The First Golden Morning

Crawling out of my writing cave to share pics of the first golden morning of the season. Fall's not here yet, obviously, but when the light shifts, I know it's near. It's the little things.

And now I'll pop back into the cave. I want to get a little more work done before I share anything further. Self-imposed social media banishment so I can get. this. done. 

 

#ThrowbackThursday - Shaman

 

"You bent the ear of the mother chapter president of the world's most notorious motorcycle club about your insipid romantic drama?"

"No. I called the man you look to as a father figure to see if he had any idea what's been bothering you so that I could help you through it."

Going back through the older books for Throwback Thursday each week has been such an interesting exercise in watching the ebb and flow of everyone's state of mind. Ian is Going Through It™ in Shaman, while Ghost, by contrast, currently hooked up to a heart monitor in Lord Have Mercy, is feeling pretty peaceful and on top of things. My how times change. 

Writing this novella was necessary for me, because it felt wrong to leave Ian hanging, his future - his happiness - up in the air, after the events of Loverboy. There's certainly an argument to be made, and a version of the story in which Ian and Tango end up together. But for all that Ian was Tango's one point of brightness and pleasure amidst the terror and pain of the Nest, he was also someone who manipulated Kev. Them ending up together would have been even more angsty, and I'm not sure I could say at the end of it that they would have been better off with each other than with their respective partners. In the novella, we get a chance to see Alec as Ian's rock, his love nothing but supportive and uncomplicated, and it feels like a big sigh of relief. He's a soft place for Ian to land, and he needs that. There's always going to be that tension between him and Tango; there'll always be the specter of what if and if only and might have. But I'm satisfied with how it all shook out, and I love him with Alec. 

Shaman isn't listed as an official book in the series, but it's an important read for context, and essential for anyone who loves Ian. It falls immediately after American Hellhound in the reading order. 

(Belated) #TeaserTuesday - Boyle and Alex

 

Some day-late Teaser Tuesday action today, folks. Boyle hitting at the heart of Alex's insecurities and also inspiring murderous fantasies. I'm going to put the snippet under a cut since it's bristling with content warnings, from profanity to derogatory language. All very Dartmoor standard, but I won't leave it floating on the main page. 

Boyle is, let's face it, detestable. But I'm having lots of dark fun using him and his cronies to draw all the characters' doubts and fears into the light. 

**Note about release date: it obviously won't be August. Being sick really slowed me down, and I'm still dragging a little bit. But I'm working hard to make up for lost time, so it'll be soon! 

Unedited passage from Lord Have Mercy, Part II: Fortunate Son 
Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Gilley 

Telling Was Only Part of It: A Declaration

 

Of course he would try to describe it to Bill when he got home, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to make Bill see it, the way Bill would have been able to make him see it if their positions had been reversed. Bill was good at reading and writing, but even at his age, George was wise enough to know that wasn’t the only reason why Bill got all A’s on his report cards, or why his teachers liked his compositions so well. Telling was only part of it. Bill was good at seeing.

~ It, Part I, Chapter 1: After the Flood (1957), by Stephen King

I was in middle school when I read my first Stephen King book. ‘Salem’s Lot. I wanted to read it much earlier, because in the book store, Dad would tap one of the rather benign covers and say, “Stephen King. Man, that’s some scaaaaary shit right there, boy.” (He does talk like this, I promise.) I wanted to know how it was scary, why it was scary, and I liked being scared in that way, despite being a perpetually petrified, Eddie Kaspbrakian hypochondriac of a child who was afraid of everything from the monster in my closet to the very real risk of falling down a storm drain, or witnessing, as my Dad put it when we were playing too rowdy in the living room, my brother falling into the fireplace and impaling his scrotum on the grate within. This was a real thing he said. And he really did tell me, when I was three or four, riding on his shoulders on a walk around the neighborhood, to steer clear of storm drains. To never get within a yard of them. We have home movie footage of a very tiny me repeating, over and over again, “Don’t go in that old sewer, you might get stuck.” My father has always worked in risk management for an insurance firm (Eddie Freaking Kaspbrak, ladies and gents), and I was the only first-grader I knew worried about getting caught in a wheat combine, or catching AIDs from a needle shoved in a grapefruit. Every scary movie, every OSHA horror-story, was catalogued neatly and indelibly in my brain, when other kids might have brushed off a parent’s worry as superfluous. I took it to heart. Hello, lifelong anxiety.

