Vampire Hopes and Dreams

One item on my (overly) ambitious list of writing goals this year is to release something in the Sons of Rome universe. I was having Nik and Sasha thoughts last night while I was at the barn, and remembered all over again that I haven't put out a book in that series since Golden Eagle in December of 2019. It's been almost four years 😭 I've got other projects waiting, but I would love, love, love to squeeze in The Winter Palace. 

Book five is going to be Lionheart, which I've done some work on, and which will require more research, more time at the computer, and more effort than any book I've ever written. It's one-third ongoing, contemporary storyline, one-third ode to Sir Robin of Locksley, one-third Richard I docu-drama. It's a big project, so big that thinking about it overwhelms me at times. One storyline I was going to include catches us up with Nik and his pack in Buffalo - but I decided it was a storyline better suited to its own, separate novella, which I have started, and will be inspired by a series of vignettes posted on the blog, filled out by new action. It's called The Winter Palace, and will address several major shifts within the pack. It won't follow the vignettes exactly, and some will be entirely rewritten, but the action of it will play out at Trina's family compound in upstate New York, and lead us straight into the action of Lionheart. 

Below is a sample of chapter one, but you can read the inspiring vignettes under the Scenes From Buffalo tag here on the blog. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.

Fingers crossed we get more vamps before the year's out! 

From The Winter Palace, Sons of Rome Book 4.5
Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Gilley 

Nikita lit a fresh cigarette off the butt of the old one. He dropped the last bit of the filter and crushed it beneath his bootheel. Took a long, long drag off the fresh one, and blew the smoke in a hard plume up into the air. The wind swirled it into tattered gray ribbons, carrying them off between the trees.

The familiar, acrid stink of Marlboros couldn’t cover the scents that clung to the sable collar of his coat: blood, old and new; wolf musk, Sasha’s. He imagined he could smell Dima’s cologne, and pastry flakes from a pirozhki someone had tried to press on him. Fancied Moscow still clung to this coat…that coat. The long black leather one that had kept him warm when he’d worked for men he’d hated; the coat he’d then hated in turn; the coat that Sasha loved, and that Nik himself was, slowly, embracing again.  

Scenes From Buffalo Part Six

Major Golden Eagle spoilers ahead! And our Unlikely Triumvirate. 

Severin had an audience in attendance before he managed to get the bag open, this time. Finches, and chickadees, and even a few woodpeckers, their checkered black and white feathers fluttering like playing cards as they alighted on the snow in the gathering crowd around him, looking up with expectant, black bead eyes, waiting for him. The cardinals were his favorites, the males in their brightest red, and the females in their muted browns and oranges, their rust tails, both genders sporting the little feather hats for which they were named. 

Scenes From Buffalo Part Five

“I think he’s afraid.”

Scenes From Buffalo Part Four

The air smelled of frost, and cold, and pine sap, and prey. Sasha ran with his mouth open, tongue lolling, diving and plunging through the heavy drifts gathered at the edge of the forest. He felt ice crystals digging at his toe pads; felt the wind in his face, sharp and wild. When he caught the scent of a rabbit, he gave a high, excited whine; changed course and plunged past the tree line, hot on the trail. He could sense and hear the other two wolves behind him; the musk of their fur, the bristling of their own excitement. It was almost like having a real four-legged pack again. 

Scenes From Buffalo: Part Three

Part Three. Spoilers for Golden Eagle. 

“Watch my body,” Trina instructed. “Not my hands. My body will tell you where I’m going next – the way I shift my weight. The knife is a distraction.” A wicked, serrated hunting number waited to strike in her right hand, held horizontally, its jagged edge gleaming.

“Who taught you that?” Anna asked from the sidelines, a grin in her voice.

Trina smirked. “Family friend.” Then she moved.

Scenes From Buffalo: Part Two

More fluff! More NY pack in Buffalo, spoilers for Golden Eagle. 

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Val sighed, and returned to his body. 

Scenes From Buffalo: Part One

I woke up this morning with this particular bit of post-Golden Eagle fluff stuck in my head, and had to write it out. Just a writing exercise, I said. Just stretching the old mental muscles, I lied to myself. By the time I finished, I realized I had lots of fluff I wanted to write, and that a good bit of it was tinged with angst. (Though, no worries, it's a reflective kind of angst, and it's also so much fluff.)

This isn't part of Lionheart, let it be known. I'm thinking it might be nice to have a little bridging novella that picks up with our NY pack in Buffalo. A novella, perhaps? Blog tidbits? We shall see. I just love these characters and I could write about them all day long.

This tidbit picks up a day or so after the end of Golden Eagle, so please be mindful of that if you haven't read/finished the book yet! 

(Grab it HERE if you need to get all caught up on the Sons of Rome Series)

And please enjoy today's totally self-indulgent snippet. 

*GE SPOILERS BELOW*