New Release - Long Way Down

 Lean Dogs Legacy Book Four

Long Way Down 

Long Way Down is finally live! I say finally because I’d originally hoped to release it at the end of July; was in fact racing to complete the first draft because I found out in June that my new puppy had been born and would be ready to come home the first weekend in August. I wrote 75k words in July, but alas was unable to finish LWD (that had been a foolish hope, anyway.) Strider came home, and it’s been chaos ever since. But I did manage to finish, and then, with painstaking slowness, work through my edits, fold in my editor’s edits, and finally put the book on sale. Woohoo! (I say with a yawn, because sleep deprivation is my closest companion these days.)

Some of my series, like Sons of Rome or the Drake Chronicles, have a pre-planned overarching plotline, the finish of which I’m always working toward. But Dartmoor is much more of a gardening project. As I work on a book, I decide which characters I want to highlight next, and start building toward their featured stories. Sometimes, like with Tango, that process unfolds slowly over the course of several books. With LWD, I introduced our main couple in the previous book, and was so charmed by them that I decided to feature them next.

The novel picks up in New York, right where The Wild Charge left off. With Abacus toppled, there’s rumblings of a shakeup in the underworld. Nathan “Pongo” McCoy has spent the last few years working more or less solo in Manhattan, keeping tabs on the club’s various dealers and gleaning intel with his sunny personality while the rest of the club stays stationed in Albany, where the clubhouse is located. In TWC, we learned that he has a “working” relationship with a Vice detective, Melissa Dixon, that’s turned romantic, and LWD starts with Pongo offering to help her locate a rapist. He’s coincidentally asked to investigate the very same rapist by an angry pimp who’s heard that the Lean Dogs are in the white knight business these days. The underworld is talking about the Dogs. Their reputation is shifting, and that leads Pongo toward new potential allies in the city. It also draws some unwanted attention from other powerful criminal organizations.

This tale is mostly Melissa’s, though. We learn the story of her past one memory at a time as the novel unfolds, a dark secret from her childhood that haunts her still, and which has been the driving force behind her law enforcement career. I couldn’t help but think of one of my earliest female leads, Lisa Russell, while writing Melissa’s story. She’s prickly, and foul-mouthed, and doesn’t want anyone’s help. She’s clothed herself in Hardass to keep from revealing any weakness, and, at the end of the day, isn’t sure she trusts her own instincts at all. Her dynamic with Pongo is one of my favorites to write: grump and sunshine, with Pongo providing the sunshine – and sly charm – in spades.

Along the way, we see more of Toly – who I love and will be writing a book for (next, hopefully) – and meet two new characters, Kat and Prince, who were especially fun to bring to life. I also really enjoyed Melissa’s partner, Rob Contreras, who is such a dad and a genuinely good guy.

Typical trigger warnings apply here, since Melissa and her partner are Sex Crimes detectives investigating a serial rapist. Tread lightly if that sort of violence hits too close to the bone.

I love mysteries and police procedurals, and so this book, while an unexpected addition to the saga, was a blast because I got to dabble in one of my favorite genres. My editor said it reminds her of Whatever Remains, which is one of her favorites in my catalogue. She also says it reads like a standalone, so thumbs up for that. And for my part, I think it moves the needle on the overall club plotline in an interesting and genre-bending way.

I hope you’ll all enjoy it! Thanks so much for your patience and support.

~Lauren

Dartmoor Series On Sale

With Long Way Down arriving soon - I'm working on edits as we speak! - it seems like a good time to venture all the way back to 2015, to the very beginning of this saga, fourteen books ago. When a biker princess came home from college and reunited with her beloved monster. 

Fearless began in Knoxville, took us back in time, and traveled all the way to the swamps of New Orleans. We started with Mercy and Ava's star-crossed, fated romance, and seven years later, a young New York Lean Dog is getting overly involved with an NYPD investigation. The club's expanded; grown richer, more powerful, and gained even more powerful enemies along the way. Babies have been born, alliances forged, and the family built up into a motley crew of wildly gray characters who love one another in all their own, weird ways. 

Amidst the daily grind of writing, and editing, and advertising, and feeling far too behind, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. When I stop to consider it, I'm still floored by the way y'all responded to that first, oversized adventure. The way you loved Mercy, and his love for Ava. It's been one hell of a ride, and it's still going!

In the spirit of more rides to come, and to celebrate the release of Lean Dogs Legacy book four, I've put the entire series on sale for 99c until October first. That's fourteen books, the whole Lean Dog saga, novellas included, for less than $14. You can't even buy two coffees for that. After October first, all the novels will be $4.99 each, so if you've thought about starting the series, or have a friend you want to try it, now's the perfect time. 

