#TeaserTuesday: A Return to Aquitainia

 

When his head listed to the side, he let it; propped his temple on his knuckles and watched, tired and helpless, as Oliver began to slowly pace the width of the rug, fiddling with the ring that Erik had given him.

“I don’t blame Askr,” he said. “Nor any of them. I’m still new to this, and there are elements of it I can’t hope to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug mirrored by the humorless lift of half his mouth. “Most days I’m not sure I believe myself.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re biased.”

Erik felt a fast, but quickly-killed flare of temper. No one had ever questioned him as much as Oliver; it was his right as a paramour… but this wasn’t questioning. Not really. “If you’ll remember,” he said, levering fondness into his tone, “I was the one who told you of the existence of drakes.”

Oliver kept pacing, but shot him a sideways glance, loaded with sass.

Erik sat back in his chair, relieved at the sight. “I was raised in the North, darling. I don’t doubt magic, nor do the others.”

Oliver’s lips pressed together, a wry, flat pretend smile. “So it’s me they doubt.”

“Ollie—”

He lifted a hand in a bid for silence, and turned to walk the length of the rug once more. “No, no. They’re right to.”

“What?”

Oliver stopped, and turned to face him, hands clasped together. His expression did something tense and unfamiliar that Erik didn’t like at all.

His pulse kicked up a step, and Erik repeated, “What?”

Oliver’s look of indecipherable concentration intensified. “They’re right to doubt me. Probably they shouldn’t listen to me at all. And neither should you.”

It was, without question, the strangest thing Oliver had ever said to him. It was alarming. Erik’s heart slammed inside his chest.

He sat up straight and said, “Oliver, what is this? Where is this coming from?”

Rather than answer, Oliver resumed pacing, hands at his sides this time, using his thumbs to crack each finger with a sequence of nervous flicks. “Is the war winnable?”

Erik was beginning to wish he’d poured himself a cup of wine before beginning this conversation. “Is the… every war is winnable.”

Oliver sent him a dark look. “Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What would you have me say? That I’ve led my entire nation to war, but I don’t think we can win?”

Oliver spun toward him, brows drawn. “Did you?”

“No.” He was more than a little stung. “I’m not Náli. I’m not some—some cocksure child who thinks he’s invincible.”

“Náli is actually quite frightened and morbid all the time.”

“You know what I mean, Oliver,” Erik growled, half expecting Oliver to recoil.

He didn’t. 

It's been a hot minute since I worked on the Drake Chronicles, so I was convinced I would have a tough time changing gears and getting back to it. My paperback proofs of Beware of Dog are set to arrive today, so I'm working on Avarice of the Empire in the meantime. 

To my pleasant surprise, I was able to dive right back into this world. Book Five left us in a bit of a lurch, and plenty of readers expressed their anger/disappointment in Oliver, and even Leif. Book Six offers us some *revelations* on both those fronts, and I'll reiterate that everything is going to be okay with Erik and Oliver. And even Leif. And Amelia. I said before: let me cook. 

The good news is that I feel sure I can make Book Seven the final book in the series. Yay! So AOTE, and the one more. I'm looking forward to wrapping things up and having the whole story out there. In the way of all ongoing fantasy sagas, things have to get worse before they can get better, but they definitely will get better. I don't do sad endings. 

Once I'm finished with BoD edits, I can turn my full attention to the Drakes, and I'm hoping to get this one out before the fall. Fingers crossed! 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Sixteen

 

She knew Carina’s type: the country club mothers for whom a child was just another merit badge on the Girl Scout vest of life, who turned to the bottle the moment their “precious darlings” needed anything more than a patented proud smile. Carina wasn’t worried about Mason, Maggie knew – after all, the doctors had said he was out of the woods as far as the whole dying thing went – but was worried about her social standing now that her son had almost killed himself with a party drug. 

The use of the phrase "another merit badge on the Girl Scout vest of life" here is a case of me folding a little bit of my real self into the fiction. I've always applied it to the equestrian world: those riders who were in it for the prestige of blue ribbons, who treated their horses as disposable vehicles. But it certainly applies here with regard to Carina Stephens and her son. 

Maggie is a uniquely Southern heroine because even though she can be a hardass, lethal when necessary, she wields soft power like a pro. Some of that's down to her formal cotillion training growing up, but most of it's simply a cultural staple. She can play nice when she needs to, all fake saccharine sweetness and "bless your heart." We see her skills at play here in this scene, and will see them more in later chapters. 

Ava, meanwhile, is still having A Time (in a bad way) with Mercy. 

Caught up in the moment, he didn't realize how badly she was hurting until afterward, and then he panics a little bit - for more than one reason. He hates that he caused her pain, and if you're thinking "why didn't he know to be more careful?" consider that, up to this point, he's only ever hooked up with club groupies: casual, unemotional sex with experienced women. Mentally and emotionally, he's still in a very immature place. He's finally slept with someone he actually loves, and he hurt her, and he feels fumbly, and stupid, and like an ass. Then layer in the panic that he's finally crossed the line with her, and OMG, how are Ghost and Maggie going to react when/if they find out? His first instinct is to get rid of all the physical evidence of what happened and put some distance between them in case her parents get home earlier than expected. 

