Hey, babes!
Only a few more weeks left until this calendar year ends, and the winter solstice approaches like a freight train. I swear it was just February, I was just releasing Defiance, and I had the whole year ahead of me. Now we’re about to break from school for the remainder of the year and then it’ll be 2024, and I’ll be back to writing dates wrong and thinking I have all the time in the world again.
This week’s newsletter will include the following:
2023 Recap and 2024 First Look
Book Bestie New Release
First Look at Axel (IMP MC Book 2)
Book Fairs and Giveaways
Let’s recap 2023:
Started Substack newsletter in January
4 major road trips (11,391 miles and counting)
4 flights
2 book signings
7 book releases
1 new job (for a total of two full-time positions)
Still to come:
1 tattoo (thanks to Curtis Stairs (@curtisstairstattoo on Instagram)
1 flight
1 week of PTO to breathe
Next year…
2024 will be hitting the ground hard. I have cowrites planned with
and . I am well underway writing the sequel to Cage (IMP MC book two). I will be attending Hot & Steamy in Portland, Wild Deadwood Reads in Deadwood, and Getting Witchy With It in Salem with some of the best people I know.Next year we will be releasing House of Magic, a short urban fantasy anthology benefitting First Book, an educational equity charity. Booktober will be coming back for 2024 (Oh damn, I just remembered all the work I have to do to get that ready! Better start now! Interested authors who write spicy PNR, keep your eyes out for the EOI)
Travel will be interesting with my new job. I work for a school district (don’t even ask me how this happened! I’m not sure. I am excited to assist and serve the students in the district, but man, this is not where I saw my life going) and so, unlike in previous years, I do not have unlimited freedom to take my show on the road. As a mom with a child in school this was going to be stunted anyway, but I’ll have spring, winter, and summer breaks to sustain me. I’ll keep you posted.
Book bestie new release…
Congratulations to
on her new release!! Lonely Kitty is the first book of the Knights of Destruction MC series and as with everything Miri writes, it’s a rich world of diverse dynamics, characters with spunk and pizzazz, and so much steam it’ll knock your socks off. Miri writes paranormal motorcycle club romance in a way that is wholly unique while honoring the dark and gritty elements of the genre.You can grab this smoking hot story (that started it’s life as a Christmas tale) at books2read.com/lonelykitty and read a fantastic review from Maycee at Queen Bee Reviews (@queen_bee_reviews on Instagram) here: Check out the review!
First Look at Axel…
Now here’s where I’m gonna run into trouble! I am damned determined to bring you the second book of the Iron Mountain Pride series as soon as my little fingers can type. For those of you who have read Cage (and if you haven’t, you can grab it at books2read.com/cage-imp), book two will pick up with some familiar faces all grown up. I love Isaac, and I hope you grow to appreciate Moody Beef as much as I do.
The following is unedited content.
CH1 - Isaac
I wasn’t hiding from my mother. Standing behind the barn to smoke was a habit I’d picked up in high school. Helped that it was quiet, and the hill it was situated on offered a nice view of Iron Mountain and the valley. Pretty killer sunsets, too.
Today, though, I was grateful that my parents didn’t come back here much anymore. Glad that my brothers preferred to hang around the clubhouse. Elaine was too busy from oh-dark-fucking-thirty to sunset since opening her shop to spend much time with anyone at home. It was a relief. I wanted the quiet.
If Mom saw my face right now, she’d ask questions. Nevermind she hated smoking, and I think she was more disappointed the day she first caught me lighting up than she was the time I almost crashed Pops’ old Chevelle on prom night. And she loved that fucking car.
Nope. Wasn’t hiding from my mother. But I wasn’t in the mood to be smothered, either. Being her firstborn meant I usually took the full brunt of her overprotectiveness. It had been just her and I for some years until we came back to her hometown to settle down. Running away from my father.
Staring out at the sun sinking behind the mountain, at the dramatic colors slowly beginning to tint the sky and the landscape below, I sucked down a lungful of poison.
Sometimes I really hated myself. I had everything a man could rightly ask for. My folks were good to me. I had all the love a kid could ever want. Pops had adopted me after the mysterious death of my sperm donor. My siblings had come along and I hadn’t been shooed out–if anything, I’d been enfolded even harder into the arms of my growing family. Mama was so damned proud she glowed whenever she saw us, her little brood.
It wasn’t enough for me.
Couldn’t just be happy.
All that love couldn’t fill up the hole in me. The one I’d inherited from my fucked up daddy, who’d tried to strangle my mother to death in a hotel room.
I wasn’t supposed to know about that, but of course, I’d been told sometime between my first sip of beer in junior high and my first lay in sophomore year. Bikers were good at a lot of shit, but keeping shit PG for the kiddies wasn’t one of them. They’d thought it important that I know exactly what my mom and I had been rescued from. And maybe they were right. I might have grown up confused about this hollow ache in my chest otherwise.
