by JA Huss
The best thing about their news was that a few months later Ivy—Fertile Myrtle that she is—got pregnant again, so they can have babies together now. Nolan’s not rooting for a boy, he says. And while I might think that remark was disingenuous coming from, oh, just about anyone else, I don’t think it is, coming from him. Because he told me, “I want girls just like you have, Five.”
And I said, “What do ya mean?”
And he said, “Mathilda and Louise.” He said, “They are perfect and I love them. And if I get two girls, they’ll have the same age gap as your two. And I’ll teach them everything it means to be a girl.”
I don’t doubt that at all. I think Nolan Delaney makes a fine girl. I caught him painting his nails last week and he just shrugged and said, “I got this color for Louise, but I’m trying it out to make sure it’s sparkly enough. She likes sparkles.”
Indeed she does.
Corporate got his kid under control. Actually, my daughter seems to have been the one to get his kid under control. I guess I can’t fault the boy. Mathilda is already spectacularly smart, adventurous, sassy, and looks just like her mother. But now I know how Spencer Shrike felt about me at that age.
I wanna strangle Ethan Conrad and invite him in for a talk at the same time. Because that kid is cool as fuck.
So I’m rolling with that one. For now.
Tori had a girl, so she and West are regulars over here for Nolan Delaney’s day-out-with-the daughters thing.
I just shake my head at that dude. Whatever.
Mysterious and Cindy took off for a round-the-world trip. We haven’t seen them since the day after the wedding. But Cindy calls every weekend to talk to Rory and tell her where they’re at, what they’re doing, and send us pictures of themselves hanging off cliffs or swimming with dolphins, and all that other Airborne Ranger shit they do. I keep joking with Mysterious that he needs to get his ass back here and help me start a horse breeding business. But he always yells, “Fuck that Golden Balls asshole!” when I bring it up. Which I do often, just to hear him call Rory’s prize pony that name.
Oliver and Kat live down the road now.
Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention we moved home. Home home. Like Shrike farm home. I’m fucking my wife in her childhood bedroom every goddamned night and there’s nothing Spencer Shrike can do about it.
But Oliver and Kat found a farm down the road too, so they’re down there now. Ollie took over Shrike Bikes and my dad is trying to get him to do a reality show.
My stupid dad.
But I think Ollie is into it. So we’ll see where that goes.
Kat is a full-fledged Shrike Bitch now. She’s working with my sisters and taking pictures of their new boutique downtown that specializes in one-of-a-kind handmade wedding dresses.
Ana and Isa both got into the school Rory wanted to send them to. They stay there during the week and come home on the weekends. I want to die of sadness every Monday morning. But every Friday night when they come home and tell me about their week, I grow stronger.
They will leave me for good one day. And they love their school down in Colorado Springs. And Ellie pops in twice a week to take them out to dinner. And Ivy takes them shopping every Wednesday afternoon.
I want them to stay little forever. And I’d take us back to the island in a second if I thought I had a chance to stop time and make it work. But I don’t, so I get over it.
Turns out Mac was right when he said Colorado is the perfect place to be. I feel like… people know us here. They’ve got our backs. Plus, the paparazzi splashed our faces all over the TV for months. They had that pig video running with a play-by-play for each fucked thing that went wrong. It was like some kind of dissection of a NFL game. With little x’s and o’s drawn on the screen to show who went where, and blah, blah, blah.
We had something like sixty million views on one of the YouTube videos.
If anyone touches my girls, the world is gonna know about it.
So I guess that’s it as far as this story goes. And yeah, it’s funny how life can derail and go off track and you end up in a place you never thought you’d be.
But my life never went off track.
I got my queen, and my princesses, and my farm, and my family. I got a new pony for Mathilda since she grew too big for her last one. He’s white and she calls him Snowflake, even though Rory and I never told her that story. And I’m pretty sure Rory is gonna make her a princess costume and Tory is gonna make Ethan a knight costume. And in a few weeks, they’re gonna clip-clop through downtown Fort Collins and trick-or-treat on horseback.
Nope… my life never derailed.
Because I’m right where I was always supposed to be.
END OF BOOK SHIT
Mr & Mrs End of Book Shit
I feel like I’ve written a lot of endings in 2017. I started the year with Taking Turns and wrote the end of that series in July. Then I picked back up in the Anarchy series and wrote the end of that series in June. Then there was Five. :) And that was an end and a beginning at the same time, which was a first for me. Not to mention I re-released the Dirty, Dark & Deadly series (Come, Come Back, and Coming for You) as a single book called The Company. Those books were a spin-off of the Rook & Ronin series, and even though it was and ending, it was also a beginning because Meet Me in the Dark and Wasted Lust came afterward.
So here we are now… the final Mister book that ties Five and Rory back to Mac, Nolan, West, Pax, and Oliver.
But is it an ending? I just got a tweet asking if I’ll ever write books about the Rook & Ronin kids. And of course, people have been asking for the Vaughn brothers for a long time now. I don’t know if I’ll write a book about Kate, Sparrow, Ariel and the other kids that grew up with Five and Rory. Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you who I think stole the show in this book… Mathilda and Louise! I had so much fun writing Mr. Romantic’s parts. That little pig and those little girls just kinda made me happy I decided to do this book.
And Ethan… Jesus. If ever there was a kid who needed a grown-up book, I think it’s him. I kinda have it in my mind that he’s gonna fall for Mathilda the same way Five fell for Rory. The same way Spencer fell for Veronica.
