LHM: Cutting Room Floor

   The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

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You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

Believe it or not, you can write a 469,000-word book and still leave a few scenes on the cutting room floor. Or, rather: there are scenes that never made it to the document in the first place, despite early intentions. 

I've never been one for outlines, formal or otherwise, and rarely take physical notes during the conceptual stage of a project (save with SoR, because it's so research-heavy). When I first begin a novel, there's a lot of brainstorming that happens while I exercise, or clean stalls, or work in the garden, and most of those scenes make it into the final version of the book - but not always. Sometimes, no matter how much I like the idea of a scene, it doesn't fit the tone, or the narrative flow, or a better alternative presents itself while I'm writing. And other times, a plot bunny threatens to bog down the whole book, and I have to snip it cleanly away before it goes too far down the rabbit hole. 

The biggest Didn't Happen in Lord Have Mercy involves Big Son. 

Remember this viral image from Texas?

I saw it online, and then my mom texted it to me with the caption Mercy must be in Texas. I was still in the percolating stage of LHM, and I loved the idea of Mercy wrestling, and then killing a gator with a knife. I imagined him bloodied, and trying to get Remy to shore, and a gator grabbing onto him from under the water. Him going under, and Ava shouting, and him eventually emerging victorious and badder than ever. I went back and forth on whether or not I wanted it to be a random gator, or Big Son himself. If it was Big Son, I decided they needed to haul his body onto shore and find a way to transport him to a taxidermist. Imagine a snarling, stuffed Big Son preserved forever on the wall of the clubhouse. 

It was one of those ridiculous ideas that was fun to contemplate, but which I quickly scrapped when I started writing. For starters, I couldn't kill Big Son: he's a legend! He's this mythical dinosaur from Mercy's past, and it was much more satisfying to have him take a chomp out of Boyle. No way could I get rid of him: he needs to live on and haunt the swamp forever. 

So that left me with another, unnamed gator...but decided against that as well. From a practical standpoint, if Mercy had been bitten, that would have majorly complicated his recovery. Gator mouths are nasty, and the infection would have been gnarly. Secondly, given how over the top of the rest of the finale wound up being, it felt like an unnecessary embellishment. Plus, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of Mercy never running afoul of a gator here: he's too experienced and too smart for that. And I won't say there was any magic at play, but the gators only harm Mercy's enemies. It felt fitting. 

I'm glad I nixed the idea, even if the photo was oh so tempting. 

Fox sighed. “Look, they’re probably fine. They’ve got Mercy, and Colin, and Ten and Reese, and the old man, and Toly, and Gray. Plus, Alex can’t be completely useless. Stop worrying.”

“Says the man whose wife and kid are all the way in London, safe and sound.”

Fox shook his head. “Nah. She’s not my wife.”

Of all the day’s conversations, that comment was what finally punched through Ghost’s fog of worry and provided a little clarity. “Oh, fuck you.”

Fox spared him a fast glance, face carved with blue shadows from the dash lights. “Fuck me because…” he drawled, brows lifted, patient in a condescending way, like Ghost was a child pitching a tantrum, like he’d lost a ball game, or misplaced his favorite toy, and not like he was his goddamn president.

“She’s not your wife?” Ghost asked. He coughed a humorless laugh that hurt his throat. He felt near-hysterical, and channeled it into his best defense: good old reliable anger.

“She– ” Fox started, and Ghost cut across him.

“Lemme get this straight: you live with this woman. You don’t fuck anyone but her – I’m assuming.”

Fox gave a fractional shake of his head, and Ghost continued.

“You have a kid with her. You lie down and go to sleep beside her every night. But you think a wedding ring’s what would make you worry. That’s the big difference between you and me, right? The joint bank account?” He was sneering by the end, and didn’t know if he was more disgusted with Fox’s play at indifference, or his own oversight in assuming that Maggie and Ava would actually get on the plane and leave town.

Ahead, the Mercedes hung a right, and Fox had to accelerate through the intersection to make the light. “It’s not like that with Eden and me.”

“No? Which part was a lie?”

“We’re not as…attached,” he finally settled on, and the word left his lips as though foreign. The careful pronunciation of someone learning a new language. “Not like you and Mags, or Ava and Mercy.”

“No one’s like Ava and Mercy, that’s some unhealthy shit,” Ghost said. “But are you really sitting there trying to tell me you don’t love her? That you don’t worry about her? That you wouldn’t worry if she was in New Orleans right now hunting Boyle?”

Fox didn’t answer, and that was answer in itself. 

There's an exchange between Ghost and Fox in Virginia - when they're tailing Hames - that I really liked. Just a quick few lines, but a chance for Ghost to be the voice of authority in a situation in which he's largely ridden as passenger. 

Eden has her baby during LHM, and we have the scene between Fox, Devin, and Tenny in the garden at the hospital that I really liked, but we don't see Dad Fox in action. Originally, I was going to write some of that here, but given the urgency of the kidnapping plot, the women heading for London, and the already-massive scale of the project, I decided to bump Dad Fox to future projects, if/when I get to them. 

Likewise, I didn't carry Ava's pregnancy all the way through on-page. The ending point was the perfect spot to wrap everything up, and I didn't want to go farther. I will say that baby number four is a girl. Millie needs a sister. 😊

Another scrapped idea: I wanted Ian to kill Fallon, originally. I toyed with several ideas: Ian killing him in Knoxville. Ian dressing down and going into the swamp with the Knoxville Dogs - something that became logistically impossible when I sent Ian and Ghost to New York, since they didn't arrive in New Orleans with Walsh and co. Also, as funny as it would have been in some ways, Ian would be wasted in the swamp. That's not his scene. Then I thought about having Aidan do it, on Ian's and Tango's behalf. Protecting his friends. 

But the final, correct answer came to me well before it was time to write the scene: it had to be Tango. He didn't follow through with Miss Carla, and I think that's weighed on him ever since. This time, he pulled the trigger. And, as far as deaths go, it was pretty unremarkable, undramatic. I think that's fitting, though: Fallon is, in many ways, far more despicable a person than Boyle, and doesn't deserve a dramatic send-off. 

Lastly: I spent a long time wondering where I'd leave Alex at the end of the book. I thought of him staying on with the FBI, helping to clean house post-Abacus and intervening on the club's behalf when and where he could. But, ultimately, I decided his disillusionment was complete...and that he'd stopped being so afraid of his bloodline. 

I can't say for sure if I'll ever write an Alex-centric book, but he's right where he needs to be now, with his brother. 

I think the ending is predictable, in the way all happy endings are, to some extent, but I hope the road to get there shocked and thrilled and kept you engaged. Did anything happen you didn't expect? Any twists you didn't see coming? I'd love to know!