#DartmoorSeries Read-Along: Tastes Like Candy Part One

Men win wars.

Legends inspire them to do so.

And some legends...some are still living...

We've lost all momentum with this read-along, but I'm endeavoring to limp along anyway. For the next few days, we'll take a closer look at Tastes Like Candy. 

Looking at reader comments since the book's release in summer of 2016, this is one of the most well-liked books in the series. After Fearless, it's the one most often mentioned as a favorite in reviews, comments, messages, and emails, and I must admit I've always found that a little surprising - though maybe I shouldn't have. Candy is tall, and bold, and a good brother, a good leader, with a honeyed tongue. I've always loved his name; as with so many of my characters, Derek Snow's nickname was borrowed from a horse I used to know. Candyman; Candy for short. In-universe, this human Candyman earned his nickname thanks to a mean right hook; he's got a reputation for ruining teeth. 

The thing I enjoyed most about writing this book, however, was the glimpse it offers us of Devin Green's brood. 

It had begun like any other task, a photograph slid across her father's ancient cherrywood desk. It was raining, fat drops sliding down the window, casting shadows across the rug in the upstairs room above Baskerville Hall. 

(By now, you'll know that the club is named after a black dog legend - just as in "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and I couldn't resist the chance to name the London chapter's pub and headquarters after the estate in my favorite Sherlock Holmes story of all time.)

Like Ava, Michelle was born into the club - but unlike Ava, she was brought up as a useful soldier - or, more accurately, covert operative - in her father's London biker army. 

Her mother's passing had hit him hard. Someone had needed to step up and be the woman of the house. The woman of the club. She'd never viewed it as a choice, but as a natural progression. 

Michelle's dad, Phillip, never remarried after his wife died, nor did he settle down with a serious, long-term girlfriend, so Michelle, by default, became the woman of the London chapter. Not only that, but the London chapter operates very differently from the Knoxville chapter. London is a major metropolis, and an international hub, and it's simply not possible for a club like the Lean Dogs to be much in charge of anything, the way they are in smaller American cities and towns. Everything Phillip's done, every ladder he's climbed, every toe-hold he's achieved, has come through subtly and subterfuge, rather than the outright flexing of muscles, and he's used every tool at his disposal - including his daughter. The London chapter doesn't ride down the street in formation, or have shootouts in public - but like with all chapters, they handle problems that regular folks bring to their doorstep. When someone gets in deep trouble that can't be handled by the police, they come to the Dogs, and the Dogs make it right - though with less flash and strutting about than the American Dogs. The delightful irony of it all, for me, is that all of Devin's boys hate him, and yet all of them have tackled life's problems with dispassion, cunning, treachery, and finely-honed skill, just as he would. 

I'm still genuinely surprised that readers were surprised by the spy angle in Prodigal Son, when this book lays all the groundwork for it. Oh well. 

TLC opens in London, with Michelle and her uncle - who was raised as her brother - Tommy on an op gone wrong. We get to see flashes of the weeks leading up to it, the ways the club, as it expands and matures, is changing, the ways Tommy's already worried about the way some members react to her role with the Dogs. We get to meet Albie, and see his secret stash. And we get to see the verdict handed down, after the explosion: Michelle can't stay in London. 

Michelle has a lot in common with the other old ladies that we've met - her toughness, and her attitude, and her fierce love of family - but she interacts with the club in a completely new way from all the women we've met so far. That was exciting to write. Her role is one that inevitably shifts when she goes to Texas...but it's a role that we're exploring again in Lone Star, which is book seven of the main series, and coming soon. LS asks, Can someone who worked in the trenches alongside the club take a step back and be content with a more domestic life? The book is all about restlessness, in all its forms, and learning how to reconcile the different sides of a life. 

#TeaserTuesday: Lionheart First Look

Big teaser today! A look at Sons of Rome book five, Lionheart, due out this Christmas. 