I think it’s obvious, then, why my mom wanted to keep me away from King as long as possible, despite their free-rein policy when it came to other books. I could mostly read whatever I wanted, and in middle school, finally, I got to read ‘Salem’s Lot.

It was my summer reading pick for a first-week-back-at-school project, and I wish now I could see my teacher’s face when the other kids came in with The Babysitter’s Club and I came in with an adult horror doorstop, but all I remember is acing that paper. And though the finer details are fuzzy enough that I think it might be time for a reread once I finish my It reread, the thing I remember most about that book, that reading experience, was getting halfway down the first page, and thinking, Oh. I’m home. Because no matter what horrors awaited on the pages ahead, no matter how gruesome or macabre or nightmare-triggering the story of Jerusalem’s Lot might prove, I knew immediately that Stephen King was someone who could see, and who, in doing so, could make me feel seen. It didn’t matter that he and I were strangers, a man penning scary stories and a sixth-grade girl sitting in the back seat of a moving Oldsmobile; it didn’t matter that we might not get along in real life, or have nothing in common or perhaps even detest one another. Reading his book, I knew that Stephen King’s imagination worked in the same cursive loops and curls that mine did. He wasn’t simply telling a story, but seeing the story, and showing it to me, helping me see it in all its fine-grain details, in the exact way I wanted to see it.

When you are someone who thinks in carefully-blocked Hollywood shots, and close-ups, and who thinks in words, great, languidly-unspooling ribbons of words, soft and satiny inside your mind, talismans to rub when you’re at your most anxious, it is an astonishing and precious thing to bump up against an imagination that works at the same pace and particularity as your own.

I talk often and at length about the authors who’ve most inspired and influenced me, and I would have written stories no matter what…but I wouldn’t have been brave enough to write the way I wanted to if not for Stephen King. He is, in that respect, the greatest writing inspiration of my life. 

And as a reader, encountering Eddie was the first time I’d witnessed a character deal with so many of my childhood, and, let’s face it, persisting adult anxieties and phobias. Romance authors didn’t write characters like Eddie because there was no way to spin hypochondria into sexiness. Science fiction and action authors didn’t want to dilute a character’s public appeal in that way. Maybe that was why I loved and latched onto Eddie right away, because I am him, in so many ways. And maybe that’s why, like Eddie, Richie is my favorite character.

One of the things it took me a long time to understand was that the reason my dad said such anxiety-inducing things, voiced such extreme cautions when I was a child, was because he was anxious, just as I was. One of the things that I think those without anxiety don’t understand is that anxiety is not blind, stupid panic. And just because your thoughts are a sometimes-endless cycle of fear responses, it doesn’t mean that you can’t also be brave. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be sure of things. All that relentless, yammering Kasprak brain energy can be sharpened; can be honed; can be directed. You can hammer it out into metal, into rusted iron; you can go for the throat with it. It kills monsters, if you believe it does.

That’s what writing is for me. It’s structure, it’s order, it’s harnessing my too-busy brain in a meticulous, purposeful way that makes the whole world make sense. I’m brave when I work with horses, but I’m never braver than when I’m at the word processor, and just like Horton hearing those Whos, I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Every angle, every viewpoint, every eyebrow flick and sudden slant of a sunbeam has been carefully selected and arranged. Each sentence has been committed to paper not because of focus group consensus, or mass appeal, or the desire to fit in with the cool kids. I storyboard, block, light, check cameras, dab on a little fake blood, shoot in my head, and then write it down, and that’s the scene. That’s my vision. And whether it was a quiet, kitchen table conversation, or a shootout, or an interrogation, or a werewolf three-way in a brothel, none of it was throwaway filler. Every head tilt and jeering quip was telling the readers something about the characters in that scene, if their eyes were open to see it.

