SICK HEART, Huss, JA [novels for students .txt] 📗

Because they were sent there to kill her.

Not fall for her.

Not feel sorry for her.

Not want to take care of her, or protect her, or be in to her.

But sometimes people enter your life for a reason. Sometimes they even enter at the very moment you need them most. And Yvette Nightingale needs AJ and Logan.

She needs them even more than they need her.

In To Her is 320 pages of dirty smut, fantasy scenes with erotic toys, MFM and MMF ménage, and an angst-y HEA that will leave you guessing until the very last page. (This is not a love triangle).

END OF BOOK SHIT

Welcome to the End of Book Shit. This is the part of the book where I get to say whatever I want about the story (or anything else!). It’s never edited and it’s always pretty last minute. Though this time, I’m writing the EOBS two weeks before release because I need to get my paperback uploaded for preorder.

I started writing the End of Book Shit back in March of 2013 because I was sad. My dog had to be put down the day I finished my Junco book, Range, and I was a newbie writer back then and figured I was obligated to write some kind of “end of book shit” (acknowledgments or author’s note to most people) and I didn’t want to do it. So I called it the End of Book Shit because that’s what those words felt like. Just a bunch of shit. And from that point on, it became a thing.

So.

I have a lot of feelings about this book. Most of them are good ones. Sick Heart is definitely one of my most favorite stories ever.

Sometimes I finish a book and I’m like… meh. It’s a book. I’m not going to tell you which ones I have those feelings about because for the most part all my books have about the same rating. Somewhere between 4.0 and 4.8. And to me that means that the people who are generally reading the books like them about equally.

Of course, everyone has their favorites. And like me, their not-so-favorites. But the ratings tell me that it all evens out in the wash. About an equal number of people always seem to like the books and an equal number of people always seem to dislike the books. So I don’t want you guys to know which books I don’t like. If there was a clear winner in the “I-Hate-This-JA-Huss-Book” category, I probably would tell you because then I would disappoint fewer people when they realized I hated the book THEY loved.

And because I am able to have this perspective on the books, and because I have written so many, and published so many, and gone through the entire book process nearly a hundred times now, I can take a step back and separate myself from the story once it’s over.

For instance, people who hated Mr. Romantic – I GET IT. The book was about a guy who was accused of rape in college and had a thing for rape fantasies afterward. That book is definitely what I would call dark.

And Meet Me in the Dark. I mean, the title says it all. You’re gonna meet this asshole in the dark. And what you find there is gonna be equally dark. So if people hate Merc, I GET IT.

And in Bully King. Cooper is a jerk. Again, the title explains in very clear language what’s going on here. He’s a bully. He bullies a girl because they have a messy past he can’t quite wrap his head around. You know what I absolutely love about the negative Bully King reviews though? I always—ALWAYS—know who read the book and who didn’t. Because the twist comes very late in the story and um… yeah. It’s called a twist for a reason.

Anyway, like Nolan in Mr. Romantic and Merc in Meet Me in the Dark, Cooper the Bully King is looking for redemption. (Though, Nolan didn’t *really* need redemption. He did nothing wrong. But regardless, he was still looking for it.)

These are dark books. They have dark heroes. These heroes are broken, they live outside what most of us consider socially acceptable norms, and they do this by CHOICE.

I love all three of those books, by the way. None of them come anywhere near the “meh” feeling I have gotten for some over the years. These three are masterpieces, actually.

But here’s my point—Sick Heart isn’t about a dark hero. He isn’t looking for redemption because he doesn’t need redemption. And I do not care what kind of shit people want to write about me for saying that, it’s an accurate assessment of Cort the Sick Heart and here’s why:

1. He’s not into dark shit in bed. He’s actually pretty apathetic about sex. Sex to him, and all the adult protagonists in this story, has lost its meaning. Sex is NOT the reason he takes Anya with him to the Rock. He takes Anya to the Rock because he intuitively knows Lazar is a piece of his puzzle and she could be a way to crack that secret. He never clearly articulates this in his thoughts, but it’s there. Trust me, I wrote the fucking book, it’s there. And despite what one early reader said – there is no dubious consent in this book. This person actually complained that Anya didn’t agree to the first sex scene because she never said the word YES out loud, even though Anya doesn’t fucking talk. Like… did we read the same book here? I was very confused by this accusation because there is no dubcon in this book. Anya’s view of sex is even more apathetic than Cort’s. She gives no fucks at all about sex. But she clearly gives permission in that first sex scene three separate times, for all three men. There is an explicit conversation about her consent. But beyond that, she is laughing