Susan Fanetti

Hello!

As the calendar flips to August, I return to a primary focus on my day job, prepping reading lists and syllabi, writing lesson plans and lecture notes, setting up course information in Canvas (our online course tool platform), etc. But before I put my head down for that work, I’ve got some authory work to do.

Today I’m revealing my next release! Freak, Book Three of the Signal Bend Heritage series, is now available for preorder at Amazon and just about everywhere else. Release day is Saturday, 6 September. A paperback edition will also be available.

This is the only place I’m announcing the reveal and the only place I’ll do any kind of promotion on it. I understand and am okay with how so little promotion might affect sales; that’s the trade-off I made when I decided to back away from social media for my mental (and ethical) wellbeing. That said, if you’re feeling inspired to do so, please feel free to share promo/teaser images I post here, or just the link to this post, or anything you’d like to share about this release—no pressure to do so, no expectation at all on my end, just my consent for you to copy SBH3 promo images like the one below to share if you’d like to do so.

Freak is a story that “popped” for me while I was writing Snake, Book 2 of the series. Abigail Freeman, the female lead, is first introduced with a small, incidental mention in Virago, Book 1, and though she was mentioned as no more than a little bit of town flavor, I got the first tickle of inspiration in that brief moment. Then something happens to her in Snake that sparks quite a bit of plot, especially for the Horde, and in all that, Abigail rose in my mind to the level of a potential lead. The prologue of Freak, which I shared last month, covers that inciting event from Abigail’s POV.

Abigail herself is somewhat inspired by a social media influencer, Hannah Taylor (LilyLouTay). She’s pretty popular, and you might well know her. She does cute southern cooking vids, which often feature her husband, James, as her chief taster and number-one fan. Actually, Abigail and Mel’s relationship is maybe a little bit inspired by Hannah and James.

I hope you enjoy Freak and the continuing saga of Signal Bend and the Night Horde MC!

Here’s the description:

Abigail Freeman has lived all her life in the hills above Signal Bend, Missouri. Like the grandmother who raised her and taught her all she knew, Abigail leads a traditional, solitary life mostly outside the prickly borders of the modern world. Some call her a witch, some call her a freak, but others call her an old soul and a good woman, the kind of country-bred that’ll drop everything to help a stranger. And just about everybody loves her pies.

Mel Lind has lived long enough in Signal Bend to be considered a local. A longstanding patch in the Night Horde MC, and lead electrician at Signal Bend Construction, he’s built up a decent life for himself. After years of family obligation, he’s glad to be living solo, no external expectations to shape himself around, no compromises, no burdens on his shoulders but his own.

When Abigail comes home to find her property ransacked, death and destruction in every direction, she knows it’s too much for her to handle alone. So she calls the only help she feels she can trust: the Night Horde.

It’s Mel who answers her call. That simple coincidence changes both their lives forever.

At the same time Abigail and Mel realize a bond is forming between them, the Horde discover a schism forming among them. When the club is in turmoil, Signal Bend suffers for it. That dark history has repeated several times.

This time, Mel has someone other than himself to keep safe. And Abigail needs him safe, too.

And here’s a little teaser as well. Since I already shared the prologue, I’ll give you Chapter 3 today—a view of Abigail from Mel’s perspective:

Abigail Freeman’s house was like something out of an old folk tale.

On the outside it looked like a normal farmhouse, setting aside the vivid purple paint and black trim (and the graffiti she’d left on a side wall and prettied up like it belonged there), but once you crossed the threshold, the inside was like nothing Mel had seen outside a book of fairy tales.

He understood why some folks around here thought she might really be a witch.

Take this kitchen, for instance. At its base, it was a regular country kitchen: large and practical, with a wood floor and wood countertops, lots of wooden cupboards and other storage, including two big old hutches and a hand-built case of floor-to-ceiling shelves. She had three ovens—two in a wall unit probably installed in the 80s and a monster range that was probably twice as old as that. Her fridge was an antique beast as well, the kind where the freezer had to be defrosted a few times a year.

The base of her kitchen, in other words, was what one would expect from a hundred-plus-year-old country house—funky and aging, but practical. The wild stuff began the next layer up. The cupboards were painted a deep purple color—not the violet of the exterior but a rich, reddish purple like a ripe plum. The ceiling was painted black. A patchwork of thin, woven rugs in a vast array of colors, patterns, and sizes covered the floor. The backsplash behind the sink was gold tile, each one hand-painted with a different flower. Half a dozen pendant lights hung from the ceiling, each one with a vintage glass globe in a different color and shape. The walls—wood planks—were barely visibly behind the hutches, the shelves, a big pegboard hung with rows of live plants in small glass pots, and another wall bedazzled with an extensive collection of cast-iron cookware.

