26

“Whoa, hey. The captain said you pulled a late night and that you were gonna clock some PT this morning,” McCoy says when Heidi strides back into the bullpen.

She swings her satchel down onto her desk and sends loose papers flying. McCoy scrambles to snatch them out of the air where they float like fall leaves. “I had a nap,” she says. Her jacket buttons get stuck, and she curses under her breath as she finally fumbles the thing off and hangs it on the back of her chair.

McCoy raps the papers into a neat stack and offers it across their pushed-together desks with a skeptical look.

“I’m fine.” She makes a concerted effort not to snatch the paper from him; it’s more difficult than it should be.

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AN: In yesterday’s Insta reel, I mentioned a short story from the early, conceptualization days of the Sons of Rome series I’d had published in an online magazine. It turns out I don’t still have a copy of it, and the magazine is now defunct, so I think it’s lost forever. BUT: I also mentioned Richard, whom I’ve yet to introduce properly in the series. I have no idea when I’ll complete Lionheart, but I thought I might share a little tidbit from the historical portion of the novel, as told from Will Scarlet’s POV.

1184
Duchy of Aquitaine
Hautefort Castle

For seven days, the impregnable, pale stone edifice had resisted her besiegers, repelling arrows and ladders and wall-scalers true to her reputation.

But only for seven days.

The gates were flung open now, and all the servants roused from their hiding places and put to work laying fresh rushes, and lighting fires, and rushing around with trays laden with cups of water and wine for the victorious. Already, the kitchens sweltered, and the trestles were being set in the great hall: a feast preparing for the new master, Constantine de Born, brother of the only-just-now ousted Bertram.

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So far, Michael had taken him to the post office to sign for some sort of slender package that he’d secreted away inside his cut, and a specialty custom body shop where he leafed through about a dozen catalogues before finally placing an order for bike tailpipes. From there, they ventured twenty minutes outside of town to a ramshackle ranch house with trash strewn about the yard, where Michael accepted an envelope of cash from a stringy-haired, beanpole man who was clearly a drug dealer.

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Miranda braced herself for some catcalls and suggestive eyebrow waggles once Alex left, but when she finally emerged from the dorm, redressed and with her hair only a little rumpled, she found the common room empty save for Lewis, who was mopping the floors with wood polish.

“Oh.” She stopped shy of the gleaming, freshly-mopped patch in front of her. “Everyone left.”

“Alex went somewhere with Michael,” Lewis said without glancing up from his task. “I don’t know when they’ll be back.”

“Okay.” She thought, Now what?

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Ghost’s phone pinged in his hand. A text from Carter: on driveway.

Ok. He stood, pocketed his phone, and waited, one shoulder braced against the cabin’s porch post, ears pricked. When he heard the crunch of approaching tires, he whistled.

A black Tahoe nosed into view, traveling slowly over the rutted drive, and just before it breached the clearing, Aidan and Tango melted out of the trees on either side of it.

The Tahoe halted when Aidan lifted his hand, and Duet made a brave show of hiding her nerves when she climbed out of the truck and lifted her arms to submit to a pat down. Tango did the honors, quick and non-invasive. Ghost had told her not to come wired, and he didn’t think she had, but even so, he knew how to play this game; she’d get nothing admissible from him during their exchange.

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25

Heidi spends a stupid amount of time crafting a user profile. She’s not a writer, but she needs to sound like one, and ultimately decides to use her lack of experience to her advantage.

She styles herself NearlyNovel35 and claims to be a mid-thirties office manager who dreams of completing her first novel and landing an agent. She writes a fluffy little greeting statement for her profile page, snags a stock image of a white dahlia for her avatar, and then she goes hunting.

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Alex looked different when he emerged from the room Ava had called “the chapel.” The cut looked good on him, but that was only a fractional shift; the more important, the foundational change, was in his energy. His expression. The proud, thrust-back set of his shoulders, and the smoothness of his brow, and the brightness in his gaze—which immediately sought and found Miranda.

He smirked: pleased with himself, but also boyishly delighted.