Red set the little potted cactus down on the table in front of her brother, Eighteen. We have to give him a name! she thought for at least the hundredth time. She wanted him – both of them, Twelve, too – to choose their own names. Rooster had given her hers – but it had been a choice. What about Red? And she’d liked it right away, the simplicity of it; the way, just three letters, it sounded like a pet name, something intimate between two people who cared for one another. And in his low, rough voice, too…Red…

#Loverboy Read-Along

At the beginning of last week, I anticipated writing several posts for the read-along of this book. It was the most challenging - and in that sense rewarding - book of the whole series for me, and it covers all sorts of sensitive topics. There was a lot of unpacking to do, I thought. I've blogged about it in the past, but I spent all of last week struggling to put together a post. And I finally realized why. It's a tough book to read, yes, but I also think it's a book that says what it needs to. I don't know that blogging about it after the fact adds to its meaning or impact. 

So I decided I'm not going to pick it apart and tease out every scene. But I will say two things about it.

One, it was important to me that Tango not be stoic throughout this story. This isn't a book about being a tough biker guy. Tango can't be stoic here - he's hurting in so, so many ways. He needs help. His heart's shattered. I wanted to show him in pieces; show him struggling, and emotional, and leaning on his friends - and I wanted to show those friends picking him up and showing him that he's loved, unconditionally. It's a story about hope and healing and recovery, and, not about forgetting the past, but learning to live with it. I wanted Kev to be vulnerable. Every single line in which he seems fragile was a deliberate choice. 

And two, I wanted to pull back the curtain on Ian and show that this villain started as a victim. He isn't cruel for the sake of it. He isn't a cackling madman. At heart, he's a very damaged little boy doing the best he can - but where Tango has punished himself, Ian has punished others. His drug of choice has been flexing his power. I wanted to show the ways two people can go through the same thing, and walk away from it with completely different coping mechanisms for their trauma. Neither is right, neither is wrong. This is who they are; this is how they've healed, which is to say, badly. But, with loving support, they can start to soften some of those scars. 

What's your favorite thing about Loverboy? Is it a book you can read over and over again? Or does it hurt too much? 

Empathy

Over the holidays, I took advantage of my Amazon Prime membership and finally started watching a show that's intrigued me for a while, but which I'd been too chicken to start. I'm happy to report that Bryan Fuller's Hannibal - based on the novels about pop culture-notorious cannibal Hannibal Lecter - lives up to the hype, and then some. The show is DARK. The show is GORY. It's given open-minded me a nightmare or two, and, at this point, halfway through season three, I'm not ashamed to admit that I often pause the stream, and peek ahead on the progress bar so I know when to close my eyes or skip an especially icky moment. It's not a show for the faint of heart - nor for the close-minded. You see, I could wax poetic about Mads Mikkelsen - who I was a big fan of prior to watching this - for pages and pages, but this post isn't about the show. Not really. It's about the ways fiction offers us these special, exclusive windows into hearts and souls not our own...and the ways a lack of nuance, hate, and cancel culture are currently eroding all the benefits of dark fiction. 

In the first moments of the first episode of Hannibal, we meet Will Graham, a professor and special agent in the employ of the FBI. He's a profiler; he's also what's called a "pure empath." Will's gift is empathy: he - through artfully done segments of the show's narrative - has the ability to put himself wholly in the shoes of the criminals the FBI is trying to catch. He can follow their logic, and therefore anticipate their movements, thanks to his unique ability to let go of his own thoughts and biases. He himself doesn't have murderous impulses - though it's a theme Hannibal seeks to exploit in the show - but he's able to think like a murderer. He's wildly empathetic. 

What struck me from the first was this: authors have to be empaths, too. Oh, how often I beat the war drum of empathy. It's my constant refrain: a fiction author's job is to think like other people. I'm not putting my whole life and truth on the page, but I'm putting someone's life and truth there, and if anyone can read my work, and identify with it, and find something special in it, then I've done my job well. 