And then there were the little glass pots and bottles that filled that case of shelves, each one carefully marked with a label in Abigail’s calligraphic handwriting. In a normal kitchen, that would be a spice rack, and about one-tenth the size. This one indeed held kitchen spices, every one Mel knew and a whole bunch he didn’t. But then they took a decidedly fantastical turn. Dried bits from strange, spiky plants, odd things in liquid, things with names he’d never heard. And also names he knew but unsettled him nonetheless: bee venom, dried crickets, dried ants, and more. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find ‘eye of newt’—but that was not among her strange ‘spices.’

Maybe she was a witch. He hadn’t asked; that seemed like one of those questions it was best to keep to himself.

What really made it seem so ethereal wasn’t the strange little bottles but the plants, so many plants the kitchen was a jungle. In addition to that board of baby plants, three pots hung from macrame hangers before the window at the sink, dozens of plants hung from the ceiling in similar hangers all around the room, one enormous plant made a vining curtain over the side window, and bunches of leafy stems had been bound together and strung across the room like clothes hanging to dry. At six-one, Mel practically needed a pith helmet and a machete to cross the room.

Coming into this kitchen from the outside was like walking through a portal and landing in the forest where Hansel and Gretel got lost. It was dark, verdant, unusual, and bursting with life. And in the middle of it stood this woman, herself verdant, unusual, and bursting with life.

But she wasn’t dark. Abigail Freeman’s inner light was bright as a lighthouse.

Mel was maybe a little bit in love with her.

Er … no, not that. He didn’t do love; with love came commitment, and that wasn’t his bag. He’d done his time being responsible for another person, and now he liked captaining a ship for one. Nobody leaning on him, nobody riding him if he got home late, nobody waiting on him for anything.

But damn, he liked Abigail’s company.

Until a pack of unknown (yet) shitheads had ransacked this homestead, Mel hadn’t known her particularly well. The people up here in the hills stuck to themselves more than not, so he wouldn’t have said he knew any particularly well. Gary Prentiss, he supposed, but that was because Gary had been a minor thorn in the Horde’s side until he’d ended up dead because of it. Abigail he’d known only because she made the best damn pies and jams he’d ever had, and he always made a point of stopping by her booth at a town festival and loading up on provisions.

Simple coincidence had brought them into each other’s orbit. Mel had been the one to answer the phone—a landline that almost never rang—when she’d called the club for help that day, and since then, Abigail had become one of his favorite people. Yeah, she was a little weird, but it was the best kind of weird, entirely without malice or cynicism.

She was one of those folks the sun seemed to shine straight through. Always smiling, always sweet, patient with young and old, deftly disarming anybody who might be inclined to be difficult. That last one spoke to a strength of spirit most ‘nice’ people didn’t possess, in his experience. A lot of people were ‘nice’ because they were afraid of confrontation and wanted to slip under the radar. They were people pleasers, looking for affirmation, not actually compassionate. Abigail was kind, but she wasn’t afraid of confrontation. She stood her ground with a sincere smile and without aggression. She simply held her boundaries firm.

She was the type of woman who’d leave a nasty message meant to hurt her feelings and deface her home right where it was and paint flowers, butterflies, and honey bees all around it, turning something that had been done to her into something that was hers. There was a firm FUCK YOU in a move like that.

She was kind, but there was steel in her.

She was real nice to look at, too.

If Mel had a type, it was ‘independent.’ He admired anybody who handled their own shit. He didn’t like clingy women, those made their guy their whole personality, but otherwise he liked most of them. If he had a physical feature he appreciated most of all, it had to be eyes; eyes were what he noticed first on anybody, and a pretty set on a woman would pull and hold his attention every time. Abigail’s eyes were the clear blue of a June sky, and her perpetual smile kept them sparkling like a lake on a sunny day. Combined with that wild mess of dark hair and those bodacious curves a man could sink into, okay, yeah, he’d had a thought or ten of her during his ‘personal time,’ sure.