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Miranda heard footfalls approaching and assumed Alec had returned. “I come bearing good news, ladies,” a British-accented voice announced, crisp and elevated and straight off the BBC.

She jolted with surprise and turned around in her chair. The man who walked toward them was tall, lean, and, wore his hair in a gleaming, flat ironed auburn sheet down his back. Pale, blue eyed, and dressed in a dove gray suit with an open-throated lavender shirt, he was as striking as a runway model, though the sly curve of his lips suggested something more dangerous.

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An Anniversary

Firstly, and most importantly, today’s is Sonata’s Gotcha Day! It’s been one year since she joined the herd, and though she won’t turn two until November, she’s already of a height with Bambi, who’s four, and Kit Kat, who turned three last month. She should mature to be the tallest of the three.

AB had been toughing her way through Cushing’s disease for several years with the help of medication, supplements, body clips, anti-sweat fleeces, and a flexible turnout schedule, but last April, she gave me a big scare. I had her, and Kit Kat, and Bambi, and the herd felt settled and complete - but when my vet said she had “two weeks to live,” it was a painful reminder that she was a senior battling an incurable disease, and that time wasn’t guaranteed. She did eventually pull out of her spiral and lived another happy and healthy year before finally crossing the rainbow bridge this April, but last year, after a lot of internal debate and doubt, I started horse shopping.

Introducing a new horse is always stressful - especially with Bambi. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t the eldest, she quickly established herself as lead horse upon her arrival, and she gets dramatic about meeting new friends. I knew that when AB passed, I would need a third horse - if you only have two, they get very buddy sour, and when you try to work with one and leave the other alone in the barn, there’s a whole lot of screaming and stressing. Knowing that AB’s death would be stressful in its own right, I thought it might be best to introduce a new horse while she was still with us. That way, when she passed, the new friend would be well established, and I wouldn’t have to go searching while the girls were grieving.

How did I find Sonata? Google.

I started on Facebook, perusing the sale groups. I was limited by budget, which means I was limited to three types of horses: senior horses with health issues in need of a retirement home where they could serve as pasture companions; unbroken babies; or “project” horses with behavioral or soundness issues. From Skip, to Cosmo, to Markus, to the minis, I had already said goodbye to my seniors after difficult health struggles. In a perfect world, I could open a horse retirement sanctuary and take in all the sweet old seniors who need a soft final chapter. But I had two young horses and didn’t want to introduce a new friend who only had a year or two left. I also didn’t want to deal with a horse challenged by significant phobias or aggressions. Things are peaceful and lowkey at my place, and I didn’t want to disrupt that with a problem horse. Not to mention, Bambi might think she’s a bad bitch, and is the boss mare, but she’s more or less made of twigs, and a strong, healthy, ten-year-old mare with an attitude could have seriously hurt her or Kit Kat. That left unbroken baby, of which I already had two, so what was one more? That was my logic at the time, because I’d just found Sonata online.

When Facebook didn’t yield results, I Googled “horses for sale near me,” and found her ad on a sales website. She was in budget! Yes! And she was a filly! Also yes! I love geldings to death, but no way could I introduce a colt to my wild, hormonal girls. The ad had been up for a few months, and I liked her photos a lot. She was six months in them, which is perfect - around eight months, babies hit that “ugly” stage where they’re growing rapidly and in awkward ways and they start looking like llamas.

She’s what you’d call a “grade” horse, meaning she isn’t registered - which is perfect for me. Registration is important if you’re trying to show in breed-specific competitions, like American Quarter Horse Association or Appaloosa Horse Club (she’s Quarter Horse/Appaloosa, and theoretically could show in both or either if papered) or you’re wanting to breed and register the foal. You can’t register a foal if one of its parents is grade. But I don’t have plans to breed, and if I ever show again, it’ll be in dressage, where the horse is judged on movement and performance, and the papers don’t matter. I was looking at health, attitude, and conformation. I really like the way she’s built, and she has big, expressive movement you don’t normally see in Quarter Horses, and which will be an asset in dressage training. Plus, being grade meant she was affordable. When I saw her head-on photo, and the way her blaze slid off one nostril the same as one of my very favorite horses, I was convinced. It just felt right, like she was the horse I was meant to find.

