled, slow and sharply-curled at the ends. It didn’t touch his eyes. “Good to know.”

Walsh returned, silent, a chambray-clad wraith toting all three glasses in one hand, fingers pinching the rims together. In his other hand, he carried two bottles, long necks crossed. Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker Red. He set the glasses down at their places, and thumped the Scotch down between them. “Figured I’d save myself a future trip.”

Alex looked at Mercy, surprised, and Mercy lifted his brows in return. Apparently, they both liked Johnnie Walker Red.

“Hmph,” Walsh snorted into his glass.

Mercy made a go ahead gesture with the hand holding the cigarette. “Guests first.”

“Nah. I’m good.” But Mercy stared at him until he bit back a sigh and reached for the bottle.

Update 11/20

This has been one of the prettiest falls in recent memory: the color in the leaves; the color of the skies, both the clear and cloudless kind, and the tumble-of-quilted-cloud kind, like today. A mild sort of cool, with crisp nights, and afternoons warm enough to wear shorts. 

But it's been a difficult one, too, in multiple ways. Real life nonsense coupled with holiday prep, topped up with a heaping helping of covid, three months in a row. 

Two weeks ago, the family said goodbye to Spoof, our 23-year-old mini who we've had since he was three months old. 

The most difficult part of horse ownership isn't the early mornings and the late nights; it's not the stall mucking, or the smashed toes, or the dirt up your nose (if you've ever been to a horse show, you'll know what I mean. You'll be blowing arena dust out of your nostrils for two days straight.) No, the worst part, always, is saying goodbye. 

It is with much relief, and no small amount of thankfulness, that I can say that Spoof passed peacefully. That wasn't the case for Cosmo, for Skip, for Markus. The final moment, the letting go, was peaceful in its own way with them, but all three were catastrophic colics. Strangulating lipomas, the silent, sneaky killer for which there is no cure, and no prevention. In Cosmo and Markus's cases, both of them very large, big-boned warmbloods with waning circulation, they suffered chronic lymphangitis for the final years of their lives. Letting them go meant an end to their pain...but it hurt. God, did it hurt. And it hurt worse, with all of them, having to make the decision. It hurt that letting them go was an act, was something I had to give permission for. 

Spoof was sick, too. In a different way. He'd been struggling with Cushing's Disease the last few years, which is a metabolic condition that manifests in older horses who've struggled with processing sugar in their younger years. It's a pituitary gland malfunction, for which they are medicated, but, eventually, their bodies simply...give up. It's a quiet capitulation. Two weeks ago, he was fine at lunch, and at dinner, I found him in his favorite sunny napping spot, already gone. There was no decision to make; no thrashing, no panic, no terrible pain at the end. He laid down to sleep, and then he let go. 

He's buried where he closed his eyes for the last time, in the shade of the pines and the honeysuckle. 

I'm doing okay. I'm doing better. When you're in this business long enough, you develop the ability to compartmentalize. Not to avoid your grief, but to still work through the practical necessities that follow a loss; it's a deep, still-pond sort of depression, but one in which you can still function, can still laugh. It gets easier, over time, over losses, to laugh at the memories and grin while you dash your tears. It's not wallowing. It's...sitting with it, for a few days. Taking the sadness in both hands in the sunlight and examining it, letting yourself feel it, and knowing that you're alright. 

I'm feeling better in a physical sense, too, post-covid. Still with hiccups here and there, but I'm exercising again. It took about a week after Spoof passed to feel like writing again, but now, in the way that I sometimes get after a sad spell, my mind feels sharp, all dagger tips and crystalline surfaces. The words feel like bright little explosions going down on the page, each one perfect, and weighted, and digging deeper into the action of the story. 

This past weekend was busy in a non-writing, real-life sense, but it was productively busy. Hopefully busy. And I think I might have some things on the horizon to feel excited about very, very soon. 

