Contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy
Meet Sophie
Ash tilted
his head to one side and narrowed his eyes as he regarded the pink-swaddled
baby in Ava’s arms. When his lips pursed, and his little jaw worked
side-to-side, he looked hilariously like Ghost. Ghost himself stood behind the
chair where Ash sat perched on his knees at the side of the bed, arms folded, a
glimpse of Ash’s future self.
When Cass checked, she saw Tenny gazing at him with tender fondness, and her chest warmed with the knowledge that things had turned out just as they were always meant to.
Writing is just as much about knowing what not to say as it is knowing what to say. If I've done my job well, and the characters are distinct and "real" feeling, then logical choices present themselves with little fanfare. In the thick of writing a novel, dialogue feels natural; I know exactly what a character wouldn't say in a given situation.
But before the writing starts, there's always options. Choices to be made about the course of a character's future. What I publish is always what felt right to me; what clicked seamlessly into place and made the most sense. But in the early stages, I often toy with other possibilities.
I know I've mentioned before that when I wrote Prodigal Son, I originally flirted with the idea of Cass ending up with Reese. But of course, once I introduced Tenny, that plan changed. Toly saved her from a kidnapping in The Wild Charge, and though I never seriously considered pairing them up, there was a spark of possibility there - enough of one that I knew it wouldn't feel out of left field if, a few years later, the two of them wound up together.
Cass kept skirting the edges of my imagination while I worked on Long Way Down and Nothing More. Her journey, her situation, was more like Ava's than any other leading lady's I'd worked with since Fearless, and I wanted to give her a chance to take the spotlight. But who should I pair her with?
That's the wrong question. It's not so much picking and choosing romances, as letting the inevitable unfold. All my early ideas felt forced, so I knew they weren't good. For a long while, throughout all of Nothing More, in fact, I contemplated sending Cass to Knoxville. The conflict of Beware of Dog was always going to happen, but in early iterations of the novel, it drove her out of state, to the safety of her brothers in Tennessee. There, she might have a fling with Evan. Or Lewis, the young farmer Aidan takes under his wing in Lord Have Mercy. I even considered coming up with a new character to serve as her love interest. For every novel, there's a flipside, a "what might have been." What if Tango and Ian had wound up together back in Loverboy? We'd be looking at a very different Dartmoor landscape right now. In the same vein, I knew that there was certainly a story there for Cass in Tennessee, and maybe even love. But no story takes place in a vacuum. Once you make those creative decisions, you have to stick with them, so you'd be better be sure of them.
I didn't feel sure of anything regarding Cass until I considered Shep as her partner, and then everything fell into place.
Their banter is some of my favorite in the whole series, and I'm truly in love with Shep's very in-character love confession. I had no idea when he first strode into Raven's office and introduced himself with sleazeball flirtation that he'd be perfect for Raven's little sister, but that's how it played out. That's how it works.
Even ten years on, I have those waffling moments where I debate the direction of the series, and its characters; but those ten years have taught me to wait patiently, and, eventually, the right course will make itself known. That's also one of the fun parts: the thrill of discovery within your own universe.
“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.
Bob Boudreaux was a face she’d only ever seen in photos that were more than twenty-years-old, but she would have recognized him straight off, despite the intervening years and the graying hair, based on the way the Dogs were seated. Bob sat at the corner-most table, facing the doorway through which she and Colin entered, the front of his cut weathered from long decades of wear, and resplendent with patches. The man beside him was a good ten years younger, slight, but with a serious face, and his own impressive bevvy of patches. His VP, she thought. The others, ranged across the rest of the tables, drinking beer from tall glasses, were his killers. His honor guard. They glanced over their shoulders and flicked disinterested glances up from their hands of cards; she knew they were cataloguing everything about her, and were surprised by her presence at Colin’s side, though Bob was the only one to show it outwardly.
His brows lifted, pressing a tall stack of sun wrinkles up his forehead. “Colin,” he said as they approached the table, “not to stick my nose in your business, son, but I thought your old lady was a blonde.”
“She is.” Ava pulled off her cap and smoothed the crown of her ponytail. “I’m Mercy’s old lady.”
