Sunday Tidbits: BoD

This book is just fun.

Beware of Dog, Lean Dogs Legacy Book Six, coming soon.  

#ReadingLife: Mr. Mercedes

 

Time to get caught up on posting about the books I've read so far this year. 

The first read of 2025 was Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. Having exhausted the last of the OG Classic Kings that I hadn't yet read, I debated going back and doing a reread (which I quite enjoyed last year with It, and which was very helpful while I was writing LHM) of something, or venturing into some of his newer work. I had some...doubts, shall we say. King's focus the past few years seems to have been on political proselytizing on X and he's become the "Old Man Yells at Cloud" meme. So I didn't go for a new new release, but, rather, a newer one. I thankfully didn't dive head-first into a sophomoric X rant, but I also didn't venture into Classic King territory. 

Mr. Mercedes is the first installment of a crime thriller trilogy about retired detective Bill Hodges, his unlikely junior detectives, and the sadistic mass murderer who engages him in a game of virtual cat and mouse. The villain POV in this book is unmistakably King. But if not for that, and his name on the cover, I never would have guessed that Bill's story was penned by the same author. It took me the first half of the book to feel anything like a connection to our protagonist. The novel as a whole reads as a commercial thriller. The book is shorter, sharper, much more tightly focused than his early work. It's certainly a well-executed entry in the genre. 

What I missed, however, was the deep, lush, often-meandering sense of character and place that endeared his early work to me at a young age. I just can't help it: I crave that "something special" kind of prose that creates rich, slow-flowering garden landscapes of words. Even if they're terrifying and bloody gardens. 

I think if you don't care for King's doorstop novels, this will be much more to your liking. At this time, I don't feel especially compelled to read the rest of the trilogy, and think I'll see about a classic reread instead. 

Signed Books

I'm opening up sales of signed books again! I have several titles in stock, but will be ordering more of other titles, so now's the time to place your order if you'd like to purchase any of my books as signed paperbacks. (Shaman is the only title not available in paperback; I'll be adding the Hell Theory titles this weekend)

To order, email which titles you'd like, how many copies, and who you'd like me to make them out to, to my author email: authorlaurengilley@gmail.com. Printing has been a bit slow on Amazon's end, so I can't guarantee a quick turnaround, unfortunately. I charge Amazon list price for books themselves, plus a few extra dollars for shipping, depending on destination. 

The Fearless hardback giveaway is still ongoing and will end April 10th. I expect to start shipping after then. 

So send me an email with your order, and I'll invoice you via PayPal once I have your books in stock.

#ThrowbackThursday: Dartmoor Spinoffs

 

A sleepy Keeper joins me for this week's Throwback Thursday look at the Dartmoor spinoff series, Lean Dogs Legacy. I have a few new followers across various platforms, and reading order can get a little confusing with both series running concurrent of one another. 

Here's what first-time readers need to know: 

The Lean Dogs Legacy began on Wattpad. I returned to my fanfiction roots by posting Snow in Texas one chapter at a time while I was writing Dartmoor book five, Secondhand Smoke. I wanted to tell Colin's story, but didn't feel like it fit tidily into the main Dartmoor action, given he was sent to Texas to prospect, and given the overarching narrative unfolding in the main series. Thus, a spinoff series was born. 

Book one takes place in Amarillo, Texas, where an apprehensive Colin meets VP Candyman, and his sister, Jenny Snow. This is also where we first meet Fox, and eventually Michelle, Tenny, Eden, Axelle, Pongo, Melissa Dixon, Devin, Raven, and Toly (though Pongo and Toly first pop up in The Wild Charge, we don't get to spend any proper time with them until their books in this series). 

Each book takes place in chapters outside of Knoxville, Texas and New York so far, and the storylines stray a bit farther from the main club action in Dartmoor. Prodigal Son has strong spy/secret government elements, and Long Way Down is a police procedural/romantic thriller. They might be spinoffs, but the events of each book all contribute to the staggering Dartmoor finale that is Lord Have Mercy. 

I'll provide a link to the whole series, and below, I've folded the books into their proper reading order within the main narrative: 

Fearless
Price of Angels
Half My Blood
The Skeleton King
Secondhand Smoke
Snow in Texas
Tastes Like Candy
Loverboy
American Hellhound 
Shaman
Prodigal Son
Lone Star
Homecoming 
The Wild Charge 
Long Way Down
Nothing More
Lord Have Mercy
Beware of Dog (coming soon)

#TeaserTuesday: Don't Let Go

 

Remember the police procedural I mentioned on Sunday? The one I said I might post part of here just to throw it out into the universe? Well, consider this the wind up, and the pitch. 