He's freaking out. 

Ava, of course, reads this as a rejection, as him not caring, and that's the tragedy of it all. 

Happy Father's Day

 

I want to wish all dads a Happy Father's Day, but extend a special "Happy Father's Day" to all the poor horse dads out there. 😄

I started asking for a horse the moment I could talk. It was the only thing I wanted to do in life. My parents tried to sidetrack me with me other pursuits early on: ballet, jazz and tap, gymnastics, band. I was fixated. They started me out with smaller pets: finches, frogs, a dog, a rabbit. But I wanted to ride. My mom rode as a kid and teenager, and she was fully on-board, but my dad took some convincing. I finally started lessons when I was nine, and we bought my first horse, Skip (there he is!) when I was ten. Dad might have been reluctant before I became a full-fledged horse girl, but once I was in the saddle, he never once tried to discourage me. He's not exactly an animal person, but he knew that it was my dream. Over the years, friends and family members alike tried to convince me that horses were a phase, and that once I started dating, or went off to college, I'd sell my horse and pursue "adult" hobbies. 

Well, I'm thirty-seven, and just celebrated Kit Kat's second birthday yesterday, so it's safe to say it wasn't a phase! 

Thank you, Dad, for all the entry fees, and the show barn camp chair naps, and the awkward well-wishes before I went into the ring. For being there the night we put Cosmo down, and knowing how painful each goodbye has been over the years. You didn't ever ask for the equine life, but it found you anyway. 

This picture was taken by a barn friend who was starting up a photography business and wanted some practice. I'm either 14 or 15 here, and I'm glad she insisted on a group shot. Skip and Spoof have both crossed over the rainbow bridge now, Skip in 2011 and Spoof in 2023. Miss you, boys. ❤

(Also deeply regretting my choice in riding breeches.)

Happy Father's Day! 

Paperback Alert: Hell Theory

 

He sipped his drink, and after a few long moments she saw the line of his shoulders relax; saw him sink down deeper in his chair. His fingers drummed on his glass, and his nostrils flared as he let out a deep breath that had the firelight leaping down the holster straps on his chest.

Then he turned to her. With eyes that weren’t honey, or burnt sugar, no, not now. Gold eyes. Lion’s eyes. The firelight licked over them, carved dark shadows beneath his cheekbones. His hair was already starting to dry, faintly curling at the ends, framing his sharp jaw.

“Are you alright?” she asked, softly.

He dipped his head, a nod of thanks. “Yes. It just takes me a moment – after.”

After what? She didn’t ask.

First released in 2020 and 2021, my Hell Theory trilogy, and its novella, Mystical Wonderful, are now finally available in paperback! 

This series was very much an impulse project rather than a long-planned goal, but it was a lot of fun to swerve into a whole new lane and write something out of character. I've described it as a blended homage to Anne Rice, Thomas Harris, and the tales of King Arthur. It's near-future dystopian erotica, and a nice dark and rainy escape from hot, sunny June days. 

You can grab the paperbacks on Amazon, and the reading order is:

King Among the Dead

Night In A Waste Land

Mystic Wonderful 

Vanish Into Light

The trilogy is complete! And each book is around 75k words, two rarities for me! Binge ready for your summer reading needs.  

The Real Life Walshes

Did anyone watch the Belmont this past Saturday? I was excited to watch Sovereignty win it. He had an incredible Derby run, and then, after skipping the Preakness, danced his way excitedly through the post parade, and had a drawing-away, come-from-mid-pack epic win in the Belmont. I love when a trainer makes a call for the benefit of a horse's wellbeing, and Bill Mott keeping him out of the Preakness was definitely the right call, even if it meant there was no chance of a Triple Crown winner this year. And I especially loved, after the finish, watching Junior Alvarado love on Sovereignty, and then Journalism, as he and Umberto Rispoli praised one another's horses. Horse racing is dangerous, and can be a brutal industry, so I love when I see those involved show genuine care for their animals. 

But that's not the point of this post. 

Also in the field was Heart of Honor, ridden by a UK-based woman jockey. There's not too many female jockeys out there; exercise riders, yes, but race day jockeys, not so much. 

This is Saffie Osborne. Her dad, Jamie, is the trainer, and she's the jockey, and I said, "Oh my God, it's the real-life Walsh and Violet!" She's even a blonde. Come on, now. 

Obviously, they didn't win on Saturday, but getting a slot in a Triple Crown race is still a big deal, even if you don't come home with the hardware. Here she is riding Heart of Honor to a second-place finish in the UAE Derby. 

I've had more than a few readers express hope that I'll write a second gen series for Dartmoor, and let me say that while I'll never say never, I definitely do not have plans to do that as of right now. Any story about Remy would be heavily influenced by his and his family's ordeal in Lord Have Mercy, and I'm not looking to explore that given LHM's sales performance. Besides: the Dartmoor kid whose story I would most want to tell? Violet's. And I don't have any kind of club drama plot mapped out yet; only her personal journey, which I've started exploring my "Dartmoor Futures" blog series. 