Just checking in to say that I'm hammering away at Lord Have Mercy part two. I still don't have a release date, and I'm helping my mom host Christmas dinner this year, so the upcoming weeks will be full of party prep, but I'm going to see how much progress I can make. I originally thought I'd have all four parts completed and published before Christmas - ha! - but life likes to laugh at our plans. I'm currently 90k words and 259 pages into it, and I can safely say that, even if you're disappointed you have to wait, you won't be disappointed in the story itself. 

Hope everyone's well. I'll share a tidbit or two tomorrow for Teaser Tuesday. 

#TeaserTuesday - The Cottonmouth

 

“You need me,” Harlan said, and both men fell silent. Both looked at him, Philbert with dread, Hames with flared-nostril rage. Both of them disbelieving of what he’d just said.

He thought of Felix that day in the clearing, all those years ago, the breadth of his shoulders, his chest, the way one strong flex might have ripped his shirt down the middle. The way the other two boys had caught wind of this new, grown-up threat in the air, lifting off of Felix like steam. He willed some of the sureness and self-possession into himself now; sat up straight, back stiff, shoulders spread.

“You need me,” he repeated, before either of them could speak. “Because if you had someone better than me, you’d have used him, and I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

Philbert’s eyes widened; Hames’s narrowed.

Harlan said, “You can’t risk anyone else knowing what this case is really about for you. It has to be me. Me and Fallon. Right? You trust us because you have to trust us, and we trust you, because we could destroy you if we wanted to.”

 

Dartmoor has always been heavily threaded with gator imagery and metaphors thanks to Mercy. He's the same sort of blunt, deadly, apex predator he used to hunt with his daddy, and Ava's got killer teeth and a death roll to match him.

But gators are far from the only predators in the swamps. One of the deadliest is one you aren't expecting, one that isn't big and flashy; one you might step on.

If the Lécuyers are gators, then their nemesis in Lord Have Mercy is a cottonmouth snake, and Boyle's not going to go down without a fight. 

**It's still slow going for me, but I'm finally starting to feel a little more like myself. Still no date yet; we'll get there when we get there 😊

Slow It Goes

I somehow forgot how slow recovery goes for this stupid virus. I had a few truly rough days, and now I'm in the slightly-better, but-not-good limbo that comes after. I made the mistake early on of not truly resting, but I've learned my lesson. Now it's lots of vitamins, lots of little breaks, lots of Walgreens Allergy Relief™ since I have such a terrible reaction to OTC cough medicine, lots of wishing I could send my dog to doggie daycare because he does not understand sick days. 

On an update front, I think it's obvious that my hoped-for Sons of Rome read-along won't be kicking off on October first (ha) and that it's been pushed back. If I do it at all. While I do need to reread the whole series for my own purposes, I'm no longer feeling the discussion angle.  

I took down last weekend's lengthy Lord Have Mercy sneak-peak of chapter 18 because I was getting flak in the comments, and I'm not doing that. This blog is my house, and you can't come into my house and tell me I've miswritten my own characters. Screw that. "Alexa, play 'This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things' by Taylor Swift." My editor says I've been sharing far too much in advance, and I agree with her. 

Still alive. Still writing, albeit slowly. I overdid it a little yesterday, so I'll probably be quiet again for a while. 

Take care. 

Update 9/30

If you follow me on Insta, you probably saw my post earlier in the week in which I said I had Covid. I'd been feeling poorly for days, and then found out what it was and went oh, of course. I had it earlier in the summer, and then a nasty cold last month, and now Covid again, and while it's not the sickest I've ever been, I've definitely felt pretty crappy for a while. Lots of gnarly headaches, lots of fatigue, lots of brain fog. It hasn't stopped me from working completely, but let's just say the ratio of staring out the window vs. typing has shifted heavily toward the former. 

I feel better than I did midweek, but I still don't feel good. As you can imagine, this is incredibly frustrating! I've got so much to write, and so much that needs doing around the farm. It's been frustrating for Strider, too, who hasn't been getting in as many hikes as he wants 😝

I feel like all I say lately is "thanks for being patient." Get ready to hear it again. Thanks for being patient, guys. The back half of this summer has been one long migraine. 