The VP – stone-faced in a very Walsh-like way – went blank and blinking with surprise. “Shit.”
“Shit,” Bob echoed.
“Bob, meet Ava Lécuyer,” Colin said in the voice of a man who was very, very tired of his life lately.
“Wow,” Bob said, and then folded his arms and grinned. “The famous fillette, in the flesh.”
Ava couldn’t decide how she felt about that, so she said, simply, “Hi, Bob. You got a boat we can borrow?”
Technically, Ava's been Lean Dog royalty since birth. Even before he was president, Ghost held a position of high esteem among his brothers, and was a legacy member besides.
But there's a difference between holding a title and living up to it, and one of the cool things about Lord Have Mercy was the chance to write Ava as someone who's fought, and bled, and killed for the club. To see her as a living legend in her own right, alongside Mercy. I always regretted not bringing her and Bob face-to-face in Fearless, but the meeting finally happened, eight years later.
If you haven't yet embarked upon the arduous journey that is the final installment of the Dartmoor Series, you can do so through the link below:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
“I
think it was right sweet,” Devin said, on the porch of Walsh’s old place out by
the train tracks. Night had fallen, a net of stars hanging suspended above
them, and the last train had rumbled past five minutes ago, its roar now a distant,
shrinking echo like far off thunder. An open cooler sat between them on the
edge of the porch, where their legs dangled over into the weeds, loaded with
ice and beer. “Chivalrous. Perhaps heroic…if you’re in the mind to give the boy
hero credit.”
“We
won’t go that far.” Mercy set his empty can aside and reached for a fresh,
dripping water in fat, dark discs onto the porch boards. “But it was – a not
shitty thing he did.”
Devin
snorted.
“Surprising,”
Mercy added.
“What?
That he’d do something brave for his brother? Come on, then. You’re not surprised.
My boys are at each other’s throats all the time, but they would have done the
same.”
Mercy
skated him a look.
“That’s
right,” Devin said, grinning as he lifted his can. “I’m paternal now.”
There
was a lot to be said in response to that, but the growl of approaching
motorcycles snared both their attentions.
Devin
hopped to his feet, more agilely than a man his age should have been capable.
“Wait here,” he said, setting his beer aside and rounding the porch toward the
overgrown gravel driveway, gun appearing in his hand without any visible reach
for one.
“Sure
thing, Papa.”
Mercy
caught the grin he tossed over his shoulder before he melted out of sight.
The
bikes arrived with a symphonic grumble, and then were silenced. Voices floated
around the cabin, masculine, familiar, soothing, even if he couldn’t understand
the words. And then he heard running footsteps crunching over the gravel,
racing around the cabin, heading toward him.
Mercy
set his beer down, stood, and turned, and when Ava came flying around the
corner, – he’d known it was her right away, the strike of her shoes on the
gravel, the speed at which her long legs carried her to him – for a moment, the
past superimposed itself over the present.
She
was eight and all knees and elbows, dark pigtails streaming behind her. She was
ten, and shooting up again, her jeans turned to high-waters over the harness
boots she insisted on wearing instead of sandals. She was thirteen, fifteen,
seventeen and wondrous, and begging him to love her, which was ridiculous,
because he already did, he always had, how could he not? She was twenty-two,
and hating him, and that was okay, because he loved her enough for the both of
them. And she was twenty-two, still, and marrying him, promising to love him
forever, because of course she could, did, would, because their love had always
existed, no matter its shape or its weight or the directions it took them; it
was something patiently waiting for them both, star-destined and inescapable,
labeled so quickly and wrongly by those outside of it.
Her
smile was wide, but wobbly, and there were tears in her eyes, and she was
reaching out before she got to him. She was thirty, and she’d borne three of
his babies, she loved him still, they loved each other better and deeper and
truer than they ever had.
They’d
been apart four days and it had felt like years.
He
caught her around the waist and tucked her under his chin, and the others who’d
come were kind enough to hang back out of sight, until Ava had whispered, “Hi,
baby,” and blotted her eyes dry on his shirtfront.
“Hi,
baby,” he echoed, and rubbed her back until she stopped trembling.
