What's Next?

 

Since it's not the end of the year, I'm hoping to add to this 2024 stack by at least one more title. But as of now, the book release count is up to five:

College Town

A Cure for Recovery

Lord Have Mercy Part Three: Rising Sun

Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

Does the final version of LHM count as a release? Since it's only a compilation of previous releases? I'm gonna count it. It broke my brain, so I'm including it. 

All of these releases are available for Kindle, paperback, Nook, and Kobo, and all of them could use some review love! 💖

The typical course of events for me is: edit a project, publish a project, and already be several thousand words into the next project by the time it goes live. Usually, I'm already making daily word counts on the next book while I'm advertising the latest release. 

But that's not been the case this time. After LHM, I knew I needed a bit of a break. I thought if I took a week, that then I'd be raring to go on the next project. But instead, it's been two weeks, and I find that I'm still sluggish. Usually, when someone asks "what's next?" I have an answer ready to go. This time? I'm debating. 

Earlier in the year, I said I was going to dive into the next Drake Chronicles book after I finished LHM. Now I'm not so sure. 

I know I need a Dartmoor break - and for LHM to earn its page count in sales. I have dabbled a little with Avarice of the Empire - the next Drake book - in the past few days. I've added about a thousand words. Today, I'm actually working on the Sons of Rome novella that comes between Golden Eagle and Lionheart, The Winter Palace. Despite a persistent, full-body malaise, it's always a bit of a thrill to return to Nikita's pack. And since the novella is set in Buffalo, a modern-day concurrence of the events that will play out in the Appalachians and eventually Romania in Lionheart, it's not slowed by necessary research. Given the last SoR release was in 2019 - eek! - that may be the project I settle down and get serious with in the weeks to come.

Still, another part of me wants to write something new entirely. Either mystery/crime, or horror, or a blend of both. 

Energy levels are still low, though, so I'm taking things one day at a time. Trying to spend more time outside, walking, working KitKat, enjoying the first orange flickers of fall. The truth is, I don't know exactly what's next, but I do know that spooky season puts me in a vampiric mood...

Fulk shifted back to his human-shape first, snowflakes caught in his unraveling black braid, pale face furious. “What the hell was that? Who’s shooting?”

Anna was next, smoothing down her long coat and making a disgusted face at the mess of wounded vampires. The snow was patchwork crimson, now, and reeking of copper. “It sounded like–”

“Trina,” Sasha said, sprouting back on two legs, wiping his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. He grinned, tips of his fangs showing, cheeks pink from the cold. “I know the sound of that gun.” The sparkle in his eyes dimmed and his smile slipped when he met Nik’s gaze. “Oh.”

“Yes.” Nik bent to retrieve his knife and wiped it on his pants leg. “Very much oh.”

“Jesus,” Fulk swore. He smoothed his hair and regathered his composure. “There weren’t any others, we made sure. Go see about your insubordinate relative.” He jerked his chin toward the trees. “We’ll see about dispatching these wretches.”

Nikita sent him a raised-brow look.

Fulk chuffed and rolled his eyes. “If it would please, captain.”

Anna grinned. “I’m not gonna bend and scrape. You’re not my master.”

Nikita turned. “Sasha, with me.” If the ensuing conversation went the way he suspected it would, they’d need a moderator.

 

~*~

 

Trina hooked her great-grandmother’s rifle over her shoulder on its strap and shimmied down the tree she’d climbed. She was getting better at that – the climbing up and then climbing back down. It was becoming instinctual, finding handholds, sensing which branches would hold and which were suspect. She landed with a thump of her heavy boots in the snow, and when she looked up, Nik was cresting the hill, wind blowing his black coat dramatically back, blue eyes neon against the bleak landscape.

Here we go.

Sasha kept pace at his side, lips smeared red – she’d watched him take a bite out of the lead vampire through her scope – tucking his hair back and talking frantically to his husband in a voice too low for her to hear. Nikita ignored him, taking long strides toward her. He showed all his anger in his eyes; the rest of his face was the same eerily blank mask she thought so many poor Russians had cowered before, once upon a time.

She resettled her rifle, tugged her ski cap into place, and waited for him, feet planted, unflinching. She’d seen a lot of scary shit in her time as a cop, and in her time as a member of this improbable, immortal pack.

She wasn’t afraid of Nik.