Don't Let Go is currently sitting at 61,500 words, and despite lots of waffling, it seems like it would be a shame to abandon it with so much already written. Plus, I've grown attached to the characters, and already have a sequel planned. *ducks tomatoes* 

This is a contemporary novel set in Nashville, TN, that's half M/F romantic suspense, and half police procedural about a group of detectives struggling with personal problems against the backdrop of an assault against a celebrity author. After writing College Town, in which Lawson wants to be and is struggling to become an author, I decided to flip the script: this novel's central protagonist is an author who's hit it big, and has garnered a lot of ugly, unwanted attention in the process. She's attacked after a book signing in Nashville, and the local detectives set about solving the case while the media has a field day. Stuck in Nashville during the investigation, our author, Avery, becomes romantically entangled with the sexy district attorney in charge of taking her attackers to trial. Conflict of interest much? 

It's a whodunnit meets character-driven real-life drama, and I'm dropping the first five chapters here. Have a gander, see if you're interested, and leave me a comment. 😊 

*Fair warning, this hasn't been edited or proofed AT ALL, so here there be typos. 

1

 

An employee in a pin-bedecked ID lanyard claps her hands and then cups them around her mouth to yell, “Attention, shoppers! TBR is now closed! Please collect your final purchases and make your way to the register!”

Avery glances up from the page she’s signing with a start. “It’s ten already?”

“Yes,” her publicist, Trish, says with a gusty sigh and a fast check of her Apple watch. “Thank God.” She then turns a severe smile on the last fan in line that leaves the woman blinking and stepping back. That’s Trish: punctual, organized to a fault, a hell of a hard worker…terrible with people. “No offense, ma’am. We hope you enjoyed the signing.” She gives a little shoo motion with the flats of her hands.

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Six

 

Chapter Six is a flashback to fourteen-years-ago, the drive-by incident that prompted Mercy being named bodyguard for the Teague ladies. Mercy fled New Orleans because the police started sniffing around the club, asking after the missing persons they were slowly starting to link to Mercy, but of all the chapters, he wound up in Tennessee thanks to a request from Ghost. Things were heating up with the Carpathians, and Ghost wanted to recruit strong, violent, unflinching brothers willing and able to take on the fight. Then the drive-by happened at Stella's, and, without argument from James, Ghost tapped Mercy as personal security for his girls. Maggie and Ava seemed to like him, and Ghost thought Mercy's seeming interest in Ava, the way he didn't ignore her or brush her off, was a good match. 

(Oh, how he'd come to regret that - but only in the short-term.)

This whole chapter is a flashback I included for the purposes of showing rather than telling. Life as the child of an MC officer is just different. Most eight-year-olds are worried about picture day, and their favorite outfits, and what their mom packed for lunch. Ava's worries are much more sinister, and though neither Ghost nor Maggie say so explicitly here, they made a decision early on to keep Ava safe, but not to sugarcoat the reality of their lifestyle from her. Ghost is all-in with the club; he's VP, and knows he'll someday be president, and he's not conflicted at all about being an outlaw. Likewise, Maggie is fully accepting of the club, and the life. Theirs is not a Jax-and-Tara conflict in which she's going to encourage him to walk away from all he's known and try to shield the children from it. As a couple, they're in, and so they've decided that a naive child is a child in danger. I never wanted to have a moral discussion about the ethics of teaching a child how to be an outlaw from birth; rather, this is the reality of their situation, and they're doing what they think is best to help Ava grow up within their world. 

Whether it's Sons of Anarchy itself, or biker books in general, the theme of clashing worlds seems to dominate the internal tension landscape. Hard-nosed criminals falling for civilian women. Maggie started out a civilian, sure, but I had no interest in telling a story that involved Ghost and Maggie clashing over how to raise a child. The way I laid it out in Fearless allows for a totally immersive reading experience, like stepping off a plane in a country in which you don't speak the language and learning on the fly. As we go deeper into Fearless, we'll see more of Maggie dealing with other Knoxville moms, often to hilarious effect. 

Mercy met Ava when he found her hiding in the chapel, but Chapter Six shows them getting to know one another. As a homeschooled kid who became a social outcast prior to joining the club, Mercy's not "too cool" to talk to an eight-year-old, and he finds her straightforwardness charming. When he says, "I never liked being lied to," the poor man has no idea how much his own beloved father lied to him. Ugh. I'm sorry, Mercy. It gets rough. 

But unlike Remy the elder, Mercy is VERY honest, and Ava latches onto that trait immediately. Her parents are blunt with her, but a lot of the other Dogs give her the brush-off in a well-meaning way. He's the first adult Dog to truly engage with her, and give her words any weight, so she gets attached fast and firmly. 

With regard to Stella's re: a Facebook question, Stella's is not based on a real cafe. I have an aesthetic fondness for restaurants that really put in the decorating effort, and I love perusing bakery cases, even if I can't eat anything in them. 

ICYMI 3/16

 

I feel like I ought to start making Sundays official catch-up, in-case-you-missed-it days. Today, I'm feeling incredibly thankful to have made it through last night's violent storm outbreak with no damage to people, animals, or property. We got lucky. 

