Coming Soon

 

Oh, the wonderful, bittersweet relief of typing "The End." I finished A Cure for Recovery today, and I should be able to order my proof copies this weekend! It topped out at 38k+ words, and 155 5"x8" paperback pages. Lengthy for a novella, but a quick read. 

If you haven't read College Town yet, now's the time. Be on the lookout for this follow-up novella very soon. 

Synopsis: 

"Tommy’s been a Granger instead of a Katz or a Cattaneo for almost seven months, and he’s still not tired of signing his new legal name on documents, or seeing it printed in his email signature. He especially likes the sight of it in the elegant script of Leo and Dana’s wedding save-the-date cards.

But even the charm of his new name, and the new life it represents, can’t make up for the drudgery of yet another doctor’s appointment." 

Tommy survived a shooting, retired from the NYPD, and married the love of his life, but recovery, he's learned in the seven months since, isn't as straightforward as physical healing. Set after the events of "College Town," A Cure for Recovery tells a domestic story of love, and frustration, and working through tough times with the people you love most. A story of family, and the fears and joys of a future you never thought you'd get to live.  

This M/M novella is not a standalone and must be read after "College Town." 

A Walk Through the Backlist: The Drakes

I'm working away on Lord Have Mercy Part Four, and the nearly-complete College Town novella, A Cure for Recovery, both of which will be available soon. But while we wait for those releases, I thought it would be fun to make Throwback Thursdays a little more organized for the next few weeks, and take the time to reflect on the backlist. The world moves so fast, is so social media driven, and is so focused on new/now/next, but an author's backlist is, pun intended, the backbone of her writing career. I'm very familiar with the sensation of having not done enough, but when I pause, and reflect, it's startling to realize that there are forty-one books in my catalogue. If you haven't read them all, they might be a nice little distraction until LHM 4 drops. 

I have so many impulse-started WIPs, and the Drake Chronicles began that way in 2020, during the height of the pandemic lockdown. I was working on Lone Star, but wanted a side project to dabble with another genre, and started Heart of Winter on a whim. Within a few chapters, it had become a whole series in my mind, and by the time I'd completed book one, I'd decided that this, finally, was the epic fantasy I'd been wanting to write for years. I'd always wanted to write a sword-and-sorcery, dragons-and-magic fantasy series, but always got stymied by the sheer scale of such a project. Beginning Heart of Winter without any internal pressure or expectations, and focusing initially on the romantic relationships, helped me ease into the process, and then organically fill in all the cultural and dramatic blanks in a way that felt organic. 

Here's a secret: the first three books - Heart of Winter, The Edge of the Wild, and Blood of Wolves - were all supposed to be one book. My original vision was of a trilogy of fat books. The defeat of the Sels at Aeres was supposed to be the climax of book one, rather than book three. Ultimately, though, I decided that since this was a) a new genre for me, and b) a total departure from the real world, it was too risky to spend months and months writing an 800 page book. Smaller books seem to perform better in general, so I split book one into three, and so on and so forth. The result is a series with smaller, more manageable books as opposed to my usual, monoliths, but with none of the story or character development sacrificed. This means the series as a whole reads as slower paced, but that's my brand, essentially. Slow, and steady, and rich in characterization. 

When I finish my two current projects, the plan is to tackle book 6, Avarice of the Empire, and while I don't have any sort of release date in mind for that, you can read the first five books in the series now. It's got:

• Romance: m/m and m/f
• Motley, ensemble cast
• fantasy realm 
• dragons
• dragon-riding 
• magic
• necromancy
• courtly drama
• political intrigue 
• sword fights
• sabotage and subterfuge 
• redemption arcs
• shapeshifting 
• Viking-inspired clothes and customs
• invading armies 
• cannibals 
• assassination attempts

I'm sure I'm leaving something out, because there's so very much going on in this series! It's available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. 

I look forward to diving back into it soon. 🐉

#TeaserTuesday: The Truth

 

When Fox laid down Waverly’s photo, she gulped audibly and turned her face away. “Enough,” she said, and put a hand up to shield her peripheral vision.