I went to look at her and went back the next day to pick her up, and now it’s been a whole year. Together, the three girls are the perfect trio. As sad as it’s been to lose AB, I’m thrilled that I was able to find Sonata, and that she fits into the family so well.

Speaking of grade, all three of my young horses are unregistered, which is the reason I’m able to have three in the first place. I could register Bambi, both with the AQHA and the ApHC, but I haven’t gotten around to it because it’s a lot of hassle, paperwork, and expense. Kit Kat comes from some very distinguished foundation Quarter Horse bloodlines, and both her parents are registered, but her father was a young stallion who died in an accident before he could be blood tested according to AQHA standards. The registry requires testing for genetic disorders, and a stallion’s offspring are ineligible for registration without the blood panel and Association approval. So, though Kit Kat’s sire is a Dash For Cash grandson, and her dam is from Kid Clu, Poco Bueno, Hollywood Dunn It, and Skipper W lines, Kit Kat herself doesn’t have papers. That’s a bummer for the Quarter Horse nerd in me…but a big win for the wallet!

I would actually love to work as a horse purchasing agent, helping match clients with horses. There are some amazing finds out there if you know what you’re looking for and where you can afford to compromise. Maybe when I pack in this whole writing thing, I can give that a whirl.

Speaking of…

The Actual News

Congrats to y’all if you made it all the way through my horse geek out. Now on to the actual newsletter portion of things.

I’ve been talking on Instagram (@hppress) about the not-at-all-stressful fact that I’m working on five WIPs at the moment. I’m making steady progress on all of them, most notably on Inherent Violence, which is almost there. I can see that big, blinding light at the end of the tunnel, and it is sweet. For now, it’s going to stay a Substack exclusive.

As far as books releasing on sales platforms, I’d really love to have The Winter Palace (Sons of Rome 5) out as a Christmas release. I feel like epic fantasy/paranormal series are more special around the holidays - all The Lord of the Rings movies dropped in December and conditioned me, I guess; Christmas=fantasy - and I’m ramping up work on it in preparation for that.

Field of Fire has been slow going, but I’m hoping the triumphant return of House of the Dragon (more importantly, Daemon Targaryen) will get me “fired up” to work on it more quickly. I always fret about the last installment of anything, wanting to make sure I hit all the right notes and give the characters a proper send off. Goodbyes are always trickier than beginnings.

If you don’t already, come follow me on Instagram to stay up to date on all things fictional and equine.

TTFN <3

When Miranda returned to the table, dressed in the fresh-smelling, baggy men’s sweats Alec had given her, wet hair tied up in the towel, she found a different version of Ava: quiet, face drawn with discomfort, elbow resting on the tabletop and temple propped up on her fist.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Ava sat upright, with obvious effort. “Each pregnancy’s been a little harder than the last. It might be time for Mercy to get the old…” She lifted two fingers and mimed scissors.

“Will he go for that?”

“He’ll do what I need him to.” Said fondly, with a faint smile. And said with absolute surety. This was a woman who knew without question that her man would take whatever step she asked him to. What must that be like? It left Miranda dizzy just imagining it.

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24

Heidi hasn’t felt this sober and sharp in a long time. She’s been in law enforcement for twenty years, and Dale Matthis murdering his girlfriend doesn’t break the top five most shocking events she’s witnessed; it did, however, take her by the shoulders and give her a thorough shake.

Professional jealousy had turned to hatred, had turned to action, until Dale Matthis put one woman in the hospital, killed another, and ruined his own life in the process. Heidi took the case seriously from the first, but now she feels a fresh urgency.

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Something was wrong.

When the first bike arrived, a low growl that cut the morning mist like thunder, Miranda got to her feet and went down the hall, eager to see what news Alex had brought.

But when she stepped into the common room, she found herself face-to-face with Rottie instead. He’d offered a nod and a tight smile, and brushed past her toward the kitchen.

More bikes arrived, but Alex didn’t appear. When Ghost strode into the common room, Miranda slipped back down the hall and into her dorm. She sat down on the edge of the bed where Casey still lay curled up sleeping, clutching tight to her stuffed pony. Her pulse knocked ominously—and then someone knocked on the door.