The wild Belmont coincidence is: after her track accident, I envisioned Walsh taking Vi to Saratoga (where the Belmont is run), courtesy of Uncle Ian's money and connections, to see if she still wants to be a jockey. My plan is that, with her confidence badly rattled, Vi isn't ready to dive back into racing just yet. Instead, she takes on a difficult training job, working with an off the track Thoroughbred back in Tennessee, and eventually discovering a love for three-day eventing. Still a daredevil sport, but an individual one, without quite the same risks at the racetrack. 

Her romance, of course, as hinted at in the scenes I've written so far, is with Ash Teague. I don't know if/when I'll write any more of her (their) story, but the Belmont got me thinking Violet Walsh thoughts, for sure. 

#TeaserTuesday: BoD Coming Soon

 

As the youngest of ten half-siblings, Cassandra Green worries she’ll always been seen as the “baby” of the family, even though she’s about to turn twenty. Life as an art student in New York is peaceful, steady, and with the club at its most powerful and settled, Cass ventures deeper into civilian life, trying to carve a niche for herself among her fellow students. But when her roommate is assaulted, she turns to her assigned Lean Dog protector, Shep, for support.

When he was first placed on Raven Blake’s security detail almost three years ago, Shepherd wanted no part of looking after her teenage sister. Now, though, he’s finding any excuse to stay in Manhattan to keep an eye on Cass. When she lands in the crosshairs of a rich and influential family, he realizes his feelings aren’t just protective anymore.

Book Six in the Lean Dogs Legacy series takes place after Lean Dogs Legacy Book Five, Nothing More, and Dartmoor Series Book Ten, Lord Have Mercy. 

I finished writing Beware of Dog on Sunday! Pre-edits, it sits at 365 pages, and 127k words. Much more manageable than my last release, which shall remain nameless here. No sense reliving the shame. 

Right now, I'm doing a full read-through of it on the computer, and then it'll go off to my editor. Depending on how cooperative real life is, I'm thinking it'll be about two weeks until release day. 

This was a fun one to write. There's some high drama and some angst, yes, a little life-or-death action, because this involves the Lean Dogs, after all. But the romance manages to be lighthearted, and sweet, and spicy all at once. I'm excited to share Cass and Shep with you soon!

As I mentioned last week, this isn't a standalone. It can be read as one, maybe, but to be fully up to speed on who's who, you'll need to have read Long Way Down and Nothing More. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Fifteen

 

   

           Carter took a step back, his expression fretful, but he didn’t retreat. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

               Mercy sighed. “What are you talking about?” But inwardly, he felt the first stirrings of panic. People knew. People were noticing. He was too obvious and he didn’t know how to stop it.

               “Ava’s crazy about someone,” Carter said, voice growing wistful. “She’s too distracted and she daydreams in class. She’s into someone, big time. And it’s you.”

Boy, Mercy is at the very peak of his Asshole Era at this stage in the book, isn't he? He has an excuse, but it's still troubling to witness. 

In Chapter Fifteen, the simmering tension between Ava and Mercy finally reaches a boiling point, and they sleep together for the first time. It's a decidedly unromantic event. In hindsight, I find it sad that their coming together wasn't as sweet as I know they can be together, but I stand by the way I wrote it originally. Their first run, when she was seventeen, was doomed from the start, and their first time reflects that.

At this point in the book, readers know that Mercy is wildly conflicted, but Ava doesn't. From her perspective, Mercy's toying with her for his own amusement, pulling her in and then pushing her away again when it suits him. She feels so very young here: mature in some ways beyond her years, but very much a "girl" when it comes to romance. 

I'm obviously a big fan of multi-POV storytelling, and in the case of a story such as this, I find it necessary. If we only ever saw this play out from Ava's POV, I'm not sure Mercy's inner struggle would be clear. I very intentionally highlight the way Mercy still feels the same almost-paternal affection he's felt for Ava all along, but now with an added layer of romantic and physical attraction. He's as flawed as any human, and he's not able to tuck those old feelings neatly away just because he sees her as a woman now. His tangle of sentiment is knotted past the point of organization, and it's making him angry and resentful: at Ava, yes, and also at Ghost. 

   

           “She likes you.” Ghost made a sound in his throat that could have been contemptuous. “She likes you better than she likes me.”

               “No she doesn’t,” Mercy said, because it was what he had to say. He couldn’t say that “like” wasn’t a part of the equation anymore.

               “She trusts you,” Ghost continued. “She talks to you – tells you shit a daughter wouldn’t tell her old man.”

               If only he knew how terrible that truth was.

               “Do me a favor,” Ghost said, and Mercy was ready for the request; there’d been an air of favor-asking about this little moment staring off toward the street. If Ghost was going to grow contemplative and start unraveling the inner workings of his soul, he wasn’t ever going to do it with Mercy. No, it was only ever about the club, about work, with Mercy.