Here's what's happening in my personal authorsphere:

1) I have a giveaway going on my Facebook page; I'm giving out five copies of the newly released hardback edition of Fearless. You can check this post for entry details. 

2) If you'd like to BUY a hardback copy of Fearless, you can find it here. 

3) If you own/work for an independent bookstore and would like to STOCK signed copies of Fearless (or any of my books), please email me at authorlaurengilley@gmail.com and I'll be happy to order, sign them, and send them your way!

4) I'm conducting a one-chapter-a-week read-along for Fearless. Each Monday, I do a write-up here on the blog, in which I reflect back on the writing process, and my artistic intentions with the book, and then readers can ask questions or discuss the chapter directly in the Read-Along Group on Facebook. 

5) I've got multiple projects going, which means I don't make massive progress on a lone project, but will end up with at least three books ready to go back-to-back. One of my projects is a standalone romantic suspense/police procedural that I'm waffling on. I have more than 60k words of it written, so it seems like a shame to abandon it, but I don't really know if it's something anyone would want to read. I might wind up sharing a few chapters here on the blog to get a feel for interest. Aside from it, I'm also working on The Winter Palace, a Sons of Rome betweener novella, Beware of Dog, Lean Dogs Legacy Book Six, and Avarice of the Empire, The Drake Chronicles Book Six. Which book are you most looking forward to? 

6) If you have a chance, and feel like doing so, Lord Have Mercy could use some reviews, either on Amazon or Goodreads. It would help boost the book's visibility. 

Tomorrow, we start the book club discussion for Chapter Six of Fearless, so be sure to join me here, on FB, or Instagram for that! 

#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. 

#WorkshopWednesday: Learning From Failure

Some books are more popular than others. Some books are so UNpopular that you wish you'd never written them. 

I kid. Mostly. 

One of the things it can be difficult to keep in mind with regard to authoring books is the tired, but very true adage about learning from our failures. Every failure does teach us something, if we're receptive to that knowledge. And even if it sucks to realize a failure was an entire year in the making. 

Publishing any book is a gamble: you're betting your time and effort against the likelihood of it selling. Traditionally published authors with book advances have a guaranteed cushion. Self-published authors are going all in without a safety net. Sometimes the gamble pays off, and sometimes it doesn't. That's when you have to start asking yourself the hard questions: why did this book fail? Is it market related? Trend related? Series related? Are there readers holding out on a series until it's complete, or is continuing a series just putting good money after bad? You have to take a step back and seriously self-reflect. Will more advertising help? Or was the book a lost cause from the get go?

That's the business part of learning from failure. My takeaways in this instance have been twofold: write shorter, snappier books in general, and end this series specifically. 

But the more hopeful, and useful, aspect of failure is that you can't become a better writer without completing books. 

I have always written. Short stories, scenes I wished were included in favorite TV shows, poems, contest entries. I was obviously a stronger writer at eighteen than I was at four, but I didn't notice marked improvement in my work until I started writing novels to completion. I started dozens in my high school and college years, and ran out of steam around ten-thousand words in. In every case, that initial burst of confidence would fade, and I'd talk myself out of continuing, certain the idea wasn't as worthy as I'd first assumed. In this way, I was unable to become a better writer. Anyone can start a story, but carrying it through the middle and end requires commitment. An introductory scene sets a stage, yes, but it doesn't highlight the growth of the characters, or teach you anything about plot, or pacing, or the subtle use of tension. It wasn't until I finished my very first novel - an early version of God Love Her that will never see the light of day - that I realized I could write a book, and only then could I set about learning how to write better books. 

I've written more than forty full-length novels at this point, and each one has taught me something different about craft. As we go through our Fearless read-along, I've cringed over some of my own words - and that's a good thing, because it means that I've grown, and that I'm a more skilled author, and that I can write with more authority in the future. 

There have been many days since its completion that I truly have wished I'd never written Lord Have Mercy. It took me a year, and I can't help but think about all the ways that time could have been spent more successfully. But even if it's a failure of a book, I learned a great deal about my own style in the process. I pushed myself, and I could feel the growth as it was happening. Writing that book helped me level up, which means the next book, and the next, will be better. 

If you ever find yourself writing something and you start to doubt whether it's worth finishing, I think it is. Even if you fail, finishing is where we learn the most. 

#TeaserTuesday: Beware of Dog

 

“What I was gonna say, before you get all offended for no reason, is that I seriously think you need to talk to your sister about what’s going on.”

That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. She covered her surprise with a dramatic eyeroll. “God, is that all anyone can think to tell me? ‘Call your sister.’ ‘Check in with your sister.’”

He wasn’t deterred. “This shit that’s going on with your friend is heavy.”

“Oh my God.”

