Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Six

“Mercy.” Her voice was breathless now. “What’s the matter?”

               His cut was hanging off the doorknob, on the inside of the front door, and he plucked it up, shrugged into it. When he faced her, he did so decorated with all his patches, the stains and scars in the old leather. And his face hardened. The worship, the sweetness, the tenderness – all replaced by a professional steel. This was Mercy the extractor. Mercy the club man, the Lean Dog. Not her companion and protector, her lover and friend.

               Ava felt her heart become a drum inside her chest, beating out a dire rhythm. Danger. Danger.

               “I’m going back to New Orleans,” he said. “I’m moving back there.”

               Her brain refused to compute that. “You hate New Orleans.”

               “I’m heading out first thing in the morning.”

               “But…you hate New Orleans.”

               “Bob down there says he has work for me.”

               “You love Knoxville,” she insisted. “You have work here.”

               Mercy gave her one long, flat look. “I’m leaving, Ava.”

               It hit her then. She surged to her feet. Her voice trembled. “You’re leaving me, you mean, right?” 

This chapter is short, but anything but sweet. The heartbreak's been brewing since that first afternoon in Ava's bedroom, when Mercy gave in to temptation, and it's even more painful when it finally arrives thanks to what happened at Hamilton House. 

This is why I love multi-POV storytelling. Thanks to spending time in Mercy's head, we know how much this is killing him. We grieve not only for Ava, but for him as well. Perhaps worst of all, neither of them has had the chance to share their grief over the miscarriage with one another. 

I don't ever hate any of my own characters, but I come pretty close with Ghost in this instance. However...I wonder how many parents of girls Ava's age would have done something similar, hypocrisy be damned. It's a bad situation all the way around, and I think that's what makes it feel authentic. All that thorny, lose-lose energy results in honest reactions from characters, as opposed to "correct" reactions. 

Dartmoor At A Glance

If you're new here, welcome! There's lots to explore here on the blog. If you're after info, insides, and bonus content, you can find it all under the "Dartmoor" tag. 

Here's a quick visual rundown to get you started.

As mentioned in the slide, the series is complete, and ready to be binged all at once! It's available for paperback, Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and can be ordered through your local indie bookstore if you prefer. 

Thanks for being here, and happy reading! 

Fearless Special Edition Alert!

 

Over the past few months, I've had the very exciting opportunity to work with Beyond the Pages Book Box on a special, limited edition of Fearless, and it's finally time to share it with y'all! 

Fearless is part of The Buddy Box, along with Good Gone Bad by Giana Darling. These are gorgeous hardcover special editions with limited run covers, endpapers, and dust jackets. Charli is offering several ordering options, so you can buy the books individually, or as a complete box, along with custom swag. Proceeds go to a charity hand-picked by Charli, and this one sounds like a wonderful organization. 

The front and back Fearless covers above are for the hardcover book, and I'll drop a look at the reversible dust jacket and chapter heading pages below.

This is the full, uncut version of Fearless available on Amazon, all four parts put together, unabridged, plus stunning, one-of-a-kind artwork! It's going to be gorgeous!

I've never had a book in a box before, so I am pumped! And Charli has been wonderful to collaborate with throughout. 

Here's her price breakdown and instructions for ordering:

 All the details for the Buddy Box! 

Available to purchase separately (book only) or as a full box with both books + matching swag items!

 Optional Extra: Choose hand-sprayed edges (limited to just 30 full boxes) for an additional cost — each set hand-sprayed by my husband!

 Prices (AUD):

 Good Gone Bad – Book Only $95 + shipping (≈ $82 USD total)

 Fearless – Book Only $100 + shipping (≈ $88 USD total)

 Buddy Box with BOTH – $185 + shipping (≈ $150 USD total)

Final checkout will be in AUD! But there is a currency converter on the website to give an approximate conversion to your local currency. 

 Available Sunday 19th October, 8:30am AEST

(Sat 18th: 3:30pm PT | 6:30pm EST | 11:30pm GMT)

 Proceeds will go to the Red Rose Foundation, supporting victims of domestic violence. Let’s help #ChangeTheEnding.

 

Head over to Beyond the Pages to pre-order your copy. It's a limited run, so you'll have to jump on it. And good news for my Australia folks: the books ship from Australia, so you'll get the domestic shipping price. 

Be sure to follow Beyond the Pages on Facebook and Instagram for updates! 

White Wolf Read-Along: Chapter Five

 

"Perhaps your story is as full of twists and turns as my own. Perhaps not. Either way, I think both of us have many secrets." 

We're finally on the way to Siberia! There's something delightful about the Trans-Siberian Railway. Iconic before Agatha Christie, there's a certain mystic quality to it, a magic that makes it more interesting than your average train. It's also spooky, too: all that empty distance, all that snow, so far from civilization. 

Logistically speaking, the boys are taking the main line to Tayga, where they'll switch to a smaller train and go into Tomsk directly. In the way of all long journeys, it's a trip filled with lots of monotony; I didn't want to linger overlong on the drudgery of travel, and chose instead to offer a few important character-building moments. 

