Ruminations: The Wild Charge

My "favorite scenes" Insta post yesterday put me right back in the thick of The Wild Charge. I've had immense difficulty concentrating while writing this week, so maybe a little walk down memory lane will help. 

If you haven't read The Wild Charge, turn back now, because I will be posting spoilers. You can grab it HERE if you're ready to dive into book nine of the Dartmoor Series. 

I decided I wanted to write Lord Have Mercy in 2020, but there was a chasm of uncharted territory that lay between it, and the last Dartmoor book I'd released, Prodigal Son. I already had the vision for Alex, and Boyle, and Remy's kidnapping planned out. I was immensely excited about showing Ava in her final form: the true version of her that's been allowed to grow and flourish alongside Mercy's open, unwavering support. 

But I knew I needed to lay a ton of groundwork, first. 

The funny thing is that when I started writing Lone Star, Tenny and Reese were not meant to wind up together. Tenny was still standing in the corner snapping his teeth like a feral bobcat, and I was still toying with the idea of pairing Reese with Cassandra - boy, am I glad I didn't go that route, because the outcome is so much better. Cass and Shep together are one of my favorite couples to write. 

Reese and Tenny's story is one in which I spotted the unfolding chemistry and ran with it, rather than force the characters to adhere to my initial plan. We see this happen all the time in popular media: the writers have a plan, but the on-page or on-screen chemistry leaps wildly in another direction. Then, when the characters are wrangled back into their original destinies, the relationships never feel as earned or as welcome as those accidental ones. My motto is: never waste good chemistry. Reese and Tenny were lightning in a bottle, and I realized that straight off - but I knew it would take time to get them to their happily ever after. 

It was hard, yesterday, choosing favorite scenes, because in truth, the whole third act of the book, from the moment Reese is taken onward, is my favorite part. Is it over the top? Hell yes, and I love every second of it, from Ian and his sword cane, to Fox popping Tenny's shoulder back into place, to Mercy's heaven-sent appearance with the sledgehammer. I especially love Devin taking on Marshal Hunter, and what happened afterward. 

Only when the echo of the last shot died away did he realize that he was screaming.

He sucked in a breath, his throat raw, and stared down at what had once been Hunter’s face. The floor seemed to tilt, and it was an effort to stay upright.

This high up, the wind was vicious. It swept in through the shattered window…and carried with it the sound of a strained voice. “Bit…dramatic…don’t you…think, Charlie?”

Fox blinked stupidly at the gaping hole in the glass a moment, then nearly tripped and fell in his haste to cross to it. He dropped down to his knees and looked over the edge to see Devin’s sweaty, effort-flushed face staring back up at him. He clung to a bit of concrete building ledge with his fingertips, legs dangling over a thirty-nine-story drop to the alley below.

“Jesus Christ.”

“He would…be quite useful…right now,” Devin huffed. “What with…the whole…gut wound…cliffhanger…situation.”

“Shut up, I hate you,” Fox said around the lump in his throat, and reached to take his hands.

Too late, he realized the right was useless; he couldn’t even force it to curl around Devin’s wrist, all of it managing to be numb and throbbing with pain at the same time. “Fuck.”

“Here,” a warm, Cajun-accented voice said. “I got him.”

Mercy knelt beside him, big and warm and solid; leaned over the edge and gripped both of Devin’s wrists in his massive hands. He hauled him up and over, back into the building, as if Devin was nothing more than a wayward kitten. He situated Devin so he laid back against his knees, and dug out a thick wad of gauze to press over the wound in his belly.

Fox was swamped with the overwhelming desire to sleep. To curl up right here on the floor and pass into oblivion.

But Devin breathed in rough scrapes, gaze rolling up toward Mercy’s face. “Look at that…hair,” he said on a chuckle that turned to a cough. “I’ll be damned. Jesus really did come…through.”

“Almost,” Mercy said, chuckling himself. He caught Fox’s gaze. “You ready to blow this taco stand, brother?”

Fox wiped his good hand down his face, eyes squeezing shut a moment until the stinging subsided, then nodded and gathered himself to stand. “Yes. Fuck yes.”

 

Reese and Tenny get the romantic spotlight in this book, but everything Lone Star onward is about the club as a whole. The series has never been a loosely connected string of standalone romance novels; it's always been an ongoing family saga. New members join, and they bring their baggage and their skills along for the ride. I've said before and I'll say again: a long-running series like this must up the ante. It can't remain static; I can't recycle the same conflict over and over, changing only the names and faces involved. The club would grow in size regardless, because you can't have more romances without introducing new characters; the club's grown in power because Ghost is an ambitious president who doesn't want to live by the rules his "betters" set for him. Like all the best college football teams, he wants to control his own destiny, and to do that, the club must become stronger. Strength, as ever, invites challenge; as the club gets stronger, so too do its enemies. 

I know there are readers who didn't like what they call the "Bond elements" of the novel. I understand that - but I also wouldn't go back and change a thing. 

For starters, Reese is a trained assassin, and Tenny is a trained government assassin who was carrying out international hits. Do they deserve peace and personhood after their inhumane upbringings? Yes, but it would also be a huge disappointment if they just...rode around Knoxville. Being bikers. It's very much a Chekov's Gun situation: don't introduce these highly skilled killers and then not have them do highly skilled killer things. The whole Devin's Brood situation is wild, and I know that, but I was also the girl who grew up loving monster movies and action movies, and I'm always having the best time when I get to write that crew. Sorry, not sorry. My main focus is always to deliver the emotional development goods on every character, and I did that here, no question. There's a bit of a genre shift, sure, but I don't believe in tightly-boxed genres, so...*shrugs*

This book was the most fun I'd had writing in a long time, and it's a book I still enjoy revisiting. Reese and Tenny started as an accident, and now I can't imagine Dartmoor without them.