Start with book one, Fearless. From there, check out the whole series, and its tie-in novels, in the following order (all are 99c):

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 (coming soon)

#ReadingLife - Locked Tomb Reread

 Nona the Ninth drops tomorrow! I've been madly anticipating it since I first read the last line of Harrow, and decided, after discussing the Locked Tomb series with someone I'd recc'd it to, that I'd forgotten far too many pertinent details since Gideon first came out in 2019. The central mystery of it all, concerning God, and his lyctors, and the twisted timeline demanded a reread. I embarked on one amidst my newfound duties as Doberman-Beagle referee and finished up Harrow last week. 

"We do bones, motherf*cker."

Rereads are, in general, risky things. We return to a book at one time thought beloved, only to find that, in the intervening years, we've grown older, grown wiser; found that our tastes have changed, or that the book was one of those "book of the moment" phenomena, and that we got caught up in the thrill of sharing it with so many people; right place, right time, very relevant for the day of its release. I don't reread very often, mostly because there's so many books I want to read for the first time, and so little time in which to read them. I've had rereads that were disappointing because I realized that it was wanting to know what happened next that colored my impression of the book on the first read, but that, upon return, the prose fell flat amidst a cast of unremarkable characters. The first read was a headlong rush to know; once I knew, the meat of the book turned out not to be meat at all, but some addictive, mindlessly consumed carbohydrate snack that left me ultimately unsatisfied and vaguely nauseated.  

I'm pleased to report that Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth not only hold up, but were, at least for me, even more enjoyable on a second read. 

Ignore all the publisher's kitschy, trope-centered marketing of this series. I love tropes, and I understand why they make for such effective marketing bullet points, but I think the snappy little taglines utterly fail to capture the magic of books like these. I reviewed Gideon back when I first read it, so I won't rehash all that. The second book, Harrow, turns everything that happened in Gideon on its head - in a fun way - and expands on the universe Muir created in wholly unexpected, fantastically weird fashion. This is my current favorite ongoing series, and that's all down to its author. 

So much of this series shouldn't work on paper, but it works delightfully and beautifully in Tamsyn Muir's hands. If I had to pin down a genre for it, I'd call it horror. I'd forgotten how gory and bloody so much of the action is. Big yikes. But also, as horror, it tackles fear, primal instinct, and so many of those big questions about autonomy, and ethics, and the afterlife. It's Gothic spooky, but also sci-fi spooky - I stand by my Alien comparison - and deeply unsettling, at moments. The characters are what sell it. They are so vivid, and real, and complex, and human, and loveable in all their fucked-upedness. 

The end of Harrow is ?????, and so I can't wait to dive into Nona.This is the sort of series that raises two questions for every one that it answers, but through its deft characterization, its overflowing life amidst relentless death, its tangents of pure poetry, you know that you can trust Muir to bring it all home in the end. 

Cannot reccomend this series enough. 

#ReadingLife - No. 8, 9, 10.

There are stories that are hidden gems, and stories that have their day in the sunshine; stories of the moment, stories of the year. And then there are those stories that become so deeply, inextricably linked to, not simply pop culture, but culture in general, that refences become shorthand. Become part of the daily vernacular. For instance, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone today who wasn't familiar with Hannibal Lecter. Lob that name as an insult, and everyone knows just what you mean by its use. He's as mythic and renowned a figure as Santa Claus, and just as fictional. 

My introduction came - like most of my introductions to the monsters and horror landscapes of fiction - at an early age. (Dad used to let me watch Tales From the Crypt with him when I was four.) Visits to Blockbuster video were a weekly affair, along with stops at the bookstore. The bookstore was always a chance to discover a new story; Blockbuster, on the other hand, was the place to repeatedly rent the VHS compilations of Ghostbusters cartoons and buy Sno-Caps. While our parents browsed the non-animated sections, my brother and I played a game: we walked through the horror section and tried to find the scariest box. Oh, Blockbuster, with rows of plastic, rentable cases lined up like dominoes behind the shrink-wrapped VHS boxes. No streaming service will replace the joy of picking up that crinkly, lightweight box and turning it over to read the blurb on the back. 

There were indeed some scary boxes to find in the nineties, Hellraiser leaps to mind, but it was the drama section, rather than the horror, that held the box that frightened and fascinated me the most. There was something indescribably riveting for young me about the front of The Silence of the Lambs. That cool-color scheme shot of Jodie Foster's face, her eyes red like Hannibal's, her mouth covered by a death's head moth. It was neither gory, nor explanatory, instead a simple, subtle image that could only be understood by someone who'd watched the film. And yet it was provocative; obscene, almost. I walked past it week after week, curiouser and curiouser, like Alice. 