“Shut up, brat, I’m being serious. It’s a big deal. The fact that it happened, yeah, but your friend’s a goddamn basket case, and you’re trying to support her all on your own. I think you need to talk to your sister, because I think you need someone to support you.”

“That’s…actually rather sweet.” And it was, as was the way he wrinkled his nose in distaste. “But I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not bothering Raven with this. Between the baby, and her business, she doesn’t have time for stupid drama.”

His head tilted to a rarely-used imploring angle, the one that reminded her, every time, that he’d seen active combat in the Army, and that he wasn’t the give-a-damn good-time guy his club brothers seemed to think he was. “It’s not stupid, and she would make time for you.”

“No. I said I wasn’t going to bother her, and I’m not.”

“Damn it, Cass,” he sighed, and wiped a hand down his jaw. Evening stubble was coming in, and rasped against his palm. “You need somebody in your corner.”

“I have you.”

He froze, hand halfway lowered, and darted a glance at her through half-lowered lashes.

“Don’t I?”

He blinked. She could see the rapid throb of his pulse in the side of his throat, and wondered what it meant. Then he straightened, arms folded tight—tighter than before, body now strung with tension. “Yeah.” His voice was gruff. “Of course.”

 

I've been teasing this book rather coyly, I suppose, because I've had some questions about it, so I thought I'd clear them up here.

I'm currently 27k words into book six in the Lean Dogs Legacy series, titled Beware of Dog. It's a story I conceived before Lord Have Mercy was released, and it simply would not leave me alone. So the Dartmoor Series as a whole is still considered complete, and this novel will be part of the spinoff series. It's not a standalone, though you could certainly attempt to tackle it if you're okay not being wholly up to speed on all the past events. 

It takes place in NYC, and stars Walsh's younger sister Cassandra, and her NY Dog bodyguard Shep, who we first met in Long Way Down, and who was tasked with watching out for Raven and Cass in Nothing More. It's a more tightly-focused, personal story, without the overarching drama of the Abacus plotline. Though not nearly as epic in scope, it definitely has some major Fearless vibes. Age gap, protector/charge, charming jerk love interest. It's a fun time. 

There's no release date yet since I'm very much still in the thick of the writing process, but be on the lookout for more teasers and updates for it. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Five

 No one cared that he was Felix. 

Chapter Five is on the short side: a quick flashback to fourteen years ago, and a transitional beat between Mercy and Ava's encounter and the church vote from Mercy's POV. Me meet Hound, Rottie, and Troy through his eyes, and witness a little of the whole-club dynamic as everyone files into church. 

As a reread, though, I'm struck by Mercy's melancholy here. The way he, in this moment, and in the past, hasn't always felt like a person within the MC. This is a stark contrast to the beloved husband, son-in-law, brother-in-law, friend and confidante he becomes over the course of the series. By the time we get to Lord Have Mercy, there's no question that he's beloved; that his family and club will kill and sacrifice for him. But in this moment, he is keenly aware of his value as a killer and little else. 

That was the scary part: he wasn't a bit crazy.

Whether he is or isn't insane by clinical standards is irrelevant. Mercy is self-aware, perhaps hyper-self-aware. He knows what he's capable of, and that he doesn't really have an upper limit on brutality, and he also knows that this is a useful quality for the club. He doesn't and hasn't ever resented his club brothers for being squeamish by comparison. While he's confident in some arenas, he's got a low sense of self-worth when it comes to the more personal and emotional aspects of life. 

This is why Ava makes such an impact on him. When she's little, he's delighted that she isn't frightened of him, and instead seeks him out. The fact that she finds safety and comfort in his presence fills a very specific, unacknowledged need for him. This eventually blossoms into romantic feelings. Through every stage of their relationship, Ava is the one who makes him feel like a person: loved, needed, valued for his personality and the abundance of love he has to give. 

Fearless Hardback Giveaway!

 It's giveaway time!

What: 5 hardback copies of Dartmoor Book One, Fearless. 

When: Now - April 10th, 2025

Who: anyone! 

To celebrate ten years of Fearless, and the new hardback edition, I'm giving away five signed copies! 

To enter, go to my author Facebook page to comment on the giveaway post. If you don't have a Facebook account, then tell me so in a comment here and I'll add your name to the list of entrants over on FB. 

Winners will be chosen at random on April 10th.

Thank you, all, and good luck! 

If you'd like to purchase a hardback copy of Fearless, you can find it here.  

#TeaserTuesday: Cass and Shep

 

Back to lightly tip-tapping away at this as I recover from a hellish cold. If you're thinking "wait, Lauren, really?" about this pairing...trust me, it's gonna work, and work well. 😉

“What about Sig?”

“What about him?”

“Did you beat him up?”

Something squealed. A locker door, she thought. “What the hell kind of name is Sig?”

“That’s lovely. Avoid the question.”