               “Go by the house a little later,” Ghost went on. “Mags sent Ava home with her books. I’m worried about her. This thing with the Stephens has got my hackles up. I don’t trust that something else won’t happen.

               “And while you’re there, see if you can get her to talk about last night. I just don’t understand how she got herself in that spot.”

               Mercy affected a bored expression and said, “Sure thing, boss. Will do.”

Ava's anguished, too, to a lesser extent. There's something tragic about them loving one another at this stage, and so I wanted their first time to be real, and raw, and as painful, emotionally and physically, as it would be in a true to life situation. 

Throwback Thursday: Getting Ready for Beware of Dog

I know I mentioned this in a post a month or two ago, but I wanted to expand on it today for Throwback Thursday. I've had lots of questions on FB and Insta about the new book (I completed the big final action scene today and now it's denouement time!!), mostly asking about who Shep and Cass are, so I wanted to do a refresher here for anyone who might need it.

Who is Cass?

Cass is Cassandra Green, Raven's younger sister, and the youngest of Devin Green's ten children. We first meet her in Prodigal Son.

Of the nine half-siblings, Cassandra was the only one who boasted the last name Green. Cass had a theory that all of the nine women her father impregnated had at one point or other fashioned themselves "the one": the one who'd finally convinced Devin to settle down for good.

She's seventeen, and though we never meet her mother, it's obvious that Raven is the forceful, maternal figure in her life. Cass is kidnapped in this book and later rescued by Reese. In subsequent books, she moves to New York with Raven, and Raven's paying her tuition to art school. She's once again targeted by club enemies in The Wild Charge, and we see a lot of her in Raven's book, Nothing More. She's bubbly, and opinionated, and boasts Devin's determination. She loves the club, having grown up beneath its protection, and has always fostered crushes on Lean Dogs. Raven's been afraid all along that she'd "throw her life away" on a biker, but recognizes now how hypocritical that statement is. 

Who is Shep?

Shep is the sergeant at arms for the New York chapter, and we first meet him in Long Way Down, when Mav comes to talk to Pongo and Melissa at the club-owned apartment in Manhattan. 

“Hey, dipshit,” Shepherd barked, hiking a hip up to perch on the back of the couch. He flicked open a knife and started cleaning beneath his nails, unbothered. “If you’d shut up for a second, maybe he could explain it to you.”

Pongo shot him a glare, which, judging by Shepherd’s responding smirk, was ruined by the fact that he trembled faintly all over.

“Shep,” Maverick warned. 

Let's just say he doesn't make a stellar first impression here.

It turned out Toly made a damn good pasta sauce, if heavy on the garlic. “Vodka,” he said, when Pongo asked for the secret ingredient, to which Shepherd had snorted and said, “God, that’s fantastic.” Toly gave him a look so withering Shepherd should have been reduced to bones. Alas. 

 

In Nothing More, he's assigned to Raven and Cass as a security detail, and while he and Toly don't get along at this juncture, we catch background glimpses of his growing bond with Cass.

 

She steeled herself, and went back into the office – where Shep was seated at her desk, merrily eating a multigrain bagel, poppy and sesame seeds all over her blotter.

“Hey,” he called, as she heeled the door shut and felt her face pull tight with anger. “Do you got any real milk? This is some kinda soy shit or something, and it sucks,” he said of his coffee, peering down into the cup with a grimace.

The latch clicked into place.

“First of all, Shep,” she said, “let us establish some ground rules…”

“Uh…” Cassandra said, eyes comically wide as she glanced between Raven and her new shadow.

“Yes, Toly’s gone,” Raven said crisply. “This is Shepherd. He’s…a work in progress.”

“I can hear you, you know.” 

Shep twisted around in his seat, gaze turning eager as he glanced between them. “You like who now?”

“Not you,” Raven and Cass said together.

 Raven said, “Cassandra, maybe Greg would like to hear about the art exhibit you’re having after the New Year.” She traded a fast look with Shep, who stood against the wall, watching them with the intensity of a bouncer, and the subtlety of a chainsaw; he was never going to wear a suit like he was meant for it, no matter how finely it was tailored, but he was at least being quiet today, and she had to acknowledge progress, no matter how small.

United in their love of a good, fresh-smelling tree, Cass looped her arm through Shep’s and dragged him off toward the back of the lot, doubtless toward the more expensive trees. 

 

When Beware of Dog begins, Cass is about to turn twenty, and Shep has been her loyal protector for a while. Their vibe is very different from Mercy and Ava's, and Shep hasn't so much been assigned to her, but keeps finding reasons to stick around the city, and has become the person Cass depends upon most and calls when she's in trouble. 

One of the things I've always enjoyed about writing this series is the way it breathes and grows and shifts organically. I have Big Plans, and most of those pan out, carefully choreographed from the start; but there are also relationships that seem to form themselves as I go along. Often times, while writing one main romance, another starts developing in the background, and eventually demands to be told. That was the case here. 