If Grayface, and Nonny, and Cartoon Avatar, and Cutiepie32 on Goodreads found it tasteless, or unnecessary, or filler, or that it “needed editing,” then that’s just tough titty. Because there is absolutely nothing about Goodreads trolls and wannabe editors trying to drum up business that can shake the cinderblock and rebar foundations of my imagination. Of my intention, each time I sit down to write. My anxieties are many, and varied, and lie deep along the bone, but they are old growths, calcified and familiar, and the unproofread rantings of a stranger on the internet about my proofreading habits are not something that can harm me. Oh, they can try to spook would-be readers. “She needs an editor!” “It’s not edited at all!” “I wish she’d hire an editor!” “Did you hear she uses a computer program to edit?” They’re trying to affect my business, sure. But their minds work in ways so violently different from mine that they think their tactics will work, and that is so unbelievably laughable. They think they can change the way I see my own imagination; that the next time I start a new paragraph, I’ll pause. And I’ll maybe, finally return one of those emails. Yes, please, Internet Stranger, can you help me catch errors? Can you help me with my scene transitions? Can you help me make Amelia more likable? And Aidan more mature?

You could start, Internet Stranger, by spelling Aidan’s name right. Beep beep.

When you write, there’s nothing quite as special as having a reader quote your own book back to you. Having them tell you which parts made them laugh or tear up. Someone said that the cheating at Monopoly scene in Nothing More reminded her of playing cards with a lost relative, and that’s one of those wondrous kernels of writerly bliss, like someone handed me a nugget of splendid Belgian chocolate, or offered a tight hug at the end of a long day. That’s one of those meeting of the imaginations that I experience when I read Stephen King, and that stuff is author crack, let me tell you. It’s addictive.

But sometime in early 2020, I stopped checking my author email as often, and more or less stopped responding, because that place is a real shitshow, lemme tell ya. On one hand, there’s a silver lining to that shitshow. When I first started publishing, I only ever got pleasant emails. When the haters and users started seeping through the cracks like backed-up sewage, I knew I’d earned at least a little notoriety. Nobody bothers someone who sells nothing. So even if I’m not well-known, and even if paying the bills still gives me hives, some people have heard of me, and some of them don’t like that they’ve heard of me. Some people are going to act like paying $3.99 for a 500 page book they didn’t care for is tantamount to car-jacking them at gunpoint, and it ruined their lives, and their marriages, and I owe them for the resultant therapy.

And then some people are going to see me as a business opportunity. As a naïve sucker, essentially.

My inbox is full of passive-aggressive emails from readers who would like me to pay them to beta, proofread, and edit my books. Seriously, I could feature an email a day, like that Asshole Cat of the Week meme, but, like, a bulletin board to pin up the truly delicious gaslighting attempts. The thing about these Wishful Editors is that there aren’t nearly as many of them as the number of emails would suggest. The other thing about them, the most eyeroll-inducing thing, is that they think there’s a direct line between my turnip truck fall and publishing my first book. That I am, how shall I say?...stupid. That I am incapable of recognizing the speech patterns that repeat in the emails and sock puppet reviews.

That’s the other other thing: the sock puppets.

Wishful Editors work like this: they or a colleague or two use several GR sock puppet accounts to leave reviews that echo the same sentiment, in this instance, their sometimes-angry, sometimes-regretful assertion that my books need further editing. That they could have been five stars (or starts, as one “professional proofreader” stated) if only I’d hire someone to help me. The tone switches up, review to review, but the wording is near-identical. And then ding! The email comes. There is truly only one version of this email. The “and”s and “but”s and misplaced commas vary from email to email, but the tone is the same, the offer the same, the diction the same, down to the inexplicable “lol”s and excessive use of exclamation points and O’s in love.