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23

The courtroom descends into chaos.

Avery stands up, and Trish hisses something at her, and tugs at her good arm, pinches the skin of her wrist between her sharp nails. But Avery doesn’t move. She watches, transfixed, as the two officers wrestle Matthis back across the table, flip him onto his front, and Tase him again. And again. His legs kick, and he shouts a garbled response, and, finally, they get him down on the floor, a knee pinning him at the kidneys.

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The rain slackened, and the sun rose gunmetal and burnished gold over the trees, like molten steel pouring into the Tennessee River, when Alex and Mercy rounded the last bend on Industrial and Dartmoor appeared through their mist-spattered goggles. The building lights burned warm against the muted dawn, and Alex couldn’t remember ever feeling this excited upon sight of the compound; his stomach leaped, and his palms tingled, and his whole body felt light enough to float up off the seat of his bike. It should have looked sinister, the mist hugging the warm pavement, curling around parked cars and bikes, swirling beneath the halogens, but the beckoning glow of the clubhouse lights lent the scene a welcome coziness.

He was coming home. That’s what it felt like. And no amount of mist, or fog, or grumbling cloud cover could dim the incandescent pull of the place.

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22

The arraignments are set to begin at nine, but Eddie’s in his office by seven on Monday morning. He pulls up all the relevant arrest records on his computer, and then transcribes them all by hand onto a legal pad. Heidi calls his handwriting “chicken scratch,” but he can read it, and the act of writing it out sears the words into his memory. He peppers the charges with his own arguments, so he has a script of sorts that he, most of the time, never needs to refer to. It’s his process, and it works.

It usually works. This morning, he’s distracted.

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The FBI didn’t exactly put their field agents up in five-star hotels when they were on a job. The Comfort Suites in Knoxville wasn’t the Ritz, but it beat the hell out of the rundown motels she normally frequented. Continental breakfast, wi-fi, HBO, and a suite all to herself. Izzy had stayed in some real rattraps over the years, so the limitless hot water and clean white tile of the shower felt like a luxury; she did, indeed, luxuriate under the spray the morning after she learned Alex Bonfils had quit the Knoxville PD.

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Is Richard Matheson’s Hell House, in the words of the Stephen King blurb on the cover, the “scariest haunted house novel ever written?” In short, no. Though I suppose your mileage may vary depending on your experience with horror. My imagination has kept me scared out of my own skin since kindergarten, so a book needs to execute the horror for me, not merely tell me about it.

Given Matheson is no longer with us, I feel more comfortable dissecting his novel—in this case, not as a review, but as an educational tool. I think it’s the perfect vehicle for a discussion about the effectiveness of prose and characterization. A story can’t (or shouldn’t) exist on concept alone. I think the bones of a terrifying tale are present here, but the writing itself falls flat.

It’s clear from chapter one that Hell House (1971) was heavily inspired by Shirley Jackson’s 1959 masterpiece The Haunting of Hill House, which is frightening. Jackson’s mesmeric, lush prose draws you into a tangible, normal-seeming world, and then spins you into disorientation and palpable, physically felt terror. You are in those characters’ skins for the duration, heart racing, palms sweating, unsure what’s real and what’s ghostly and what’s delusion. Some genres benefit from straightforward, blunt prose, but not horror. Horror and romance are two sides of the same coin, both born from the Romantic period, and both genres are exercised to best effect with a healthy dose of richness. In The Haunting of Hill House, we believe we’re witnessing a true haunting.

The setup for Hell House is eerily similar: a small group of people forced to stay in a haunted house for a prescribed period of time. There’s a scientist, an innocent (the scientist’s wife in this case), and two others (mediums in Hell House). There are two housekeepers who bring their meals and who lock the doors and leave before nightfall (a trope also found in my favorite Vincent Price movie, House on Haunted Hill).

The novel dives straight into the action, with only a few quick pages to set up the premise. The titular Hell House is instantly picturable, its design—and darkness—vivid and dread-inducing. The setting is well-drawn and definitely creates an atmosphere ripe for the paranormal.