When I asked my dad about it, he said, "Oh, man. Boy. That's a scary movie." Followed by that forced-air laugh he uses for emphasis rather than actual amusement. 

"Why is it scary?" I wanted to know, envisioning haunted house jump scares, monsters slithering from beneath beds, the reaching, webbed hands of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

"It's about a serial killer," he said, and my mind thought 'cereal' instead. "And he eats people." Now there's an alternative to the cardboard marshmallows in Lucky Charms. 

Cue my poor mom telling him not to relate such details to a five-year-old. 

The poster for the 1991 film based on Thomas Harris's classic novel is still one of my favorites. I so love a simple, statement-making piece of cover art that doesn't clutter the messaging of the story. At this point, I'm extremely familiar with Dr. Lecter. First the '91 film, and then, first binged in 2019 and binged again a number of times, Bryan Fuller's TV masterpiece, Hannibal. 

But up until a few months ago, I still hadn't read any of Harris's novels, aside from The Red Dragon. Since I knew i was going to tip the cap to and hang a lantern on Lambs for Long Way Down, I decided to dive in - not just to Lambs, but to Hannibal and Hannibal Rising as well. Looked at artistically and impactfully, I think Lambs is the most successful of the novels, but disagree with the critics who claim that learning Hannibal's backstory in the latter two diminishes his fearsomeness or appeal as a character. More on that later. 

First, we walk with Clarice Starling down, down, down into the cold underbelly of the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane, through the clanging, barred doors, past the cat calls and raving of its inmates...to the last cell on the right, where a trim, poised man sits at a table bolted to the floor. 

Your mileage may vary, but I find that crime fiction and thrillers fail all too often to engage me on an emotional level. I love the genre when it's handled in a way that drops you right into the middle of the stress and fear of the case; or, even better, when the crime becomes a frame that allows the characters' inner journeys to play out in grand scale. Tana French is masterful in this sense. Harris is, too, but, at first blush, his novel feels more clinical, less lyrical. But after a few minutes, you find those absolute gem lines that so cleanly, perfectly paint you a scene that feels photographic, if not textural. And once mired within its pages, you begin to read the bravery, stoicism, and depravity not of Hannibal, but of Clarice, in all that she holds back from thinking and saying. Harris writes Clarice with a restraint that speaks to a determined repression, and relies wholly on reader interpretation, rather than outright telling. Buffalo Bill's crimes are horrific beyond comprehension, yes. but it's Clarice and her internal dilemmas, her journey, that dominate the narrative in the reader's mind, just as, to my mind anyway, it should be. She's tough, and fascinating, and sympathetic, capable and admirable. I love Hugh Dancy's Will Graham, and his relationship with Hannibal, so much from the show that I worried I'd have trouble with Clarice. But I found the opposite to be true; I found her instantly relatable...though maybe that says more about me than about her as a character, who knows. 

The Silence of the Lambs feels as though it was meant to stand on its own, without sequels. But, author intent aside - I haven't researched whether Harris planned the two follow-ups all along, or if they were later creations - I don't think Hannibal or Hannibal Rising detract from what we already know. Critics have charged that the line "Nothing made me happen. I happened" is then retconned by the reveal of Hannibal's backstory. That knowing about Mischa, and the copper bathtub, and the boy who wandered up to a Soviet tank with a chain around his neck "ruins" the whole concept of Hannibal Lecter. Some readers are in love with the idea that he simply was. A monster birthed whole cloth, without reason; a full-fledged demon unhampered by memory or trauma. But if you read my books, you know me: a person's upbringing always informs their adulthood, to some extent. It would be unreasonable to think a character like Hannibal had no backstory. To assume his wickedness was only the result of some genetic flaw, or a tic of his personality; in fact, that would be far less interesting to me. Given his predilections, his civility, the traceable backstory heightens his "realness." You could put a hundred, a thousand people in those circumstances, and they would live with trauma, sure, but none of them would turn out like Hannibal. And there is something in him that is twisted; some flaw that galvanized him, so that the horror he endured became a horror he inflicted on others. In that sense, his statement in Lambs is true: nothing made him happen. He happened. Circumstances beyond his control unleashed a side of him that happened to be monstrous. It forces the reader to ask the question: Do I have a monster inside of me? If pressed, if given the proper motivation, would it come out? 

Will I ever tire of this opera-loving, cannibalistic sophisticate? Unlikely. Film, literature, and pop culture still haven't tired of him, after all. 

Cover Reveal - Long Way Down

Happy Teaser Tuesday! Here's our cover and blurb for the next Dartmoor release, Long Way Down. Hoping to have it out by the end of the month! 