The good thing - and I've known this for years now - is that being sick doesn't kneecap the quality of my writing. If it did, I could always fix it in editing, but I've had some really great and insightful passages this week. It just kills the rate at which I can write. Instead of four, five, six-thousand-word days, I'm lucky to get a couple hundred words. They might be quality words, but they come in short bursts. 

So thanks for your patience! Ha! For those asking, no I don't have a date on part two: just whenever I get it finished and edited. 

 

Retread

 

“We have a warrant from a federal judge, Mrs. Teague. If I were you, I’d do my best to cooperate with the questions being asked and rest easy knowing you yourself weren’t suspected of any wrongdoing.”

A warrant from a federal judge.

She thought of Ava’s eerie expression minutes ago, her calm and levelheaded insistence that she’d do whatever it took to keep Mercy out of prison.

All of the boys had been questioned over the years. None had ever earned a federal arrest warrant.

She swallowed, and said, “I’m not sure how I can help you.”

His nod was short, and approving. And infuriating. “You can start by telling me about your son-in-law.”

“What about him?”

“Do you like him?”

“He’s my family. I love him. He makes my daughter very happy, and he’s a wonderful father to my grandchildren.” And I wish he could pull your smug teeth out of your head, asshole, she thought.

“You’ve known him a long time?”

“Yes.”

“How old was he when you first met him?”

She recalled him with aching clarity, the overgrown boy he’d been, still with baby fat clinging to his cheeks, and his brown eyes deep wells of sadness that softened when he spoke to Ava, who stared up at him in unselfconscious wonder. He’d been pretty and cute, not yet as devastating as he’d be at thirty, when everything went to shit. Still short-haired and innocent…as innocent as anyone could be after torturing and killing fifteen people.

“Twenty-one,” she said, careful to keep her voice neutral. She didn’t like this line of questioning, where it could be headed, but it was so far innocent enough.

“He was from New Orleans, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Why come here?” He tilted his head. “Was he running from something?”

“No. My husband requested his transfer. He wanted,” she continued, as his lips formed a why, “a dedicated bodyguard for my daughter and me. The city wasn’t all that safe in those days.” She offered a tight smile. “And he’s big. A visual deterrent, Kenny said.”

“Visual. Right.” A fast flare of amusement lit his eyes a second, and then was gone. “Okay, so, he was twenty-one. How old was your daughter?”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maggie could feel tension steal along her jaw, but she kept her voice airy. “She was eight.”

“Eight and twenty-one.” His brows lifted. “That’s a big age difference. Did they get along?”

She wanted to crack open her head, and pour out her memories; wanted to rub this man’s nose in them until he understood that it hadn’t been like that. He hadn’t been twenty-one and lusting after a child.

But most of the club hadn’t understood it; Ava’s own father hadn’t. There was no way to explain it to an agent with a federal arrest warrant.

She said, “Famously.”

He smirked, a twitch of his upper lip quickly smoothed. “Obviously. They got married.”

“They got married when Ava was twenty-two.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Our records confirm that. But did any of that getting on ‘famously’ happen before she was twenty-two?”

“What are you really asking, Agent Fallon?”

His head tilted the other way, and the light from the window slanted over his eyes so they were flat, coin-like, and predatory. Eyes that had already weighed and judged her, so that her answers were superfluous; their only value was in furthering his case, or perhaps helping him establish a new one.

She hated him.

And deep, deep down, in the unacknowledged heart of her, she was a little afraid.

He said, “I’m asking if he ever did anything that made you uncomfortable. When your daughter was a child. Inappropriate touching? A lingering hug? Any staring? Gift-giving? Unnecessary compliments?”

She recalled a sunny summer afternoon, Ava with her green, heart-shaped sunglasses and shorts with little strawberries on them. Mercy plucking a wild daisy from the edge of the lawn, and bowing deeply as he handed it to her, so she’d laugh.

She recalled Ava falling asleep propped up against Mercy’s side, and the careful way he’d shifted his weight so as not to disturb her.

