#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. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Nine

 

“You gonna get your own place? Or have I got to put you up from now on?”

               “Ghost,” Maggie said. “Don’t.”

               “He’s going to get an apartment, Dad,” Ava said in an exhausted voice.

               “Is that true?” Ghost asked Ronnie.

               “Don’t torture the boy,” Maggie said, turning her back on the situation and going to the fridge for a fresh cantaloupe.

               She could no longer see Ronnie’s bulging eyes and quivering lips, but could envision them as she heard the tremors in his voice.

               “I – I’ve got two places to go look at today. Believe me, sir, I don’t mean at all to overstay my welcome.”

               In a mock-affronted voice, Ghost said, “ ‘Believe’ you? Is there something wrong with my couch?”

               “No, sir. I just meant that – that I didn’t want to…to infringe. I mean…I don’t want to bother you–”

               “You think I don’t know what ‘infringe’ means?”

Breakfast with the Teagues. 

As glad as I am that Ghost grew and learned and softened (fractionally) over the course of the series, I take undue delight in early series, uncomplicated, unabashed asshole Ghost. The way he calmly terrorizes Ronnie in every scene they share will never get old for me.

We get a little Ava and a little Mercy POV in this chapter, but Maggie narrates through the majority of it, both 14 years ago, and in the present day. I love that Maggie suggests she's not as "smart" as the rest of her family, when she's truly the cleverest and most perceptive of all four of them. 

This is the first time we see Maggie suspect future, for lack of a better word, "trouble" with Mercy and Ava. Obviously, nothing untoward has happened yet, and she doesn't see it happening soon, but she's got both a sixth sense, and personal experience in a taboo situation. 

        It was a cute picture, and Maggie smiled a moment, lingering in the shadowed foyer. But she’d been jailbait. She’d been a mom at seventeen. She knew what it was to have a heart that sang a siren’s song to deeper waters, and older men. She knew what it was like to get tangled up in the confusing feelings of age difference. 

I suppose you could ask: if Maggie saw it coming this far away, why didn't she ever warn Ava against it? For me, there are two reasons. One: telling a young person not to do something usually sends them running right toward it. Two: as time goes by, and she watches their relationship blossom, she doesn't disapprove. She can see the way Mercy loves her, and knows he'll be good to her, even as she acknowledges the external challenges they'll face. And I like to think that, in a subconscious sense, she wants Ava to be an old lady like her, so they can have that in common and keep their family close-knit and on the Dog side of the law. 

Reading through this time, I was struck by Ava's unfriendly attitude with Littlejohn, but I wrote it that way for a reason. 

The Maggie we see here, and even 14 years ago, is an old lady. Her status within the club is unquestioned (especially once we learn part of why that is in American Hellhound). She's secure, but can be firm when necessary. Also, she's totally mastered the Southern art of excoriating someone with sweet words and a smile on her face. Bless your heart. 

But Ava's still living in the shadow of scandal. Plus, she's been away from home for five years. She's self-conscious about her standing with the club now, so she's going to make extra sure that these new prospects know she's the new president's daughter, and that, when it comes to them, she's the boss. 

Favorite lines? Scenes? Let me know! 

Update 4/26

 

I posted this yesterday on FB, so I'm sharing it here, too. All is well! But I'm, as usual lately, running behind on all things book. Thankfully, I'm watching AB graze with her girls in the pasture as I work on getting caught up. 

...

Hey, guys!

Shortly after I posted the 9/14 read-along post, I found my senior mare sick in the pasture, and it was a stressful couple of weeks seeing if she would, as my vet put it, "Get through this." The vet and the farrier came, and she was put on NSAIDs and her diet modified. She improved, and then had a little setback over the weekend.

She's doing better, though! Today was the first day she seemed like herself, hungry and pushy and ready to go out first thing this morning. I'm so relieved! But, given her age, I know that anything could happen going forward. I've always thought she was 24 thanks to what I was told when I purchased her, but my vet thinks she's actually more like 30. Yikes! No wonder she's been struggling with her health the past year.