Men who thought only skinny women could be beautiful were missing a bet. There was nothing like pulling a woman with some meat on her close and wrapping her up in his arms. It felt good absolutely everywhere. Skinny girls were sharp and bony, and he could barely feel he had anything in his arms—not to mention being half-worried he’d accidentally break one if he got too energetic. They were pretty, too, he wouldn’t kick a lanky girl out of bed, but they weren’t the be-all, end-all of beautiful, sexy women, not by a long shot.

Sometimes his eyes settled on Abigail from behind and he almost grunted.

So yeah. He was attracted to her. And okay, maybe he had a little crush. He damn sure wouldn’t turn down the opportunity. However, he’d tossed a few feelers out over the past few weeks, and she hadn’t picked up on a single one. Not even a little extra pink in her cheeks or a flutter of an eyelash. He could admit some insecurity at having his signals so roundly ignored.

Mel wasn’t shy about making his moves, but he liked to have some indication a move was wanted before he did anything obvious. Abigail was sweet as candy and said she enjoyed his company, but she was clearly not interested in anything more than platonic.

Word around town was she’d never been with anyone, not a relationship, not a one-nighter, nothing. He knew for sure she wasn’t strongly religious, at least not in the Bible-waving way, so it wasn’t that. Maybe she was one of those ‘aromantic’ or ‘asexual’ folks and not interested in anybody ever.

While he couldn’t relate to that thought—hardly an hour of his life went by where he didn’t think about sex—it helped. He was vain enough to think if she liked men she’d at least give him a second look. He took care of himself, worked out and all that, and he had no, like, deformities. Enough women had called him hot that he could be confident he was decent looking. He was getting up there a little, maybe, just a couple years shy of fifty now, but he still did okay for himself, and not only at the clubhouse.

He tried to be a decent human being, too. He didn’t have a hero complex, didn’t need to look for people to save to feel good about himself, didn’t need a chick fluttering her lashes at him in gratitude, but he threw in where there was need.

It was a lot easier to believe Abigail wasn’t interested in sex than that she wasn’t interested in him. He was pretty comfortable with himself, but rejection still hurt, even if it was only implied.

After a last, lingering glance to watch her body move as she mashed potatoes, he carried the jar of wildflowers to the dining room and set them in the middle of her round table.

Every room he’d seen in this house—kitchen, dining room, living room, a bathroom—had the same otherworldly atmosphere. Dark wood floors, covered with mismatched rugs, dark walls—in here they were painted a chocolate brown—plants hanging and sitting everywhere, eclectic collections of lights. In the dining room were a huge, dark china chest and a mismatched sideboard painted antique silver. In this room, she’d draped a big piece of funky fabric across the ceiling, drawn up in the center, around the light fixture, and swagging to the corners, so it was like sitting in a tent in the Sahara or something.

She’d spread a lace tablecloth over the table and set two places with her mismatched dishes and silverware. Two old-fashioned stoneware pitchers, one blue and full of ice water, and the other white and full of sweet tea, sat near the center, by the ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like kittens. The flowers in their glass jar and cutesy ribbon made a surprisingly nice touch, as if they’d been arranged for someone to paint a still life.

Everything about this woman was weird and beautiful in equal measure.

Why had he brought her flowers? He supposed the impulse might have been rooted in attraction, but he didn’t think he’d meant it, consciously or otherwise, as more than a nice thing for a friend. She’d certainly taken them like that. What would he have done if she’d thought they meant more? Would that have made an opportunity?

The light in the room changed subtly; a faint, flickering dimness. Mel looked up and studied the overhead light—a cut-glass bowl light that had probably been installed in the 1930s. One of its four bulbs flickered unsteadily—in a way he recognized as a problem in the wiring, not just the bulb dying.

Good thing Abigail had called an electrician over for supper.

“Mel, hon?” she called from the kitchen right then.

Mel grinned. Though he was pretty sure she’d been raised right here, she had a real mountain accent that closed off the vowel in his name and changed the sound to ‘Mil.’ She also dropped the word ‘hon’ like a period on half her sentences, whomever she was talking with. Though she was younger than him, she talked like somebody’s granny, and it was fucking delightful.

“Yeah, Abs? What you need?” He swung around and headed back to her witchy kitchen.

The food smells suddenly hit him like a drug, and he stopped and sucked in as much of them as he could. Roast chicken with rosemary, mashed potatoes with garlic and sour cream, fresh bread, sauteed green beans, no doubt fresh from her garden. He never ate better than when he ate here.

“What you do in your kitchen is fuckin’ magic, Abs.”