First: Nikita and Philippe. 

Obviously, Nik's distrustful of the dear monsieur, in part, because he's distrustful of everyone. We haven't yet learned all the ins and outs of Nik's past or politics, but we know his part of a small, tightknit group of men, and he has no love or respect for his commanders. But also because, in the midst of a war that decimated the fighting population of Moscow, and in a country living beneath the boot of a communist government, it's rare to run into anyone as cheerful as Philippe. 

Nik's also suspicious of the fact that he's French. Under Romanov rule (multiple generations of it), St. Petersburg became steadily more Westernized. French fashion, cuisine, entertainment, architecture, and general culture were popularized by the nobles of the city. There was also a heavy British influence, given both Nicholas and Alexandra were Queen Victoria's grandchildren. After the Revolution, French influence was ripped out (save, of course, all that fabulous French wine that the Bolshevik leaders continued to enjoy at their leisure); the double-headed eagle that symbolized the bridging of Byzantine and Muscovite culture was replaced by the red star. Nik, of course, knows all of this, and so he's startled to see Stalin assign a Frenchman to his task force. 

"It's a tank?"

"No, no." Philippe laughed. "Dear boy, it's much more subtle than that." He stroked his beard and leaned back in his seat, considering. "Think - ah, yes - think of a tank as a blunt instrument. A club. By comparison, my weapon is a scalpel. Surgical, precise. It can go where a tank cannot, and do the things a gun never could. It requires a special sort of man to wield." 

Key word here being "wield." 

We also met the rest of the crew: Pyotr - whom we learn is the deceased Dmitri's younger brother - Ivan, and Feliks. But the most important member after Nik is Kolya. 

One of Nik's little tics is that he has chronic low blood sugar, and he doesn't like to eat when he's worried about something, which is always. In his exchange with Kolya, we learn about this bad habit of his, and quickly understand the easy intimacy of two people who've lived and fought together for a long time. Nik might be serious, but he's also a martyr; he's anguished. Kolya isn't simply serious, but he's settled. Some of this comes from not being a leader; he only has to follow, not to make the big decisions. But that's also just him. He's cool, and strapped-down, and readily steps into Dima's shoes to ensure their leader gets a little bread and vodka so he doesn't pass out in the street anymore. He's one of my favorite secondary characters in the series, and that's why...well. I won't spoil it if you haven't read the whole series yet. 😉

The chapter ends on a bleak and foreboding note. A little (admittedly) heavy-handed metaphor on my part. It's difficult for me to stick to the chapter at hand when I talk about this book, and this series; I keep wanting to jump ahead! 

For now, though, we'll leave it here, on a train in the dark, bound toward someone special. 

Next time, we'll meet Sasha again. Properly, this time. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Five

         

 

Collier and James stood just outside the chapel doors. Collier gave him a halfhearted half-smile. James clapped him on the shoulder, but said nothing. He’d relented, then; whatever Ghost had wanted in this case, James had approved it. Already, Ghost was casting his shadow over the president’s chair, eclipsing his predecessor with brute force.

               Inside, the chapel was dark as evening, the lamplight finding places to hide in the deep corners, the folds of the velvet-seated chairs. Ghost stood with his back to the doors, behind Troy’s favorite chair, a lit cigarette smoldering in one hand.

               “Take a seat,” he said, his voice emotionless. 

 

Here we are, when the sword falls. Mercy's day of judgement has arrived. 

His chapel conversation with Ghost is one of those make-or-break scenes that I knew would be pivotal long before it came time to write it. I needed it to have a certain vibe: the immediacy and tension of the conflict between Ghost and Mercy as men, yes. But I also wanted to tap into that Knights of the Round Table, king-and-warrior mythos at the core of the civilian fascination with motorcycle clubs. They're organizations "out of time," and I wanted the ghosts (no pun intended) of the past to sit deep and dark in the corners of the room. 

   

           Ghost was a man out of time, some displaced warrior king deserving of better vestment than denim and leather, more dignified than the wallet chain at his hip, in need of an audience more tractable than his one-man punching bag. 

 

I think it's a scene that speaks for itself, without need of a play-by-play breakdown. Even ten years later, I'm very happy with it.

The rest of the chapter is Ava slowly cracking. Maggie absolutely knows that she's detached from reality as an emotional defense mechanism, and that a big crash is coming, and she's trying to gently guide her through the day to day. 

Ava's fast-tracking the early stages of grief - but in a distinctly blunt, Ava-like way. I wanted the audience, like Maggie, to sit back and watch her process and think "oh no, this isn't going to end well," but in Ava's POV, she's behaving in a rational, grownup way. (She's not, but that's the fun of unreliable narrators.)

I've always enjoying using nightmares to portray underlying anxiety or grief because I personally have lots of nightmares. I hate dreaming in general because I don't have good dreams. Not ever. I've been plagued by detailed nightmares ever since I was a little girl, everything from sharks, to aliens, to ghosts, to home invasions, and armed robberies. Nonsensical and Lovecraftian and deeply disturbing. I even have the full-blown sleep paralysis BS every few weeks. So I think they make for useful tools when it comes to pulling back the curtain on a character's subconscious. 