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
It was quiet in the way of all churches, steps careful, voices hushed. But inevitably loud because of the sheer scope of the place: the high, vaulted ceilings and all its secret nooks and angles trebled each tiny sound into a constant wall of not-unpleasant white noise. A pair of old, stooped women were lighting candles. Two pews ahead and to the left, a young man sat with his head bent and his hands clasped, lips moving soundlessly in what looked to be fervent prayer.
Aidan had thought about praying, when he first sat down, but only because he’d been bowled over by the beauty of the place. Its blue-and-white check marble floors; its gold-set frescoes; its gleaming organ pipes as tall and awe-inspiring as the tubular towers of Oz. There was something…reverent…about the air in here. It smelled of candlewax, and linseed oil, but something rarified, too, that spooked him a little. Like when he was a kid, and Maggie had taken him into a fancy store, and told him, sweetly but firmly, not to touch anything. His boots had left muddy scuffs on the tile, and he was half-tempted to get down on his knees and mop the streaks up with his sleeve.
But he didn’t know how to pray. Other than a few desperate mental declarations of oh God at moments of crisis, he’d never called upon the man upstairs. Had never been to bible study, nor learned any of the hymns. His people were not church people – “church” meant club meetings, in his world. Mercy was Catholic, and doubtless could have offered guidance, but Mercy was still at the hospital, battling an infection.
Maybe it didn’t matter. Sitting here, resting in this place, was clarifying in a secular way, too. He hadn’t known when he first entered that his heart was pounding, but knew it had been now, as he felt it slow and steady in his chest, his breaths even, and deep, and unencumbered.
“Our perceptions of people are all relative, I suppose.” His gaze, though soft, drilled straight into Aidan with a force that left him wanting to sway backward. “It’s all about perspective. Ghost is perhaps not a good man, but he’s the best man I’ve ever known personally.”
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
Relief washed
over Mercy as elation, and with it came the ugly dizziness of blood loss. He
turned, and carefully lowered himself to sit on the edge of the dock, boots
dangling over the edge. He lifted his arm – lead-heavy, no longer painful, only
dragging, which wasn’t a good sign, he knew – so that Ava could sit down beside
him, and tuck herself beneath it. She was shivering as though cold, despite the
hot, sweaty feel of her cheek when she pressed it down on his shoulder.
“Good job,
Mama.” He tried to pat her waist, but his hand didn’t want to cooperate.
In the water,
Big Son had begun his death roll.
“You, too.”
She turned her head and pressed her lips to his shoulder before resettling, her
warm, familiar weight better than any drug against his side.
Mercy’s head
felt cotton-stuffed, dry, and floaty, like he’d taken morphine. But it was
pleasant. Dreamy. “He really is beautiful, isn’t he?”
“He is,
baby,” Ava agreed. “Like you.”
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
“Are you sure about this?”
It was so unusual a question coming from Michael that Walsh paused and gave it due consideration. He was already seated at the head of the table, but hadn’t gotten comfortable: he didn’t figure it would be his chair for long.
Michael stood at the door, his back to it, one hand on the knob, ready to usher in their brothers.
Who might not consider Walsh their brother in about ten minutes.
Was he sure about this?
Other than Michael, he hadn’t yet told anyone about what he was about to say at church. Michael was a very good listener, but not the best advice-giver. That was probably part of the reason Walsh hadn’t tried to bring anyone else into his confidence. He wasn’t looking for anyone to take a side, here. He’d like to escape with his life, to live out his days with Emmie and Violet, in whatever shape those days would take once he’d lost the club’s support. But otherwise, he wasn’t picky. Michael had said he wouldn’t let anyone kill him; that was enough. It was clear, now, that he could not sit idly by in Knoxville, lying to his brothers, while New York and New Orleans decided the future of the club he’d dedicated himself to. He would play his part, and play it as well as the other Dogs would allow him to.
“I’m sure,” he said, and meant it. Felt calm, steady. “Let them in.”
Aidan was the first through the door, and he sat down beside Walsh, in his new chair, in his new role, his VP patches still shiny-white and clean-threaded on his chest.
It was Aidan who would react the strongest, and Aidan who Walsh felt was owed a pound of flesh for emotional trauma. If Aidan took a swing at him, he was going to sit still and let him take it.