This week, in our Dartmoor Read-Along, it's Loverboy's turn. And, quite honestly, given the policing that's been happening in the book community over the past year, I knew some trepidation going into it. Tango's experience is not my experience - do I have a right to tell his story? That's just one of the things being debated on social media. In the past year, I've watched the same book "influencer" target two women authors I respect and admire greatly with Twitter callout posts. In one case, challenging a three-year age gap between characters as "pedophilia," and in another challenging an author's previous fanfic stories as "pedophilia," in the latter case, without any nuance or clarification as to the fic's actual intent. These are two specific, high-profile cases, but it happens all too often: someone on the internet using a cartoon avatar, a name that may or may not be real, and boosted by the safety of anonymity, launches a callout post in the name of "protecting" and "informing," but with the clear intent of harming an author's name and reputation. The conversation starts as "concerned" members of the book community wanting to limit who can tell which stories - but ends up, in truth, demanding that certain stories not be told at all. Both sentiments are appalling to me. In both cases - in any case - a reader has the choice to not read something he or she finds upsetting. Determining what's allowed to exist, however, is a form of censorship, and, unfortunately, it's alive and well amongst authors, bloggers, influencers, and plenty of insulated, cartoon-avatar social media users. 

The sad part? In NO cases that I've witnessed have any of the authors actually been promoting harmful behavior. All of this is the result of particular whiny consumers wanting to control every aspect of the art being created. "Don't Like Don't Read" is something in which I believe in wholeheartedly. There are plenty of books out there you couldn't PAY me to read. 50 Shades? NO THANK YOU. Catch me enjoying that never. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist; that doesn't mean an author needs to be bullied, called-out, etc. 

If we limited a person's "right" to write about certain topics based on their own experiences, we'd be cutting fiction-writing off at the knees. For example: I don't write about my own issues, for the most part. I can't. There are stories that I've had family ask me to put to paper...and I just don't know how. It hurts too much. But there are other people who can tell those sorts of stories, and who have, and who will. I don't care if they've lived any of it - I just care that they portray the issues thoughtfully, empathetically, in a way that resonates with others. And if they don't...? I simply move and read other books.

I'm terribly afraid nuance is dead. And all I know to do is to push back against the loud, ignorant, hateful - potentially paid - voices, and keep striving for art. The only way art survives is if we insist upon it. 

#SecondhandSmoke Read-Along: Tango

Today marks the start of Loverboy week in the Dartmoor Read-Along - you can grab if HERE for 99c - and though most of you have already read it once before, and know what it entails, I think it's only fair to remind everyone that, given the book's dark themes, the discussion from here on out is going to cover some difficult subject matter. I want to start with one last look back at Secondhand Smoke, because the events of that book are what set Tango down the dark path he travels during his own book.

Here goes. 

What happens to Tango in Smoke is no one's fault except Don Ellison's. He's the villain here; he's the one who kidnaps him, imprisons him, and lets his thugs torture him. Aidan feels terribly guilty - because his own drama prevented him from being as tuned-in to Tango's spiraling depressive state before the kidnapping happens - but Aidan's certainly not to blame for what happens. 

The thing about Tango is: that depressive spiral has been slowly happening throughout the course of the series. There's a sadness to him in Fearless, even though the source isn't revealed. Price of Angels is where things really start to go downhill; he's lived for years with a band-aid slapped over his trauma, but seeing Ian again, so unexpectedly, and seeing Ian as this villain who's causing trouble for the club, shatters the fragile peace he's constructed for himself. Tango is not just a club nickname, but a new identity; a shield to hide behind. Most of his club brothers know him as Tango, but here's Ian, who knows every intimate detail of his life as Kev. Who endured all the same trauma and hardship alongside him - and who he left behind. That moment in the funeral home in PoA is the start of everything going sideways for Tango. He begins a slow retreat into a dark headspace, and, through SS, his coping drug of choice is sex. It's all tangled for him; his sense of self-worth, indeed his whole sense of self, is tied up in sex, and so when he feels vulnerable and uncertain, thats' his got-to. That's a part of his identity he's certain of, and so it's become a crutch. 