Where he falls short, in my opinion, is narrative execution and, most of all, characterization.

If you’re familiar with me or my books, you’ll know I prize characterization as the beating heart of literature. It isn’t that I don’t care about plot, but it takes a backseat—nay, a third-row minivan seat—to character. I want to feel that a character is so fully-fleshed out that I could look him up on Facebook when I’m done reading. That she must be someone from high school I’d forgotten until now. Whether they’re good, evil, or living in the vast gray lands between, I want to be invested in that character’s hopes, dreams, fears, biases, and sensory experiences. Too often, aesthetic and physical appearance, even occupation is mistaken for characterization; I’m told what a character is, but not who they are. Such is the case with Hell House.

The characterization here is asymptotic: we draw close to a deeper look behind the veil, but then glance off it without fully inhabiting the character in a true empathetic portrayal. Some of this is a deliberate writing choice—it’s likely most authors are less neurotic about character than I am. But the other part of it is down to an odd tonal shift during each paranormal event.

It’s clear Matheson envisioned the novel as a film, which is fair, because I do the same. I’m always the director and camera operator of my never-to-see-the-screen book-movies. But in the case of Hell House, which is written in third person limited perspective, the perspective shifts each time something of a poltergeist nature happens, and the audience is suddenly outside of the character, watching the action from an omniscient viewpoint. We immediately shift from readers to moviegoers, and the action unfolds in an emotionless, fact-based accounting. As if sensing this shortcoming, Matheson has the characters wail, and moan, and scream, and shout “NO!” in excess, to make up for all the internal emotion and fear we the audience are no longer allowed to experience inside our characters’ heads. This is a jarring and ineffective creative decision that immediately threw me out of the story, much like the ghosts were throwing around teapots and possessed cats.

Near the end, characters “see apparitions,” but in a flat, nothing-but-words-on-a-page way that inspires zero emotion. Every time the novel has the chance to scare the reader, it fails to, utterly and clumsily, in favor of cold, screenplay style stage directions. It doesn’t just weaken the fright factor, but cripples it completely.

Add to that: I’m not invested in the struggles or fates of any of the characters. The deaths are not devastating. The jump scares are neither jumping nor scaring. It’s a whole lot of “this happened, and then this happened.” Add to that, there’s nothing beautiful about the prose itself. For me, when horror is done well, it’s with a clever beauty, the prose providing its own haunting effect.

As a quick example: a line reads “Tears of fright filled her eyes.” That’s an external observation, not a sensation. A more effective choice would be: “Her hands blurred as she scrubbed them. She blinked to clear her vision and found her lashes wet, her eyes brimming with tears.” It takes longer to say, yes, but it puts you inside her experience, rather than watching it.

As a review, I would say that the novel fails to meet my “personal favorites” criteria on multiple levels. But as I said before, that’s my opinion, and you might wind up loving the novel.

I’m a greedy little goblin of a reader: I always want the complete picture. I want to be fully immersed. If a character makes a decision, I want to know why; make me care about that character. This is the reason I don’t care for shirtless-male-model book covers. Yes, I can see that he’s got quite the impressive set of abdominals. So? Tell me something about him. Why should I want to read a book about him? Why should I feel emotional investment? As in real life dating, “hot” isn’t reason enough for me. I love a good haunted house, but the premise alone isn’t enough to sway me. Matheson’s told me scary things happened, but why should I feel any investment in those scary happenings? In the characters who endured them?

My writing prescription:

Had I written the novel, I would have spent much more time establishing the characters as individuals through their interactions with one another. Too much time is spent alone in their rooms; they never mesh as a group, and seem to actively dislike one another in a cold and bland way. When they sit down for meals, it’s briefly, and their work at the house is the only topic of discussion. If we’d gotten to know them better, and seen their endearing qualities through group interactions, their deaths would be gut-wrenching. When the characters provide warmth, the paranormal forces outside of them feel colder and darker by contrast.