When she was six, a horrific crime against a family member determined the course of Melissa Dixon’s life. It eventually drove her away from her tiny, Mississippi home town, away from her family, and into a career in law enforcement. Living and working in NYC, she keeps the past locked away tight, memory relegated to rare nightmares.

That all changed, however, when her Lean Dog CI, Pongo, involved her in the takedown of an international sex trafficking ring. Now, freshly-transferred to Sex Crimes, disturbed by what she glimpsed on the fringes of the Abacus case, memory and old trauma crowd her mind and cloud her judgement, as she and her new partner, Rob Contreras, tackle a serial rape case in which their suspect is paying tribute to an incarcerated rapist with a similar MO. Albeit reluctantly, Melissa turns to Pongo for help, and as the case grows murkier, she begins to understand the allure of the club in an ultimately lawless world.

Long Way Down is a mystery/thriller centering around a main m/f romance intended for adult audiences. It’s the fourth installment of the Lean Dogs Legacy series, a spinoff of the Dartmoor series, and references events that took place in the most recent Dartmoor novel, The Wild Charge. It is not a standalone. 

Lionheart Update

 

Remember this teaser? 🦁 One of my favorites.

Remember when I thought I could have Lionheart out by December of 2020? 😭

Been really itching to work on Sons of Rome lately, but have lacked the time to dedicate to it. I’ve had several questions about it across multiple platforms, and I wish I had a release date. But! The series is most definitely not done with. I have *several* more installments planned. There was a period of time, right after Golden Eagle released, when I was furiously working on Lion, that I began to panic a little; I thought, in order to maintain reader interest in the series, I’d have to fast track the rest of the books, cutting some of the slower storylines along the way, reducing flashbacks in favor of a quicker-driving plot. But that’s not what this series IS. This is my passion project, a creative dream that’s haunted me since high school, and it NEEDS to unspool slowly, richly, indulgently. I knew that if I caved, if I narrowed and winnowed and cut back, the final end product result of the complete series would be but a ghost of the series I’d set out to write. With this series, I’m not aiming for mass appeal; not trying to “tighten” it into more manageable chunks for the skimmers, scanners, or GR keyboard warriors. It’s a slow burn by design. It took Nikita more than 2k pages to confess his love. We haven’t BEGUN to see what the mages can do. Newly-immortal characters like Adela and Mia are OF COURSE not as fascinating as Val and Vlad; give them time, don’t expect them to be as interesting as a centuries-old vampire at first blush. We’ve still got kings and gods to meet, after all. Lionheart will be even more challenging to write than Dragon Slayer. Do I really want to shift from modern day Bucharest, to the siege of Acre, to the reimagined legend of Robin Hood? To tie it to Rus’, and a Norse god, and meet a mage who broke bread with Julius Caesar in a Gallic campaign tent? Yes, I really do. The scope of this series as a whole is tremendous; y’all ain’t ready.

So I’ve taken some time to tackle more manageable projects since GE’s release, but trust that our immortals are always on my mind. I can’t wait to return to them soon. With a little luck, and a lot of puppy cooperation, I’m hoping to have the NY pack-centric novella, The Winter Palace, out before the end of the year 🤞🏻

This was yesterday's Instagram photo and caption, and I wanted to expand upon it a little, if I may, and offer a glimpse into our illustrious, titular king. 

#TeaserTuesday - Long Way Down

Sleep-deprived, but checking in for another #TeaserTuesday. If you follow me on Insta, you'll know I got a new Dobie puppy. He's adorable, and cuddly, and just the sweetest...but going through the new-puppy, crate-training blues. I'm happy to report that he, and therefore I, got five hours of sleep last night. Woo freaking hoo, y'all. So now I'm trying to get back on track with writing as he settles into the routine around here. 

Today's teaser is from the next Dartmoor (Lean Dogs Legacy, really) offering, Long Way Down, in which a book finally presents me with the chance to write one of my all-time-favorite tropes: heinous criminal helps detectives get inside the mind of the monster they're hunting. It's a shtick I will never get sick of. 

In general, I'm excited for y'all to read this book. Though not a spy novel, like Prodigal Son, it has a bit of a different feel than the rest of the series. Melissa is one of those prickly, walls-up, defensive leading ladies with a backstory that gets peeled back like onion layers as we go along. It's her story, truly, with Pongo being the adorable-but-badass emotional support character. Plenty of romance, a splash of club action, and a whole lot of crime thriller. 

“What about former associates?” she pressed. Leaving here with nothing felt like losing; she hated the idea of him smiling at her retreating back with the simple satisfaction of knowing he’d been unhelpful. “Relatives? Any cousins? Nephews?”

He put his head to the side, smile serene, now. “Come on, Detective. You have my file. You already know I don’t have any family or friends.”