Confession: I initially planned to pair Cass with Reese, hence him rescuing her in Prodigal Son. But that book is also where I first introduced Tenny, and in Lone Star, Reese and Tenny's contempt for one another, and all their similarities, quickly eclipsed any idea of writing a slow burn story in which Reese becomes more human and falls in love with Tenny's vivacious, already human sister. Cass would have been sweet to him, but Reese's issues are way outside her purview. He and Tenny are perfect together, and I wouldn't change that. And Shep, I discovered while writing Nothing More, is seen as insensitive and "an idiot" by his brothers in large part because, despite being a Dog, he has nothing and no one, and is badly in need of a little TLC. 

I've had such fun turning his and Cass's friendship into something more, and getting back into the age gap trope, where it all began. 

I suppose you can read this book as a standalone, but if you want to be best prepared, be sure to read Prodigal Son, Long Way Down, and Nothing More. 

#TeaserTuesday: Hammer Hand

 

If I can ever finish this book - I'm in the final stretch and determined to get the first draft done this week - then please know that our favorite monster does indeed make a cameo appearance. How can you talk about an age gap romance without the OG there to offer advice and sledgehammer services, after all? 

Fearless Read-along: Chapter Fourteen

Fisher wet his lips and twitched like a trapped bug.

               “And the truth would be great,” Collier said. “We already caught you with them – what good does lying do you now?”

               “I dunno,” Mercy said, putting a little more pressure on the frail sternum beneath his boot sole. “Too many people tell the truth, and I’ll be out of a job. If he lies” – a wide smile for Fisher’s benefit – “then I get to go to work.”

After a whole week without Wi-Fi, I caught up with Chapter Thirteen on Saturday, and am back on schedule today with Chapter Fourteen. Check out the previous post if you missed it, and then jump back here. 

For someone who continually claims that plot is her weak point, I sure do saddle myself with lots of complex plots that take up a good deal of page time. There's a reason for that. 

I love action movies, and I love, love a good crime thriller; love fantasy with lots of sword fights and interpersonal intrigue. Explosions, car chases, murder plots, betrayals - all that good stuff. But the romantic relationships in those sorts of stories usually go one of two ways. In an action movie, there's a few heated moments of eye contact amidst the world-saving, and then a kiss at the end with very little build-up. Or it can go the Game of Thrones route, in which there's lots of graphic sex but zero romance or chemistry. On the flip side, genre romance has a tendency to leave the action, subterfuge, and suspense off of the page. The focus is on the couple with a sprinkling of intrigue for flavor. 

I'm greedy. I want all the action, the mystery, the shock, and I want the romance to be fully fleshed-out, organic, and an important part of the characters' emotional journeys. I've never been a fan of adhering strictly to genre specifications, which is why I end up writing all these huge honking doorstop books. It takes twice the pages to tell both kinds of stories in a complete way.

(I did stay on topic in College Town, however, which is very much a romance sprinkled at the edges with mafia vibes)

But I digress. Mercy's POV in Chapter Fourteen is all about plot movement. Going to see Fisher sets up the mystery of the past - who's trying to sabotage the Dogs - and also offers a glimpse at the unsavory side of the Dogs' business dealings. There are lots of MC books in which the MC aspect is mostly aesthetic with a little tough talk. I wanted to go all in and make them true 1%ers. Despite what Mercy told Ava last chapter, they do sell drugs, but through dealers like Fisher, and not directly with their own hands. It's all about the plausible deniability. 

As far as legit Dog businesses go, Ava's going to spend her OSS working at the Dartmoor-owned nursery, Green Hills.

Personal notes:

Don't you know everyone who works at that school hates Maggie Teague? 😂 She gives zero Fs. 

I forgot that Collier was sergeant-at-arms before Michael! Rereading this - properly rereading instead of just doing a specific reference search - is uncovering all of these little nuggets I've forgotten over time. Given Collier turned out to be something of a traitor, it makes sense that Ghost would nominate Michael as his replacement: better to have a cold, dispassionate strong right hand than get burned by a personal friend. 

If I'm not mistaken, next chapter things get spicy...

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Thirteen

Whoo, boy. This spring is a bit of a struggle session in so many ways. Last weekend, the Internet went out, so I haven't been able to post anything anywhere. The main cable up at the street fell, likely frayed in one of our many gnarly storms this month, and it took AT&T seven days to get to it. Everything moves at a glacial pace in the boonies. But it's finally back up and running as of last night, so I have lots to get caught up on. 

Which brings us to this week's very belated Fearless read-along post. Let's get to it. 

Chapter Thirteen is on the longer side, and it offers a seizure, a cheerleader with a busted nose, an accusation, a threat, and a moment of heartbreak for Ava. 

After the party at Hamilton House breaks up in Chapter Twelve, Ava - in a moment of heartsick defiance - agrees to leave and continue the evening with Carter...and his regrettable clique of friends. They wind up on the football field at the high school, passing around a joint and a bottle, and then Mason takes two unidentified designer tablets, and promptly seizes - but not before claiming he bought the drugs from Ava's dad. When he starts convulsing, his girlfriend, Ainsley, blames Ava, attacks her, and Ava clocks her in the nose. Because Ava emerges unscathed, and Ainsley's sporting two black eyes, Ava's labeled the aggressor by the school and she's the one who gets suspended. 