Leah blinked, and gave her that same odd look everyone had been giving her.

               “Oh, not you too,” Ava said. “Come on. Everyone’s acting like I’m some sort of freak show.”

               “Sorry. Totally not doing that.” Leah was the first person to let it drop and change the subject, but that look…Ava was so tired of that look.

               And still, nothing from Mercy. 

At this stage in the book, Ava is blaming herself. Hindsight tells her she should have been more suspicious of the texts from Carter and protected her baby better. What she needs right now more than anything is Mercy's comfort and reassurance. The simple balm of his presence. 

But, well, we know how that goes. 

White Wolf Read-Along: Chapter Four

His mother would have given her last heel of bread to see the inside of this place. Nikita had given the life of his closest friend - though not willingly.  

Shortly after I published White Wolf, a concerned reader reached out to let me know that Chekists were "the bad guys." I assured her that I knew that, and that, if she read the book, she wouldn't find me sympathizing with Soviet secret police. Chapter Four, "The Captain," is a short one, and so this gives me a chance to highlight some of the real history, and inspiration, that went into the novel. 

I don't want to bore anyone with an annotated history paper, so I'll try to keep things as breezy as possible. Here's what you need to know: post-revolution, Stalin formed a secret police whose main function was to ensure that Russians behaved like good little Soviets. They weren't out there walking beats, apprehending criminals; for the Bolsheviks - for any communist leadership - independent thought, action, and self-determination are the enemies of the collective. The Cheka spent their days pillaging the homes and secret stores of the Russian people. They pulled up floorboards, took squirrelled away grain, vodka, jewels, valuables...and if there were women in the house, they availed themselves of them, too. There were Chekists who enjoyed this - like Commander Beria, who I include in later chapters, and who was killed by his own men, eventually - but there were lots of young men who went along to get along. I can't believe I'm about to quote The Mummy here...but "better to be the right hand of the devil than in his path." Thanks, Benny. 

We don't learn anything about Nikita's political affiliation in this chapter, but we see his leashed anger, and grief, and we know he doesn't want to be doing what he is. If you're thinking, why did I make one of the series' main characters a Chekist? There are a couple reasons. 

I always wanted Alexei to be a central character. It would have made sense to start the Russian leg of the series pre-revolution. But Nik and Sasha needed WWII to happen, so they could exist. And I was inspired by two things. One: the real history of the USSR's search for supernatural artifacts. Everyone knows that Hitler had his boys experimenting with the paranormal. But I don't think it's common knowledge that, under Stalin's orders, the Soviets were quietly but seriously searching for a paranormal answer of their own. Keep in mind that at the beginning of the war, Germany and the USSR were allies. Communism and fascism are nothing but separate branches on the same Marxist tree. After their falling out, the Soviets decided to concoct their own supernatural answer to whatever the Germans cooked up.

Obviously, they didn't create a werewolf. Or did they? We'll never know. But that was a huge inspiration for me. 

The second bit of inspo was, somehow, nerdier. My divorce from the Marvel Cinematic Universe was finalized years ago. But in 2014,15, 16, I was obsessed. I loved the concept of the Winter Soldier so much that I went out and bought comics. 

These two panels actually gave me goosebumps. "We have our winters." 

I always find it irritatingly short-sighted when I see people on social media say that the Soviets were "good" because they fought Hitler. Soviet leadership was evil, but in WWII, the West was going to take whatever help it could get. And one thing history has taught us about Russia is that no one can conquer it over land via traditional, old-school methods. I'm looking at you, Napolean. There are some really cool stories about some badass Russians who took on the Germans, most especially the female sniper units, which inspired Katya's character, but it was Russia itself, the landscape, its winter, that bogged the Germans down in a permanent two-front war. You aren't just fighting men, you're fighting winter. You're fighting the land. 

We meet Nikita here, fresh off another failed mission to find a supernatural artifact. He's dressed as Chekists were back then, meant to intimidate: all black, long leather trench coat, gloves, hat. We'll learn later that he's a White, rather than a Red, and what that means for him personally. But in the meantime, we're with him when he first meets Monsieur Philippe, the first of many real-life historical figures to grace the pages of this book. The major general here is also a real-life dude. 

Timeline wise, this meeting takes place after the Red Army managed to hold off the Germans at Moscow. The Nazis never made it all the way into the capital, but the army took a major manpower hit. At this point, conscripts were brought in from Siberia to fill the ranks, so even if he wasn't turned, Sasha would have wound up a soldier anyway.

There's so many characters in this series, but I see Nik as the central character. Like I said last post, he's the glue that ties it all together, so I'm super excited to be digging into the flashback section of this book. Nik might be my absolute favorite of all my many characters, so it'll be fun to spend some time in his head. 

Also, far warning: I view myself as an entertainer, and I don't comment on politics or current events, because no one is here for that. I want to provide an escape for readers. But I'm not down with the Soviets, or communism in general, so...be prepared for that.