“You’re the Deputy Director of Forensics, aren’t you?” Ghost spoke for the first time. Fox sent him a look that warned caution, but didn’t cut him off. “You’re not going to get queasy over crime scene photos, are you? Has it been too long since you were in the field? Or were you never qualified for the job in the first place?”

According to the file Mike had given them, Sawyer’s rise to directorship had been meteoric, especially considering her low test scores as a trainee.

“Or,” Fox said, “is it harder to look at these images when they’re images of your friends?”

Her head whipped back around at that, threads of silver hair flying loose from her tight bun to cling at the sweat-damp skin of her temples and forehead. Her eyes were huge. “What? I don’t – these aren’t my friends.” But she was too rattled to sound contemptuous, her breathing too quick to sell the lie.

Fox pulled out a digital audio recorder, clicked it on, and set it on the table, just out of her reach. Folded his arms. “Tell us about Abacus. About how you like to buy and sell young women.”

She stared at him a moment, and then her lashes flickered, and her eyes welled, and her lip trembled. She broke, and Ghost tipped a mental hat to Fox’s judgement call on approaching her first.

Somehow, over the years, up to his eyeballs in enough crises and mundane worries alike to drink and smoke and stress himself into the hospital, he’d managed to amass the sort of talent and loyalty in a crew that could more than likely topple a small country, if they set their minds to it. The FBI had all their tech and their government money, but Ghost had the smartest, savviest killers in the country under his roof.

How many of those killers, he wondered, his own son included, would trust him once they learned the truth?

All the main players in this book are hiding something. Ghost's sin is perhaps the most egregious, but they're all in it "up to their eyeballs." 

I'm currently sitting at 34k words (102 6x9 book pages), which seems like alarmingly few, given what needs to happen, but the last two weeks have been very good story-mapping weeks, and I'm starting off this week with a clear vision of the scenes I want to use to get us to the finish line. I know it's been a difficult wait, but we're almost there! Thank you all for your patience. 

 

 

An Epilogue

 

He slides his hand in the crook of Lawson’s elbow. “Hey.”

Lawson’s head only half turns, his gaze askance, wary.

Oh, Tommy thinks. I’ve really messed up.

Voice gentle, he says, “I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t something new. I’ve been dealing with it off and on the whole time.”

“I thought–” Lawson starts, then shakes his head, and looks away again.

Tommy sits up, which isn’t as effortless as it used to be, his muscles gone soft and unsteady from disuse. And isn’t that stupid? He should have been working on his stretches, on his Pilates, his upper body exercises, and instead he’s kept putting it off. When I’m better, he always thinks. When I’m healed.

But maybe he never will be.

Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned I was playing around with a Tommy POV follow-up to College Town as a writing exercise while I worked through the last part of Lord Have Mercy? It's officially a novella, now. As usual with me, the story grew legs, got up, and started running around, and what am I to do but follow? It's a look at what comes after the happy ending - the domestic joy and angst of moving past a major, life-altering event, with plenty of sweetness and spice, and a trip to NYC. Much like with the Russells, and then Hal and Luke in Walking Wounded, I found I wasn't ready to let go of Lawson and Tommy just yet, and had to add a little epilogue. 

It's titled A Cure For Recovery, and should be available soon! 

If you haven't read College Town yet, now's the perfect time. It's got:

• small-town setting
• childhood sweethearts
• friends to lovers
• twenty years later
• second chance romance
• mafia vibes
• suspense
• plot twist ending
• banter
• explicit steamy scenes
• happy ending 

It's available in all the usual places:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

#TeaserTuesday: Complicated

 

 

There were other, more pressing questions to ask, but the one that formed on Ava’s tongue needed to come out, or drive her crazy forever for missing her shot. “Dee didn’t want to be with Remy – she left him. So why was she so obsessed with him? Why’d she keep tabs on him?”

