Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Samuel Richardson, 1748. After the publication of Clarissa, a novel so devastating it runs over a million words and ends exactly the way you're afraid it will, readers across England wrote to Richardson begging him to change the ending. One woman in Bath wrote that she had not left her house in six days because "the world outside does not contain Clarissa and therefore holds nothing for me." Richardson wrote back. His letter said, in its entirety: "Madam, the world outside never did." Historians call this the first recorded author not giving a fuck. I call him a kindred spirit.
The Brontë Problem, 1847-1848. Between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, the Brontë sisters essentially carpet-bombed England with book hangovers within a twelve-month window. A London bookseller reportedly kept smelling salts behind the counter. One woman returned three days in a row to reread the same chapter in the shop because she refused to purchase the book and "give that woman the satisfaction." A vicar in Yorkshire wrote to his bishop that "weights of an invisible nature are pressing upon the women of this parish" and requested guidance. The bishop did not reply. He was on chapter thirty-one.
Daphne du Maurier, 1938. When Rebecca was published, du Maurier's publisher received a letter from a woman who said she'd finished the book four days prior and had since redecorated her entire parlor because "nothing in this room looks the way it did before that ending." Her husband wrote a separate letter asking if the publisher could "please send whatever the next book is, immediately, as my wife has painted the dining room twice and I fear for the upstairs."
Me, 1986. I was sixteen years old sitting on a plane and I met a biker. Not a weekend warrior. Not a Harley cosplayer. A biker. And somehow — in the way that things happened in 1993 that would get everyone arrested today — I ended up on a road trip to the Harley-Davidson factory in York, Pennsylvania with him and his friend.
Not on a bike.
In a white van.
I was sixteen. In a white van. With two bikers I met on a plane.
And I didn't even die.
I tell you this because people ask me where Legion comes from. Where the MC world comes from. Why it feels like I've been in those rooms, smelled that leather, heard the way a clubhouse goes quiet when the wrong person walks in.
Because I grew up adjacent to it. Northeastern Ohio in the 1980s. Lake Erie cold and rust-belt mean. I was a kid sitting on the edges of a world that wasn't mine but left its fingerprints all over me. Men who were terrifying on Friday and coaching Little League on Saturday. Women who stayed — not because they were trapped, but because they looked at the fire and said mine.
And then at sixteen, a white van to Pennsylvania, and I came back with a story I've been carrying for over thirty years and only now figured out how to write.
That's what a book hangover really is. It's not about the book. It's about the thing the book unlocked in you that was already there. Legion walking into that elevator, covered in dirt, believing the demons won — that wrecked you because you've watched someone walk away. Or you've been the one walking. Or you've stood in the vault and watched the elevator doors close and known, KNOWN, that the person leaving was wrong about themselves and you couldn't make them see it.
That's Savannah right now.
Standing in Eleanor's archive. Surrounded by photographs of the man she chose. Listening to the elevator rise without her.
She's got a book hangover too.
Only hers hasn't ended yet.
So. What’s next. First of all, don’t miss the teaser after the EOBS for my next new series in 2026 - MAFIA ROMANCE!
The Book of Legion Season One — all five novellas — will release as an omnibus in ebook, paperback, and AUDIOBOOK in late July or early August 2026.
The audiobook is narrated in duet by Teddy Hamilton and Samantha Summers and should clock in at around 16 hours. If you know, you know. If you don't know — Teddy Hamilton voicing Legion is going to be a federal emergency and I'm not even a little sorry about it.
Season Two of the Badlands MC — five more novellas, same weekly release format — will hit in late August 2026.
I'm not going to tell you what happens in season two. I'm not going to tell you if Savannah goes after him. I'm not going to tell you if the government comes. I'm not going to tell you what June does when she finds out about Havoc. I'm not going to tell you if Castillo's field office in Terry has a coffee maker.
I will tell you this: the elevator goes both ways.