My approach to storytelling has always been organic. I prefer the gardening process to the meticulous pre-planning method: no detailed outlines that require strict adherence. I know who the character is, what he or she wants, and what he or she is afraid of. When a character - or a couple - is the main focus of a book, I have a handful of scenes that I know must happen in order to move the story along. But when it comes to secondary and tertiary characters, I let them grow and develop as they will. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and so their actions, and the actions of those around them, impact their storylines going forward.
I feel like this approach could paint a writer into a corner - but for me, it only ever presents opportunities. An idea will feel right in the moment, sometimes inexplicably, and then several books down the line I'll realize just how useful a seemingly small develop has the potential to be.
Walsh comes to a BIG decision in Lord Have Mercy, one that's been slowly building since The Skeleton King.
In Fearless, a newly-elected Ghost nominates Walsh as his VP, and that was the obvious and natural choice. Ghost has Plans and Ambitions for the club, and not only is Walsh the Money Man who can make them happen financially, but he's also a steady, serious, thoughtful right-hand man who isn't swayed by emotional arguments. Then, of course, along comes Emmie. And then Violet. I think, deep down, so deep down that he doesn't acknowledge it even to himself for much of the series, Walsh worries that allowing himself to have a family, and to love them - to love them more than he loves his club - makes him weak. His self-containment has been an asset all his life - one that he finally understands, in LHM, as armor. A shield against feeling. One that's been completely unsuccessful: he does love his family, he can't and won't change that, and he's not, in fact, handling the stress of club expansion well at all. Like with Ghost, he spends the course of the series slowly becoming surlier, drinking and smoking more, and sleeping less.
I loved getting to hand Aidan the VP patches, but that couldn't have happened without the audience understanding, completely, Walsh's decision to step down. I've always blamed my diverting, side-story focus on Walsh as playing favorites, but while writing LHM, that favoritism proved to be the very necessary groundwork needed to retire Walsh as vice president in a believable and emotionally satisfying way. He'll stay on with the club, of course, Money Man and Skeleton King both. And he's very committed to helping Aidan succeed in his stead.
This scene, where he comes clean to the club, and then walks out declaring that he's going to New Orleans, and then gets hit in the face, is a favorite of mine.
“I’m not really the president, and going forward, I might not be anything, depending on how the voting shakes out. So I’m not going to give orders. You can stay here if you want, or you can hand over your cut and walk away, or you can…make up your own mind. About what to do next. Ghost is in New York.” He pushed back his chair, and stood, and his legs were steadier, stronger, than he’d hoped. “I’m going to New Orleans.”
Then he turned, walked to the door, opened it, and walked through it.
His heart was beating like a high school drumline, but the steadiness persisted. He’d come to a decision, and it was the correct one. Whatever happened afterward, he was sure of his decision to go south.
He heard footfalls behind him – but not the slow, ground-covering gait he’d expected from Michael. No, these were quick, almost running.
He reached the bar, and turned.
And his face exploded with pain.
A bright, hot, numbing shock of it along the left edge of his jaw, and Walsh had time to be grateful that whoever it wasn’t hadn’t aimed for the eye, and risked knocking him out. Then the momentum of the blow carried him sideways, he tripped, knocked over a stool, and would have hit the floor if he hadn’t fetched up against the bar. He caught himself with a hand braced on the smooth wood surface, and reached to touch his struck face with the other, ready for a second hit.
But it was only the one, and as the seconds ticked by, the first cold numbness of the strike warmed, and then flared hot, and the pain crackled in electric arcs along all the affected nerves. The skin was already swelling, tight and hot to the touch, but a quick probe with his tongue proved none of his teeth were loose, and he hadn’t bitten the inside of his cheek. He was going to have one hell of a bruise, but it wasn’t too bad, all things considered.
Anyone in the chapel could have chased him out and hit him, and any of them would have been justified. But when he turned his head, he of course found Aidan standing there.
But it was an Aidan who still looked as vice-presidential as he had in the chapel, save the working and flexing of his right hand. The knuckles were red where he’d struck Walsh, and the way he flattened and then cracked them looked like it hurt.