That finally landed like an arrow. Barbara blinked, and, afterward, her gaze skated across the room. It snagged on something – maybe Reese, going by her slight frown – and then returned. Her eyes weren’t so impassive this time. “Dee was complicated.”

“So’s cancer. It’ll still kill you.”

The first glimmer of emotion touched her: frown lines deepening around her mouth. “She–”

Out of patience, Ava decided to swing the hammer, and sweep up the glass if necessary. “She was a bitch,” she said, coldly, and Barbara’s brows jumped, once.

Colin muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Maggie nodded, subtly. Approving. It gave Ava the nerve to press on.

“I know you cared about her,” Ava said. “And I know that, even though she’s dead, your loyalty lies with her, and not us. Not Felix. I’m not here to resurrect ghosts. I’m looking for my son. Loyalty to Dee aside, you should at least want to protect an eight-year-old boy who never hurt anyone. Dee’s grandson, at that.”

Barbara jerked, sat somehow more upright, and crossed her legs the other way. Picked an invisible spot of lint off her skirt. She met Ava’s gaze head-on, and Ava thought she was seeing the real Barbara for the first time. In a sharp, affronted voice, she said, “Did I say I didn’t want to help your little boy?”

“Not in so many words,” Ava shot back. “But you sure were beating around the bush about it.”

It's wall-to-wall ghosts in this one, for everyone.

Chrome Stripped Off

 

I don't know what you think, but for me, that version's a loser. The story is there, but it's not elegant. It's like a Cadillac with the chrome stripped off and the paint sanded down to dull metal. It goes somewhere, but it ain't, you know, boss. 

Soldiering on with my year of unread King novels, yesterday I finished Needful Things, and started The Stand (I know, I know, why is The Stand one I haven't read yet?). I'm reading the "Complete and Uncut Edition" that released in 2020. My paperback version is 1,296 pages. Yeehaw. 

I'm not going to do a review of Needful Things. It manages to be both small-scale and large-scale horror, and in true King fashion, the real horrors are the evils humans deliver upon one another, and the monster is a big ol' metaphor. I really enjoyed it, but that was to be expected. He's one of my all-time favorites, and his work is perhaps the only thing keeping me going creatively with this year's writing. 

I won't say I'm in a rut. I don't have writer's block. If anything, I have an abundance of ideas, and a deep frustration that I might never have the chance to bring them into the light. Lord Have Mercy is the book that never ends, like that friggin' Lambchop song. The rest of The Drake Chronicles are twisty, and turny, and complex, and not a soul out there has guessed where it's headed; rather, book five seems to have upset a lot of readers, and I'm not sure there's enough patience out there to wait for the whole thing to develop at its own pace. It's epic fantasy, which means lots of characters, lots of POVs, lots of setbacks, and surprises, and reveals...but is it worth my time and energy at this point? Can I afford to block off time to work on Lionheart? Would any of my other WIPs be better received? The space opera Lawson's working on in College Town is in fact one of my own projects, but, like every other stupid thing I write, it's going to be long, and involved, and layered, and a weird blend of genres, so how is that any better? Sure, Lauren, let's add a thousand-page book about alien invasion, and secret military projects, and body horror, and immortality, and found family, and childhood sweethearts. That'll really do the trick. 

In short: I'm grumpy about writing lately, and haven't felt much like posting. I am writing. But grumpily. 

Mostly, I think I'm just ready to be done with LHM. I won't rush it, but I've got end-of-book burnout, and want to get to the end. Also, are you even an author if you're not subject to fits of melancholy? 

I took a little comfort from the preface of The Stand yesterday. Even if you've already read the original version of the novel, it's worth opening up the sample on Amazon to read King's preface for the uncut version. I've always been a verbose writer; his work didn't inspire that in me, but, rather, offered a comfort when I was younger: it's not just me. Other writers approach the craft the same way and have even been a commercial success because of it. I talked about it last year in this post, about feeling seen through literature. Seen, to some extent in a superficial way, because as much as I admire the likes of Dorothy Dunnett and Jane Austen, I'm always going to have that little gremlin streak that cackles, "Yeah, but then, what if he cuts his head off? Ha!" 