OMG, I loooooooooove your work! You are such a talented author! Lol! [The flattery continues for another 50-100 words here]

Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, because you are soooo good, and I loooove your books so much, but I’ve noticed other reviewers complaining about the typos, missed words, and errors etc,.[sic] [there is always a comma at the end of “etc.” instead of a period, for some ungodly reason] I wanted to ask, do you have a beta reader? Lol. Because I beta and proofread for a lot of other authors and they say it really helps! Lol. [Do these individuals know what “lol” means? Or is it an unconscious habit like me saying “fuck” five times per sentence?] I of course wouldn’t charge for this at all, but I really love helping my favorite authors make their books better! I can fix spelling and punctuation, and other stuff, like awkward sentences. Your books are soooo amazing and they deserve to be seen by more people! Of course I don’t mind the little errors – I can read right past them and pretend they’re not there – but since so many people have mentioned them, I wanted to offer my help. Let me know what you think! Looking forward to hearing from you.

I don’t recall off the top of my head how many times I’ve received this exact email from a multitude of different addresses. As I said, there are small differences, but the high-school-girl stretching-out of vowels is always there. Aidan’s name is inevitably spelled with an “E” for the Wishful Editors pretending to be Dartmoor fans (some are Drake or SoR fans instead). Each time, the Wishful Editor stresses that she of course isn’t bothered by all my mistakes, not even the “problematic characterization,” but that others are, and she’s only trying to help. It always starts with typos, but then progresses into the promise of sentence structure help. Each time, smoke is blown up my ass before I get the digital equivalent of the pouty poor baby face and a “sincere” offer of help.

Dear Reader, sometimes I wish I had indeed fallen off that turnip truck. Then perhaps I might know peace.

Alas.

This is how they do it, these Wishful Editors. They either hope I’ll be so thankful to have their brilliance bestowed upon me that I will indeed pay them; or they’re an author hoping to gaslight me straight into hanging up the old word processor for good; or they’re a frustrated non-writer who would rather manipulate an author into bringing their ideas to life rather than taking a Freshman level English course to learn how to set pen to page themselves. But whoever they are, and whatever they ultimately want to get out of a potential collaboration, their methods are the same. Create a problem: in this case, dissatisfied readers upset with my “lack of editing.” And then present themselves as the solution: the brilliant, professional alpha/beta/proofer/editor/developmental genius here to polish my rough turd of a story into a diamond. They insult me just enough in the hopes I’ll let self-doubt creep in, and then offer their solutions as bait.

“Hey, Georgie, don’t you want your boat back?”

Here I am splashing along in my little yellow raincoat, and they are the voice echoing out of the storm drain. Promising popcorn and balloons. The yellow eyes in the dark.

But I was much younger than Georgie Denbrough when I learned not to go into that old sewer. You might get stuck. The Internet is teeming with predators of all kinds. I think there are quite a lot of brand-new self-pubbed authors who are understandably nervous and uncertain, and these sorts of tactics work on them. Oh no, someone thinks their book is bad? Gosh, thank goodness this benevolent genius happened along to help!

It would be so easy to fall into the trap of buying reviews, buying readers, spending thousands of dollars on “help” and “influence” that isn’t actually helpful at all, because someone with a cartoon avatar trying to get her side hustle on doesn’t have any sway in the business. You keep paying, and you keep praying, and one day you turn around and realize those influencers you paid to help you had a bunch of bought followers, zero creative or technical expertise, and that you’re so deep in the hole, and your confidence so shriveled, that you can’t recover, and you stop writing altogether.