This whole half of the chapter is very much focused on the trials and tribulations of youth, of high school; of navigating those particular sorts of conflicts that far too often paint the wrong kid the victim. 

Later, we see the adult side of this conflict: Mason's father comes by the clubhouse to swear vengeance upon the Dogs. I enjoy playing the Stephens vs. the Teagues through two generations. Two families, both of which hold significant power in Knoxville, both of which go about things in an underhanded way, but I like to think I paint the Stephens as the villains in this battle. That's the intent, anyway. And at the end of the day, is there any real difference (besides the wardrobe) between outlaws and politicians? 

The clubhouse confrontation sets up the conflict to come down the road, once Stephens becomes mayor and is truly able to go after the Dogs. It also showcases the very real phenomenon that is one-percenter MCs' ability to launder their money with a deft hand and evade total takedown. 

The emotional meat and potatoes of the chapter is, of course, Mercy and Ava's conversation on the precinct steps. Neither of them say anything explicit, but it's very clear in this moment that Ava's feelings for Mercy are no longer platonic, and that Mercy is going to reject them, albeit gently. 

She was tucked against him and his body shielded her from view, from the light, from anything that would interfere. His large thumb brushed over the inside of her wrist, over her pounding pulse. Staring at their hands, he said in the softest, gentlest voice, “No, chéri. No, no, no. You’re just a little thing.”

               Her eyes were full of tears before she could find any meaning in his words. “Why is that a bad thing?” she whispered.

               “It isn’t.” He lifted her hand, placed it back in her own lap, and released her. “It’s a very bad thing.”

               She wanted to stand, to walk away, put her back to him, but instead she sat, her head bowed against his arm, as the awful evening crashed over her and she mourned the loss of him as the man in her life. Things couldn’t continue. He could never again be “her Mercy,” because her feelings for him could never go back to the innocent adoration of childhood. 

Mercy is so warm and open in later books, it's wild to see how guarded he is here. 

At this point, Ava has no idea how Mercy's struggling internally with his own feelings, and her inner monologue on the matter is devastated and bitter. 

#TeaserTuesday: Let's Get Started

“You ever dug a hole before?” she asked Gray as she tied her hair back and secured it with the elastic off her wrist.

“Yes.” He paused. “Have you?”

“Not this kind of hole, but I think all holes are pretty much standard.”

“This one needs to be deep. At least six feet.”

She popped her door. “Let’s get started, then.”

I'm very pleased to say that I managed to cut my way through the worst of the tangles in that difficult Beware of Dog scene earlier today, and the ball is rolling once more. But I'm not sharing a BoD teaser this Tuesday. Instead, I'm going back to a previous book.

All this read-along discussion of Ava's beginnings has me thinking more and more about the final-form adult Ava we see in Lord Have Mercy. In the decade that I've written her, the transformation has been a slow, organic process, but looking at book one alongside book ten makes it look stark. 

There's so many scenes I loved in LHM; scenes that felt necessary, well-earned, and a long time coming. This was one of them. I'll add most of it under a cut so it doesn't clog up the main page, and to hide major spoilers. 

If you still haven't ventured back to the swamp with the whole gang in Lord Have Mercy, consider this your gentle reminder that there's more than four-hundred-thousand words of craziness out there for your reading pleasure. What are you waiting for? 

She wouldn’t call the digging therapeutic, because nothing could have been that, at the moment, but it was…good. A positive way to burn calories. It felt like doing something, and something far more useful than vacuuming.

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twelve

The scene in Beware of Dog I'm currently working on is seriously kicking my butt, and taking a little hiatus didn't really help! Fun! So! Here we go with Chapter Twelve. 

This chapter highlights the fact that, though Ava and Mercy are both a part of the Lean Dog sphere, their daily lives and daily challenges couldn't be more different. We see Ava set off for a party at the local abandoned haunted hangout, Hamilton House. And we see Mercy absolutely lose his cool and threaten Jasmine back at the clubhouse. 

Mercy:

“Understand this, too: I’d be perfectly within my rights to crush your windpipe right now. My boys out there, they’d help me chuck you in the river and not say a damn thing about it. You do not ever, ever, question a member like you just did. You do not ever suggest what you just did about Ava Teague.” He flexed his fingers the tiniest amount. “Got it?”

I wrote this scene knowing full well that it was going to make Mercy look bad. I knew there would likely be readers who had a big problem with what happens, but was willing to take any potential heat for it for two reasons. One: it's one of those reminders that this is an outlaw club. They're not bike enthusiasts looking to make the world a better place (though all of them do develop a slightly more philanthropic side in later books as the Abacus plotline unfolds). They care about their women, but women outside the club do not get the full-scale MC protection and respect treatment, as we see in Price of Angels with Holly. And two: since the beginning I wanted to draw a distinct line between Mercy's intense love of his chosen family, and those he sees as a threat to it. Unfortunately for Jazz, here, she's also serving as a foreshadowing breadcrumb for Mercy's mother, Dee. Mercy has a very complicated relationship with women in general, and you throw in that immaturity/arrested development of his, and things can go sideways. He's a much-loved, and I think truly loveable character...but I never backpedal on his psycho front. 