“You can hit me again, if you want,” Walsh said. “I won’t try to stop you.”
“I will.” That was Michael, sliding in between them, seemingly out of nowhere. “You had your hit. That’s the only one.”
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
Given my love of horror - of the Classic, Gothic variety, and the more contemporary - and given the violent-by-necessity nature of Dartmoor, I've always tried to lever a bit of the horrific and the fantastic into the way I write certain scenes for that series. The whiff of the supernatural, though Dartmoor's horrors are solidly human.
For funsies, I searched the word "haunted" to see how many times I used it in Big Son. The answer is four:
“Colin,” Alex prodded, ungently, and Dandridge sent him a cool it look.
Colin dropped his hands, and his expression was haunted. He looked like he’d run here on foot, wan and sweating and spacy.
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
Driving into the city had put a lump in Mercy’s gut, but this was different. Bittersweet, yes, and tainted, as all his memories were by the relentless knowledge of what happened to Daddy, to Gram. But no matter what tortures this city threw at him, he could never bring himself to hate the water. It had raised him alongside his father, the only mother he’d ever wanted or needed. There was water in Tennessee, sure, the Tennessee River, that fat black snake that curved around Dartmoor and slithered its slow way up to Neyland Stadium. But this was the swamp, and it smelled different, and it tasted different on his tongue when he opened his mouth to inhale, and it coursed through his bloodstream.
As a reader, I can fall in love with any setting. I can luxuriate in any aesthetic, and feel at home in any city, in any kind of house. It's all down to author voice. Descriptive language, and sensory detail, and authenticity.
As a writer, I don't have strong preferences when it comes to choosing the location of a story - but once I'm committed, then I'm dedicated to making it feel like a real place for readers, whether it's an existing city - what I use most often - or a fantasy landscape. Everything from weather patterns to predominant architecture styles all come into play, and the street view on Google Maps is incredibly helpful.
With Dartmoor, I knew Mercy was from New Orleans, and a great deal of thought went into making that happen. But the decision to put Ghost's mother chapter in Knoxville was more of an afterthought. At first.
I had two criteria: I wanted it to be a Southern city, because bikers are a bit of a throwback, and the South felt like a good fit. And I knew it needed to be a college town, or near enough to one to commute, since Ava was going to be in grad school. That eliminated UGA right off the bat - sorry! Just not a fan! I did try to be fair, and Ava's undergrad degree is from Georgia: she wanted a fresh start, ha, and Ghost was happy to send her out of state. I'm a 'Bama fan, so I didn't want to play favorites and send her there - though I will say that my eventual plan is for Cal to get recruited there to play college football.
Eliminating those two schools, UT became the no-brainer option. My mom's family loves Tennessee. There's lots of alumni on that side of the fam, and my great uncle, Ted, was an artist who did a lot of design work for the school. That orange T? That's his!
Once I made the decision, the reasons started piling up, until I couldn't imagine Dartmoor Inc. being anywhere else. It's a pretty city; hopelessly Southern, but with a mountainous, and more temperate climate than Georgia, with colorful autumn foliage and cool, misty river mornings. I love that it isn't Nashville; that it isn't a bustling, cultural hotspot; it's smaller, and quieter, except on fall Saturdays, and it's much easier to see the Dogs ruling over it than a bigger, busier city. It feels like a non-obvious choice, and that's why I love using it.
I have family history there; in certain lights, I probably bleed orange. But it's been interesting, unexpected, and enjoyable to find a love for the city through writing about it. It feels like a home away from home, and it's certainly become home for a wayward Dog or two, Mercy most of all.
In Lord Have Mercy, I included a few lines about the ways he loved and hated New Orleans; the ways it would always be a part of him, and he'd always cherish it, but that he didn't want to be there. It's a haunted place for him.
But Knoxville is where he learned how to smile again. It's where he fell in love. Where his babies were born. He'll always be Swamp Thing, but there's nowhere else on earth he'd rather be than Knoxville, TN.
Rocky Top, you'll always beHome sweet home to meGood ol' Rocky TopRocky Top, TennesseeRocky Top, Tennessee
*UT plays Oklahoma tonight. Go Big Orange! Please envision Ghost in his white-base, orange-T baseball cap, taking it off every now and then to check that his hair still looks great.