There are excellent editors and proofreaders out there, but those gaslighters in your inbox? Sewer clowns. Underhanded sewer clowns hoping to flatter and flay you with enough tact to draw you down, down, down, so they can take what they want from you, whatever that may prove.

Ask yourself: why should any author believe the word of an Internet Stranger? Why should I? Who are they? What’s their background? What sort of literature have they studied? What are their qualifications? Saying “trust me” and “I’m a professional” wouldn’t work on a resume, and they don’t work in an unsolicited email.

I know why there are people in the book community who want to turn being a reader into a way to make money, but in a realistic sense, you can’t trust a screen name and a dog photo to have your best interests at heart. That’s the practical, bare bones side of things. Trust is earned. Skills need to be exhibited, track records proven, that sort of thing.

But for me? Personally? Even if I was in the market for a new editor – which I’m not – I would never choose anyone who used these sorts of tactics. Editing a book is not a bloodless, data entry sort of job; it requires collaboration, a united vision, and lots and lots of trust on the part of author and editor. The author must be able to trust that the editor’s imagination is bumping up against her own; that they’re running on parallel tracks, and the view ahead is the same. That the editor sees what the author sees. That is essential.

What I said before about discovering Stephen King’s books, about his words, the way he laid each down, the way he unspooled them like satin ribbon, that applies in this instance. When someone uses alternate accounts to criticize me, even lie about me, and then tries to gaslight me in an email, that proves immediately and irrevocably that her brain and my brain don’t begin to align. That person may have read my books, but she did not see my books, and she doesn’t see me. Because if she saw me, really, truly crossed the threshold of my imagination, and saw the vaulted, frescoed ceilings overhead, and heard the distant choral harmonies competing with yet another playthrough of the entire Back in Black album, she would understand that my purpose, my passion, my fervor and, above all, my confidence in my words, is not something she can crack. It can’t be swayed. It can’t be lured down a dark storm drain.

Anyone who thinks she can maneuver me into doubting myself and my work doesn’t understand a single thing about me. Not as a person, and certainly not as an artist. When I say that I’m anxious, I mean that I check the expiration date on the ground beef seven times and then smell it before I drop it in the pan. But my work is inviolate. My imagination is girded up with concrete and steel, and its gilded edges glitter with jewels, and I always say what I mean and mean what I say. No clown can touch that, not for all the popcorn and balloons in the world.

The sad part, for readers, is that I know attempts such as the ones I’ve described have had the power, at times, to ward off potential readers, and those potential readers might have really loved my books, if not for clownish efforts. The clowns want to make me smaller, they want to cut me off from those whose imaginations might run in the same loops and whirls as mine; they want to crush me in order to make themselves stronger.

But that’s not the way it works in these sorts of stories. For every Georgie there is a Bill. Or an Eddie, I suppose, in my case.

Beep beep.

I feel certain that the people who needed to read this post checked out about two-thousand words ago, off to scream on Twitter or Goodreads about what a bully I am, then drop some nasty reviews. But if you did read all the way through, I not only appreciate it greatly, but I also hope, humbly, that over the past decade, and the past forty books, you’ve brushed up against some part of my imagination that made you feel seen and heard. I would always write, but readers like you make this twisted publishing game rewarding beyond all tell.

Thanks, guys, as always.

xx

(Final note: any professional proofreaders and editors hoping to work with indie authors should probably not take any job interview advice from Pennywise the Dancing Clown.)

 

Those Weedy Days (not THAT kind of weed)

 

I posted a sunset shot on Insta last Friday evening, and then didn't post again until this morning. Yikes. Remember when nobody felt obligated to post stuff on social media to prove they were alive and (not really very at all) relevant? I am in fact still alive, though I'm not sure I was ever relevant, so one out of two ain't bad. I had a thoroughly unfun week of being sick, hurting my back, and having my horse turn my right pinky toe into a mashed-up purple potato with one glancing hoof strike. She was feeling feisty when I turned her out and I failed to step out of the way in time. It's not broken, I don't think, hairline maybe, but that was WITH boots on. Don't ever get cute and wear flip flops to the barn, folks. I've seen that turn out BADLY for other people in the past. 