At the beginning of Smoke, though, we see that it's a joyless vice for him, at this point. He's getting an immediate thrill and gratification, sure, but he's feeling hollow and aimless and pretty bleak. Jasmine has been a source of comfort for him for a long time now; she likes to have a good time, and doesn't feel ashamed of it. In their time together, that attitude has helped him to let go of some of his own shame surrounding sex. But things have shifted, now, and he feels disconnected from her - evident in the way he takes a big step back and lets Carter take his place. He's drowning, and there's only one person who can remind him of who he really is; the person who loved him at his absolute worst. He goes to Ian. 

At this point, Ghost is the only one who knows Tango is spending time with Ian outside of necessary club business. And Ghost is worried; at the beginning of the book, Ian's just asked to be "given" Kev, a favor Ghost refused outright, and with good reason. He doesn't know all the details of their relationship, but he knows Ian has a vicious streak, and a careless streak, and he can see the danger signs flashing for Tango. One could argue that Ghost should have taken a more active role, here; told Tango to keep away from Ian, inserted himself more firmly into the situation. After all, look what he did to break up Mercy and Ava.

But this is a very different situation. For starters, Tango isn't his biological child - not that he loves him any less for it, but he doesn't feel like he has the "right," so to speak, to be dictatorial. The other aspect is, Tango's personal history of abuse and addiction give Ghost pause; he doesn't ever want to say or do anything to put Tango back into his darkest of places. He can see that something is badly wrong, but, given Ghost has the emotional intelligence of an old tree stump, he doesn't really know how to go about helping without causing further harm. And I think there's a part of him, deep down, that thinks Ian might - just might - have a point. Ghost knows that, despite all the love, support, and relative stability of the club, Tango isn't happy, that he doesn't feel safe - evidenced by the way Tango acts nearly frightened of Ghost when he hands over the map. They've tried it this way; what if Ian's life of luxury and insulation, of imported cars and bodyguards, is a better approach? Ghost doesn't know. 

And then Tango is abducted. 

Here's another moment for the audience to hate Ghost! Rest assured I hate him here, too. I remember being actively angry when I wrote the scene where he turns down Ian's offer. But, once again, I see it as my job to adhere to the characters as they are; to write them consistently. The thing about Ghost is that, except when it comes to Maggie and their kids, he doesn't ever operate while wearing just one hat - though we see a shift in that with Loverboy. I think Loverboy is the book where Ghost finally takes a long, hard look at himself. Up to that point, he's always looking at every situation from a variety of angles. It would have been a really feel-good moment for him to jump on Ian's offer and set everything else aside in the effort to rescue Tango. But that's not how Ghost operates. He still doesn't trust Ian, and he's certainly not going to essentially sell his club to the man without thinking things through. Ian would have them at an incredible disadvantage, and he isn't ready to concede to that.

His hesitation, though, provides a chance for Aidan to act on purely emotional impulse - and for the better, this time. I've seen readers say Aidan was "dumb" for staging a rescue attempt without Mercy leading the charge, but Mercy, loveable and lethal as he is, is a wrecking ball of a human being. Instead, Aidan turns to the precise, knifelike skills of Fox. And, in a lot of ways, Fox is the smart choice, because he doesn't get emotionally involved in things. If Fox agrees to the scheme, and comes up with it, even, then Aidan feels like at least someone is thinking this through, as opposed to merely reacting. 

This situation with Tango is really the most complex of the whole series. There's lots to unpack. And the thing is, I think there could have been a version of the story in which Tango stayed with Ian, and you can't know how tempted I sometimes am to write an AU of my own story - but it would have gotten much darker before it got lighter, because they're both so damaged, and it would have taken a long time for them to learn how to lift one another up, rather than drag one another down. 

