I Love You, But I Don't Trust You to Do What We Need You to Do
The trope that's in every book I've written, which I only noticed when I tried to sell them
I love you, but I just don't trust that you'll do what we need you to do.
That's a trope, and it's in a lot of the books I'm reading right now. I found that out doing author comp studies — looking at the authors I might actually be able to compete with — and it turns out a lot of us are running it.
Which got me thinking. What is it about this one that we're drawn to? What's the wound underneath it?
Devotion comes in a lot of flavors
There's ambivalent devotion. Fierce devotion. A bunch of others, and they all promise something slightly different about the relationship you're about to watch.
The one I write most is ambivalent devotion: two people who love each other fiercely while a genuine doubt sits right there in the middle of it.
The best example I've got is in Demon Whiskey, between Paige and Leslie and Alma. Leslie is Paige's sister. Alma is their grandmother, who raised them, because their mother is just a wonderful person.
Paige can summon demons. This terrifies the ever-loving crap out of both of them, for different reasons.
Alma's afraid of it because her mother had the same gift and it broke her mental stability — and is insane even the right word for that? Let's say it broke her, and it eventually led to her death. So when Paige developed the gift young, before puberty, six or eight years old, Alma took one look and decided this was a terrible idea. Rachel, their mother, decided she'd take the only good kid and leave.
That's a hell of a dynamic right there.
Leslie's afraid because there's so much she doesn't know about demons. Demons are the bad guys, obviously, because we were told that by men looking to control society through religion and faith, which made demons an excellent boogeyman. Leslie doesn't know any different. And it doesn't help that most demons are, in fact, not nice people.
But Leslie and Alma have always loved Paige. They were willing to love her in spite of the scary thing she can do.
The part that makes it a trope instead of a vibe
There has to be a sacrifice, and there has to be a moment of betrayal. Usually it's the same moment.
In Demon Whiskey, Paige does something that isn't great, and Leslie and Alma are afraid. But here's what matters: they're afraid for Paige more than they're afraid of her. Paige goes to a genuinely dark place — so dark I couldn't write it from her point of view. Her story runs close to mine, and I just didn't think I could do it. As an author you get to make those choices, and that's the one I made.
Having them betray her out of love was the most interesting version to me. Because the betrayal I've felt in my own life wasn't that. Maybe. I don't think so.
The story the people in my life would tell isn't "I betrayed her" — they wouldn't use that language. Being generous, I think they believed they were doing the best thing for the situation, for the people they valued. I was just never one of the people they valued. I was always a problem. Wrong personality, too blunt, could never react correctly.
Now that I'm older I understand why. There's a lot we understand now that nobody understood when I was a kid. It doesn't change one single thing that happened. I just get to be grateful I went through it to become this version of me.
Does that make it better? I don't know. But it does give me fodder.
The devotion roller coaster
Here's the thing I didn't see until I sat down to market these books — which I only did because look at that pretty cover, I'll buy that stopped working roughly a thousand beautiful covers ago.
So I asked myself what I'm actually drawn to right now. I went back through the books I've been reading and thought: baby girl. Are you okay?
Then I went back through my own, and it's not that I write different types of devotion. It's that each book sits at a different point on the same roller coaster.
Demon Whiskey — the betrayal happens.
Whiskey Witches — Paige discovers it.
Blood Moon Magic — Paige has no idea what to do with it, and just wants to live her best life. The world informs her that she isn't dealing with it, she's hiding from it, and how about she stop.
Barrel of Whiskey — she goes to Texas and faces it head on. One of my favorite books I've written.
Whiskey Witches was supposed to be genre fiction. A snarky female detective in an urban setting, a new mystery every book, and at the end of Blood Moon Magic Sven gets caught and everything ties up in a nice little bow.
That is not what happened. She got fired.
So I thought, well. Crap. I guess we're going back to Texas.
I'm a plotter, in a weird way — I need a short statement for each chapter, and then I can spin a whole lot of words out of "destroy, destroy, destroy." (That was three very long chapters.) But I had no idea what to do with Barrel of Whiskey, because everything I told my characters we were doing, they said how about no. Fine. Do what you were going to do anyway.
It turned out to be a really good book.
The conversation that actually wrote it
The recognition scene in Whiskey Witches is the one I'd point at. You took my memories of my daughter. You buried my gift. You didn't ask me. You didn't check whether I was okay. You took away my free will. Paige says that to Alma — the woman she loves more than anyone except her sister.
That hurt. It was real and it was visceral, and she had to carry it into Barrel of Whiskey.
Problem: I did not know how to write healing, because in my history nobody did it. We pretended things were fine and shoved them under the rug and let them fester. That was the whole technology.
So I sat down with my characters. This was back when I did full-on interviews with them, which I thought was very cool. We had chat rooms — does anybody remember chat rooms? I'd run two computers at once. On one I was the character, on the other I was me.
