The day Toly met Maverick.
Almost a month later, he was washing his hands in a McDonald’s bathroom
when a man loomed behind him in the mirror, and said, “Anatoly Kobliska?”
Toly froze, glanced up at his reflection, and then froze again.
The man had a friendly, weather-beaten face, handsome in an easy sort of
way. Dark hair getting some salt in it, jaw rough with purposeful stubble,
brown eyes. He wore a plain blue hoodie.
And a Lean Dogs cut.
I've always hesitated to say that having a puppy is like having a baby, because I know parenthood is a much greater challenge. But there are similarities. The watching their every step, the teaching, the disciplining. "What's in your mouth? Don't eat that!" applies to both species. Worry over electrical cords, and ponds, and household cleaners. Apologizing to strangers in public: "I'm sorry, he's friendly! He's just excited." The way "no" stops feeling like an actual word because you've said it so much.
In many ways, Strider is shaping up to be a good barn dog. He loves the horses, and they at least seem to tolerate him. My last dog, Viktor, was not only hyper-aggressive, but angry. I've never met such an angry puppy. He was terrible with children. Strider is cheerful, and bouncy, and loves life...but I can't get him to sleep through the night. He started teething at the start of October, and, like a human baby, was feverish, cranky, and had an upset stomach. He was up three, four, five, sometimes six times a night. Cue me standing in the yard, robe and jacket over it, with a flashlight, searching for coyote eyeshine while he did his thing. His teething is better, and he is sleeping a little better - at least two or three nights a week all the way through - but there's no consistency. He's been to the vet, and there's nothing medically wrong with him. I've tried with and without canine probiotics, tried keeping him away from certain treats (horse manure, let's be real), but so far, the only common denominator I can find is the weather. If it's freezing, and windy; if there's a storm front moving in, he can't sleep. Cry-cry-cry, scratch on the crate door, and then it's outside. At one, two, three, four. Every hour, some nights, until he crashes as the sun comes up, and then it's extra coffee for me throughout the day. He's an anxious bird - gee, wonder where he picked that up? - and I'd like to think this is all just a stage he's going through, that as he matures, and comes into his own - the big boy bark is in full effect, these days - he'll be less anxious, more confident, and I can find some kind of sleep rhythm.
Until then, I'm still on the night shift.
And I won't lie: it's messed with my head a little.
I like spooky. Halloween is my favorite holiday. My dad likes to say that I'm Claire from Modern Family. But that's just it: spooky. I love horror, but I tend to swerve more toward ghosts, and creepy forests, and old legends, haunted Victorian houses. I rewatch Sleepy Hollow every year, and prefer Crimson Peak to Nightmare on Elm Street. Less existential dread horror, more creature feature horror. Vampires, and werewolves, and Loch Ness Monster documentaries. It's fun to be frightened by fictional monsters.
But as someone who's grown up on farms, I've learned it's not Lon Chaney Jr. who's going to come at you across a field at night.
When I worked at an "in town" farm, I came face to face with coyotes on multiple occasions. My boss's son shot one, one day, and brought it around in the golf cart to show us all. Tall, leggy, shaggy: it looked just like a wolf. In movies, on news clips, they're small, skinny, furtive creatures. They snatch a few toy dogs in Cali every year, but are solitary, skittish, and not a threat to humans. Right? If that's your coyote experience, you've never run up on an Eastern coyote. Nor heard them howling at night. Eastern coyotes travel in packs, hunt in packs, routinely bring down deer, and are as tall as my dog. Thick-coated, like a wolf, less fearful, known to kill sheep, and goats, and small donkeys. There are three packs who spend their days in the woods that border my farm. If an ambulance siren breaks the peace of an afternoon, you hear them start up, one, two, three, like sirens of their own. That awful hyena squalling.
About four years ago, I heard a mountain lion in the woods for the first time. Georgia Fish & Wildlife are adamant they don't live here, but there's no faking that sound. That spine-tingling, murdered-woman shriek. It's the sound a female makes while trying to attract a mate, and I've only ever heard it in January and February - mountain lion mating season. Go Google "mountain lion scream," and be prepared to have all your hair stand on end. I don't know if the cats in my woods are Carolina panthers come down, or Florida panthers come up, but a friend's caught them on trail cam, so suffice to say they're there, amidst the bobcats, and chuckling foxes, and howling coyotes. The rabbits, the skunks, the woodchucks. It's Wild Kingdom out here, northwest of Atlanta.