Ava thirteen, and starting to bloom, her crush full-throated and innocent and starting to be noticeable to Mercy, if the way his faint blush went all the way up to the tips of his ears was anything to go by.

“No,” she said. “Never.”

His look was doubtful. “I find it hard to believe that someone who marries a twenty-two-year-old, who knew her most of her life, didn’t cross the line a time or two in the past. And I find it even harder to believe the girl’s mother wouldn’t notice.”

An image filled her mind: Ava asleep and hollow-cheeked in a hospital bed, swaddled in white, arms trailing tubes. And Mercy at the bedside, his head bowed against her hip, his great shoulders bowed and trembling.

“Believe what you want,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

His gaze turned sly, secretly pleased – about what, she didn’t know. “For now.”

When she walked away from him, she felt his gaze burning through her back. 

Yesterday's throwback post about revisiting couples got me thinking about Lord Have Mercy - although, what doesn't make me think of it? Daily. Nightly. When I try to relax. The thing giving me acid reflux and chronic stress; oh book, kill me now - and the way it's nothing but revisiting established couples. And friendships. 

The beauty of this book - the cause of said acid reflux and chronic stress - is that the circumstances allow us to retread old ground from a different perspective. One of the novel's major themes is that you can't ever really bury the past. It comes back to you; its ghosts will always haunt you, though sometimes in ways unexpected. Everyone is doing well, now, but everyone from Ava and Mercy, to Tango, to Aidan, to Ian, to Ghost, is forced to re-examine their past actions and review them with new insight and perspective. 

In the scene I highlighted above, Maggie's having to look back at Mercy and Ava's coming together. Their meeting, and their past, and their falling in love. She and Ghost came to grips with all of this long ago, and Maggie came to grips with it early and easily because she got it. She'd been there, in her own way. They had to explain it to the club, and to each other, but it was a very private matter. The outside world - beyond people like Mason Stephens and school bullies - have no idea what sort of history lies buried beneath the veneer of married parents of three. But now, suddenly, the FBI is asking questions about it, and the past comes roaring back, bigger and scarier than ever, dressed in a Halloween mask. Potentially devastating in ways more than emotional. 

As a writer, I love retreading old ground with new perspective. Ava and Mercy's romance is Gothic and tragic at its roots, and I love getting to play with that again; getting to show it from outside POVs and force Ava, Mercy, and even Maggie and Ghost to justify their relationship all over again. 

Almost every character has scenes like this one in Lord Have Mercy Part II. It's a two-front war for everyone: present and past, and all of them are caught in the middle. It's delicious, and that's why it's been such a tightrope act to write, and why it's taking me four forevers. We will get there! I'm getting there. Almost 70k words at this point. And still coming soon, though I'm trying to give myself mini breaks here and there to help with the headaches. 

Happy Friday! Thanks for your continued patience! I am chomping at the bit to share this part of the book because there are so many really great reveals. *laughs evilly* 

#ThrowbackThursday - Lone Star

 

“The club is a family,” Reese insisted.

“Yes, I’m painfully aware.”

“Don’t you want a family?”

More surprise. A blanking of the face and a rounding of the eyes. A beat of silence. A shift in tone. “Do you?”

“I’ve always had a sister.”

“To whom you are related by blood, and with whom your former employers controlled your allegiance. I was briefed on you,” he said. “But these men will never be your brothers. Do you think they care for you? That they love you?”

He thought about his phone call with Mercy earlier, the now-familiar softness and affection in the big man’s voice. Mercy was many things, but never duplicitous. Never subtle.

“What?” Tenny asked, brows lowering, because he must have had another facial malfunction.

“The club is a place for people who don’t fit in anywhere else,” Reese said, repeating what Mercy had once told him. “It’s a family for people like us.”

Ten studied him a moment longer, and then let his head fall back, let his eyes fall shut. Just talking like this had exhausted him. He yawned, and it didn’t seem fake. “Christ,” he murmured.

“You can sleep,” Reese said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Oh, wonderful. I feel safer already.” But a few moments later, his breathing had evened, and the cruel line of his mouth softened.