In any event, I missed ANOTHER read-along post this past Monday. Ugh. My goal is to post it tomorrow, and then get us back on track this coming Monday.

I'll also be shipping giveaway and signed books one day this next week. If you ordered a signed book, BOLO for your invoice this weekend. Sorry for the delay!

Apologies for going MIA again, and thanks for your patience

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Eight

 

“She’s a smart girl.”

               “Yes she is.” She felt her smile stretch and let it go, allowing it to spread at will. “She was raised by a smart girl.”

               “Oh.” Ronnie’s expression tightened with panic. The pulse in his throat looked ready to punch through the skin. “I didn’t mean–”

               “I know what you mean.” She waved for him to calm down. “She and I aren’t the same kind of smart. I get that. She’s my little book-smart brainchild.” Maggie had been drinking Jack Daniels since she was sixteen, and she’d developed a taste for its subtle, sweeter undertones. It was almost like honey down her throat as she took another swallow and twisted her smile to something sinister. “Now let me tell you what I mean. When I said you were a salesman, that wasn’t a compliment, sweetie.”

               He paled under his golden tan.

               “I know your kind. Boys with good backgrounds, boys with money – you see something you want, and you take it for yourself. You saw my daughter, and maybe I should give you some credit. Maybe you saw that she was beautiful, and brilliant, and talented, and quirky in a cute sort of way. Maybe you adore her for that. Or maybe you saw a hot piece of ass and figured, what the hell, she’s from a biker family, she must be easy to nail.”

               “Mrs. Teague, I swear–”

               “But let me make something perfectly clear to you, Ronald.” She heard the knife-edge in her voice, the one that made Ghost say, “That’s my girl,” and sent prospects and hangarounds running for cover. “If you’re just out for a lay, if you don’t adore my daughter, then you made a big mistake crossing my threshold.”

This chapter was fun to re-read given what I'm currently writing in Beware of Dog; I do love a good family-threatens-significant-other scene. In fiction, I want to stress. 

Not much happens as far as plot movement goes in this chapter. We learn of Andre's death, and, at the end of the chapter, we learn that the powers that be in Knoxville are going to villainize the Dogs. We get to "see" Ava's gator tattoo, but don't learn what it means yet. Ghost proves that he's experienced quite a bit of character growth over the course of the series. He'll always be my favorite asshole, but it's stark to go back and see him in Fearless after writing him for ten years and winding up in Lord Have Mercy. He does lighten up a little over time. 

The star of the chapter is, unquestionably, Maggie. There's a line that I love which explains everything about Maggie and Ava's relationship:

She’d never been a mother for lectures. Grammie Lowe said it was because she’d been a teenage mother with no idea what she was doing. Ava thought it was because Maggie had known from the start that the two of them would need to be friends and allies, women in this sea of outlaw men.

 

There's hundreds of literary fiction novels about families with deep, unfixable, foundational cracks; cycles of abuse, and resentment. I do love to write history repeating itself, because that's just life, and Ghost Teague is the biggest hypocrite in this whole series, but I made the choice early on that I wanted this to be a family that loved each other. It's not a story about a family in crisis; it's more like the world's in crisis, and this is how this particular family goes about carving out space in that world, not caring how it looks from the outside. Maggie is tough as nails, but she always knew she needed another woman on her side; she raised her daughter to be that woman. 

Overall, Chapter Eight is another "layering" chapter: layering in history, and relationship nuances, and characterization, and groundwork for what's to come. 

Cover Reveal: Beware of Dog

 

“No one puts a sign in their yard proclaiming ‘Beware of Artist.’ When you’re out there in the city with Shep at your back, I don’t ever worry. I know he’d rip the throat out of anyone who raised a hand to you.”

I've been making great strides with book six of the Lean Dogs Legacy series, so it's headed your way soon!

Fearless Ch. 7: Sowing Seeds

 

A sharp observation on our Chapter Seven discussion over on Facebook mentioned Mercy and Michael's interaction, which doesn't become relevant until later. Good catch! And it inspired me to blog about seed sowing with regard to overarching storylines. 