Stylistically, I would have shaken up the sentence structure a little more, using the straightforward tone when I wanted to jolt the audience with a sudden scare, and falling into something lighter and more lyrical for the rest. The dialogue needed at least a touch of banter: these people are cheerless and dull. Even a quip, or some hint that one of them had a sense of humor would have been welcome. I can see one character being driven and totally focused, but odds are low that in a group, no one would make a sarcastic or inappropriate remark.

Now that I’ve eviscerated this poor book, I want to say that I did so with good reason: it’s what makes me, and all of us, stronger writers. Anyone hoping to write horror someday, I do recommend you read Hell House, but only if you also read The Haunting of Hill House. For me, Shirley Jackson’s novel is the superior of the two, but it’s important to compare, contrast, and decide for yourselves.

Happy reading!

21

“I still say this is an absolutely stupid plan,” Trish says with a sigh, but she adjusts the strap of Avery’s sling for her so it rests more smoothly over her dress. It’s a casual dress, one she packed to wear to the seminar, a deep green button-up with a collar, cinched around her waist with a brown, tooled belt. A subtle nod to a western shirt; very Nashville, as are the boots. Trish helped her with her hair, and after a quiet rest of the week focused on healing, the bruising and swelling on her face has gone down. Her bad eye is open, and a generous application of makeup softens the deepness of the bruising around the socket.

She still looks like hell, as Will charmingly put it, but less than she did a week ago. And she feels better. Physically.

Mentally she’s still ready for a boogeyman to pop out from behind the TV stand at any moment…which is why she thinks it’s important to go out and do something normal. Something social. If she hides away for too long, she’s afraid the fear will become a habit too difficult to break.

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Ghost had just clicked on his beard trimmer when Maggie leaned into the bathroom and said, “You have visitors.”

Always a loaded statement. It could be anyone from Aidan wanting to borrow a wrench, to the mayor calling in a favor. Given it was six-eighteen in the morning, his money was on mayor—or some other sort of emergency.

He set the trimmer down and tugged on the t-shirt that lay folded on the counter. “Who?” he asked when his head popped through.

“All three Foxes. Wet and worried.”

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I posted quite a bit last week in a bid at catching up, and it was mostly a success. In case you missed anything, look for:

• Inherent Violence: Chapter Fifty-Two and Chapter Fifty-Three

• Don’t Let Go: chapters 18, 19, and 20

• Plus, the first installment of the bonus story, “Tommy’s Wedding,” which takes place two years after the end of Beware of Dog, and which focuses on the NY Dogs.

I’d like to go back and put a link for the next chapter at the end of all these consecutive chapters, and I have plans to do that - but it’s a tedious and time-consuming project, so I’ll probably tackle it late one evening when my brain’s gotten tired for the day. I’ve got to use my daylight thinking hours for writing.

As far as the writing itself goes, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for Inherent Violence. Yay! This one’s gotten much longer and more complicated than originally intended, but when is that not the case for me? For y’all reading it chapter by chapter with me, you’re getting a look at the raw storytelling process. I always begin with a character’s emotional journey firmly in mind, and a few key scenes set in stone, but the narrative is a fluid and organic creation; I give myself wiggle room to explore side stories and drop the breadcrumbs that I find in my pocket along the way. The result is that the Inherent Violence you’re reading here on Substack is, other than a cursory proofreading, a rough draft. Which brings me to our first ever Substack poll.

Please only vote here if you’re a PAID subscriber. I’ve been asked frequently about publishing IV as a physical novel and ebook on Amazon/Kobo/etc. once it’s complete, and my main focus is to be respectful to those of you who are paying subscribers. Is a polished, final edition something you’d like the chance to purchase? Or would you feel cheated and cancel your subscription? Please feel free to sound off in the comments, because I’m very much leaning toward NOT publishing this as a book and keeping it exclusive for Substack subscribers.

In non-book related news, my girl Kit Kat turned three yesterday! It feels like it’s been a blink, and also like I’ve known her forever. I’m still fretting quite a bit about her eye, but she’s continuing to handle her new situation with grace and toughness. I’m still not sure she won’t need to have the eye removed at some point, but for now, we’re holding steady. Happy Birthday, pink princess.