Reese settled back in his chair to wait, and watch, an inexplicable kernel of warmth blooming in his chest.

We're getting closer and closer to present day with these throwback posts! 

Lone Star was the first book that revisited an established couple as the center storyline. There were new and developing relationships - Albie and Axelle, and of course Reese and Tenny, who were my favorite parts of this book - but the brunt of the emotional burden was carried by Candy and Michelle. That's always a risk with a book series. I'm the sort of reader who loves going back to revisit characters once they're in established relationships, but I know that's not always the case for others. I would happily gobble up petty domestic squabbles and slice-of-life content about my faves, but I think the majority of readers want things to chug forward at a rapid pace. 

So it felt risky, but there are lots of plot and character developments in this one that make it essential reading for all the books to come. 

#ThrowbackThursday - Prodigal Son

 

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

Her target, Charles William Fox, was half-brother to the London chapter president. He didn’t hold a steady job in the city, and, for some reason, he chose to drink at a pub that wasn’t owned by his club. A bit odd, maybe, but Eden walked into McTaggert’s that night thinking she knew what to expect.

But she hadn’t counted on Fox.

He’d leveled a grin like a weapon at her – repeatedly. “Most people don’t, but you can call me Charlie.”

Charlie. With dark hair that gleamed under a row of Christmas lights, and a clean-shaven, almost boyish face. Not handsome in a traditional sense, but interesting. A spark in those big, blue, blue eyes.

All of my favorite characters in Dartmoor belong to the same group of half-siblings. Devin’s brood are all cold, calculating, clinical when they need to be, loving when they can be…but never mushy. None of them have a love story like the fated, epic, all-consuming romance that is Mercy-and-Ava, but no one should have expected them to. Tenny’s the tenderest, down beneath his cache of masks, his love almost violent. His older siblings have learned to temper those sorts of feelings, aided by Devin’s DNA.

Over the years I’ve said all that I care to say about Prodigal Son. I like it. I stand by it. I’m proud of it. It’s necessary reading for the series as a whole.

And Charlie is, well…he’s Charlie. Unknowable even to the people who know and love him best. 

#WorkshopWednesday: High/Low Stakes

 

“Oh yeah,” Richie said. “I can see it. After you shoot it four or five times and it keeps comin at us like the Teenage Werewolf in that movie me and Ben and Bev saw, you can try your Bullseye on it. And if the Bullseye doesn’t work, I’ll throw some of my sneezing powder at it. And if it keeps on coming after that we’ll just call time and say, ‘Hey now, hold on. This ain’t getting it, Mr. Monster. Look, I got to read up on it at the library. I’ll be back. Pawdon me.’ Is that what you’re going to say, Big Bill?”

Apologies in advance if you were hoping not to hear any more about the Clown Book after that post a couple weeks ago. I certainly didn’t intend to make it an ongoing thing, but it’s spooky season, and I’m rereading the Clown Book for the first time in years, and remembering why I love it so, and wondering when I can squeeze in a movie rewatch, so, the first wasn’t the last, and neither is this one. The year is 2023 and I’ve got Clown Book brainworms. There are worse worms to have, I suppose. And look, I can put the worms to use!

I’m currently on page 372 of 1,153, and I’ve reached one of my favorite scenes: Richie and Bill going to the house on Neibolt for the first time, just the two of them. Earlier in this same chapter, Richie went home with Bill to look at Georgie’s photo album (one of those delicious small scare scenes that I wish had made it into the movie), and earlier than that Richie tried awkwardly but sincerely to comfort Bill when he had a breakdown on the curb about his worried complicity in Georgie’s death.

“He was your brother for gosh sakes. If my brother got killed, I’d cry my fuckin head off.”

“Yuh-Yuh-You d-don’t have a buh-brother.”

“Yeah, but if I did.”

“Y-You w-w-would?”

“Course.”