“Maybe he should go with ‘Stick.’ Have you seen his arms? What’s the opposite of gains?”

“Shepherd.”

“Yeah, okay! Okay.”

She waited.

And waited some more.

“Shep—”

His voice was low and tight and nervous, she thought, when he said, “Did you really think that could happen to you and I wouldn’t send a message?”

She…

Oh.

Did he…?

He did that for her?

“Where are you?” he cut in. “Do not tell me you’re hanging out with that guy again.”

“No. I’m…” she hesitated, because she hadn’t expected to explain any of this to him over the phone. “I’m at the hospital.”

“What?”

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Four

 

*Slithers out of my coffin to offer you this one week late and not as detailed as I'd hoped because I'm still sick. Ugh.*

There's lots of little gems in this chapter - which I believe is the longest one yet - but the two scenes that stand out as most important in my mind are the first one, the flashback where Ava recalls hiding in the chapel; and her scene with Mercy at the end. 

The prose in the chapel scene is intentionally lush, ripe with details, as a means of carrying forward the mythical tone of the overall narrative. There are places, terribly ordinary places, that we visit as children, and in our minds, they become as spectacular and fascinating as Versailles. The chapel was one such place for Ava as a child, and that's precisely why I chose to write it for the first time from her 8-year-old POV. The level of detail here shows the reader that she isn't a dispassionate observer; likewise, it again highlights how much the club, and her past, means to her still. This place is knitted into her bones, and she'll never shake it off. 

This scene is also the first time she meets Mercy. Absolutely nothing untoward happens, but I still was very aware that showing their age difference in this way would raise some reader hair. At every turn with this book, I strove to "go there." The life these characters lead isn't legal or comfortable, so I never tried to draw those hard lines along their personal lives. 

This chapter as a whole shows Ava's (erroneous) assumptions about never having truly belonged with the club. Her seeing herself as "only" a daughter, rather than an old lady, isn't a statement from me about social hierarchy or worthiness, but a personal fear of Ava's, before, by the end of the book, she comes fully into her own. Likewise, Mercy seems like an ass in this chapter, because neither Ava nor the readers have yet been privy to his heartache and real feelings. 

Recall the Nietzche quote from chapter one: it's all about perspective, and so far, ours, and Ava's, is limited. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Three

 

"Never forget how small you are, Felix. When a man starts thinking he can control the beast, that's when She swallows him whole. No one remembers his name; he ain't nothin' but bleached bone washing up amongst the reeds, bits of him deep in the belly of a gator somewhere along the slimy bottom."

Like Chapter One, Chapter Three is putting in the work with this book. In Chapter Three, we finally, properly, meet Mercy.

Nothing about him surprised most anyone, really. 

One of the things I'm doing as we go along with this reread is address some of the cutting, usually hilarious bits of criticism the book, and I, have received over the past decade. Not because I have an axe to grind, but because I'm hoping to offer some insight into my process, and explain the mindfulness behind all the little creative choices in the novel. One such funny critique was - paraphrasing here - "Why should I care about alligators?" I wrote this post about it last year, so I won't rehash it all, but it's a very intentional choice in Chapter Three to introduce Mercy's POV with a glimpse at his childhood. Mercy is an unlikely combo of childishly sweet and extravagantly enthusiastic about violence. I don't think that characterization works without understanding the ways his early years were his most formative. 

Mercy's a strange bird. I researched the current MC romance trends back in 2014 when I started writing, saw the man-of-few-words, grunting, woman-ordering-around stereotypes, and swerved hard in the other direction. With all the guys, but mostly with Mercy. If I was going to write a Southern Epic, I was going to write a Southern Epic Byronic hero to go with it. My Cajun Heathcliff crossed with a modern Rhett Butler. His Cheerfully Murderous personality is 100% inspired by my now-departed dog, Viktor. 

A visit to the swamp of the past is a slow start here...but it all comes back in the end, and it's an essential part of understanding Mercy. 

Our other big introduction here is, of course, Ghost. 

Though a few inches shorter, Ghost was an imposing figure in his own right. The kind of man who made taller men want to bend their knees so they were on the same level. Lean and hard with muscle, his parentage of Aidan had never been in question: the same strong nose, dark hair and eyes, low brows that gave him a perpetual scowl, and a firm jaw that was always grinding. He’d boxed in the army, and he still had a fighter’s wide shoulders and catlike grace. Ghost never fidgeted; he had no nervous tics. He occupied a room with such indomitable presence, a radiant, unaffected confidence that was a part of his every fiber, and never a show.

Writing Ghost has always been fun, because I've always greatly enjoyed his role within the story, and have always spun him in a way that I knew would make readers dislike him. Let's be blunt: he's an asshole. But it was super important to me to showcase a couple of things, especially early on:

Firstly, that he's not going to be the same sort of president James was. He cares about the success and viability of his club beyond the social aspects. Lots of guys love to talk about being an outlaw, and playing by their own rules, but Ghost has the ambition and the ruthless savvy to back it up. In all honesty, I hope no one expected an MC president to be a nice guy. 