But in a more substantive sense, it's about feeling that kinship because it's my belief that in order to have the maximum payoff for a story, all those details and subplots are necessary. Vignettes that might seem indulgent or meaningless upon reading are in fact building up and layering the characterization so that, at the end, the reader sees the complete picture. 

Here's a for instance from my own work, using King's Cadillac metaphor. I'm going to go ahead and spoil part of the Drakes because I'm not sure it'll matter. One scathing review said that time was "wasted on NPC" characters Connor and Reggie, "petting dragons" and "porn." Reggie has significant PTSD from his trials at the hands of the Sels. He apes the lordly commander, but internally, he's shattered. He's working through some of that, working on healing, through sex. Petting the dragons is showing his slowly growing bond with them - not magical, but merely man and animal, a building of trust. Reggie's going to ride a dragon, and it's going to be important to the plot. And his relationship with Connor is the thing that gives him the courage to do so. But, sure. I wasted a bunch of time there. Like I said: I'm not sure there's enough patience to wait for that series to develop. 

Like with King's "loser" version of Hansel & Gretel, pictured above: Did you learn the pertinent information? Sure. Why not tell all stories that way? Why not just say "people meet, they banter, they fall in love, they fight the bad guys, the end?" 

I guess after doing this whole writing thing for fourteen years, I'd hoped to have been allowed a little grace and a little time to work things out on my own. A little trust that we'll get there in the end. You guys who've been reading along with LHM in installment form have been the best, most encouraging cheerleaders, but I'm already dreading the response to the complete novel as a whole once it's out in the wild. I'm tugging my collar like Rodney Dangerfield about it - but that won't change my approach. $50 says "this could/should have been 200 pages shorter" is right up there at the top. 

I just get frustrated sometimes, is all. It'll pass. It always does. 

(Also, holy crap, fourteen years??? I hadn't counted in a while. Yikes.) 

#TeaserTuesday: The Rookery

 

“This, boys,” Mercy said, “is the rookery. And it’s where Harlan Boyle is going to die a slow, painful death.”

 

~*~

 

It was his first year of proper hunting – of checking the traps, collecting the tags, and wielding the .22 alongside Remy – that Daddy first brought Mercy to this place. They’d just dropped the day’s catch at the depot, and the sun was already sinking, that pink-gold May twilight that was warm, but not yet oppressive, redolent of jasmine and honeysuckle, singing with crickets and peepers.

“Daddy, it’ll be dark soon,” Mercy cautioned, snugged next to Remy in the stern, beside the till, hands still smelling of gator, back of his neck prickling with nerves when Remy steered them away from home, and toward the deeper parts of the swamp where they rarely hunted.

“Mmhm,” Remy hummed. “That’s what spotlights are for.” He put his free arm, heavy with muscle, around Felix’s shoulders, and said, “I wanna show you something. Something good. Don’t be scared.”

He piloted them out, and out, until Felix could smell the salt of the ocean as strongly as he could smell the muck of home. Down narrower and narrower inlets and causeways and canals. He pointed out the ruins of what had never been anyone’s stone house. And as they emerged onto the lake, the sunset flared vivid as a forest fire through the lower rungs of the trees.

Felix gasped.  

The world was alive with birds.

The egrets and herons stood in thick clusters on the banks of the lake, necks stretched as they called and trilled to one another. Others flew from the lake to the island at its center, and on the island itself, the trees were decorated more ornately than any Christmas spruce, draped in garlands of snowy egrets, and blue herons, and shrieking gulls, and swooping kingfishers. The baby sandhill cranes, downy gray, still unable to fly, were making a swim for it. As Felix watched, he saw one disappear, snatched beneath the water.

The noise. It was chaos, and it was music, and Felix could feel it in his chest.

“This,” Remy said, arm squeezing tighter around him once he killed the engine, “is the rookery. This is where all the birds come to roost for the night.”