These are the animals I've been thinking of, as I stand shivering, scanning with the flashlight. When I see eyeshine coming toward us up from the hollow, fast and unafraid, while Strider sounds the alarm. When I hear the drip and plop of heavy dew, and the who-cooks-for-you call of the barred owls, the resonant whooooo of the great horned owls. When I hear some odd, gargling shriek that I can't identify, but which echoes through the hollows and hills; shivers through the bare tree trunks; ehcos strangely in the rocks.
Night shifts with Strider have left me wanting to write a proper monster tale. Fitting it into the repertoire is the challenge. If only I could get more sleep...
New Year, New You? Well, probably not for me. I'm playing my goals close to the vest this year, though be assured at least one of them is impossible and guaranteed to leave me disappointed. But aim high, right?
If you follow me on Instagram (@hppress), you'll know that last August I brought home a new Doberman puppy, and he's more or less turned life upside down. From the itty bitty baby stage, to the runaway toddler stage, to the difficult, up-all-night-teething stage. Now, at seven months, he's in the rowdy teenager stage, and keeping his brain and body active is every day's top priority. He knocked the back half of 2022 for a loop, so now I'm trying to gather my thoughts, and notebooks, and stories, and get back on track for 2023.
Let's Recap:
Last year I released three new novels.
The Wild Charge (Dartmoor Book 9) in May, which was the culmination of a multi-book story arc featuring the sinister Abacus, starring Tenny and Reese. The big, crazy, biker-cum-spy book that I absolutely didn't want to write but ended up being quite proud of. It was fun in its best moments, pull-out-my-hair stressful in its worst. A lot happens in this one, and it introduced a host of new characters whose stories I'm now working into the rotation.
In June, Demon of the Dead (Drake Chronicles Book 4) dropped, continuing the overarching main story of this epic fantasy series, with a special focus on Corpse Lord Náli, his Fault Lands, and necromantic powers. Each book purposefully expands the magic of the series, slowly peeling back the layers, and further developing our motley cast of kings, ladies, princes, and bastards.
Long Way Down (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 4) came out in October and marked the first of the spinoff stories to come from The Wild Charge. Because one half of the central couple is a Sex Crimes detective, the novel veers a little from the MC format into crime thriller territory. A whodunit with an outlaw twist and a reluctant (on our leading lady's part) romance.
Looking Ahead:
I'm currently working on the next Lean Dogs Legacy book, as well as Drake Chronicles Book 5, Fortunes of War. I've got other projects slated after those, some long-overdue, some new ideas, some series continuations. Frankly, I want to write an obscene amount this year, and I'm afraid even saying that is jinxing myself. But I'll do my best, and am eager to see what I can accomplish, dog willing.
Thank you, all, for your support last year! For your kind words and encouragement. I'm hoping to bring you more stories to get lost in this year.
Let me know what you're looking forward to most. Dartmoor? Drakes? The not-abandoned but woefully-on-pause Sons of Rome? 😅 (I really am going to get back to that, I swear! She's just a BEAST as far as research and story scope goes). Which characters are you most hoping to see more of? I have my favorites, for sure (Ragnar, anyone?) 😏
Hello, all, and Happy New Year!
I took two weeks off - one to prepare for hosting Christmas dinner, and one to recover from it. I'm back writing this week, and hoping to be able to blog more consistently this year...? No promises, though, given the Dog Situation is still very much controlling all aspects of my life. I figure when I have work time, I should be working on books, rather than posts.
I'm diving back into the next Dartmoor book, Toly and Raven's story, which, shockingly still doesn't have a title, even 90k words deep. Oh well. It'll come. Please accept a snippet of one of my favorite scenes, and be on the lookout for more soon.
“She’s a bit stressed,” she heard Ian say.
“Well, yeah.”
“And about to become more stressed, I hate to say.”
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
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.
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.