When writing a standalone, especially a plot-driven thriller, it's important not to let the storyline's momentum get bogged down in side stories. But with Dartmoor, I knew I was setting up a saga, and I wanted it to read like a TV show, with layers of tension. If tension is the heart of any story - and it is - then layering your tension provides an automatic setup for future stories. You have your main conflict, and its high tension, that rolling boil, but then there are other, less-urgent tensions simmering away. 

I knew from the first that, though these guys are a family, and they have each other's backs at the end of the day, they aren't all the same. They all have different personalities, and different individual goals, and the series works best, I think, when you have the conflict with the villain, and then conflict amongst the club members. In this case, Mercy and Michael have a LOT in common, but Mercy struggles when faced with someone too similar to him: it's a case of being blind to one's own faults, and also a case of handling their traumatic pasts in very different ways. Michael is, obviously, on the spectrum, and struggles with social cues and norms; Mercy, by contrast, has mastered the art of playing happy-go-lucky and well-adjusted. Michael performs violent tasks because he's asked to; Mercy actually likes it, deep down. 

While writing Fearless, I already knew that Michael and Holly's story would be next, so I spent some time sowing the seeds of tension and conflict between Michael and the rest of the club so that we can slide seamlessly into Price of Angels without info-dumping at the start of the book. 

Thanks, y'all, for participating in the read-along! I'm enjoying the chance to talk process. 

#TeaserTuesday: BoD

Beware of Dog most definitely brings the Fearless vibes. In fact, in the early stages, before I'd even started writing Lord Have Mercy, I decided I wanted it to be a new, and unique spin on the original. There's an age gap. There's a bodyguard/charge dynamic. It's friends to lovers, and soulmates, and presents the sort of relationship that looks odd from the outside, but which makes total sense to the two participants. 

There are plenty of differences, though, to make this its own, standalone story. Shep and Cass's age different is actually larger than Mercy and Ava's, but Shep didn't meet her when she was eight and he certainly doesn't have any sense of having helped "raise" her, like Mercy did with Ava. Mercy and Ava work so well because Ava was mature for her age, and Mercy had a certain level of immaturity thanks to his situation. Shep's immature in a different way; he's an asshole, to be honest, but as the book unfolds, it starts to become clear that he is very badly starved of love, and that his sibling-like banter and no-boundaries friendship with Cass is the only way he can accept that love. 

Like Ava, Cass is struggling with living in two worlds. One of the key differences here, and which is something Shep expresses to her, is that Shep isn't, in his own words, a martyr. He's not going to walk away just because he thinks she'd be better off without him. 

This has turned into a very fun project. Easily my favorite Dartmoor romance. I can't wait to share it soon! 

Lost in her own spiral, she didn’t notice at first that Shep was studying the page with great concentration, squinting a little in a way that pressed lines at the outer corners of her eyes. He needed to start using reading glasses, she thought.

“This is really good,” he said, after a beat. Straightened the board with a careful touch at the very corner. “Like…really good.”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling awkward.

“It looks realistic, you know? Not like that normal comic book shit.”

“Aaaand, you ruined it.” She sighed, and returned to the edge of the bed. “Why are you here, Shep? I’m not supposed to have boys in my dorm.”

“You don’t,” he said, easily, and dragged out the desk chair to sit facing her, closer than he would have been than if he’d sat on Jamie’s bed. He kicked out his leg and thumped the toe of his boot into hers. Grinned. “You have a man in your dorm.”

Fearless Read-Along 2025: Chapter Seven

Remember the movie Galaxy Quest? Sam Rockwell's character was named "Guy," and the running joke was that he was the character who got killed off early and never had a real name. Well, in the Dartmoor universe, Andre is Guy. 

*Recalls an early review in which the reader wondered "why am I supposed to care about this Andre guy?" You're not. He's a catalyst. A simple tool for launching the club into action. Sometimes we writers like to use those to our advantage. 

