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. ☺