All this to say I was a dramatic little bitch sometimes, as Bash loved to remind me. Our Sergeant at Arms had a way with words. My phone buzzed in my pocket, no doubt my best friend himself reminding me it was almost time to roll out… for the run I’d planned.
My phone began to sound like a nest of angry hornets in my pocket as Bash, summoned like the devil by the mere thought of him, decided my lack of instant response required more drastic action. I wanted to throw the damned thing into the field.
Instead, I pulled it from my pocket and swiped to accept the call, grinding my cigarette under my boot and exhaling the last of the smoke from my lungs. Slowly, I began the trek back to the house.
“Yeah.”
“Fucker, you know where you’re supposed to be right now?”
“Yes, asshole. In an hour, I’m supposed to be at the clubhouse.”
“No. An hour from now is when everyone else is supposed to be here. You are supposed to be early.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve never been early a day in your damn life.”
“And we can’t both be late. You’re the responsible one. I’m the asshole.”
“I’m not late. See you in an hour.”
I ended the call and jammed the phone into my back pocket. A rumble of protest vibrated in my chest, my cat unsettled. Truth was, we couldn’t wait to be on the road. We were escorting wolf pups from a pack ravaged by the wildfires in Canada down into Colorado. We’d taken on a lot of this kind of work lately. It soothed the itch in most of us. Time on the road kept me steady. I endeavored to be away on runs as often as possible these days.
An Iron Mountain lion I may have been by the cut on my shoulders and my mother’s blood, but I was my father’s bastard son, too. And that demon was haunting me.
Mama wasn’t on the porch in her reading chair when I came up the steps to the house, so I stepped into the warmth of the interior and was enveloped with the scents of dinner that I’d tasted on the air outside. Shepherd’s pie and cornbread–not as good as her fried chicken, but a favorite.
For a moment I observed her with her back to me, standing at the counter with her book in front of her, tapping her foot in a steady rhythm on the tile. The fuzzy socks she wore in fall and winter–she hated having cold feet, a trait she’d passed down to all of her children–muted the sound. She’d never cut her hair short to accommodate kids or busy life, and the black hair that my brothers had inherited was streaked through with bold silver, tied up in a scarf behind her head. Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I glanced at the doorway to find Pops there, observing her with an unguarded look on his face. It left me with a sharp pang in my chest.
This was the love I’d grown up with. The bond of fated mates. And the man staring at my mother like she was the sole source of all light and warmth in his world had raised me up as his own.
Pops’ blue eyes flashed in the light as his gaze shifted slowly from Mama to me, no warmth lost in the look when he found me watching him.
“Staying for supper?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Got to head back. We got a run tonight.”
He only nodded, and Mama turned from her book–slow, like cold syrup dripping out of a bottle. She never did do well being interrupted while reading. The look on her face was dreamy when she finally keyed into our presence and pulled herself away from the pages.
“Run where?” she asked, gaze sharpening as she scanned me in my leathers.
“Alberta to Aspen.”
Mama nodded. “You’ll be gone for a few days. Is Joseph going with you?”
“He is.”
She knew all of this. Pops had retired, but Mama ran the club girls, and neither of them had really “left” the lifestyle or the Pride. But dutiful sons didn’t leave home for days without letting their mothers know where they’d be headed off to, and when they’d be expected back.
“You tell him I want you both home safely. Look out for each other.”
A smile almost found its way to my face. “We always do, Mama.”
“No newspapers, no jail cells, no coffins. Home in one piece.”
I closed the distance between us and kissed my mother goodbye when she presented her cheek to me. I squeezed her in my arms and, not for the first time, I realized how small she was compared to us boys. No less life left in her, but I’d outgrown her by more than a foot. So had Joseph and Ian.
Mama turned back to her book after receiving her tribute. She hated watching me go. As I stepped away and walked back toward the front door, Pops followed me out with a gait that had become slightly uneven as the years had worn on. Losing his leg hadn’t made him any less formidable, but time was taking its toll. He clapped me on the shoulder as I swung my leg over my bike.
“Get back safe, hear?”
“Always do.”
To be continued…
Book Fairs and Giveaways
Here we are, rounding off this week’s newsletter with some cool opportunities to meet some new-to-you authors and score some bookish goodies. Click on the photos below to hit up the giveaway that speaks to you and enter for a chance to win.
As always, thank you for coming on this ride with me. Feel free to comment or email a response to mariahthayer@substack.com. I love hearing from you!
XOXO,
Mariah
Ugh.. Isaac.. I feel like an auntie all sad her baby grew up! I absolutely loved that kid in Cage 😍 I hope 2024 is freaking fabulous for you!
I love you bestie! I can wait to jump back into our incredible worlds! More BMR, more Winter Haven, and I need Axel on my bookshelf STAT.