“Wow.”

“They’re safer together. It’s where they have their nests. When their chicks hatch, up in those trees, nothing can get to them. But…” He breathed a quiet laugh. “Did you see that one go under?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s safe for any bird that can fly. But anything that swims…”

“Gators?”

“There’s more gators under us right now than you could shake a stick at. The birdsong, it calls to them.”

Felix said a sad, silent prayer for the stolen chick. But his fascination was too great to mourn it; that was life, that was nature – and never had he seen nature so noisily, unexpectedly resplendent.

“See that sandbar there?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where you’ll see them in the daylight. Sunning themselves.”

“All of them?”

“No.” Remy snorted a laugh. “Just a few at a time.”

“How many do you think there are? Total?”

“Oh, who’s to say? Not me. Hundreds, probably.”

“Well,” Felix said, as his pulse leaped. “It’s a pretty big lake.”

Remy chuckled. “It sure is, son.”

 

There are a lot of fictional spots in the Dartmoor universe, from Dartmoor itself, to Bell Bar, to Cook's Coffee. "Big Son" introduces another fictional spot...but one that's based on a real one. The rookery is based on the rookery I found in the woods behind my grandparents' house in Florida when I was kid, gators and all. 

The Gator Reasoning

I love when I come across a negative review for a book and it becomes apparent that this particular reader missed the point. Completely. They showed up thirty minutes late with Starbucks, and the point already has a two-hour head start going the other way. Sometimes they miss the point on purpose - or pretend to, because they want to drag down the book's ratings - but sometimes it's genuine. It can be hard to tell the difference, but in either case, it's always mind-boggling. 

When Golden Eagle came out, one reviewer pondered why I "kept talking about the Romanovs. Who gives a crap about the Romanovs?!" this person said. I was then forced to wonder: did this reader not realize that Alexei Romanov is one of the main protagonists of the series? I figure he cares about the Romanovs.  Because they're, you know, his murdered family. 

Years ago, someone reviewing Fearless complained that there was too much talk of alligators. "What's the point?" 

Since we're back in the heart of gator country with Lord Have Mercy, I thought it warranted a bit of discussion. 

That's the short, snarky answer, but a lot of thought - and research - went into Mercy's Swamp Thing, gator hunting streak, and I still think it's the best decision I've ever made with this series. 

I think of Mercy, Ghost, and Walsh as the core Lean Dogs. A triumvirate, if you will. They're the ones I use the most and who prove the most invaluable at every turn. As such, they all needed to be very distinctive. Mercy's past immediately sets him apart - in the series, and in the sub-genre of motorcycle club-themed romantic suspense as a whole. He's one of a kind, this murderously cheerful monster. 

Go a level deeper, and it's always my tactic to create a childhood for each character, and then use it as a framework for the clay finished sculpture of the adult character. He was a shy, thoughtful, homeschooled boy who loved poetry and his family. He was also someone who hunted for a living. But he and his daddy weren't perched in a deer stand: they were hunting an apex predator on its terms. Growing up, Mercy was someone with a great capacity for gentleness and sensitivity, but also someone who knew exactly how physically strong he was, and what he was capable of. Traits we've observed throughout the series. 

Then there's the gators themselves. Relics of prehistory that carry the mystique of dinosaurs; that in humans stir an ancient, fearful sort of reverence. They are old. They remember the swamp before the first man ever set foot in it, and you can't help but know that, looking at them, those golden eyes gliding unbothered through the duckweed. The gators represent a timelessness synonymous with the South itself, with haunted cities like New Orleans. 

And also, yes, it's a metaphor. For Mercy. For the threat that lies out of sight beneath the surface. For the monster that lay dormant inside him, unleashed by Oliver Landau, and the murders of Remy and Gram. A metaphor for the club itself, too: for the public front, and the private savagery. 

Doesn't the water look lovely? All garlanded in the reflections of the trees? But dip your toes beneath the surface, and snap. 

So, yeah. I talk about gators a lot. It's a metaphor, among other things.