#ThrowbackThursday: Shep's Greatest Hits

 

A look back at some of Shep's greatest hits in Nothing More:

Even though Cass fussed about him initially, he and Cass had something of an instant rapport. 

“Ta, darling.”

They traded cheek kisses, and she returned to her office in time to breach the tail end of a conversation she didn’t like at all.

For starters, Shepherd had joined them, and stood now at the edge of the coffee table, hands in his pockets, jangling change. He looked up from whatever Cass had been showing him on her phone, and gave Greg a dismissive headshake. “Nah, see, that’s for putzes. You gotta have the real thing. The mess, the sap, the hassle, dropping F bombs while you wrestle it outta the truck – that’s part of it. The magic of Christmas and all that shit.”

#ThrowbackThursday: Shep Meets Raven

 

The last few weeks I've been advertising the next Lean Dogs Legacy book, Beware of Dog, and talking about Cass and Shep. For anyone who's asked, Cass is of course Cassandra, the youngest of Devin's brood of ten. And Shep is Shepherd, who we first meet in Long Way Down, but who doesn't get to "shine," so to speak, until Nothing More. Obviously, you don't have to read all the books in order, but the new book will make much more sense if you do. 

Beware of Dog picks up almost three years after the events of Nothing More, and, thankfully, Cass has done a lot of growing up, and Shep's made a better impression on his sister-in-law since their first meeting.

“Yes, Melanie?” she asked, frowning at Toly’s back as he opened the door.

“There’s someone here to see you.” Melanie’s voice was uncertain. “He says he’s your new security detail?”

Through the intercom, and at the threshold, Raven heard an unfamiliar male voice. “Don’t worry, honey, I can introduce myself.”

“Sir–”

Toly stepped aside, and in stepped a man boldly flying his Lean Dog cut. He wasn’t as tall as Toly – when Toly bothered to stand at his full height – but clearly older, and broader. His dark hair was thick and lustrous, without a trace of gray, but his face bore the lines and textures of a man who’d spent cold winters and hot summers on a bike. He might have been handsome, in a rough sort of way, if not for the truly nasty smirk he turned first on Toly, then on the room at large, and then on her.

Toly shut the door.

The stranger approached the desk – swaggered toward it, really, and everything inside Raven recoiled. He stuck a hand across it. “Hey, there, doll.” His smile was all teeth, and nothing of friendliness. She noted the Sgt. At Arms patch on his cut. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”

On a different day, under different circumstances, she would have laughed in his face; even now felt a bubble of it in her throat. But it took little effort to meet his smarmy grin with her flattest, least impressed look, and say, “I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you.”

She had the pleasure of watching his expression freeze for one bewildered moment. He recovered quickly, but a new edge crept into his already razor-sharp smile. She had him pegged as a bastard straight away, but the minute shift in his expression confirmed it.

She leaned to the side to peer around him. “Anatoly,” she called, “what’s going on?”

He was typing something on his phone, and held up a finger telling her to hold.

She cleared her throat, pointedly, but the finger remained.

The stranger said, “I’m Shep, by the way. Shepherd.”

“Lovely. Anatoly.”

He and Cass have a fun dynamic, and I honestly can't wait for her brothers to find out what's going on. 

#ThrowbackThursday: Nothing More

 

He said, “Everyone’s going to know, now.”

“Let them know.”

He arched a brow. “Your sister?”

She sighed, because it did smart a little, the idea of having to do the walk of shame in front of Cass – but she was determined to be an adult about it. About him. “She’s seventeen, not four. She has to understand that I have–” A love life, she almost said. A boyfriend. “You,” she finished, instead, and something shivered across his face, impossible to parse, before he went grim and nodded. Puffed on his smoke.

“Fine.”

She went to the ensuite to brush her teeth and check that the collar of her gown covered any love bites. He joined her, stony-faced and composed once more, hair tied back in a low knot, wearing last night’s clothes, since his bag was presumably elsewhere in the flat. Raven debated going out ahead of him, providing at least the semblance of having slept separately – but dashed the thought. If everyone was going to know, she might as well leave little doubt.

“Ready?” she asked him.

He made a face. “You sound like we’re going to war.”

“Darling, with my family, war is always a distinct possibility.” 

 

I could say that if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't make all the Dartmoor books so expansive and interlaced. Shorter, snappier standalones that could be skipped or read out of order. 

I could say that...but it wouldn't be true. My favorite aspects of these books are all the connections, carry-throughs, and messy entanglements. I really enjoyed Nothing More, and it, like all the other books in the series, lays groundwork for future messiness. I originally planned to tackle Cassandra next, but that feels like a Bad Idea at this point. 