We'll talk about it, and so many other things, this week as we crack open Loverboy and tackle Tango's demons. Terrible things happened in that basement in Secondhand Smoke, but Tango also met Whitney there, and she's a vital part of his recovery. 

#SecondhandSmoke Read-Along: Part Two

The title of this book is a nod to the ways a person's actions have potentially damaging repercussions for the people close to them. Aidan's decisions don't just impact him, but those around him. 

Sam

The very first time Sam ever laid eyes on Aidan Teague, she was fourteen, and he knocked the breath right out of her. 

That impression of him had stayed with her, had held him captive in her fascination longer than any man she'd met as an adult - girlhood had a way of sharpening fascination to something dark and deadly. 

For Sam, Aidan represents the kind of deep, innocent longing that comes with being a hormonal teenager. He was beautiful, and in a lot of ways, more grown up than the other boys her age. There was that edge of danger that's always magnetic at that age. But she knew he was a cocky brat, too, and she still knows that. 

Now, as adults, since becoming friends with Ava, she's started to see beneath the very distracting outer veneer to the real person beneath all the tats and swagger, and she's realized that, inwardly, Aidan is terribly self-conscious, uncertain, and, most of all, sweet. At this point, Sam isn't just infatuated, and isn't blind to his faults because she thinks he's hot - Sam knows him, by the time we get to this book. Understands how his brain works. She loves him, and she sees his flaws as areas in which he needs help, rather than as reasons to leave him. She's no stranger to hard work. I don't see it as her "fixing" him, or her being "stuck" with him; she loves him, and it's worth it to her to offer her love and acceptance in return. People like Aidan do need a helping hand, and where so many would have turned away from him, because he was inconvenient, Sam's willing to make the effort. She's the first woman outside Maggie or Ava who's really loved him, and he knows that, which is why he's so distressed that he hurts her.

His problem with Sam is a common one: because he didn't tell her about Tonya's pregnancy immediately, it gets harder and harder to know when to fess up. He doesn't want to scare her off - though the longer he waits, the more hurtful the omission becomes. He expects her to walk away - in his mind, it's a matter of when, not if - and that's testament to the way most of his relationships have played out. Sam knows that; once she gets over her initial shock and anger and hurt, that's what brings her back, and keeps her in Aidan's corner. 

Greg

The Greg Situation is a good example of Aidan's innate kindness. Aidan can be rude, and inconsiderate, and definitely not politically correct in lots of small ways - generally with his careless language and his preconceptions ("chick soap"). But when it comes to actions, and big decisions, he's good at heart. He's an outlaw, so he's not worried about coming across as polite amongst polite society. But he does have a strong moral compass when it comes to what he deems important. He's not a killer. In Fearless, when Ghost sent him to the cattle property to kill Greg, he couldn't pull the trigger. He disobeyed Ghost not only as his father, but as his club president, and put the Dogs at risk - but for him, it was a worthy sacrifice. This wasn't a mistake, but a conscious act of mercy. He thought Greg would run far away, never be seen again, and that the problem was over. 

Often, in counter culture stories, we see characters disobeying their clubs or gangs in nefarious ways that impact the whole group later on. I wanted to turn that theme on its head: what happens when a biker does the right thing? How does that hurt the club? For  me, it's maybe the most fascinating element of the book.

The answer here is that Greg shows up again, his presence and his actions set to harm the club deeply. He doesn't see himself as "owing" Aidan for that act of mercy. Rather, it gave him a chance to seek his fortunes elsewhere. 

For Aidan, it forces him to examine his own life in uncomfortable ways. What's more important? Looking after the club by any means? Or standing by a personal moral code? The answer is muddled, and complicated, and Aidan's realization is that life is perhaps even messier than he's always thought. If you call the club your family, you can't stand on the fringes; at some point, you'll have to get your hands dirty. 

Tango

Tango I'm going to blog about tomorrow, because there's lots to look at there, and I want to take my time with it. Our poor Tiny Dancer has it rough in this book. But his rescue provides some of my favorite moments in the whole novel. 

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.