Fave BoD Scenes in No Particular Order: Shep and Toly

 

There was no use lying, was there? He really didn’t want to. She wasn’t some dirty secret, wasn’t anything he was ashamed of. “Yeah. We’re living together.”

That earned a single, sharp jerk of Toly’s head. “She’s not in her dorm?”

“No. She didn’t wanna stay. Some shit went down with the roommate, but that’s her business to tell, not mine.”

Toly nodded, as if to say fair enough. “Does she know you’re in love with her?”

He hadn’t expected that. It shocked the breath out of him. “Yeah.”

“You told her you are?”

“Yes, goddamnit. Are we done?”

Toly held up a finger. One more thing. “What will you do if and when she decides she wants to move on to better things? To a better man?”

Punch you in the fucking face, he thought. But that wasn’t the real answer to that question. The real answer was, throat getting stuck halfway through, “Let her go with my blessing. And then eat a gun.”

Toly nodded again, and turned for the door.

“Wait. Are you gonna tell Raven?”

“No. You are. Not tonight, if you can’t stomach it. But I won’t do your dirty work.” He slipped inside and left Shep standing in the cold.

 

The quoted scene in this post occurs chronologically before yesterday's pick, and I won't include all of the text here because Shep curses too much. But I really loved the scene where Toly puts two and two together and walks Shep out onto the balcony for a "chat." 

It's telling that Shep's more worried about telling Raven than Toly. Toly cares about Cass, he loves her as the sister he never had, but Shep knows that Toly is for sure living outside his means, and is happy to go with Raven's flow; if Toly's furious about Shep and Cass together, it's because he's worried that Raven will be furious. But Toly's not a hypocrite, and he's not going to be the first to throw stones given his past, and the relatively new non-glass state of his house. Though for all Shep's posturing in the rooftop scene, he acknowledges to himself that if Toly truly had a problem with their relationship, Shep would already be karate-kicked off the rooftop by now. 

I really enjoyed all of their interactions in this book. They did not get along in Nothing More, but here we see that time, proximity, and a common cause have softened their relationship, even in the very beginning of the book. Though their personalities are very different, Shep actually has a lot in common with Michael when it comes to club relationships. He doesn't have friends within the club; doesn't hang out with any of his brothers for fun. He's an outsider within a community of outlaws, and that gets complicated and lonely.

By the end of the book, they're working their way toward something like friendship; echoes of Mercy and Michael in Price of Angels. 

Keeping Up To Date

I'm highlighting the following comment from this week because it gives me the perfect chance to make sure everyone has access to all the best ways to stay updated with what's releasing, and when, and to answer a FAQ. 

First, let's talk advertising, so you can figure out which medium works best for you as a follower. 😊

I'm not on TikTok, because, let's face it, my books aren't suited for it. I'm not a trendy sort of gal, and video is definitely not my medium of choice. 

But I am active on social media, and use it to keep readers updated on WIPs, upcoming releases, and then debriefings and behind the scenes content once a book is out. (I blogged/Facebooked/Instagrammed about Lord Have Mercy for more than a year, so if you're not plugged in, then yes, you missed out!)

I post most frequently on Instagram. 

I hype my books there, provide links to blog posts and new releases, and also share my farm life, chiefly horses and flower growing. 

I share all my blog posts, new releases, and weekly hashtags like the Fearless read-along and Teaser Tuesday on my author Facebook page. 

You can follow me there to see my updates in your FB feed, and to join the Fearless Read-Along discussion group. 

I don't have an email newsletter because it would be redundant. You can follow the blog and receive an email each time I add a new post: the blog comes straight to you!

Go over to the righthand side of the blog's home page and scroll down until you reach the Followers section. Doing this myself reminded me that I need to do some major sidebar updates, but the followers are still there. Click the Follow button circled in red to sign up for email notifications, and then never miss a post. 

If you don't have a Google account, or don't want to follow the blog, but still want to know when a new book drops, then you can follow me on Amazon.

You'll get an email when I release a new book. The site has also gotten much more functional in recent years, and books are grouped together on series pages. 

If you're a Goodreads user, you can follow me there as well. My blog is linked to it, so you can see all my posts that way, and new releases will show up in followers' feeds.

Again, a newsletter wouldn't contain any new information already available in the blog, so I feel it's unnecessary. With regard to "newsletter swaps with other authors," I find those shady. When authors trade email lists, and send newsletters to non-followers unsolicited, that doesn't engender any goodwill with potential readers; in fact, it makes you spam. So I'm not down for that. If an author has a newsletter, it should only get sent to those who sign up for it, in my opinion. 

I've had tons of questions lately about Kindle Unlimited. I don't use it, and there's a good reason for that:

The premise of KU, for anyone who doesn't know, is that readers who sign up for it can read program-included books for free, and then the authors receive payment from Amazon based on the number of times the book is read to completion. It's an imperfect system to start. For an author, choosing to list a book for KU means you can't offer that book for sale on any other platform: no Nook, no Kobo, no iBooks, nada. That's fine if an author chooses to pull or withhold their books from those other sites.

The problem? Amazon counts books posted on pirate sites as being in violation of the KU agreement. Pirates create an epub file, illegally upload it, and the author is none the wiser. A crackdown in the last few years has seen multiple authors get deplatformed by Amazon because of this, and they've either not been able to restore their author accounts, or spent lots of time and money trying to get back on the platform. There were even instances of authors reporting "rival" authors to Amazon in a deliberate attempt to get their books booted off the site. 