Ava:

“I heard you,” Ava said as she righted herself, her hands curling into fists. “But I don’t think whatever just fell out of your mouth counts as English.”

Rereading this chapter, I was reminded of a reader email I received years ago. It wasn't disrespectful or rude, but the reader requested that I write older, more mature heroines, because she found she couldn't identify with young women Ava's age. I have two thoughts about this.

1) I can for sure see someone aging and maturing past the point of wanting to read about teen and young adult drama. I certainly have no desire to read a Babysitter's Club book these days. But my perspective is that it's much easier for an older reader to look back on their own younger years and find sympathy and empathy for a younger character - we've all been teenagers with teenage problems - than it is for a younger reader to understand the mindset of an older character. I mean, I've had the personality of a middle-aged man my whole life, but that's not true of most people, I don't think. I also think that, within the context of a novel written for adults, POVs from younger characters can help to create a fully realized world and set up future stories for years to come. Arya Stark is eight at the start of A Game of Thrones, and I don't think anyone could say they didn't understand and empathize with her as a character just because she was a child. I will forever maintain that no mature, together, self-possessed forty-something woman with a career could have EVER had anything like a relationship with Mercy. Meet-cutes, dates, mature conversations...nope. Not for Mercy. Ava had to be young, which means that Ava's having to deal with young people challenges. 

2) I think anyone who attended high school can understand what it's like to not be a part of the "in" crowd. Unless you were in the "in" crowd, in which case you think high school was, like, totally awesome. Ava's rivalry with Mason and co. is obviously exaggerated, and it needs to be given Ava's family and background. The enemy has to feel nasty enough to counterbalance her own nastiness. I never had a target on my back in the way that Ava did, but I wasn't pretty, wasn't cool, and I got picked on. I tried to keep my head down and I had a small, tightknit group of friends who helped make it all bearable, but I feel like Ava's school struggles have a certain universal quality to them. My high school really did have a "best body" senior superlative in the yearbook. Yuck. 

To get a little meta about it: Ava's trouble at school in the novel serves as a microcosm of the trouble the MC deals with in the wider world. Like her dad, and Mercy, and even Maggie, Ava eventually decides that since she's never going to be accepted, she's at least going to make sure she's feared. But at seventeen, there's a part of her that still wants to belong - hence going to the party in the first place - because she's not yet certain if she can truly belong in the MC world the way she wants to. 

#TeaserTuesday: Daddy Issues

 

Literally any excuse to make these two bicker, and I'll take it. Despite all the lies he tells himself, Walsh and Fox BOTH love Devin the most, and have been the most hurt by him, they just handle that hurt in different ways. 

 ***

Fox squeezed a lime wedge into his G&T and then dropped the whole thing into the drink with a little splash, so the liquid brimmed right at the edge. He ducked forward to suck the first half-inch off the top, then picked up his glass and eased back on his wicker bench. It irked Walsh to no end that the bastard could make any seat, no matter how sedate, look like the coolest possible place to sit.

“The thing is,” he said, lifting a forefinger off his glass to aim at Walsh, “not a one of us has a leg to stand on when it comes to telling her what to do with her love life.”

Walsh regarded his can of sparkling water with extreme regret. He’d spotted an unopened bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer earlier, and it was taking a not-small amount of willpower not to go and fetch it. He sipped his La Croix, grimaced, and said, “Do you think I don’t know that?” He didn’t want to have this conversation with Fox, but Fox was the only one he could have it with, so, here he sat on the back deck of the Albany house, watching Cass play beer pong with her fiancé.

Christ.

“It makes sense, if you think about it,” Fox continued, unbothered. “All of us have daddy issues—”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh no. You hate him worse than anyone. You have the most daddy issues.”

“Shut up. I’m leaving,” Walsh said, but didn’t move.

“Dad and I get along famously.”

“That’s because you have no soul.” And also, Walsh knew, because Fox was the one who actually loved the bastard. Loved him the most, anyway: Tenny was pretty damn attached at this point, and Cass, too, to a lesser extent. But like Raven, Walsh had watched her pull back over the years; had seen her carefully snip through some of those threads. All the little-girl love she’d once felt for Devin had been transformed and was now directed at Shepherd.

Speaking of…the beer pong game came to an end, and Shep reeled Cass in by both hands to kiss her like nobody was watching.

“Ooh,” Fox said, flatly. “We might have to kill him.”

“Yeah,” Walsh agreed.

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Eleven

 

               Carter Michaels had everything going for him.

               Except he wasn’t Mercy, and Ava didn’t know how else to measure a man

.

Carter! Really, Carter is the very first Lean Dog I ever wrote, because he began as one of four original characters, along with Ava, Mags, and Leah, that I used in my old fanfiction writing days. When I migrated to original fiction, I brought all of them with me. I don't usually have an actor in mind for my characters - they're normally imaginary constructs - but the exceptions are Ghost, Walsh, Fox, and Carter. Since he was "conceived" in 2008, Carter has always looked like a young Paul Walker in my mind, RIP. 