I have written two happily ever after books now (the first was for Rook & Ronin and is just called Happily Ever After) and I tell you what, they are a super fun. Yes, each of the guys had problems in this book, but they are relatable problems. No one got seriously hurt. No one was in serious danger. No one got a twisted fucked up crisis. Well, unless you count Kat’s dress getting mauled by kittens. But I think Kat would agree with me when I say the new dress was better anyway.
So it’s weird that 2017 was a year of endings for me. Because about halfway through the year I started talking to this guy named Johnathan McClain and that was nothing but new beginnings from the moment it started. He’s an actor and a writer of screenplays and some of the most kick-ass poetry I’ve ever listened to (Yes, he recited (or more aptly, PERFORMED) a poem he wrote when he came to visit a few weeks ago). And he and I just kinda hit it off creatively.
We wrote a screenplay for The Company and we started pitching it as a TV series a couple weeks ago. (If you missed our announcement, he’s also one of my audiobook narrators going under the pseudonym of Tad Branson). We started chatting on Twitter shortly after he narrated Mr. Romantic. I apologized PROFUSELY because I had loved him in other audiobook productions and begged my audio publisher to “get him” for me and I had no idea they’d ask him to be the Infamous Mr. Romantic. I’d asked for him to be Mr. Mysterious. But scheduling five men to narrate the Misters was difficult, so he got Mr. Romantic. Jesus. If I had known my favorite narrator (and soon-to-be friend) would have to narrate that fantasy rape, I’d probably never have written it. ;)
But after he narrated The Company he sent me the MOST AMAZING email. I can’t even describe that email, it was just too awesome. But that ultimately led to us talking about writing the screenplay and from there… new beginnings just starte
d pouring in for both of us. So… we’re officially partners now. And we’ve got a lot of stuff coming up (which will all be announced next week in a video we’re doing while we’re both here in Vegas.) Some beautifully amazing things are happening.
So maybe 2017 is an ending after all. But believe me when I tell you, the new beginnings we have in store for you will make up for anything that ends. I promise.
So 2018 will start off with a spin-off series of The Turning Series. If you read those books then you’ll remember a player called Jordan. And if you didn’t read it, by player, I mean like a game player. Not a “player”. Because he was an integral part of Bric’s Game and guess what? Jordan has his own game going. So the next book, releasing January 16, 2018 (cover reveal and pre-orders links go up on November 13) is called Jordan’s Game: Total Exposure. This is the first of a four-book standalone series about what Jordan was really up to in His Turn. All four books will release in 2018.
What? Only four books you say? For the entire year? Why JA Huss, what the ever-loving fuck are you talking about?
Shit, bitches. Four books? In one year? Please. ;) Hold tight… I’ve got news coming up on my blog on November 6th. News you won’t want to miss, I promise. So go there and fill the little form at the bottom of this post to FOLLOW ME, and you’ll get that news first. OR, you can just join my Facebook fan group (Shrike Bikes – just ask to join and someone will add you as soon as they see it) and watch the amazingness unfold there.
Either way, you won’t want to miss what I’ve planned for you. And I think calling 2018 the year of new beginnings would definitely apply.
So that’s it, I guess. The Misters are over but if I ever get an itch to come back to it, there’s always Mathilda and Ethan to write about when they finally grow up.
We don’t have anything definitive about The Company TV series yet, but Johnathan and I will keep you posted if there’s an update that’s worth sharing. I took most of 2017 off of book signings because I was buying a new house and needed to write a lot of books to do that, but I’m back in 2018. I’ll be at RARE – London Calling in February, at Boston Talk Books Event in April, at book Bonanza in Denver in July, San Fran Golden gate Author Event in August, and Romancing the Coast Author Event in Australia in September.
So if you’d like to meet me in person, try and come to one of those.
Thank you. For all your endless support and love. And for going on this crazy, fucked-up Rook & Ronin, Company, Mister journey with me.
See you in the next book. And if you enjoyed this book (or any of my other ones) please feel free to shout it out to the world by leaving a review. I’d really appreciate that.
Julie
JA Huss
About the Author
JA Huss is the New York Times bestseller and has written fourteen USA Today bestselling books. She likes stories about family, loyalty, and extraordinary characters who struggle with basic human emotions while dealing with bigger than life problems. JA loves writing heroes who make you swoon, heroines who makes you jealous, and the perfect Happily Ever After ending.
You can read her writing craft and marketing articles at her website and chat with her on Facebook, Twitter. If you're interested in getting your hands on an advanced release copy of her upcoming books, sneak peek teasers, or information on her upcoming personal appearances, you can join her newsletter list and get those details delivered right to your inbox.
JA Huss lives on a dirt road in Colorado thirty minutes from the nearest post office. So if she owes you a package from a giveaway, expect it to take forever. She has a small farm with two donkeys named Paris & Nicole, a ringneck parakeet named Bird, and a pack of dogs. She also has two grown children who have never read any of her books and do not plan on ever doing so.
JA collects guns and likes to read science fiction and books that make her think. JA Huss used to write homeschool science textbooks under the name Simple Schooling and after publishing more than 200 of those, she ran out of shit to say. She started writing the I Am Just Junco science fiction series in 2012, but has since found the meaning of life writing erotic stories about antihero men that readers love to love.
JA has an undergraduate degree in equine science and fully planned on becoming a veterinarian until she heard what kind of hours they keep, so she decided to go to grad school and got a master’s degree in Forensic Toxicology. Before she was a full-time writer she was smelling hog farms for the state of Colorado.
Even though JA is known to be testy and somewhat of a bitch, she loves her #fans dearly and if you want to talk to her, join her Facebook fan group where she posts daily bullshit about bullshit.
If you think she’s kidding about this crazy autobiography, you don’t know her very well.
SEE ALL HER BOOKS HERE