It's ridiculous, and it needs to be addressed by Amazon, but suffice to say, I have zero interest in getting involved in all of that drama right now. Given the insane pricing of NYT bestselling ebooks (which are never on KU, BTW), I feel very confident in my competitive pricing. LHM is the exception, because 1) I didn't want to punish the readers who bought each installment by undercutting the price on the final, compiled product, and 2) the compiled edition is the length of four full-sized novels. The price breaks down to exactly the same, and, honestly, it's worth it. Think of it as buying a boxed set instead of a lone book.

Okay, I think that's all the bases covered for now. 

This week, Beware of Dog turned two weeks old, and I announced that the next release will be Drake Chronicles book six, Avarice of the Empire. Tomorrow we'll dive into Chapter Twenty in our Fearless Read-Along. Make sure you're following me on one of the accounts listed above to stay apprised of everything that's going on in my neck of the woods! Huge thanks to everyone who follows, likes, shares, and comments. You guys are the absolute best! 

Fave BoD Scenes in No Particular Order: Shep and Raven

 

Picking my favorite Beware of Dog scenes in no particular order, because this book has perhaps my favorite dialogue of any book in the series. Up first, Shep going to see Raven.

“You’re shouting at me!”

“You’re shouting at me!” he shot back. “And if you shout at Cass about this, you and me are gonna have a big goddamn problem!”

Raven gulped audibly. She looked like she’d been slapped. She settled her hand at her throat, where her pulse throbbed a visible tattoo, and said, voice hoarse, “I could cut off the money. I could tell her I won’t pay for school.”

“No you won’t. Get outta here with that shit.”

“I could…” She trailed off, eyes big and bright with tears.

“What?” he sneered. “Threaten me? Then you better have a gun in your purse and a body bag on standby, ‘cause you don’t have anything else to threaten me with, sister.”

She bowed her head, sniffled quietly, and wiped at her eyes. When she lifted her head, she was smiling.

She choked out a laugh. “Christ, you are such an asshole.”

“Yeah.”

She rolled her eyes and dabbed at the corners. To the air, she said, “I always knew she wanted a Dog. That she’d end up with one. She would eat a little rich boy alive.”

Then she stepped around the table.

Shep sat up straight, and relaxed his jaw; it would hurt less, and do less damage if he was loose when she struck him.

Instead, she reached for him, with both hands, slow and careful like he was a dog about to bite, and caught his jaw in her palms. She leaned down and pressed a damp kiss to his forehead.

Shep’s hands were shaking where they rested between his thighs. “I do love her,” he said.

“I know that, darling,” she sighed. “I’ve known that for a long while now.” 

BoD is two weeks old today! You can grab it here:

Kindle

Paperback

Nook

Kobo

Up Next

 

I first shared this cover months ago, but this time, it's finally happening! After a two year (!!) hiatus to work on other projects, I'm finally back with the Drakes for good this week. I made progress on book six, Avarice of the Empire, which is my next planned release. 

Unlike series like Dartmoor, in which there are overarching storylines which carry through, but where the books are mostly self-contained, the Drake Chronicles are one long, ongoing narrative spanning multiple books, in the tradition of old school epic fantasy. That's meant that there have been unanswered questions piling up on top of existing questions, and things seem to be getting worse instead of better for our heroes - but once it all comes together, it's going to be so satisfying. 

Although I originally toyed with the idea of a ten-book series, I've since figured out how to do it in seven. So up next, it's AOTE, and then the seventh and final book to bring all this crazy home. I can't wait to reveal two major Oliver-centric plot twists, and to wrap everything up in one big, epic, dragon-scale bow for the finale. 

If you need to catch up, the first five books are available for Kindle, paperback, Kobo, and Nook. 

#ThrowbackThursday: Shep's Greatest Hits

 

A look back at some of Shep's greatest hits in Nothing More:

Even though Cass fussed about him initially, he and Cass had something of an instant rapport. 

“Ta, darling.”

They traded cheek kisses, and she returned to her office in time to breach the tail end of a conversation she didn’t like at all.

For starters, Shepherd had joined them, and stood now at the edge of the coffee table, hands in his pockets, jangling change. He looked up from whatever Cass had been showing him on her phone, and gave Greg a dismissive headshake. “Nah, see, that’s for putzes. You gotta have the real thing. The mess, the sap, the hassle, dropping F bombs while you wrestle it outta the truck – that’s part of it. The magic of Christmas and all that shit.”

Meet Sophie

 

Contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy

Meet Sophie

 

 

Ash tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes as he regarded the pink-swaddled baby in Ava’s arms. When his lips pursed, and his little jaw worked side-to-side, he looked hilariously like Ghost. Ghost himself stood behind the chair where Ash sat perched on his knees at the side of the bed, arms folded, a glimpse of Ash’s future self.

Beware of Dog: The Debriefing

 

Here we go: the official Beware of Dog debriefing post. I reserve the right to tack on additional posts in the likely event that I forget to include something of importance here. There will be spoilers, so I'll include a cut to keep plot details off the main blog page. Proceed at your own risk! And if you haven't grabbed your copy yet, you can find it here:

Kindle

Paperback

Nook

Kobo