The entire chapter is one of my favorites because Richie – Kid Richie, especially – is terribly sincere and tender-hearted under his Voices and his need to make a spectacle of himself. I could go on for pages about ventriloquism as a metaphor, but we’ll stop there. We’re talking stakes today.

Any scene in which a child comforts his friend during an ugly crying jag is one that tugs on the heartstrings. But in this instance, it tugs a little harder, pulls a little sweeter, because of the elevated stakes. Bill’s not crying because he got grounded, but because his little brother is dead and he lies awake at night worrying it was his fault. A low stakes moment made more poignant by the higher stakes moments that frame it.

High stakes versus low stakes moments are extremely relative, depending on genre and plot. I have such admiration for authors who turn claustrophobic, low-risk family stories into highwire acts that leave you gasping. That’s such an art form: dialing up the tension so your heart races over stories that are daisy chains of slow beats, plays entirely of conversations and kitchen table awkwardness. One day I’d love to be able to write something like that. For now, I keep dragging shootouts and werewolves into the mix. Not because I think that makes my work better; it’s a simple matter of taste. I like the shootouts and werewolves. I like superheroes, and spaceships, and Gothic vampire mansions. I think too often the genres get played against one another, readers and writers alike trying to find moral reasons for their preferences. They’re just preferences. Chocolate, and vanilla, and strawberry. And I often find that I resent when fantasy or sci-fi are seen as not real. As not being about real stuff. “Oh, all those monsters and dragons? Yeah, no. I like books about real stuff.” When I complained that the end of Game of Thrones sucked, someone said, “Ha, I never watched it. It had dragons in it, please.” But the dragons weren’t why the ending sucked: that was down to the producers failing to understand anything about character motivations. When I hated the last Avengers movie and stopped watching all things Marvel after that, someone said, “Those movies were dumb. People don’t have superpowers.” But once again, that wasn’t the point.

All stories are about real stuff. All of them. No matter how wacky. It isn’t about an evil Lovecraftian clown who gobbles children. He’s there, leering at me from the cover of my paperback edition, but the story isn’t about him. It’s about the pain and indignity of growing up; it’s about friendship; about parental abuse, and living through it; it’s about bravery, and sacrifice, and fear, and being brave and sacrificing in the face of that fear. All things that could be told in a more realistic, less fantastic way, sure; but the fantasy is what cloaks the whole of it, raises the stakes up to eleven, and makes those very real moments twice as enjoyable.

Every story I’ve ever written has largely been about the intricacies, failings, and triumphs of family. Sibling relationships, both strong and damaged, parental relationships, romantic relationships. No two the same, and all of them contrasting and complementing. As much as I enjoy the inherent eroticism of vampirism, or the pulse-pounding drama of a good fist fight, all of the fantasy and action elements are window dressing meant to highlight and deepen the character connections. It’s one of the reasons I’m never in a hurry to tell a story quickly. I’m not a plot-driven writer. I’m not rushing to “get to the point.” There’s a war on in the Drake Chronicles, but the books aren’t about the war. A few very twisted members of the FBI are hassling the Lean Dogs in Lord Have Mercy right now, but the book is about Mercy finally coming to grips with his heritage. All the betrayals, the revelations, the kisses, and the love confessions are honed to sharp points thanks to that window dressing. High stakes pointing spotlights on the low stakes.

I’ll let you decide which stakes are actually high and which are actually low. But that balance is essential in storytelling. I’m a slow beat, kitchen table conversation sort of writer, so that’s where all those stakes are focused in my work. Understanding what your tastes and preferences as a reader mean is a huge step in finding an authorial voice in your writing, I believe. You have to think about which stories stick with you the longest and most stubbornly, and then you have to analyze why, and then you can turn those lessons into your own writing mantra and set out to create all those warm fuzzies and shocked gasps for your readers in return.