But I dragged my carcass into the computer chair today, and words went on the page, so things are traveling in the right direction. 

This is the time of year when I start to feel very done with the summer grind. The plants have gone leggy and crispy, despite constant watering and feeding; this year the storms snapped or twisted most of the cutting garden, so it looks like a bad haircut on a breezy day. The weeds, manageable with ten minutes here and there, are suddenly, wildly, viciously out of control, and it's going to take hours and maybe even a truck bed to get them up and out to the trash pile. The tomatoes are tired, the trees are tired, the grass is tired - everything is tired except for Strider, who sprints and sprints and won't let you steal an hour at night for a little mindless TV. It's a very "blah" time of year, and always puts me in a bit of a funk, even without losing a week to stupid physical ailments. 

I've not been posting, but I have had an awful lot of time to think about posting; about stories, and details, and moving forward. I watched a few movies, read some absolutely incredible fanfiction, and spent far too much time mentally story-mapping books I don't have the time to write at the moment. 

I'm back! Sorry for a week of radio silence. I missed Teaser Tuesday! Eek! If my typing can catch up to my brainstorming, I have lots to post soon. 

#ThrowbackThursday - American Hellhound

"You don't want to get lost out on the moors at night...

"Everything looks the same out there. Hills, and bogs, and rocks. The ponies know the way, clever things, but a man...a man's just a man, and he wasn't made for the dark.

"You hear things, in the dark. Sounds like you've never heard before. You see things. Lights. And you worry it might be fairies until you remember what else might be out there. Watching. Listening. 

"And then every once in a while, some poor unfortunate traveler comes across a set of eyes, glowing red in the dark. And he smells corpse flesh, and hears a growl like thunder. And the man knows, then, that he's been found. Hunted - and rightfully so, 'cause he's a sinner same as all of us. Blood on his hands and evil in his heart. 

"And it ain't no living creature that's come for him. No. It's old Black Shuck. The black dog. The Lean Dog. It's one or it's all of 'em. Don't matter. They're all dark creatures. You see, sonny, when you make a deal with the devil, he always collects his price. And when he can't find you...well...he sends his hounds after you."

***

Not just anyone can put a devil dog on a leash. 

 

At the end of 2016, I released my fifth and final book of the year, Walking Wounded, and then took a little break for the holidays, with plans to break ground on American Hellhound after the New Year. Except, during that break, I caught a cold at a Christmas party that settled in my lungs and turned nasty. A few days into 2017, I was diagnosed with pneumonia, put on antibiotics and steroids, and relegated to the sofa for weeks. I couldn't even take care of my own horses, and the pain in my eyes and head was so terrible I couldn't think of writing. 

What I'd hoped would be a quick recovery ended up dragging out for six months. By the end of January, I was tired to dissolving into the couch, and started working again. 

Much of American Hellhound was written by hand in a spiral notebook, because the eye pain was so vicious I couldn't bear to look at the computer screen for more than a few minutes at a time. I don't know what it is about pneumonia that makes your eyeballs scream with pain, but it's happened every time I've come down with it. I was angry, and frustrated, and it didn't feel like I'd ever finish. 

But finally, in May, American Hellhound released, and despite all the setbacks, it ended up being one of the longest volumes in the series. It tells both a current tale of the club facing new, dangerous enemies, and gaining allies old and new, with Maggie and Ghost tackling parenthood all over again in their middle years. It also tells the "Then" story of Ghost and Maggie meeting, and falling in love, and fighting the odds to become the king and queen they are today. I think it's the book that finally shifted general opinions on Ghost...but he's still a hellhound, deep down. He never really stood a chance of being anything else. 