Look, I know how stupid that sounds. In my defense I was burning through laptops at a rate that left me with several semi-functional ones, which is exactly why I could dedicate one to a fictional person. (There's a reason I'm not allowed to buy a new laptop anymore. First, I can't type on one without generating a million typos. Second, I'm a workaholic and laptops are not built for that.)
Anyway. Chat rooms. I had these long conversations and shared them as guest posts during blog tours, which were an absolute blast, and I wish we could do them again. Now that we're back on Substack I keep wondering whether we could. Romance authors still do this kind of thing. The rest of us should get to play too.
And in one of those conversations, Paige and Leslie asked me whether I wanted to use my experience to handle this — or try something else.
I said I wanted to try something else.
That's how Barrel of Whiskey exists.
Watching it come out non-toxic
Across the rest of the series — Witches of the West, Desert Shaman, Dead Demon Die, Whiskey Storm, Midnight Whiskey, Breaking Whiskey (sometimes I have to look up at my ceiling to remember all my own titles, which is why they're on the ceiling) — I got to watch devotion turn out non-toxic.
Which mattered, because in my experience devotion was never something I wanted to seek out.
It didn't go well every time. Paige and Dexx found an impressive number of ways to screw it up, but Dexx was so Dexx. Paige and Leslie, though, did pretty well. They healed in a way I wish I could heal in real life.
Relationships are two-way streets, and if one person is doing all the healing and the other isn't, that relationship doesn't heal. Fiction gets to give you the version where both people show up.
Then it showed up again
I didn't expect to write this trope again. It's in Without Villains. It's in Where the Dust Still Glows.
In Dust it's a different kind of devotion, and it's the kind I'd most like to have — except getting it requires being a person who shows up in real life for other people, and I am not great at that. Showing up for people, outside of my house, in pants, is a wonderful idea in theory. Then it stops being theory and I have to actually put on the pants and go into public.
Part of me suspects the only version of me people like is the pretend version. I don't know that that's true. I know a lot of people feel it.
Anyway. Lixiss and Yade are programs. They were built for two completely different jobs and technically shouldn't be talking to each other at all, and they are, and they're building a bond I absolutely love. Two very sweet people, which is not who I normally write. Apparently it's who I needed this time.
Every time one of them steps outside what's expected — breaks the rules of expectation — they get wiped. Personality, memories, rebooted. That's happened 311 times.
And 310 of those times, they found each other again.
Can you imagine being loved like that? Someone can be made to forget you, and there's still some part of you lodged in their soul, and they come back to you again and again and again.
I don't mean romantically. And here's the part I'm still turning over.
Which one is more true?
Romantic relationships seem to carry a sacrifice with them. A partition, almost — you wall off parts of yourself so you can fit against another person like two puzzle pieces.
Friends don't do that. Friends get to be exactly who they are and reside next to each other. You're not trying to build one life together. You're in the same space, building lives.
Maybe that's a point-of-view problem on my end, and if I stood somewhere else I'd see it differently. But from where I'm standing, that's the difference.
So which is more true — a friendship or a romance?
I don't have an answer yet. I'm having a lot of fun walking down the path, and I cannot wait to see what happens to it across the next two books.
Here's what I actually want from you: what non-romance books have you read that run this trope? Not romance, where devotion takes a different and also lovely shape — I mean books where romance is the subplot or isn't there at all, and the devotion is the spine. Come tell me. I want the list.
Questions Readers Ask Me About This
What is the devotion trope?
Two people bound to each other by love that comes with a real cost. The version I write most is ambivalent devotion: they love each other fiercely and there's a genuine doubt sitting inside the love. It needs a sacrifice and a moment of betrayal, and usually one scene does both jobs.
Where should I start with the Whiskey Witches books?
Demon Whiskey if you want to watch the betrayal happen. Whiskey Witches if you'd rather start where Paige finds out. Both work as entry points, and the emotional arc runs Demon Whiskey → Whiskey Witches → Blood Moon Magic → Barrel of Whiskey.
Is the bond between Lixiss and Yade a romance?
No, and that's deliberate. It's the deepest relationship in Where the Dust Still Glows and it's a friendship — two beings who have found each other 310 times without ever remembering they'd done it before. If you came for a romance you'll be disappointed, and I'd rather say so now.
Did you really interview your own characters in a chat room?
I did, on two laptops, as both people. It's how Barrel of Whiskey got written, so I stand by it.
Do I need to read the Whiskey Witches books before Where the Dust Still Glows?
Nope. Dust is book one of the Dream Lord Wars and a clean start. If you've read the Whiskey books you'll catch a thread or two, and if you haven't, nothing's missing.
Where the Dust Still Glows is out now on Amazon and free in Kindle Unlimited.
For readers of Blood Over Bright Haven and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
And if you want to talk about devotion in books that aren't romances, come find me in the Trauma Llama Slayers on Facebook. That's the conversation I actually want to be having.
Happy reading. 🦙
