Tag: behind the scenes

I’m on Kobo Writing Life!

This is a “pinch me” moment, for sure.

This week, I’m a guest on the Kobo Writing Life podcast! I’ve been listening to KWL for years while building my writing career, never imagining that one day I’d be listening to myself. Craziness!

Thank you so much to Rachel, Vanessa, and both the KWL and Kobo Originals teams for this incredible opportunity. I was so nervous going in, because I knew I needed to talk about mental health in the writing community, but it can be really tricky doing so. I once approached a mod in a writers’ forum about starting a thread, and she DMed, “We so need to talk about this stuff—I’ve struggled with mental health, too, even had to take a break—but we don’t talk about that here.” Well, where else are we supposed to talk about it, if not in the same chat rooms we discuss writing while flexing our substance abuse issues? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Thankfully KWL practices what they preach. Kobo truly supports authors, and I’m so grateful for them sharing their platform with me and letting me talk about this important issue.

You can listen everywhere podcasts are available.

When is the next River Reapers MC book coming?

I just got three emails in a row asking about A Lasting Prospect, the fourth (and final?) book in the River Reapers MC series. I never expected this series to take off like this, and I’m so happy you all love Olivia and Cliff so much! Let me answer some of your burning questions.

“Lasting” is coming! The series hasn’t been cancelled. In 2021, I briefly had a pre-order link up for Book 4 and took it down. If you pre-ordered it, you got an email from Amazon letting you know the pre-order had been removed, and you were never charged. (Retailers only charge you when the book is released and available in your device library.)

To give it to you straight, I just barely was able to release A Fatal Prospect. I was seriously ill with my Lupus, and thankfully I’d already written the book. With the help of my editor Traci Finlay, I got “Fatal” revised, then published in 2021.

I hoped I could get “Lasting” written and edited for 2022, but it just didn’t work out that way. I went on hiatus and focused on getting better.

In the meantime, I’d started writing a more lighthearted series (but still very much on-brand). I pitched it to Rakuten Kobo’s publishing imprint Kobo Originals, and signed a four-book deal with them. A Touch of Gold was published earlier this year, and Book 2 is coming this fall.

Working with a publisher has given me the opportunity to continue publishing. My team with Kobo Originals handles all the things I struggle to juggle on my own, while I get to focus on writing (and taking care of myself). I’m currently focused on finishing out this contract, and then I can’t wait to return to Olivia and Cliff’s world.

While you await A Lasting Prospect, I hope you’ll check out my small town tattoo shop romance, A Touch of Gold.

If that isn’t your thing, don’t forget that I released a prequel to the River Reapers MC series, the novella Her Mercy. It tells Bree and Mercy’s story, while explaining how the club was founded and why Cliff went to prison.

Speaking of stories, you can read the quarantine chronicles (featuring the River Reapers’ shenanigans during shutdown), and a Halloween special (where the River Reapers throw a spooky bash and “take care” of a rat in the club)—both for free right here on my blog.

And the best way to stay updated on all my books is through my email newsletter.

So stay tuned, because I’m far from done with the River Reapers world. I appreciate you guys so much for being so patient!

🖤

The Real Story That Inspired Bryce’s Story in A FATAL PROSPECT

TW: Sexual assault of a minor.

In 2016, players from a high school basketball team sexually assaulted one of their teammates while at a conference. Three players were found guilty, only one of which was actually found guilty of rape. They all basically got away with a slap on the wrist.

This was about a year before I wrote A Disturbing Prospect.

This story haunted me. Based on news articles and tweets, it sounded like the school—or at least staff involved with the team—tried covering the whole thing up. The coach rushed the survivor to the hospital for emergency surgery, but didn’t report the incident. The superintendent cancelled the remainder of the basketball season, but didn’t publicly address why. According to the Times Free Press, “the judge initially refused to disclose the verdict or to allow reporters to cover the trial, claiming that it could harm the now-guilty defendants, who were juveniles at the time of their arrest.”

Our society is too often more concerned about protecting rapists instead of supporting victims. Even if a rapist is found guilty and convicted, the sentencing is often the bare minimum, with an emphasis on the negative effect it’d have on them, rather than the lifelong trauma they brought onto their victim.

This boils my blood. Here we had a young athlete, who had just as promising a future as the boys who held him down and sodomized him with a pool stick. He should’ve been supported and protected.

When I wrote A Disturbing Prospect, I knew where I wanted to take the series, but I wasn’t sure if my readers would be into a book/series like it. I wrote it as a book that could stand on its own if my readers weren’t feeling it, but could easily be built on if I got the green light. I knew exactly where I wanted to go with this series, if they let me. As soon as I realized my readers not only loved it but also wanted more ASAP, I started writing A Risky Prospect.

I wanted to incorporate a story like what happened to the teen in Tennessee because I wanted to bring awareness to how rape affects boys and men, and how rampant sexual assault is in sports. I created the character Bryce to represent all of the boys who’ve survived sexual violence in silence.

I needed to know what happened to the basketball player. He was never named and I wanted to give him the help and support he deserved.

Originally, Bryce’s story was part of A Risky Prospect. I wrote about 20,000 words of that first draft before I realized I needed to tell Olivia’s story first, to establish why she wanted to help Bryce so badly. I moved Esther’s story to A Risky Prospect because it tied in well with Olivia’s. Both of them grew up with absentee mothers who were neglectful at best. (Bree’s story is told in Her Mercy to explain why she wasn’t able to be present for Olivia; she’s a victim, too.) Those relationships played a huge part in the violence they both suffered.

Once I established those storylines, I was able to move Bryce’s front and center in A Fatal Prospect. I wanted to write this storyline as realistically as possible, while also giving Bryce the support he deserved.

From a young age, I learned that I couldn’t trust authority figures to protect or even support me. I drew on these experiences and the news to flesh out how the school, town, and police department handled what was done to Bryce. Then I let the River Reapers take over his case.

Since outlaws inherently don’t trust authorities, either, it was actually easy to write from the club’s point of view. Olivia, Cliff, and the MC make an effort to work with police, but there’s a lot of mistrust there and the police can’t legally take the case any further without the proper physical evidence. The club knows they want to support survivors like Olivia, Esther, and Bryce, and this is a sort of test run for them so they can eventually branch out and protect survivors as a service.

They’re completely new at this and they have to make mistakes before they can finesse their system. Unfortunately, their internal issues and historic rivalries don’t give them the time they need to reach any level of efficiency. The shit hits the fan and the club is thrown into reactive mode.

Bryce represents the innocence that is stolen when a person rapes someone. He’s a boy and, according to society, supposed to be strong—especially since he’s a football player. Pink is a soft color, and I gave him pink hair to remind readers that he’s still a victim, and all victims deserve justice.

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Where did the River Reapers MC name come from?

I grew up in Waterbury, a small city nestled in the Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut. One of our landmarks here is the Naugatuck River, infamous for nothing good.

In 1955, the river flooded, killing 47 people and resulting in millions of dollars of damage. My great-grandmother—my Biz Noni—used to tell me stories from that time, about how people stood on top of houses and factories while waiting for help. Thankfully my family’s home was safe, being on the top of a hill. But South Main Street—which is on lower ground and runs right along the river—completely flooded over. If you look closely, you can still see watermarks on some buildings.

These days we have flood control structures throughout the area, so it’s hard to imagine losing everything to nature’s wrath. But now we have a problem that is much more sinister.

Along the river are many factories. Some of those factories illegally dump their sewage and waste into the river. Growing up in the South End of Waterbury (which was built around the river), I can remember many, many days when the air smelled of sewage. We always joked that we knew we were home when the smell hit.

The river cleanup has been an ongoing process, mostly because people keep dumping into it. It seems like there is never, ever justice, and so the river is known for being dirty. We also used to joke that you should never fish in that river, and there were even rumors of mutants.

Of course, there aren’t any mutants, but that stuck with me. When I started fleshing out the River Reapers MC series, I needed a name for my club. Immediately the image of the Sludge Specter popped into my head. It’s a sludge-covered reaper that haunts the river, its eyes glowing with a thirst for revenge.

It’s also the patch that very few RRMC members earn when they prove they’ll do anything for the club—anything.

I decided to set the series in Naugatuck, another small city. Its city line hugs the end of the South End neighborhood. Like Waterbury, Naugatuck used to be a thriving industrial hub. Naugy just did a better job of reinventing itself. You can walk along Church Street, which is a super cute “main street” type stretch that hugs the Green and is lined with some great shops that took over vintage buildings.

There are some MCs in Naugy, but they aren’t quite as notorious as the ones in Waterbury, so it made sense to set my story there. (The first rule of writing MC romance is to never write about real life MCs, especially not one-percenters.) It also amused me greatly to stick a strip club in a town that would probably never approve one in real life.

Even though I grew up right next door to Naugy, I wasn’t too familiar with the area and had to do a lot of research, which I’ll talk about in another post, if you want me to.

And so the River Reapers MC was born, burying bodies along the Naugatuck River since sometime in the mid-Nineties. 😏

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What Inspired A RISKY PROSPECT and the River Reapers MC Series

TW: This post discusses my recovery from sexual assault.

I’ve been asked a few times about what inspired A Risky Prospect; mainly, whether Olivia’s PTSD and recovery from sexual assault is based on my own experience.

I am a sexual assault survivor.

It still feels weird to say that. It’s only been four years since I started facing my traumas and recognizing what happened to me. Two different “boyfriends” hurt me—one over a period of years, the other over a few months. Both assaults happened in different ways—not the textbook “attacked in an alley” way. I’m still working through what that means. Our society has a huge denial issue when it comes to rape. We don’t discuss it. We don’t believe survivors. We don’t punish rapists.

Once I started unpacking what happened to me and how, I started feeling less ashamed and more angry. I didn’t know what to do with that anger, though. Both of the people who hurt me are long out of my life.

I knew before I even sat down to write this series that eventually I wanted the River Reapers to be vigilantes, to be the ones that people in their town turned to when no one else would help. I also knew I didn’t want to just jump into their adventures as vigilantes; I wanted to build up to it, lay down a foundation of some history, and then let ’em at it.

“One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives,” reports the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. In the face of these astounding statistics and the rape culture the U.S. is stewing in, I needed to do something. I also needed to tell my story for my own healing. So I took those two “men” who hurt me, rolled them into one character, and let Olivia’s story unfold. It was cathartic for me but also served as a driving force for the River Reapers to take things into their own hands.

My own traumas weren’t the only things that inspired this book, though.

In 2006, not too long after the second event, I met a man who restored my faith in men. Mike showed me what it’s like to have a healthy relationship. He also supported me relentlessly while I unpacked all of my shit and dealt with it. He might not fully understand PTSD, but he tries. From the very beginning, we just fit. In a way, he’s the reason I started writing romance; through him, I started believing in love again. Pieces of him found their way into every hero I’ve ever written, but I put a whole lot of him in Cliff.

I’d need more than a few sentences to capture what he means to me. Cliff is sort of an ode to Mike.

Especially the crusty man socks in Book 1. 😉

My love for vigilantes and Sons of Anarchy sparked this series, but I also wanted to do things a little differently. If you’ve been with me for a while, you know I write “badass belles who chose the other path.” I often flip gender roles and stomp on assumptions about women. I write “unlikable” heroines: women who are strong, foulmouthed, and sex positive. I hate how much our society shames women for loving sex. I hate that both men and other women do this. Women who love sex are called all sorts of awful things, and it makes my eye twitch. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your body and having sex. Nothing! Sex is one of my favorite things, so I passed that on to Olivia. I wanted to show other women that it’s perfectly okay to be sex positive.

This book also has several healthy female friendships. I’m lucky to be surrounded by many strong, supportive, loving women in my life. Some of them I got by birth, others by chance and choice, but I’m grateful for all of them. A Risky Prospect dives deeper into Olivia and her roommate Esther’s friendship, and strengthens Olivia and Lucy’s relationship.

It’s not all about Olivia, though.

While doing research before and while writing this series, I learned a lot about the prison system and the hardships that people like Cliff face when they’re released. Cliff lost 20 years of his life and is going through a sort of identity crisis. He isn’t sure whether he loves Olivia or just the idea of her, and he has no idea what to do with himself outside of their relationship. While Olivia is unpacking her PTSD, Cliff has to figure out who he is and what he wants in life. He also has to reconcile his dreams with the reality in front of him.

A Risky Prospect is the hardest and darkest book I’ve ever written, but it’s also the book I’m most proud of. It’s got many bright spots and swoony moments. I can’t wait for the world to experience the next installment of Olivia and Cliff’s story. I hope you’ll all be as obsessed with these two as I am.

A Risky Prospect
River Reapers MC, Book 2
Now Available

Brash social worker Olivia has been through her own personal hell and come out the other side, tattered but determined to make things better in her corrupt town—no matter the cost. Her roommate’s current situation is the perfect place to start.

When ex-con Cliff’s wild ol’ lady Olivia comes to him and the River Reapers for help, he’s on board. His vigilante motorcycle club can get the job done, and it’ll help convince Olivia to take the next step in their relationship.

But when Olivia’s traumatic past walks through the club’s doors, there’s no stopping her from doing whatever it takes to settle her own score. Even if it means crossing a line that Cliff might not be able to pull her back from.

Read Chapter 1 | Read with Kindle Unlimited | Order a Signed Paperback

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Anatomy of a Biker’s Cut

In another life, I’d be a biker.

I love the freedom, the camaraderie, and the bikes themselves. If I could physically ride or even start the thing, I’d totally get one. My UCTD kinda makes that impossible, but I can live vicariously.

That’s part of why I write MC romance.

Oh, I’m sure real bikers laugh at shows like Sons of Anarchy and books like mine, but I still try to write about the life as realistically as possible. Between family members who are members of SCs/RCs (social riding clubs) and family friends who are members of MCs (motorcycle clubs), I soak it all in. One thing I really wanted to get straight were all of the patches on the cut.

At first glance, a biker’s cut can look like a random collection of patches. But each patch has a different meaning, and some patches will even vary from club to club. I threw together a watered down diagram of the patches you’ll see on almost every cut.

The top rocker is sort of a banner with the club’s name on it. The bottom rocker usually displays the club’s location. The club colors are really just a logo. When you see a sign that says “no colors allowed,” it means no MC cuts. Social clubs are sometimes accepted, depending on the establishment. The side rockers display the club’s name on the bottom sides of the cut, usually wrapping around to the front. So our River Reapers MC cuts would look something like this:

Note: On the back, there’s also a patch that signifies whether the club is a MC or SC (sometimes referred to as RC, depending on the region). I forgot it when making this graphic. 😅

On the front, there are several other patches. Again, this’ll vary from club to club.

For the River Reapers MC, I kept it simple.

On the right breast, there are club name and office patches. The right is empty, unless the member has earned a special patch—like a Sludge Specter patch. Those gray things are supposed to be pockets, in case ya can’t tell. I’m no illustrator.

In the wild, you might see bikers with a billion patches. These can be special to each club, so it really could vary. Sons of Anarchy kept theirs simple, too.

The cut itself might be leather or denim. My River Reapers wear leather, because there’s nothing like that heavenly creaking sound. At least, that’s how I feel about it. I appreciate that a lot of people want to be cruelty-free, in which case a vegan leather vest or old fashioned denim would be suitable. The River Reapers wear thrifted leather, that way it’s already broken in and they’re recycling. 😉

So there you have it—the anatomy of a cut! I hope you enjoyed this, because I plan on doing more fun posts. Let me know if you liked this and what else you want to see!

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