Chapter Eleven is the first time we meet Carter, when he's still just a high school quarterback caught between his craptastic friends and a personal desire to do the right thing. It's also the start of "Part Two" of Fearless in installment form. It begins an entire quarter of the book that's dedicated to what happened five years ago. 

By the time she's a senior in high school, Ava is completely in love with Mercy. She even thinks to herself that it goes far beyond a crush. She's obsessive, she's devoted, and she's heartbroken by the "knowledge" - I put that in quotes because she thinks it's fact, but we'll soon find out that it isn't - that he doesn't return her romantic feelings. 

It's always felt like a very natural progression to me. She already loved him, growing up in the shade of his protective shadow, always able to depend on him. He's a safe place for her, and a true friend in a way that her father and brother weren't. Her relationship with Mercy is the closest relationship she has with any man. And then, after puberty, as she matures, she starts to have romantic feelings, both emotional and physical, for him. We only get her POV in this chapter, and Ava sees Mercy's hasty retreat at the picnic table as a rejection of her innocent flirting.

We know that he's having an internal panic attack and hoping a little distance, and a distraction (Jasmine) will keep him from doing something stupid. 

I of course had to use Wuthering Heights, because Mercy and Ava are modeled on Heathcliff and Catherine. 

“That’s…a lot of drama for one guy.”

               “Heathcliff’s a dramatic dude,” Ava agreed. 

#TeaserTuesday: Best Friend

 

87k words and going strong! I know how it all works out, so now it's just pushing through to the end. 

Outright rejection would be crushing.

But he didn’t reject her.

His throat jerked in a painful-looking way when he swallowed. Cass could hear the bone-dry click of it across the table. His eyes went very big, and very dark, and Cass realized, with a thrill, that this was the opposite of a dismissal. “Cassie,” he rasped. “Don’t—don’t ask me for that.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “Why not?”

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Ten

 

               “C’mere.” He patted the bench beside him. “Come sit with me a sec.”

               That was so dangerous. And if he was nothing to her but a former lover, she could have resisted his magnetic pull.

               But Mercy had been her surrogate uncle, watcher, keeper, friend, brother…he’d been this tangle of people in her life. This man had meant so much to her. He’d snatched himself out of her life, but he’d been such a part of it…she was powerless to resist. 

Chapter Ten is a bit of a milestone because it marks the end of "Part One," back when Fearless was first released in installments. It's also the last present-day chapter for a while. The flashbacks so far have been delivered in bite-sized chunks, but going forward we're going to have a big look at what happened five years ago, all laid out at once. I know there are some who would disagree, but I maintain that this is still the best way to tell the story. The first ten chapters present the current tension, so you know what's at stake going forward; then we can go back and examine what happened to while we're already invested in the main story. 

If this was commercial fiction, and aimed at a trad-pub audience, the scene where Ava meets with her advisor could be cut. From my end, it was a chance to drop some Byronic breadcrumbs about Ava and Mercy, and to show that little bit of steel backbone that makes Littlejohn a good security tail, and not just a cardboard standee in a cut. 

The meat-and-potatoes of the chapter is, of course, Ava's run-in with Mercy at the clubhouse. I've been writing him as the doting husband and father for so long now that it's wild to look back at ten years ago, and see what an ass he was at the start of Fearless. 

“What the hell are you dressed up for?”

               She didn’t owe him an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything. But she propped a hand on her hip and said, “I had a meeting with my advisor at school. I start class next week.”

               “School. Jesus, haven’t you had enough of that?”

               “I don’t know. Haven’t you had enough of this conversation yet?”

               His grin widened. “You used to be so sweet. You used to dress better, too.”

I've talked often and at length about how there's a few disconnected wires in the parts of Mercy's brain that control his maturity. He's not wild and rebellious and impulsive like Aidan; he's logical, and methodical, and he thinks ahead. Ava mentions his rationality here, and he is, in general, a very rational person, even when he's "extracting." That's the thing about Mercy: he's not going "red zone" with his violence. It's a very logical process start to finish. 

Except when it comes to Ava. He simply cannot be logical or rational or mature about her. That's where we see his immaturity. His arrested development. It would be easier for both of them if he refused to acknowledge her presence, but he can't do that. Just as he fills multiple masculine roles for Ava, he fills ALL of the feminine roles in Mercy's mind and heart. He loved his grandmother, but she didn't fill that maternal role he subconsciously craved. He didn't think he'd recover after he lost his family, but Ava became everything to him. 

Is it twisted? Oh yes! That's what makes it so fun to write. 

There was this place at his side that would always be hers; they both knew it; neither of them needed to say it. 

I think, at first, that it was mostly willful blindness on Ghost and Aidan's parts, assuming Mercy just saw her as young, and hot, and available. It took them a while to catch up to the truth that she's everything to him. And when Ghost did figure it out, he used it against them.