He walked into the chapel – the same chapel, with the same table, same chairs, same framed photos and flags that he’d known since he’d come here, feeling then as though he’d lived an entire, miserable life, brought low by terrible grief…only to find that entering this room for the first time, and finding a girl hiding in a cabinet, had been, in fact, the beginning of his life. His real life. His best life.
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
My paperback proof for Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel arrived yesterday, and its chonky. The Kindle version is 1,609 pages, but the paperback is limited to a more manageable 827 pages. While I was able to squeeze all four parts together within the page limit, the nine-point font is difficult to read. Today, I'm working on shoring up any unnecessary page breaks in the hopes that I'll be able to cut more pages, and then enlarge the font to at least ten, hopefully eleven, which is what I normally use for my paperbacks. I'm a little more than halfway through, and down to 802 pages, so fingers crossed.
But even if the font has to stay tiny, it'll still be available, and that's better than I expected. So BOLO for an announcement and a link soon!
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle.
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
The cigarette
flicked down into the water, a tiny red shooting star, and Bob straightened
away from the pillar so the moonlight carved a sickle down the side of his
face, layering shadows in the corner of his eye where he had a half-dozen more
smile lines than Mercy remembered.
“As I live
and breathe,” he said, and his voice was the same, and Mercy wondered how he’d
ever made room for trepidation within the maelstrom that was worrying
over Remy, “if it ain’t ol Merci himself.”
“Nobody calls
me that anymore.”
“Well, I’m
gonna. You can’t go forgetting where you came from.”
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle.
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
Barbara tipped her head, mulling it over, lips compressed. “Felix did always love that man. More than he deserved.”
Despite the action, the
romance, the shootouts, the super-secret spy ops, and the organized crime
politics, Dartmoor is, at its heart, a family story. I’ve longed maintained
that its extreme situations and heightened stakes make for interpersonal family
dynamics twice as messy and twice as engaging. It’s a club family, true, but
one populated by smaller biological families, and they deal with all the trials
and triumphs of every family, just on an outlaw scale.
The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:
You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle.
Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel
In Friday's debrief post, I talked about my favorite scenes, but there were many that were truly inspired and that I enjoyed reading as a spectator during the various editing stages. While I was writing, I kept thinking "why is this taking so long?" And now that I'm finished, I keep asking "why do I feel so mentally drained?" And I think that's because every single scene in this monster of a book felt necessary. Each one furthered the tension of the overall narrative. Each was a building block, and a puzzle piece, and was balanced on a knife-edge. Each one kept me in that make-or-break headspace that ends up being so exhausting.
The result is that I have very-favorite scenes, which I mentioned Friday, but I also have lots of general favorites. Lots of lines that proved immensely satisfying to put to paper.
In no particular order, some highlights (for me) are:
"I’m here to say that, in years past, I’ve hated Kenneth Teague so much that I wanted to strangle him. And, in the years since, I’ve loved him better than my own father. Because my daddy lied to me an awful lot, and Ghost lies, sometimes, yeah, to protect us, but he always tells the truth in the end. And this is his club. His family. I owe every good thing in my life to him. So he has my vote.”
Big Son has been live in
the wild for one week, and yesterday, I dropped the compiled edition of Lord
Have Mercy. All 1,609 (holy crap, guys) Kindle pages of it are now
available in full, and I even managed to get a paperback version formatted and
have ordered a proof. I’m not sure yet if I’ll release it as such, because the
print is so very small. I’ll look at my physical copy first before I decide.
But in any event, it’s out there!
It’s done!
I’m still waiting to feel
something besides crushing relief and exhaustion. My mom said, “You should be
proud,” and I’m just…tired. I wanted to recapture the setting and the feeling
of Fearless, but this time there was a plethora of new characters to
utilize, and an overarching enemy plotline to wrap up, and the entire effort
became monumental, and monumentally stressful. The four parts altogether
measured up to a whopping 469,000 words. I’m insane. I’m a crazy person – and
I’ve felt it, physically and mentally, for the past month or so. I’m grateful
that the book exists, but I’d like to sleep for a week, please and thank you.