Anyway: if you skipped this one when it released, and wondered who the heck Toly was in LHM, this is his and Raven's book - as much as any book in this series belongs to one couple. It's also about Tenny, and Reese, and Devin, and Ian, and the New York Dogs, and the Kozlov bratva. It's about families: families worth being loyal to, and families who scar you deeply. It's about second and even third chances, and how, sometimes, even when we know better, it's impossible to let go of bonds from the past. 

Fun fact: Toly first appeared in The Wild Charge, guarding the elevator in the Ritz. He then had a guest starring role in Long Way Down, before finally landing his own headliner role. His and Raven's first real interaction was in TWC, when he hustled her away from Times Square after she watched Ian [redacted] Jack Waverly on the taken-over big screens. 

You can check the "Nothing More" tag for debriefs and reflections on the novel. 

Fond Reflections

Devin didn’t take him back to the house right away. There was a bench halfway back down the hill, and they pulled over and climbed onto it, overlooking the bare tree trunks, the glimpses of dead brown field grass below. A wisp of smoke curling up from the house chimney, visible as a smudge above the tree tops.

Devin lit two cigarettes and passed one over.

The first drag hit Toly like something harder and more necessary than nicotine. “Thanks,” he croaked out, and didn’t just mean for the smoke.

“’Course. That’s what family’s for, right?”

Toly skated a sideways look at him, trying and failing to imagine a past in which he’d successfully predicted he’d end up somehow related to this man, of all people.

And then Devin said, “I’m proud of you. You did really well back there.”

Toly snorted to cover the traitorous way his heart flipped. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” All innocence.

“Pretend that…I dunno. You care. Like I’m your kid.”

“Well, I figure you almost are. All but in name, right? It’s bound to happen.”

Another snort, this one a little desperate, because it was bad enough when Maverick played dad; he couldn’t do it with his actual potential father-in-law. “You never even tell your own kids you’re proud of them.”

“Not true, now. Not anymore. I’m downright paternal these days.” When Toly looked over at him, he grinned and winked. “After all: a man can change, can’t he?”

Toly took a drag off his smoke, and thought of all his wants, unboxed, shining, possible. Achievable. “Yeah,” he muttered, and felt the first tug of a smile, the first he’d felt in a week. “I guess so.”

I don't like to presume that writing is a process that presents universal challenges and sentiments to its practitioners, but I do think there are some hang-ups that most of us could confess to struggling with. For instance, I've seen other authors talk about being sick of their own work. You get to that point, even with the most poignant and personal of passion projects, at which you'd be perfectly happy to never see the thing again. Yeet it into the void and run the other way. "Thank God that's over. What's next?" Again, not wanting to speak for everyone, but for me, by the time I've finished editing and have released a project, it's hard to feel much affection for it; I feel relief, yes, and pride, too, but it's a detached sort of pride. I'm proud that I scaled the mountain again...though now there's the shadow of the next peak keeping the sun off my face. 

That was a very long way of saying I need a little distance after I've finished a book. The flip side, then - the bright side - is that when I do revisit it, weeks, months, even years later, I'm reminded why I wrote the book in the first place. When I come back to a book, I get to look at it as a reader, and that's when I'm most proud of it. 

I had to look something up for Lord Have Mercy in Nothing More, and I wound up reading big chunks of text unnecessarily, because I was simply enjoying it. I love Raven, and I love Toly, and I love the way they play off one another. Readers had asked for years if I intended to write a book for Raven, and I never gave a solid answer, because I wasn't sure. It had to be right; it had to preserve Raven's...Ravenness. Hers would need to be a man who fit amongst her assassin family, but who she could also whisk away to Paris Fashion Week if the need arose. I blogged at length about all my behind the scenes reasoning when the book first dropped in March, and that reasoning still holds true today. 

I'm not sure what the point of this post was, other than to say: I like this book so much. After a few months away from it, I can look back over it with fresh eyes and feel incredibly satisfied with the direction the story took, and the way it was another steppingstone along the path to where the series is now. Not every book will be a universal favorite, and not every one will play out in the same way: it would be boring if they did. But they're all a part of the tapestry. Of the garden. Of the *insert preferred metaphor here.* 

It's so easy to become overwhelmed with the big picture, chewed up in the daily grind. But it's okay, and it's even important, to step back and appreciate the little things. Like the snippet I shared above, which is one of my favorites from the book. 

*Nick Saban voice*: It's a process. Trust it. 

**Nothing More is available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and paperback if you haven't read it. Be sure to get all caught up for Lord Have Mercy, part one of which is out now. ☺

Four Week Check-In: Nothing More

 

He wanted to walk up behind her; rest his hands on her waist, and slide them lower. Lean in until he felt the silk of her hair on his face, and could smell the Chanel she’d dabbed on her neck that morning. Press in close, until she could feel him all down the length of her back; until she shuddered, and let out a little unbidden sound, and leaned back into him, encouraging. It was easy to imagine all that would follow, the ways it was already familiar, but would be new, still, because everything with them was still new. 