#TeaserTuesday - Fortunate Son

 

Fielding buzzed the window down, and a man-shaped shadow detached from the gate and drifted over to lean down to their level.

The dash lights illuminated the square face of a strongly-built young man with close-shaved dark hair and a prominent, but straight nose. “Chief,” he greeted. His gaze flicked across the car, and his eyes blew wide when he spotted Alex. “Shit, is that–”

“Dr. Bonfils, yeah,” Fielding said. “He’s here to help.”

The kid shook his head, half-bewildered, half-refusing. “I dunno…he’s…shit, he’s a…” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Fed.”

Alex bit back a sigh. He understood the hesitance – the fear, even – just as he understood that none of them were going to believe a word he said, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about proving himself, or setting any of them at ease. He said, “I don’t have my gun, and I’m not wearing a wire. You can search me, if it makes you feel better.”

The Lean Dog made a face, mouth scrunched to the side.

“We need to talk to Ratchet,” Fielding pressed. “Who’s running things inside? Walsh? Radio in and ask if he’ll see us.”

The Dog made an unhappy noise, but straightened. Alex heard the squawk and crackle of a radio, a blurred voice from the other side, then the Dog leaned down and waved them on. “Go straight in the front door. We’ll search him.”

Alex couldn’t say he blamed them, but he’d hoped they wouldn’t take him up on the offer.

“Right,” Fielding said. “Thanks, Boom.” He rolled up the window and pulled forward.

Parking was scarce. Alex recognized Ava’s black Expedition.  

Fielding killed the engine, placed both hands on the wheel, and turned to him.

“Right,” Alex said, and didn’t bother swallowing his sigh this time. “Last warning?”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Fielding said, seriously, and Alex sobered. “I don’t know what you’re expecting – what you’ve read about, or seen in movies, or think you know. These people in here” – he pointed through the windshield, where two guys were going in the front door – “aren’t half as uncivilized as you’re thinking. And they’re twice as dangerous as they’ll let you see.”

Something about his expression, the way it was haunted at the edges, and resolved in the center, told Alex he wasn’t speaking lightly, and wasn’t merely trying to intimidate him. He’d not felt it before, at first, or on the ride over, but suddenly, it seemed that he and Fielding were in the same boat, struggling with the same internal war.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Watch yourself,” Fielding cautioned, and popped his door. 

Fond Reflections

Devin didn’t take him back to the house right away. There was a bench halfway back down the hill, and they pulled over and climbed onto it, overlooking the bare tree trunks, the glimpses of dead brown field grass below. A wisp of smoke curling up from the house chimney, visible as a smudge above the tree tops.

Devin lit two cigarettes and passed one over.

The first drag hit Toly like something harder and more necessary than nicotine. “Thanks,” he croaked out, and didn’t just mean for the smoke.

“’Course. That’s what family’s for, right?”

Toly skated a sideways look at him, trying and failing to imagine a past in which he’d successfully predicted he’d end up somehow related to this man, of all people.

And then Devin said, “I’m proud of you. You did really well back there.”

Toly snorted to cover the traitorous way his heart flipped. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” All innocence.

“Pretend that…I dunno. You care. Like I’m your kid.”

“Well, I figure you almost are. All but in name, right? It’s bound to happen.”

Another snort, this one a little desperate, because it was bad enough when Maverick played dad; he couldn’t do it with his actual potential father-in-law. “You never even tell your own kids you’re proud of them.”

“Not true, now. Not anymore. I’m downright paternal these days.” When Toly looked over at him, he grinned and winked. “After all: a man can change, can’t he?”

Toly took a drag off his smoke, and thought of all his wants, unboxed, shining, possible. Achievable. “Yeah,” he muttered, and felt the first tug of a smile, the first he’d felt in a week. “I guess so.”