I also wanted to show a clear juxtaposition between Mercy's dad's "Daddy" bonhomie, and Ghost's relentless practicality and total disregard for niceties. It's something that will, ten years later, be echoed quite satisfyingly in Lord Have Mercy when Mercy stands up at church and says that there are times he's wanted to strangle Ghost, but that he loves him better than he loved his own father. That's a big deal. 

One last parting note: I love this line, because it's Mercy acknowledging what we'll all soon learn about Ava:

It seemed only fitting that as Ghost became the new president, Maggie would finally take her rightful place as queen of the MC.

               Ava didn’t know it yet, but she had that same steel in her.

Fearless Read-Along: Unconditional

 

Tomorrow we move on to Chapter Three in our read-along, so get your final Chapter Two questions, comments, observations, etc. in at the FB discussion group (there's obviously not a real time limit, you can ask about anything at any time). 

Today's post - later than intended thanks to a storm and a ten-hour power outage, yikes! - isn't so much focused on Chapter Two as on Ava and Mercy in general. Y'all had some great observations this week, specifically with regard to the Valentine's post. 

I loved hearing which romance in the Dartmoor Series was everyone's favorite. Lots of Ava/Mercy votes, as expected, but a fair number of Ghost/Maggie, Michael/Holly, Walsh/Emmie, and Reese/Tenny, too. I love seeing that variation, because I've always sought to showcase different relationship dynamics and character archetypes throughout the series, knowing everyone has different tastes. But even so, Mercy and Ava's love story sticks out; it feels more "epic" and cinematic than some of the others, and I think - and y'all awesomely pointed out! - that that's down to the unlikely and unconditional nature of their romance. 

Mercy and Ava are rare in that they quite literally know everything about one another. In part because Mercy was around while Ava was growing up, but also because, in the back half of Fearless, Mercy entrusts Ava with the dark side of his family history. She of course already knows all about the dark things he's willing to do for the club, and for her. There's no secrets between them, and they're both very, very secure in one another's love and affection. They aren't hiding anything from one another. Neither of them thinks about being unfaithful or is otherwise tempted in any way.

Whatever else is happening around them, there's never any doubt that they'll do absolutely anything it takes for one another and their family. That's a rare thing in real life, I think, and it's what makes their relationship so special. 

It's also a perhaps more extreme echo of Ghost and Maggie's relationship. Ghost is gruff and unpoetic, and as a couple they're longer-established and less demonstrative than Mercy and Ava are in the beginning, but Maggie and Ghost are just as ride-or-die for one another, something Aidan's unpleasantly reminded of in Lord Have Mercy. 

Happy Book Birthday to College Town

 

It's Valentine's Day, and the one-year bookiversary of College Town. Mired deep in the middle of writing Lord Have Mercy, at that stage in a book that size when it feels as though it will never end, I was struck by a sudden burst of unrelated inspiration, and ended up writing a standalone M/M romance that not only helped me work through some sticky places in LHM, but became my favorite project of the year. 

It features a second-chance romance between childhood sweethearts, some mafia action, and a surprise twist ending. You can grab a copy here, or at B&N or Kobo, and there's also a follow-up novella told from Tommy's POV, A Cure for Recovery. Both are perfect short and spicy-sweet V-Day reads. 

Blurb:

Welcome to Eastman, home of the Eastman University Eagles. They’ve got twelve bars, twice as many coffeeshops, and Lawson Granger’s probably going to die behind the counter of Coffee Town, watching all the bright young people in town get their degrees and get on with their lives. He’s not miserable, exactly, but between working retail, writing books that’ll never get published, and helping take care of his infirm father, his life’s running a little short on joy. He has his family, though, and his best friend, Dana, and dreaming about being published is somehow better than accepting that he never will be.

Then the boy who broke his heart twenty years ago walks into the shop one day and throws Lawson’s entire small world into chaos. Tommy Cattaneo grew up handsome. And rich, clearly, judging by his suit, and his watch, and his chauffeured Lincoln. If Lawson’s shocked to see him, Tommy is dumbfounded. Lawson’s happy to pretend they’re strangers, despite the traitorous racing of his heart, but Tommy is adamant that they talk. He wants to explain why he left town suddenly…and returned twenty years later, with a beautiful fiancée, and a mansion, and a wardrobe that costs more than Lawson’s car.

When it becomes clear that Tommy means to stay in town for a while, and that he won’t take no for an answer, Lawson agrees to hear him out. Just once, and then he can lay his old heartache to rest. It’s probably a stupid excuse, anyway. I mean, t’s not like Tommy’s in the mafia…right?