I’ve been thinking all this past
week that I’d wake up one morning ready to type out a stellar and comprehensive
debriefing for Part Four, but in truth, since I’ve been blogging about the book
for a year at this point, I think I’ve said all there is to say about its
themes and characterization, and my authorly intentions with every installment.
But I will add…and here
come the spoilers…
I think – hope – that it was
clear all along that Remy was going to be found and that Boyle was going to get
his comeuppance. I never care if the happy ending is predictable, nor if the
action enables readers to anticipate what’s to come chapter by chapter. That’s
called narrative follow through, and is an intentional feature rather than a
bug of storytelling. I always deliver happy endings, but this one was buried at
the end of a long, winding, tense road, and, though it’s silly, given I created
her, I’m proud of Ava. Of the role she played. She’s never been a sweet,
innocent darling, and has always been Mercy’s monster counterpart. But, just
like with Mercy, that monster part of her doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her
children fiercely, or that she can’t show them tenderness and leniency.
I think of Mercy and Ava’s
storyline, chiefly its culmination here at the end, as a confirmation of
everything we already know about them, rather than any sort of revelation. There
was none of the usual romantic tension present in a romance novel: the
will-they-won’t-they, the heat, the developing chemistry. In that respect, I
don’t know that it can be classified as a romance, despite their
romantic love being what ultimately saves the day. And without any of that
traditional romantic tension, the whole novel felt like a big risk: will
readers want to return to a relationship that is already well-established and
not in danger of collapsing? I know I enjoy that, as a reader, but in general,
writing a second book about a couple in a series isn’t always a recipe for
success. Which is why, though this is their book, the emotional revelations
happen for other characters.
For Alex, yes, as he wrestles
with the meaning of his bloodline, constantly asking himself if he’s inherently
violent or “bad” thanks to Remy’s DNA. One of several favorite moments for me
was the scene outside the hospital when Tina assures Alex that he’s more like
Mercy than Remy, and that both of them are better men than he ever was. At the
beginning of the novel, Alex would have hated hearing that he was similar to
Mercy, but by the end, is touched and comforted by the knowledge.
I think the most significant
emotional storyline in the novel belongs to Aidan and Ghost. And, by default,
Walsh.
My favorite scene in the whole
novel is the conversation between Aidan and Ghost in the cathedral. From a
strategic standpoint, I loved the contrast of their meetings being “church,”
but this honest and raw moment between them happening in an actual church. But
chiefly, I loved writing that scene because Aidan got to be as upfront and as
vulnerable as he’s ever been with Ghost. And Ghost, well…Ghost is Ghost. Everything
he says in this book is wholly honest, and like Tango tells him a few scenes
earlier, they’ve all realized, finally, that being a good president and being a
good father aren’t the same thing, but that he does love them, in his hardass
way. His club, in turn, has decided to love him back, knowing what they do of
him. He has grown, though; wanting Aidan to be his VP is a huge step, and a
vital one. I know there were readers who were hoping that Aidan would never
forgive him, or maybe even that Ghost would be excommunicated from the club,
but those things were never on the table. The club’s one big messy family, and
they fight, and they want to hate, but they love each other, at the end of the
day.
Walsh’s storyline here is the
culmination of a very slowly-unspooling thread from multiple books. I needed to
keep checking in with him throughout LHM so that his decision at the end made
narrative sense, and I think it does. He was a good VP, but, ultimately, he’s
the Money Man, rather than an ambassador, and Aidan’s affable bad boy charm is,
at this point, a better fit for the role.
In the vein of Fearless,
this book has lots of small, delightful moments that I enjoyed writing: the
Ava/Tenny team-up; Toly’s motion sickness; Ghost’s astonishment over Fox’s
thoughtfulness, getting to see him on an op for the first time.
I feel like, as the weeks go by,
I’ll think of other posts I want to write. Favorite lines I’ll remember; little
nuggets that can be mined for future books. But for now, I’ll leave it here,
and leave you with links. Thank you so much for sticking through a year of a
slow rollout, and for reading. If you get the chance, a review would be greatly
appreciated.
Xo
Lauren
Big Son:
