Parts 1 & 2 of my standalone dark romance novella Her Mercy are now live! Read this prequel to the River Reapers MC on its own, or as your appetizer for the series. Free when you join my email list!
🖤 Her Mercy Parts 1 & 2 are now live! 🖤
In case you missed it, I’ve been serializing my dark fake marriage romance Her Mercy on my website, free for all email subscribers.
This novella is a standalone prequel to the River Reapers series, and a little less dark than the main series. If you haven’t read it yet, now’s the perfect time!
what you can expect
standalone novella 📖
prequel to the River Reapers MC series 🖤
he’s 19 years older 😉
second chance romance spanning decades 💔
runaway bride 👰🏻♀️
SA survivor heroine 🙌🏼
wounded warrior biker hero 🎖
surprise baby (it’s not his) 🤰🏻
healing together ❤️🩹
quick read ⌛️
The last time Bree ran away, she put the love of her life Mercy in prison. Now that he’s out, he’s got to find her and convince her they belong together so they can both be free.
Bree has been running for decades. Every time she gets into trouble, the River Reapers MC covers her tracks. That’s how she met Mercy, the only man who’s ever loved her, and the reason she’s running again.
Mercy has an ache in his bones that not even freedom can soothe. When Bree disappeared, she put him in prison both metaphorically and physically.
Mercy needs to find Bree and reclaim the home they once found in each other. But Bree is still buckling under the weight of her own prison, and if Mercy doesn’t find her before her past does, she’ll disappear forever.
Catch Up on Part 1
Read part 2: The War Hero
Part 3 begins Tuesday, May 6th! Be sure to join my free email list so you don’t miss a chapter.
If you’re enjoying this serialized edition of Her Mercy, give this post a like! And if you’re excited for more River Reapers stories, give this post a like for that. 🖤
Music is a powerful tool. All of Mike’s concussion clinic providers are about 45 minutes away from our apartment—plus traffic. “Exhausted” is my baseline, but when he started having seizures, I took over as driver. It’s been good for me, in a sense, challenging me out of my comfort zone and into pushing myself a little bit more. But driving requires a lot of focus, which eats up a lot of my spoons—especially when I’m in a flare.
“Hit me with something high octane,” I beg Mike, passing him my phone. He puts on Kylesa, and it actually perks me up.
This isn’t the first time I’ve used music to set my own mood. I do it a lot when I’m writing, especially when writing dual POV romance. The two lead characters are often different as night and day, even down to the music I put on to get in their heads.
When I wrote Bree’s chapters for Her Mercy, I listened to a lot of Liela Moss’s My Name is Safe in Your Mouth. All of the songs on this album have a sad, romantic, nostalgic feel to them. There’s wisdom woven into the heartbreak, a constant thread of self-discovery. The novella is dual POV but the story is really driven by Bree; Mercy’s all in, it’s Bree who has to face and save herself.
The playlist for Her Mercy is shorter than the other books’ playlists, mostly because I listened to that Liela Moss album quite a bit. I kicked it off with Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” to set the mood of the book. It’s pretty much the soundtrack to a then 14-year-old Bree having run away.
When she stumbles upon The Wet Mermaid and walks into the strip club, “American Woman” is playing. This song is required for all biker gatherings. I’m pretty sure it’s an unwritten rule. This is the first time Bree has a run-in with Bastard, and it won’t be the last.
As Mercy searches for Bree in the present, both of their past selves grapple with everything they know exploding.
Mercy struggles to believe the evil things his lifelong friend Bastard does, hoping to rescue him from the darkness before it swallows both of them and the club they built.
Bree is alone in the world, reeling after a shocking event that sent her running. She’s convinced Mercy and the others to let her stay, but she doesn’t really belong.
Not that she belongs anywhere or to anyone, not anymore.
To keep Bree safe from Bastard, Mercy pretends to marry her, making her forever off limits. But he can’t keep her safe from herself, no more than he can stop the fire burning inside him.
Being fake married only brings them closer. Bree’s balm soothes the pain in Mercy’s bones, and when he tells her the truth about Bastard, she urges him to take it to the MC’s table for a vote. Mercy knows she’s right, that Bastard can’t be allowed to hurt anyone else ever again, but it’s soul-crushing, accepting what his best friend’s become.
As everything comes to a head in the past, Mercy searches for Bree in the present. He’ll never break the vows he made to her, but she sure doesn’t make it easy.
Especially when she runs away again just as he closes in.
When they finally reunite, even though they have much to reconcile, it’s clear that they belong together.
It won’t be easy, but now that they’re together, they can heal the past and face the future.
Read Her Mercy
Ebook, serial, and paperback editions of Her Mercy are now available! Read serialized chapters for free on my website. All you need is a valid email address. You can also purchase the ebook or paperback through your favorite retailer.
Part 1 of my standalone dark romance novella Her Mercy is now live! Read this prequel to the River Reapers MC on its own, or as your appetizer for the series.
The last time Bree ran away, she put the love of her life Mercy in prison. Now that he’s out, he’s got to find her and convince her they belong together so they can both be free.
Bree has been running for decades. Every time she gets into trouble, the River Reapers MC covers her tracks. That’s how she met Mercy, the only man who’s ever loved her, and the reason she’s running again.
Mercy has an ache in his bones that not even freedom can soothe. When Bree disappeared, she put him in prison both metaphorically and physically.
Mercy needs to find Bree and reclaim the home they once found in each other. But Bree is still buckling under the weight of her own prison, and if Mercy doesn’t find her before her past does, she’ll disappear forever.
what you can expect
standalone novella 📖
prequel to the River Reapers MC series 🖤
he’s 19 years older 😉
second chance romance spanning decades 💔
runaway biker bride 👰🏻♀️
SA survivor heroine 🙌🏼
wounded warrior biker hero 🎖
surprise baby (it’s not his) 🤰🏻
healing together ❤️🩹
quick read ⌛️
Her Mercy, part 1: The Drifter
Part 2 begins April 8th! Be sure to join my free email list so you don’t miss a chapter.
If you’re enjoying this serialized edition of Her Mercy, give this post a like! And if you’re excited for more River Reapers stories, give this post a like for that. 🖤
Welcome back to Books, Bud, and Brews. I love saying that!
What a week. This week was really hard. I had to just unplug from all the media, and I needed to rest, and regroup a little bit, and I took a morning nap, which felt amazing, and I woke up actually feeling much better, and it was an accidental nap. *chuckles* I was watching the Reading Rainbow documentary, and that actually was just the pep talk I needed.
I don’t know—it’s so strange, sometimes when I watch things, or read things, they’re exactly what I need, and it was wild. Reading Rainbow—still saving my generation’s sanity, to this day.
So, what are we talking about today? We are talking about writer burnout, which is taking us out, one by one, like dominoes, and we don’t talk about it at all. So I’m gonna talk about it.
We’re also going to talk about character trauma, and character arcs, and healing together from trauma, in romance.
Please subscribe and give this video a like if you’re watching on YouTube!
So, creative burnout. It’s a thing. It happens to writers. It happens to us a lot. It’s an issue in our community that we don’t talk about. I don’t think readers are even remotely aware. I just think readers kind of see—you guys see the after effects of burnout, right. You’ll see that the series you’re really into is not being continued anymore, or that author’s not on social media anymore. Or, you’ll see author’s kind of rescheduling releases a lot or completely cancelling different releases, different events, stuff like that. I’ve also seen authors be really up front with readers, like “Hey, I’m going through this thing right now, and I just can’t get this book out at the moment. I need a moment for myself, and I need to regroup, reset, and relax, and reevaluate things. The wonderful thing about the book community is, people are generally pretty supportive of this. Which is why I don’t understand why we don’t talk about it, because our readers are very supportive, other authors are very supportive.
We got sucked into this myth that we have to publish quickly because the algorithms on certain retailers favor that. The thing is, before those algorithms were a thing, we were lucky if we saw a book a year from our favorite authors. I mean, authors were creating pen names so they could publish more than one book in a year. The norm really was every year or so you’d get a new book from that author. Sometimes even longer. Books used to take years and years and years in between, like, series books. I mean, if you don’t have the experience of waiting for the next book in the series, and you’re just so hungry for any news, and then it comes out, and you get that first cozy-up with it—it’s the best.
So we didn’t always have this insane breakneck speed schedule. Readers were happy waiting, writers would just take their time, focus on the craft. Things would just naturally come out, and people would get to enjoy them.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a fast release schedule, do not get me wrong. Because it can be great, there are people who literally read books *snaps fingers* within hours. You’re amazing. So no hate to people that write fast or read fast. What I’m really talking about is when we kind of get stuck in this thought that, “I have to serve this algorithm. I have to be on this schedule. I have to be very fast. I have to keep putting books out. I have to release weekly, or monthly.”
I have actually seen people trying to do weekly schedules. I’ve seen people do monthly. It’s… a lot. The authors are suffering. That’s the thing. If people were not burning out so bad, and things were just moving along, that would be fine. The problem is, all the time, authors are disappearing, never to be heard from again. Authors that were doing well—that were kicking ass in their careers, that were really just taking off, and then all of a sudden, they burn out. I’ve seen authors talk about it, to the extent where they’ll kind of explain a little about what’s going on, and then I’ve also seen authors just never come back, either.
There’s also an issue within the industry of an expectation of speed. I was just talking with some authors and other industry people about how they’re formatting books and copyediting books that aren’t even written yet. So if you can kind of break that down and digest what I just said, they are copyediting books that are not written yet. *chuckles* I don’t know how that works. He explained it, it sounds stressful for everyone on all sides of it.
I don’t know what we’re doing.
I think that we need to start saying no. I think that we need to start putting boundaries for ourselves and others, and I think we need to lose the mindset that we are all in competition with each other. This kind of competitive spirit has become toxic. It’s one thing to push yourself and to want to do better, and keep pushing forward, and it’s another to just pit all authors against each other, and constantly be working against each other. We are actually on the same side, because I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t keep up with a person who can read three to five books in a day. *laughs* Never mind one book a day. I’m just always amazed by how quickly people tell me they read my books, or other books, or how many books they read in a day. That kind of thing always blows my mind, because at this point I feel like I’m lucky to read a book a year.
So what can we do? We can talk about it. That’s all I wanted. I’ve actually been in author groups where I posted something just saying, “Hey guys, we really need to talk about this, and try to figure it out, because we really are disappearing.” We’re burning out at, I think, a pretty steady rate, and it’s kind of alarming. I’ve also experienced burnout for myself, and I don’t want that, our readers don’t want that, we don’t want that for ourselves. We want better for ourselves. We want to have businesses that are sustainable and fun, and we keep getting better at what we do, and we do cool shit together. That’s what I think. So I think we start talking about it, and we collaborate on solutions for burnout. We get more collaborative in general. You know, you’re not my competition, I’m not your competition, because they’re gonna read all of our books, and then some. *laughs* So we don’t need to worry about whose book they want to read. They’re gonna read all the books.
And we also start setting boundaries for ourselves. We really think about, “If I’m going to publish a book a month, if that’s something I am going to do, that I’m comfortable with and able to do, and I can do it in a healthy, sustainable way, then what are the boundaries I’m going to put into place for myself?” Because you can’t keep pouring out of yourself if you have nothing coming in. And if you’re constantly working late, working weekends—and I understand a lot of us don’t have the flexibility in our lives to have a steady, consistent schedule at all. I mean, I don’t have kids right now, but I do have chronic illnesses. They’re like kids, they’re always needing something, they don’t go away, they don’t go with their dad for the weekend. *chuckles* Some of us are writing nights, some of us are working around other work schedules, some of us are working around family, so it’s a lot of different things that are going on.
But say I work nine to five. I stay tight within those boundaries. Or if I can only grab time where I can, say I’m writing tonight, then it’s only gonna be for an hour, 9-10 p.m., and then I’m done, I’m going to rest or relax or do something else. It’s about boundaries.
It’s also about saying no… to people that think we can *snaps fingers* generate a book. This is where it’s going to get interesting, because we have this AI technology now. We are not meant to just vomit things out. We’re not supposed to just endlessly go go go, we are human beings. We are meant to experience, and feel, and enjoy our lives. Yes, enjoy. We are meant to enjoy, and experience—even if the circumstances around us are not ideal and perfect, we’re still meant to enjoy and feel and experience. We are not supposed to keep going and burn ourselves out.
So I think those three things are a great starting point. We talk about it, we start collaborating more, and we keep some boundaries.
reading to you
Today we are reading from A Disturbing Prospect, Book 1 in my River Reapers MC series.
Last week we read Chapter 1 of A Disturbing Prospect, and Cliff got out of prison, and he is trying to figure out pretty much everything. He doesn’t have a place to stay, he doesn’t have anywhere to go, he doesn’t have a job, he doesn’t know if he has any friends or family that he’s going to be able to have as a support system, and he’s figuring everything out. His character arc is pretty awesome. I’m going to try not to spoil anything.
So when Cliff gets out of prison, he is dealing with several traumas. He’s processing so much. He has just gotten out of prison after a 20-year sentence. He’s dealing with grief, and loss. He’s also dealing with having witnessed a child hurt. He’s dealing with separation from his family. And he’s dealing with reintegration, getting back into society.
Everything is different for him. Those are the things he notices is everything is different. He is not familiar with anything anymore. The technology has changed, everything that he knew going in is pretty much horribly outdated, and there’s all this new stuff that he’s gotta figure out. So the first thing he has to figure out is, how does he find his family, so that he can maybe have a chance. Because the statistics of inmates committing another crime are really high when they first get out. Turns out there’s really no rehabilitation happening in these “rehabilitation centers.” There isn’t as much of a reintegration process that you’d think.
All of these things shape this characters as he’s—as you’re introduced to him in the story. You’re just kind of dropped into right when he gets out of prison, and he’s kind of just taking everything in, and realizing, “I’m all alone, I don’t have anyone, I don’t have anywhere to go. My only shot is finding my cousin.”
That character starts out very not sure-footed at all, really just having to pick up and really start building—and quick. He doesn’t have time or room for any trouble, anything that could potentially land him back in. He really just wants to be out, and not be there again. So this is a character that’s used to solving every problem with his fists and violence, and now he’s in a situation where he can’t do that at all anymore. He’s gotta do things the “legit way.” He’s gotta do things by the book. He’s gotta make sure he checks in with his P.O., make sure he gets a job right away, he has a place to stay—ticks off all the boxes because he does not want to go back inside.
Those survival behaviors that he had before don’t suit him anymore. He knows what he is and what he’s done, and he’s really trying to do different. After 20 years in the prison, living like that, having to fight to defend yourself, not having contact with anyone in the outside world, can he change? That’s what he wonders when he first comes out, Can he even change? Does he even have a shot at having a future, a family, falling in love…?
He can’t do it alone—we all need support—so the first thing he does is try to find his cousin and reconnect with her, because that was his best friend. But because of what happened and why he went into prison, he doesn’t necessarily know if he’s going to be able to find her, or if she’s even gonna want to talk to him. He’s very much dependent on her accepting him back into her life.
Their relationship was very, very good, they were very very close, like this, like siblings basically, except he was much older than her, so kind of more of a chibling relationship. He is really hinging everything, like, “If I can’t reconnect with this person, and she doesn’t want me, then that’s okay, I will go away… but then I’ll go away.” *chuckles* “I’ll go away… but I’ll also go away.”
So he’s in a very shitty position. It brings up issues of toxic masculinity, because he’s feeling like, “I should be the one taking care of her. I should have a job, I need to fucking get my shit together, I need to man up.” He uses those exact words. He just spent 20 years stuck in a prison with all these other men where it really is fight or die. It’s not a vacation.
So this character is dealing with all that, processing all that, and then he meets Olivia, and everything changes for both of them. They are immediately attracted to each other, and recognize something in each other. They also, because of their own individual traumas, can’t quite connect. He’s just getting out of prison and he’s like, “I gotta check all these boxes, because I’ve missed 20 years of my life. I want to have a family, I want to settle down… and I gotta do it yesterday.” Right? So he’s like ready to go, and she’s like “Uh, no.” She doesn’t want those things at all. They both have very good reasons for wanting and needing the things that they need and want.
They also complement each other at the same time. They also each have what each other needs. They have found a home and a family in each other.
Cliff immediately starts gathering his sort of support system. He’s got his cousin Lucy, he’s got Olivia, he’s also going to be having this P.O. that he can check in with, and then he will eventually have the club’s support as well.
He’s having to kind of learn everything on the fly, completely just picking it up and going. He doesn’t know what Facebook is, he doesn’t know how to use a cell phone, and he’s finding that even socially things have changed quite a bit, like in his own community. The people that he was familiar with have all faded away—the letters, the calls, the visits, those have gone. He doesn’t have any real community at all anymore. That looks completely different from what he remembers growing up.
Throughout the series, we see this character becoming less reluctant and more aware of his family history, and the generational trauma that he’s inherited. Through that understanding that he’s gaining, as he’s kind of navigating his role in the club and becoming a fully patched member, he starts to realize that he does want the club. He wants to make it what it could be. His father left a legacy that’s not so great. [Cliff] knows what he wants for it.
He goes from a person who has nothing, and has no direction, no support system—nothing—to a person who is leading. After not wanting to lead, but coming into that. Which has been so fun and so rewarding to write, and read. I know you guys love him.
His character was actually influenced by people I know in real life who did do time—throughout the years, spent a lot of time in prison, and actually were in prison longer than they were out. Through those experiences, they definitely have an interesting way of looking at life, and they have a very… amazing personality, quite honestly, because I think that it could change you. You could let it—like, Cliff worries about, is it going to change him, is he still going to be that monster that he thinks he is, he thinks he’s always going to be that person that went in and spent those 20 years in there.
It’s really easy to be that person, quite honestly. I think it’s easy to just give in and just let those things take over, and forget about what’s important, what’s within your control. I think it’s so much easier to just give in to it. Whereas, you can work and develop and evolve, and… I don’t want to say, like, “Take the lesson,” because prison is a very complicated conversation, and I don’t necessarily want to fully get into it, but I don’t think that most people start off in life thinking, “You know what I really hope? I hope I do some hard time!” *chuckles*
Most people are good people, and that’s not what they were intending at all. I think our system should reflect that, and support that, instead of supporting the chaos and trauma that come from being in prison. What I really wanted to do was highlight how very little support there is, and how very much we emphasize that prisoners should rehabilitate, but we give them very little support or opportunities to do that.
People can’t even get jobs coming out of prison. Most employers won’t hire a felon, and it doesn’t even matter if the crime wasn’t violent. In fact, recently I learned that most nursing homes won’t even let a felon recuperate in their nursing homes, even if they weren’t a violent criminal. That to me is just insane. You’re not giving people opportunities to actually come back into society. You’re completely blocking them out because of their past mistakes.
Through Cliff, I really wanted to highlight these things and draw awareness and attention to it, because it really is something that’s not mainstream at all. It’s just kind of always used as a plot device, like, “Oh, this character’s done hard time.” Well, you know, that comes with a lot of its own trauma, it comes with a lot of its own baggage, and it’s very interesting to explore, and I think it’s something worth talking about.
If you enjoyed this discussion on author burnout and character growth from prison to leader of the MC, please let me know. Please leave a comment on YouTube, you can also DM me, you can email me, or you can leave a comment on the shownotes on my blog.
Thank you so much for listening to Books, Bud, and Brews! I’m Elizabeth Barone, author of dark romance with a body count, and small town romance with a body count. You can check out all of my books, including some free books and chapters, on my website ElizabethBarone.com.
Thank you for listening to Episode 2 of Books, Bud, and Brews!
Welcome to Books, Bud, and Brews 📖💨☕️ with Elizabeth Barone, where we are hanging out, smoking up, and catching up. Today we’re discussing what makes reading so healing. I’ll read to you from my dark romance, A Disturbing Prospect. And we’ll talk favorite strains for leisure, pain management, and creativity.
Please subscribe and give this video a like if you’re watching on YouTube!
Welcome to the first episode of Books, Bud, and Brews! I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, and after a lot of false starts, I’m so excited to finally stop telling myself no and just do it. I want this show to feel like you’re chillin’ with your bestie, smoking up and shooting the shit. But I’m also not gonna pretend like nothing is happening and everything is normal, because everything is not normal. We are going to dive into some deeper topics, so I won’t be ignoring what’s going on, and I’ll also work to strike a balance between going deep and staying cozy. I’ll look to you to tell me how deep you want me to go.
This week I’ve been running through Sleeve of Hearts revisions! After over a year of working on this book, I can finally, finally see the end in sight. I ended up going old school and printed out a hard copy and revising that way. There really is something to doing things the old fashioned way sometimes. It really does something to your brain, like flips a switch. So stay tuned for more on that series soon, because things are a-moving!
Why Reading is So Healing
We talk a lot in the community about reading being healing, but have you ever thought about why?
I truly believe books find you when you need them most. It’s so weird, so many times in my life, when I was going through something and turned to a book to escape, I ended up finding exactly what I needed in that book, even if the plot wasn’t relevant to my life. Like this past summer, I ended up reading several books back to back that all were exactly what I needed, in different ways. It was amazing, because I’d been going through a dry reading spell, and then out of nowhere I just blew through three or four in a row that were all incredible, and all of them gave me something.
I’ll link to those books in the show notes.
I really do believe the right books find you right when you need them.
Reading also helps you slow down and focus your brain. It’s really, really good for anxiety. When you’re absorbing each word—reading is very cerebral, and it’s the only entertainment where the audience controls the flow of time. When you’re watching a movie, that 90 minutes goes by. But when you’re reading, you can really slow down, savor every word. Some of us (hi) are reading the same words and paragraphs over and over. But it slows you down. It’s good stuff.
It also gives you an escape from reality. Your reality doesn’t even necessarily have to be traumatic for you to need an escape. It could just be the monotony of everyday life, and reading gives you a break from that. Or when you’re going through something, it can be an escape from some really hard times.
Or like, when I’m reading horror, it can help you realize maybe things aren’t so bad. Like, things are difficult in my life… but at least it’s not zombies.
Reading is also a safe way to work through trauma and other complicated feelings. So many dark romance authors say they wrote their books because they experienced those things. Writing it gave them a safe space to process that in a sort of sandbox. And the author creates that space for themselves—but also the reader. Tehre’s a lot of controversy about trigger warnings, btu they’re useful int wo ways.
Trigger and content warnings can tell you what topics you migt want to avoid. They can also help you find a book to safely process specific things.
It’s really amazing that auhtors can create those spaces for ourselves and our readers. We end up processing together. I really want to explore that more, going forward in my own career.
Because, research shows that writing creatively actually heals trauma. When you’re involving all five senses to write and process your trauma, it has a similar effect to that of EMDR. We’re definitely going to be talking about that more in future episodes, because I’m very excited about this.
Reading to You
Today I’m reading from the first book in my dark romance series, A Disturbing Prospect.
My Favorite bud
Where I live, in Connecticut, cannabis is legal medically and recreationally. It can be a bit hard to find informaiton, though. Dispensaries use different names than what we’re used to. It can become a sort of trial and error situation, and while it can be frustrating, it can also be fun.
Different strains have different effects, uses, and side effects. It can take some experimenting to find strains that work best for you.
For pain, I really like Hauntrica and Emerald Fire. Hauntrica is one that’s in the dispensaries, I believe only on the medical side. I’m not sure what its street name is. It’s so good for pain, though quite drying. I’ve found that all the best strains for pain tend to be drying.
I also really like Emerald Fire. I actually only just tried it a few months ago, and it’s now probably my all-time favorite. It’s also not hard to find, so I’ll hopefully be keeping it in rotation from here on. It’s a really good one to keep on hand for those bad pain days.
Indicas tend to be better for pain, I think because they have a higher THC content. Don’t quote me on that. There are some sativas that I like for pain, like Sour Diesel and Gelato. But I tend to stick to indicas for pain.
Now for leisure, that’s a whole different mood. You want to kick back, watch a movie, maybe laugh a little. Gelato and Sour Diesel are really good for that, while also keeping you alert and energized. They’re not gonna put you in couch lock. My other favorite, Skywalker, though, that’ll make you feel like a cartoon character blown back into a wall by a fan. That one, you throw on a movie and probably take a nap. But for reading and stuff like that where I want to be focused and really get into my book, I love Gelato and Sour D.
They’re also my picks for creativity. Again, they’re sativas and so they’re energizing, with serious creative vibes. You’ll really get into that zone with these two strains. You’ll be able to concentrate and the ideas will flow.
There are so many strains out there but I really am a simple girl. I have my handful of favorites and I’m good to go.
What strains are your favorite? Please let us know. It can be really difficult for people to get proper information, and in the 420 community, we are all about sharing, so don’t gatekeep!
I’m so exicted for what’s ahead in this podcast. I’ve got lots of ideas for segments, and I’m curious what you’re interested in. Please take a moment and take this quick poll to help me create better episodes for you.
Thank you for listening to Episode 1 of Books, Bud, and Brews!
The infamous Butcher & Blackbird ice cream scene broke the internet. In the scene, our hero Rowan accidentally eats ice cream made from human semen. A little later, they find the maker of this confectionery nightmare eating it on purpose. The ice cream only has a brief cameo, but it ignited an age old debate. Should romance be gory?
In mainstream romance, we focus on the cute moments in life packaged in prose revised to Hallmark perfection. If there are any corpses, they’re reduced to a more palatable mention.
Sometimes that escape from reality is desperately needed. We slip into picturesque struggling towns that won’t really go under, and even if someone dies, their death serves as some kind of lesson for our main characters. We will never, ever see our hero eat cum ice cream. The only thing he’s eating is our heroine’s pussy. 😈
Or our other hero’s cock. Whatever works!
I love when dark romance marries romance with horror. It’s a personal gripe of mine that the dark romance section is packed with titles that contain little to no romance. Often they’re actually vengeance stories, our heroine getting her just desserts. I love these stories, too; it’s so healing to read a badass woman killing rapists. But when I pick up any romance, it’s because I’m in the mood for romance, ya know?
That’s why I loved Butcher & Blackbird so much. Brynne Weaver balanced revenge with a slow burn love story and plenty of gore for the triumvirate of dark romance. There’s a running bit where our hero busts our heroine’s balls for always doing a bad job gouging out the left eye of her victims. At first she’s annoyed by this wry observation. Then it becomes an inside joke, evolving as their relationship does.
The semen ice cream scene is such a brief one, yet clearly made an impression because people are still talking about it. It doesn’t read like the shock value I too often see in dark romance. It’s set up like a comedy bit, which is a smart move on Weaver’s part because comedy and horror are closely related. There’s a reason why Jordan Peele of the Key and Peele comedic duo went on to become a horror king: both genres are all about timing. The creme de cum serves as an opportunity for the reader to feel Sloane’s and Rowan’s shock. As horror fans, we’ve seen a lot of cannibalism, so the usual stuff won’t work for us. Weaver gets that. When Rowan takes a bite, we’re not just grossed out, we’re laughing in horror because omfg, he for real ate it, and most of us can recall the taste and texture of both ice cream and semen, so we’re both horrified for him and laughing in relief that it isn’t us.
In case you can’t tell, I’ve got a bit of a writing crush on her.
The scene is about as skippable as spicy bits; you can skim if you’d prefer and you won’t miss much, other than the two main characters bonding over this tragedy.
I want to see more dark romance like this: books that blend all the feels of horror with the rush of falling in love. The weirdo who made the ice cream isn’t what really scares our MCs. It’s the notion of giving away their heart to the other person, and that’s what they really have to vanquish to get their HEA.
What are your favorite romances that blend in horror elements? Tell us the title and author, please!
Maybe it’s a bit dramatic to say these books saved my life, but they kinda did. They gave me invaluable tools to cope with my complex PTSD while I’ve been unable to get back into therapy. I still believe that everyone can benefit from therapy, but unfortunately not everyone has access to it. If that’s the case for you, I hope these books will help.
This book started it all for me. Anderson’s methods might seem a bit silly at first, but once I got past that, I learned how to separate my various selves, communicate better with myself from my highest self, and unpack my self-sabotaging behaviors. Once I finished the book, I no longer felt any need to write letters to my Inner or Outer Child, but now I occasionally write letters to and from my adult self. The self-communication skills that you’ll gain from this are so worth it; a lot of us trauma survivors have no idea what our wants, needs, or drivers are, and this book cleverly shows you how to figure that out.
In my parents’ defense, they were literal teenagers when they had me. So I mean absolutely no disrespect. I love my parents and I know they love me and did their best, and yet I had a lot to unpack in adulthood, a lot of behaviors I picked up as a way to cope with not only my childhood but also multiple traumas that occurred. This book helped me see things from a whole new perspective, and gave me tools I desperately needed to shape the adult I wanted to become. I’ve been operating from a place of trauma-based fear, and this book helped me both see the areas in which I’m emotionally immature and how to reparent myself. It’s less about blaming your dysfunctional parents/family for all your problems, and more about stepping into yourself and healing.
How to Do the Work felt like the natural next step. I actually had it quite a while before I even started “Emotionally Immature.” They say that books come to you when you need them most, and I’ve found that to be so true. Maybe it was the universe guiding me, or maybe deep down I just knew I needed to ease into all this shadow work. It sure isn’t easy, facing yourself! Dr. LePera AKA The Holistic Psychologist on Instagram gently guides you through the process, while sharing her personal story as well as her clients’ stories. This book helped me build upon the things I learned from the other two, plus gave me some new insights.
I don’t think you necessarily have to read and work through all three of these books or in this exact order; you can start with whichever speaks to you most and go from there.
I hope these books help you! Please let me know if you try them. And if you have any mental health books you found helpful, please share them!
The tears in Sloane’s eyes shift and shine as they gather at her lash line. “I am not unlovable.” She jabs her bloody finger in my direction, punctuating every word. “I am very fucking lovable.”
Again and again, certain books come to me when I need them most. I’m a survivor of sexual assault. I couldn’t even start processing the things that were done to me until a different traumatic event occurred in 2015 and my therapist diagnosed me with complex PTSD. The other day, I ran into one of my abusers (almost literally), and it sent me into a bit of a spiral. I processed it over a few days, going through all sorts of emotions. Then I needed a distraction—a safe distraction.
This is why trigger warnings are so important. I get that for some readers, a list of TWs can look like spoilers and, for others, triggers are more like tropes, in that they purposely look for books featuring specific triggers—reading certain triggers can help some survivors process traumatic events. For some survivors, though, those lists are lifelines.
I’ve long struggled to find my place in dark romance, as both a reader and writer. I’ve read romances marketed as lighthearted rom-coms that opened with graphic rape scenes or contained disturbing plot twists that you’d need therapy for IRL. These triggers can be so validating in some readers’ healing journeys, while detrimental to others. This is why I believe trigger warnings are necessary; readers who don’t need them can ignore them, and readers who do need them can utilize them.
I can’t tell author Brynne Weaver how much I appreciate her not only having a content warnings section on her website, but also for writing spicy romance that is always consensual. For me, this is imperative whether I’m reading dark or light romance. I’m super cautious about the books I read, and having an extensive list of CWs helped me decide to give Butcher & Blackbird a shot. (So did this blog post and this Amazon review.)
I’m seeing a trend that’s fascinating me. [In some dark romances] we get strong, vulnerable, and resilient women who take the abuses and transgressions of life and channel them to move on and become these [badass] warrior women who fight for the voiceless victimized who cannot speak [nor] stand for themselves. While viewed by many as just smut, these types of books have the potential to do incredible collective trauma healing work surround women’s issues of SA, assault, and violence. So read all the smut you love, because you may be healing the traumas of yourself, your community, and your ancestors!
(I really want to talk more about how healing dark romance is, but this is supposed to be a review, so I’ll stay on topic!)
So I went in, cautiously, eyes wide open for the two TWs I might have an issue with due to my own history, poised to skip or put the book aside altogether, if need be. I didn’t have to do either of those things.
Butcher & Blackbird is funny. I was chuckling just reading the excerpt (Chapter 1). Weaver is flawless in her balance of dark subjects with perfectly timed humor and well-written gore. I’ve read a lot of dark romances that lean heavily on shock value but with very little substance, and with more smut than romance; they’d be more appropriately filed in horror. Butcher & Blackbird isn’t like that. There’s heart and warmth to it. There’s real romance—actual swoony moments that had me forgetting about the bodies that needed hiding. Moments that had me tearily “Aw”- and “Oh”-ing out loud the same I would if I were reading cute small town romance. Just with lobotomies.
I point to the not-so-good doctor, whose blood trickles down his face in drying streaks. “Left eye hole. Always a little gouge-y.”
Maybe it’s because my IRL “book boyfriend” is a man who knows how to love a traumatized woman, but I have such a love for this trope in dark romance. Rowan doesn’t need push around Sloane for us to know he’s ✨tortured✨. He doesn’t swing his dick around to tell us he’s strong. He takes Sloane pretending not to know who he is in stride. He gives her space and time, patiently and intentionally earning her trust. When it comes to sex, he’s giving, cognizant of her need for safety but also not afraid to dick her down. Their dynamic reminds me a lot of my own, IRL, and gave me another safe space that I desperately needed, while also giving me an escape from the real world.
In the end, Rowan and Sloane come together to heal from their pasts—another aspect of dark romance that I have big love for. After all, we’re talking romance; love can and does conquer all. The ending had me smiling so big, and I loved that Weaver didn’t just dump us off—she gave us an epilogue that connected to the next book in the series, plus a bonus epilogue that gave us a sweet happily ever after that was so very fitting to these characters.
I loved this book so much, I could go on and on—I loved and strongly related to Sloane being a lone wolf with one best friend, and as a horror fan I really enjoyed the gore and almost episodic serial killer segments. I know Weaver didn’t write this book for me, per se, but man, it really felt like it. It was just what I needed, reminding me that no matter the things I’ve been through, the beauty I have in my life far outweighs the ugly.
“You have never been unlovable. You were just waiting for someone who will love you for who you are, not for who they want you to be. I can do that, if you’ll let me.” I press my lips to hers and taste salt and blood but pull away before the kiss deepens. “I fucking adore you, Sloane Sutherland. I wanted you from that first day at Briscoe’s. I have loved you for years. I’m not stopping. Not ever.”
If you liked A Disturbing Prospect, you’ll like Butcher & Blackbird. Like Olivia and Cliff, the lead couple punishes abusers together, the romance is an achingly sweet slow burn, and the story is fast-paced with plenty of thrills and delicious darkness.
I love the way Jo Leevers wrote The Last Time I Saw You (July 1st, 2024), deftly handling daughter Georgie’s struggle with abandonment and mother Nancy’s shame of disappearing from her children’s lives. Her writing immediately pulled me in, keeping me reading because first I was curious about what would make a mother leave her children, then because I became deeply invested in the characters and ending.
Leevers’ pacing is impeccable. Chapters fly by until you realize you’re 70 percent in and should probably go to bed. She tells the story by showing us the damage caused by Nancy’s disappearance, then showing us both Nancy’s and Georgie’s lives. As the truth began to unfold, I rooted for Nancy and hoped she and her now grown children would find their way back to each other.
The ending felt like a hug from a loved one you haven’t seen in a long time. I cried happy tears but I was also relieved, after the wringer Leevers put me through.
This book should have a TW/CW for on-page sexual assault—I had to step away for a moment and check in with myself, and was able to continue shortly after. I don’t want to spoil any plot points, but readers with a history might need the heads up that there is rape and stalking.
With the happiest of endings, The Last Time I Saw You is a healing story, deftly written with tenderness and care, and I’m so grateful to Prime First Reads for putting it into my hands because it was exactly what I needed.
If you liked my novella Her Mercy, you might like The Last Time I Saw You. Even though this book isn’t a romance, it contains similar themes: missing mother, generational trauma, mother/daughter relationships, examining the past, healing together, cross country road trip to find someone. There’s even a lovely dog named Bree! I truly felt like this book was put in my hands, it was so special to me.
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.