Plot-wise, Chapter Seven kicks off the Club Drama of it all when a member of the rival Carpathians MC sneaks onto the property and knifes a hapless Andre during Ghost's inaugural party. Without an exterior threat, Mercy and Ava would doubtless eventually have found their way back together, but it would have been a slower and more frustrating dance. We have a split-second here, when Aidan's hustling Ava away from the scene, when she catches Mercy's eye and still thinks it's "rage" she's seeing him direct her way. Poor thing has no idea. 

The emotional meat and potatoes of the chapter takes place before Andre's demise. Fresh from her encounter with Mercy, Ava and Ronnie take a walk across the grounds, and while he's trying to reassure her that it's normal to feel as if she doesn't belong back home after her experiences at college, she's instead thinking the exact opposite. 

This exchange is one of those "heart of the issue" moments that show us who Ava is deep down:

           

   Ronnie said, “It’s not as great as you thought it’d be, is it?”

               Her stomach clenched in a painful way. She folded her arms across her middle. “What isn’t?”

               “Being back here.” His tone was gentle, knowing. Like he felt sorry for her.

               She chewed at the inside of her cheek, hating the sudden tears that burned her eyes.

               “That’s normal,” he continued. “It’s true what they say, you know. That you can’t go home. You’re not the same person you were when you lived here, Ava. It’s normal to be underwhelmed with what you left behind.”

               Red misted her vision. Before she could catch herself, remind herself that she was a soon-to-be grad student and not a biker chick anymore, she said, “That’s the dumbest phrase in the English language. ‘You can’t go home.’ ”

               Ronnie said. “Um, what it means–”

               “I know what it means!” she snapped. “It means every educated person is supposed to put their hands on a Pat Conroy novel and sob about how awful their childhood was and how much their parents warped them, and how far beyond that they’ve grown. Right?” She turned blazing eyes to him. She might have snarled. “Well I am not warped, Ronnie. I’m not basking in Prince of Tides hometown shame right now. You got that?”

It's also me airing my grievances with the late, great Pat Conroy, who was a Southern literary giant and very talented wordsmith...who also had some glaringly ugly ideas about women, and family origins, and who seemed, in every book, wholly unable to let go of his own self-importance. It's entirely possible to have a professional admiration for someone and find their worldview troubling, and such is the case here. 

Several years ago, I had a reader email me to make sure I knew Conroy didn't coin the phrase "you can't go home." Yes, I assured, I do know that. I reference The Prince of Tides intentionally because it's the sort of novel I think casual readers would assume Fearless is going to be, but which it definitely isn't. (I recommend the hell out of that book, by the way, it's one of the most interesting and disturbing I've ever read.) I feel Conroy was prone to sweeping generalizations - I think all authors are, to some degree. And Ava's outburst here is a signal to readers that she's going to generalize in a very un-Conroy direction going forward. His protagonists always tried to straddle two worlds, envying and hating their societal betters in equal measure, until they eventually joined the ranks of those betters. 

Not our girl. Not in this story. She's perfectly happy to lie down with those dogs and catch fleas. 

4/4 Updates

 

Happy April! I took a little social media break to deal with some appointments, and health stuff, and to just decompress a little. There's nothing new to report with regard to all things books, but here's a little update post ICYMI:

I'm still offering signed books. Printing/shipping of author copies is extremely slow, so I won't bill anyone until I have them in my possession. You can refer to this post for order details. 

The Fearless hardback giveaway runs through the tenth, and I finally DO have those copies in stock! Check this post for entry details. 

Writing wise, I'm still working on Lean Dogs Legacy 6, Drake Chronicles 6, my standalone thriller Don't Let Go, and...I think that's it? 

I'll pick back up with the Fearless Read-Along on Monday with Chapter Seven. I can't promise I won't miss weeks here and there, but I won't ever skip chapters. So BOLO for that. 

That's all I can think of for now. Let me know if you have any questions. I will say that Beware of Dog is shaping up to be my favorite Dartmoor-related project ever, so I can't wait to share it.