#WorkshopWednesday: Nonlinear

Chapter One lays down a lot of foreshadowing, and Chapter Two ups the ante. By this point, it's very clear that something's gone down in the past between Mercy and Ava. But there are also lots of little hints about Ava's upbringing, the club's history, and even Tango's dark past. In a different sort of novel, this could merely be foreshadowing as a shorthand backstory. But this is me, and my favorite literary device is the nonlinear narrative structure. 

You'd be hard-pressed to find one of my books that doesn't include flashbacks. (I think the Drakes are straight-up linear, so that's something.) The most common criticism of the "Then" and "Now" technique is that frequent or lengthy flashbacks disrupt forward momentum, and force readers to flip back because they've forgotten where the present-day story line left off before the flashback began. Valid criticisms, but criticisms I'm willing to risk because, for me, a linear narrative can just as easily be struck down by a case of "what's the point?" In a novel of this size and scope, a linear storytelling structure can start to feel like an endless slog. 

With Fearless specifically, it was important to me that I show, explicitly and in detail, Mercy and Ava's first doomed romance when she was seventeen. Because it's taboo, and shocking, and ends badly, I felt like readers needed to walk through step-by-step with Mercy and Ava in order to understand just how much they mean to one another. Seeing it firsthand builds more empathy for their unlikely situation than summarizing it in a couple paragraphs. I could have started in the past, and written straight through to the present day, but I feel like that would have made the book feel longer and less accessible. Readers would go through that whole roller coaster with Mercy and Ava, be left sad and disappointed, then see there were four-hundred more pages to go in the book. I think lots of people, having experienced one denouement, would have set the book aside, and might not have returned to it. 

By starting in the present day and introducing a juicy new conflict and a scary enemy, it establishes intrigue from the very first. Readers can then safely enjoy the large flashback portion of the book knowing that Ava and Mercy will reunite five years later. That they'll be back in one another's orbit, still drawn to each other, and with much more story to tell. 

In this way, the beginning of the book hooks you in; the second part gives you the sordid history, so you'll understand why things are so dramatic now; then parts three and four carry us home. I genuinely can't imagine writing it a different way. I think the nonlinear narrative style allows you more leeway with backstory, rather than less. I think it makes the novel richer in the long run. 

#TeaserTuesday: AOTE Cover Reveal

 

“I want to believe you.” That was far too candid, but she was past the point of caring.

He nodded. “I understand why you don’t.”

Amelia frowned, and massaged at the tension that sprouted in the center of her forehead. “Gods…why are you so bloody agreeable all the time? I hate it.” When she gapped her fingers and peered through them, she saw that the slight frown he’d worn the past few minutes had turned the other direction. His lips formed the barest upward curve, more a neutral expression than a true smile, but something bright had come into his eyes.

“I’ve never actually been part of an argument before,” he said, like a confession.

She snorted. “No free will, no romance, no arguing, hm?”

“None.”

Tired of holding it, arm full of pins and needles, Amelia laid the sword carefully on the ground, within reach should she need it. She rested her elbow on her knee, and cupped her chin in her hand. “I should kill you, you know.”

He nodded, and looked neither surprised nor alarmed. “You’d be within your rights, both as an Aquitainian and the commander of this army.”

“See?” She sat up, and gestured at him with both hands, frustrated, tired, bloody sick of making decisions and then wondering if they were the right decisions. “Agreeable. Too agreeable. What sort of man says ‘yes, my lady, you’d be within your rights to kill me?’ This is why I don’t trust you. Why you must be spying on us.”

He waited a beat, seeing if she was done, she supposed. Her too-quick, open-mouthed breathing filled the tent, and she clamped her lips shut tight.

When she was quiet, he said, “It’s as I’ve said before: I don’t wish to be a Sel any longer. Not to be a Selesee slave, at any rate. I want to be free. And I believe helping you is the only way I can be.”

A part of Amelia wanted to scream.

A larger part of her wanted to tip over onto the cot, curl up, and sleep for three days.

She did neither, but said, “When was the last time someone offered you water?”

“A…while.”

#TeaserTuesday: LDL 6

 

So hot off the press it doesn't even have a title yet. I started planning this before I broke ground on Lord Have Mercy, and, unfortunately, it won't leave me alone. This one scales back to a more intimate, personal conflict, a little more romance-focused, less club-takes-on-the-world. We're back in New York with the youngest of Devin's brood, set three years after Nothing More. 

 

Shep expected an interrogation, and wasn’t disappointed. The second they heard a door click shut down the hall, Toly turned to him, eyes nothing but dark slits, jaw set at a tense angle. The whole effect was ruined by the squirming baby on his shoulder and the disaster of his hair, but Shep was going to enjoy that rather than point it out.

“Where was she?”

“Sounding awful fatherly there, Moscow,” Shep drawled.