And while we’re speaking of stakes…I decided I wanted to do a reread of the entire Sons of Rome series. Not skimming or note-checking, but an honest to goodness reread. I queued them all up on my Kindle and started with the preface, and I realized two things. One: I really, really enjoy this series, as a writer, but as a reader, too. Why wouldn’t I? It’s all my favorite things. And two: I want to do a structured readalong, hopefully starting next month. So be on the lookout for that. My aim is to start October 1^st, and do a post a week, moving at a reasonable pace through all four books. I’d love to dive back into work on Lionheart, but I need a refresher first, and I think it’ll be fun if we do that together. I’m always ready to share “director commentary” stuff.

Keep your eyes peeled. I miss my vamps and wolves.

Cover Reveal: Fortunate Son

 Cover time! 

Obviously, not a shocking cover, since I want all four individual parts of the book to have the same look and vibe, so same lettering, different gator. 

Every single scene in this book has felt surreal to write. The culmination of so many storylines, so much history between each and every character. My brain's gonna be soup by the end, but it'll be well worth it. 

Thanks again for your patience, y'all! Rome wasn't built in a day and all that. 

**

“I already told you, that wasn’t my husband.” It was taking every ounce of Ava’s frayed self-control to keep from screaming and cursing at the man seated across from her. She would have hated him on sight even if he hadn’t been grilling her about Mercy’s whereabouts today. He had the smuggest, most punchable face she’d ever seen, and a small, infuriating smile like he already knew all the answers to the questions he kept rephrasing and repeating, over and over, as if he thought she was stupid and panicked enough to slip up and incriminate her husband somehow.

Fallon – that was the agent’s name – tucked his chin and lifted his brows. Really? his expression said. He was sitting back in his chair, legs crossed, notepad propped on his raised knee, and he adjusted it, pen tapping at its edge as he stared her down a moment.

Ava wanted to laugh – after she’d punched him. Did he think he could give her that uppity, disapproving look, and she’d spill her guts? Did he think he was going to intimidate her?

When she did nothing but stare back, he sighed, and reached for the tablet sitting on his side of the table. He illuminated the screen with a tap and started swiping. “I’ve not been cleared to show you this yet.”

“Lucky me,” she quipped, and his gaze flicked up, and flashed a warning.

Another tap, and he spun the tablet toward her, and gestured to the big Play icon in the center of the queued-up video. “Press that when you’re ready.”

She did, albeit reluctantly. She already knew what the video would show her, but it had been shot from an angle she hadn’t been privy to, down on the ground, in the heat of the moment and center of the action.

The footage had come from a camera set up across the street from Maggie’s Kitchen. A women’s clothing boutique. The quality wasn’t great – grainy and jerky – but a towering man with long black hair was plainly visible, standing over a man lying back on the ground, hands lifted in surrender.

That was the Pretend Mercy, and though she was viewing him from behind, and though his cut looked real enough – top and bottom rockers, running black dog patch – seeing him again, without adrenaline and fear clouding her judgement, he looked even more shockingly wrong. His stance, the exact slant of his shoulders, even his elbows were wrong; his hair was long, yes, but the wind didn’t play with it the same way it did Mercy’s: a wig, she realized.

The tablet speakers emitted tinny screams and crackles into the room, and then the final gunshot, as the murder was committed.

The video ended, and Ava pushed the tablet back across the table and folded her arms. “That’s not him.”

“No?” Everything about his concerned look was false. She expected him to cluck. “You’re sure?” Poor little girl. She’s so confused. He reached over and hit Play again. “Look: he’s wearing your husband’s cut. That’s the word for the vest thing, right? Cut?”

“That guy’s wearing a cut, but not Mercy’s.”

“You can tell that? Just from this?”

“I know Mercy’s had his on all day,” she shot back. “And since that’s not him, that’s not his cut.”

A smirk threatened, and he smoothed it. “But you couldn’t say for sure. There’s no way to identify it exactly.”

“If that’s the case, how do you expect me to identify him exactly?”

The smirk slipped through, but it didn’t touch his eyes, which were hard and mean. He was frustrated with her – perhaps even angry – but hiding it well. A different interview subject might not have noticed his flare of temper at all, but Ava was long-used to angering men.

“Mrs. Lécuyer, I don’t think this is your first time being interviewed by the authorities.”