But he wanted to approach her from the side, too. Tuck back the strand of hair that was already trying to slip past her ear again. Stroke her cheek, and offer her a soft expression, when she turned her head to look at him. He didn’t know how to do soft, really, but he thought he could look like a welcome place, if he tried. Like someone it was safe for her to be around, to show her uncertainty and fatigue to. 

He'd never been “safe” for any woman before. For anyone, really. 

The thought that he could be – that he wanted to be – held him rooted in the threshold, indecisive. In the end, he decided to simply walk forward, and let proximity determine his course of action when he was close enough to touch her.

Nothing More is four weeks old today! I say that like I’m remarking on the growth of a baby, and really, a book is a kind of baby. Brought into the world with mental pain, rather than physical, granted - unless you count eye strain and keyboard spine. But she’s four weeks! And time is flying! *wipes nervous sweat from my brow*

In the past four weeks, I’ve set a blistering pace working on the next Drake book, and story mapping for the next Dartmoor adventure. As always, each book in the series provides opportunity and inspiration for the next story, and the next. It’s the beauty and curse of creating a “world” with writing, and I hope to blog about that tomorrow for Workshop Wednesday. But for now, I’m reflecting back on Raven and Toly.

Usually, once I’ve finished a book, published it, put it to bed, so to speak, and left it for a few weeks, it looks different when I examine it again after a break. This is the case with NM. In the lead-up to release, most of my posts were about Raven. Her journey was what jumped out at me the most. But now, I’m struck by how terribly lonely Toly was before her. Lonely, and so emotionally underdeveloped that he didn’t even recognize that he was lonely. Ouch. Poor man. And it’s not the first time I’ve explored the inner workings of a Dog who feel like an outsider among his brothers. I love playing with that theme: yes, they’re all part of a counterculture, and share some key values, but they’re individuals first and foremost, and therein lies wonderful tension. It makes sense Toly would wind up with a woman who’s part of a big family - no matter how odd or dysfunctional. An unacknowledged craving for the security and love-you-no-matter-what aspects of family life he’s never had.

You can grab Nothing More on Amazon if you haven’t already, and also check out my full debrief post from a couple weeks ago. 

That's a Wrap on Raven and Toly

Some initial, next-day scattered reflections upon wrapping up Nothing More yesterday:  

• I'm sure it's obvious by now, but I'm extremely partial to all of Devin Green's brood. Each one of them was initially crafted as an intriguing, larger-than-life secondary character, a hefty dash of cayenne to the sauce of the story, if you will. Because of this, because each one has such flavor, I wanted their individual stories to fully reflect that spiciness. I didn't want, once the spotlight hit them, for them to get hit with a fatal case of Main Character syndrome, and turn bland and overcooked. All those quirky, bold notes had to stay forefront of the recipe...which is the exact reason I dig in my heels and resist the thought of focusing on any of them as part of a central romantic pairing. If I'm going to write them in love, then I have to get it right. It's why I was nervous about Raven; why, in years previous, I rejected a half-dozen romantic possibilities for her. I was always so sure, just as she was, that she wouldn't, couldn't fall in love with a Lean Dog. Each time I thought of pairing her up, it was always with an in-charge, presidential sort. A boss Dog, someone older, and stern, and unimpressed with her wealth and influence. And it was always wrong. So wrong. I flirted, very briefly, with the idea of pairing her with Maverick, but quickly dashed the notion. It still wasn't right. Toly was the missing, secret ingredient I never expected, but which made the whole dish sing. Okay, enough with the food metaphors, now. 

• I had no idea this book would turn out as long as it did. Genuinely. But both of these characters had emotional turmoil to sort out, and I'm a big believer in the gardening approach to writing, rather than ruthlessly forcing a story into a fixed schedule. It wound up at 188k words pre-edits, and there's a chance the count will go up rather than down. 

• I love Tenny and Devin in this one. I said on FB that one of my favorite things about writing a series is the chance to watch characters continue to grow and adapt to their circumstances, and that's never been more evident than here, watching Tenny learn how to be a brother, and Devin finally have a go at fatherhood, better late than never. 

• Mercy is like Where's Waldo? Be on the lookout for the cameo, minus the striped shirt. 

• I'll readily admit that, from conception, I built Toly with all my favorite tropes and traits; put them in the blender and poured out a guilty pleasure concoction. But by the end of the book, I really loved him. As a character. The him that was waiting to hatch out of the portrait I painted in The Wild Charge. I hope you'll all love him, too. I think he might not be what anyone ever expected for Raven, but they're so very good together.