Toly exhaled forcefully and didn’t deign to repeat himself. He was serious, Shep saw, and he could respect that; in this case, he was serious, too.

He dropped the asshole act. “Big white townhouse on the UWS. She was sitting on the sidewalk when I got there, halfway to hypothermic, and some little punkass was trying to give her something in a Solo cup.” His hand clenched on empty air at the memory of seeing her like that, clearly incapacitated, weaving where she sat in an inelegant heap on the cold concrete, some chinless little shit looming in her face and waving around more drugs in a cup. “When she called, she was slurring and out of it. She said she only had three sips and shouldn’t have been drunk.”

Toly’s expression darkened. “And you believed her?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“She just lied straight to my face.”

“Yeah, well, she doesn’t lie to me.”

Toly opened his mouth…and then closed it. A groove appeared between his black brows.

Shep found that he didn’t want to backtrack or otherwise diffuse the statement. It was true, and he liked that it was. In fact, it felt satisfying to define it out loud that way. Maybe she was a little shit, but she didn’t feed him fibs the way she did other people. He got the truth; it almost felt, strangely, satisfyingly, like he’d earned that truth.

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Two

 

             “What’s wrong with you? You were fine, and then you just weren’t.” His head dipped, his eyes bright and knowing. “When your brother mentioned whoever that Mercy person is – that is a person, right? And not the dog? I honest to God can’t tell.”

               She felt her lips form a smile, but she was deep inside her own head, somewhere back behind her face and whatever mannequin expression it managed to propel toward him. “I’m just tired,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”

               “Okay, clearly, I don’t know jack shit about all this biker nonsense” – a part of her recoiled against that phrasing – “but I know you well enough to know that something’s up. It was like someone flipped a switch back there at the…the…”

               “Clubhouse.”

               “Yeah.” He reached for a lock of her dark brown hair and gave it a little tug. “You’re not yourself.”

               Maybe, she thought bitterly, you don’t know when I’m being “myself.” You wouldn’t like me if you ever saw the real me. 

Reading this chapter was an exercise in what my mom likes to call giving myself some grace, because I wanted to rewrite the entire thing. I wouldn't change anything that happens, that's all fine and necessary, but I very much wanted to change the way I describe all of it. I think that's going to be something that plagues me through the read-along. It's been ten years, and I'm a stronger, better writer now...but now is not the time to invest time and effort into the herculean task of rewriting this monster. I'm choosing to see it as a net positive that, ten years later, I've grown enough as a writer to see where I would tighten and adjust my old work. 

Anyway. Chapter Two introduces us to some more major players, chiefly Maggie and Carter. The queen is busy getting the clubhouse set up for the big party, and we also meet her fellow old ladies. It was a little surreal to see Ava thinking of herself as not being one of them: she's still unattached to a Dog here, and after ten years of writing her as Mrs. Lecuyer, it's startling to go back to the time before. 

I said in the FB group last week that I think Maggie is one of the characters who changes the least over the course of the series, and I definitely stand by that statement. As much as I love writing characters who struggle, and who overcome, and who learn about themselves and their families in the process, this ragtag group of characters needs a rock, and that's Mags. I don't think she ever lets anyone down over the course of ten books...although, to be fair, Aidan's a little bummed after LHM for obvious reasons. He gets it, but it still stings. 

Speaking of struggling, poor Carter's in a not-great place here in Chapter Two. His dreams of a bright future have been shattered, and he's more than a little lost in life, searching for a purpose. I think that's something that attracts men to outlaw MCs in real life - that need for a purpose, feeling out of options and shut out from society - and it's something I tried to bring to life with Dartmoor. No one successful and well-adjusted prospected with the club, though many of them ended up that way after patching in. 

Anyone reading Fearless for the first time probably feels bad for Ronnie at this point. Ava isn't acting like herself - or she isn't acting like the version of herself Ronnie has always known. Chapter Two is the beginning of the end for them: every second spent in Knoxville she feels more divided, and his insistence that something is wrong only makes her resent him more. In this chapter, we see Ronnie starting to push back against her emotional whiplash.

Of course, knowing what I do about Ronnie, it's hard for me to feel too bad for him. 

In Chapter Two, we "lay eyes" on Mercy, but we don't see Ava interact with him. It was important to me that he stand out physically in his scene to really drive home what a blow the sight of him is for Ava. I'll admit, and I think it's obvious in the glimpse we catch of him through Ava's eyes here, that I did not initially envision Jason Momoa when crafting Mercy. There's only a tiny handful of characters I had actors in mind for from the start, and Mercy wasn't one of them. But my friend Lisa mentioned him in the early days of Dartmoor, and it caught on quick with readers. At this point, I think Jason's the universally accepted head-canon, and his real-life personality is a good fit for Mercy. 

Comments, questions? Drop them below, or head over to the FB group to join the book club discussion! Grab a copy of the book if you haven't and read along with us!