I don't like to presume that writing is a process that presents universal challenges and sentiments to its practitioners, but I do think there are some hang-ups that most of us could confess to struggling with. For instance, I've seen other authors talk about being sick of their own work. You get to that point, even with the most poignant and personal of passion projects, at which you'd be perfectly happy to never see the thing again. Yeet it into the void and run the other way. "Thank God that's over. What's next?" Again, not wanting to speak for everyone, but for me, by the time I've finished editing and have released a project, it's hard to feel much affection for it; I feel relief, yes, and pride, too, but it's a detached sort of pride. I'm proud that I scaled the mountain again...though now there's the shadow of the next peak keeping the sun off my face. 

That was a very long way of saying I need a little distance after I've finished a book. The flip side, then - the bright side - is that when I do revisit it, weeks, months, even years later, I'm reminded why I wrote the book in the first place. When I come back to a book, I get to look at it as a reader, and that's when I'm most proud of it. 

I had to look something up for Lord Have Mercy in Nothing More, and I wound up reading big chunks of text unnecessarily, because I was simply enjoying it. I love Raven, and I love Toly, and I love the way they play off one another. Readers had asked for years if I intended to write a book for Raven, and I never gave a solid answer, because I wasn't sure. It had to be right; it had to preserve Raven's...Ravenness. Hers would need to be a man who fit amongst her assassin family, but who she could also whisk away to Paris Fashion Week if the need arose. I blogged at length about all my behind the scenes reasoning when the book first dropped in March, and that reasoning still holds true today. 

I'm not sure what the point of this post was, other than to say: I like this book so much. After a few months away from it, I can look back over it with fresh eyes and feel incredibly satisfied with the direction the story took, and the way it was another steppingstone along the path to where the series is now. Not every book will be a universal favorite, and not every one will play out in the same way: it would be boring if they did. But they're all a part of the tapestry. Of the garden. Of the *insert preferred metaphor here.* 

It's so easy to become overwhelmed with the big picture, chewed up in the daily grind. But it's okay, and it's even important, to step back and appreciate the little things. Like the snippet I shared above, which is one of my favorites from the book. 

*Nick Saban voice*: It's a process. Trust it. 

**Nothing More is available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and paperback if you haven't read it. Be sure to get all caught up for Lord Have Mercy, part one of which is out now. ☺

#ThrowbackThursday - Loverboy

 

"Thank you," Tango said one night, a beer in his hand, Mercy's solid presence taking up most of the couch beside him. 

In the kitchen, he could hear the girls talking happily about something, the bright spill of Whitney's laughter like a gift. Aidan had taken a colicky Lainie for a walk out in the cool early spring air; the faint notes of his terrible singing voice could be heard when he passed close to the window. 

"For everything," Tango continued, quietly. "I mean, for doing what I couldn't, yeah, but for...for listening." All those makeshift therapy sessions in the apartment, Ava's baked goods, the complete and total acceptance of all the terrible stories he'd told, the lack of judgement. 

His eyes burned, suddenly. "I..."

"Hey." Mercy's huge arm went around his shoulders and pulled him in close. "I'm always here, okay?"

Tango nodded. 

"Love you, brother."

He couldn't speak for the lump in his throat, but Tango nodded again, and he hoped Mercy could read the love in it. He probably could; he was perceptive like that.

I can remember being crabby in general while writing Loverboy, but didn't put two-and-two together until after the fact that it was because the book was so very heavy. Even then, with the story fresh in my mind, I don't think I realized that it was the sort of relentless, sucker-punch story that kept layering bad upon bad, trauma upon trauma, that makes for a nervy and unsettling reading experience. Even an upsetting one. It's a bit of a shock to page back through the book now, looking for quotes, and see just how dark it is. I wouldn't change a thing, though. Tango's story is all-too-real, and the end message of hope and a positive future is one that I think is necessary for the series. 

I set the Reel for the book on Insta to "Masterpiece Theater III" by Marianas Trench, because that song has always been Tango's for me.