She turned from the stove, where she was scooping potatoes into a stoneware bowl. She always cooked for about six people and sent him home with three days’ worth of leftovers. Yep, she was like a squishy newborn granny pixie. Charmed the socks right off him.

“Sometimes, I s’pose, what I do in here could be called magic, but this here is just mashed taters. Will you carry the bird in, hon?” She nodded at the platter on the island, where a perfectly roasted chicken sat, bedecked with rosemary and gleaming under an amber-colored glass pendant lamp.

“Happy to,” he said and went to the island. When he saw her trying to tuck the bread basket under her arm and carry the potatoes and the veggies, too, he took the basket from her and added it to his own load. She smiled a thanks at him.

They took their usual seats at the table and Mel carved the chicken while Abigail filled their glasses with sweet tea.

She’d never served anything alcoholic with dinner, he thought she probably didn’t drink beer or wine, but with dessert, there was always a little glass of hooch—just one, in a little jelly glass. She made a hard cider that tasted like cinnamon applesauce and would absolutely put a grown man under the table in a couple glasses.

As usual, Abigail wouldn’t fill her plate first, so he served himself some chicken and passed the tray to her. Then he went for the mashed potatoes. If he ever ended up on death row, his last meal would be nothing but a great, heaping bowl of these potatoes.

“How’s the goats?” he asked, plopping a third big scoop of mashed magic on his plate. “You had a job in … where again?”

“Labadie,” she answered as she selected some chicken for herself. “They’re a new client, and it went just fine. They had a real nice place for me to set up the trailer. I got one more job lined up this month, and then it’ll be the end of the season for the brushers.”

“I’ll be glad of that. I don’t like you being out on the road so long.”

She laughed at that while she spooned a significantly smaller portion of potatoes onto her plate. “I’m not on the road, hon. I’m just campin’. The goats and the dogs do most of the work.”

He stopped with a serving fork full of green beans (sauteed in bacon grease and seasoned with some kind of blend that tasted like something the gods on Olympus would eat—the woman should write a cookbook, seriously) halfway to his plate and gave Abigail a firm look. “After what those shitheads—‘scuse me—did to you, Abs, I don’t like you away from home so long. On the road means away from home. They’re still out there; we haven’t found ‘em yet.”

He’d grown increasingly frustrated as the question slipped down the list of the club’s priorities. They’d hit several dead ends in the search for the doers, they’d dug themselves a big hole trying to figure it out, and most of his brothers had lost the appetite for the fight. Pretty soon he’d be the only one who cared enough to even bring it up at the table. Maybe he already was the only one.

He had not shared that frustration with Abigail, however, and he would not. If he had to figure it out himself, so be it, but he meant to find those fuckers and make them pay. Anybody who’d hurt this sweet woman deserved a very hard payback. Bloody hard.

She flapped a hand at him. “Well, first thing, I wasn’t here to get hurt when they came by, because I was ‘on the road.’ Second thing, they didn’t do much to me. They made a mess, but that’s all cleaned up now, thanks to you and your club. They killed my chickens, and that was the worst of it. You know I’m not forgettin’ that. I just…” she paused, turned to stare out the window (through dozens of tendrils from the plants hanging there), and continued her thought. “I don’t like dwellin’ in the dark, y’know? Life is hard sometimes. Bad things happen sometimes. That’s part of gettin’ up each day, puttin’ your shoes on, and movin’ forward. Sometimes it’s hard. But I don’t want other people’s demons dancin’ on my hearth.”

He chuckled softly and reached across the table to brush his fingers across her hand and catch her attention. She wore a big ring on the middle finger of her right hand, with an oval amber stone sizeable enough to fill the space between her knuckles.

Her hand twitched beneath his touch, almost like he’d brought a static charge with him. He felt something like that himself.

When she turned back to him, he said, “I like the sound of that, but I’m not sure I’ve got its meaning.”

“Other people’s demons dancin’ on my hearth?”

He nodded. “Yeah. What d’you mean?” He had a guess, but he wanted to be sure.

“Granny Kate used to say it. It means don’t invite other people’s darkness in to turn your own life dim. I said it just now because I don’t want that one bad day, when some people felt compelled to do somethin’ bad to me, to change me or my life or my home. I’m not stayin’ home because I’m scared of what some stranger might do while I’m gone. I’m not hidin’ when I’m home, afraid somebody’ll do somethin’ while I’m here. I won’t live like that, and I’m sorry for anybody who feels they have to.”

His guess had been in line with her explanation, and again he felt that kick of admiration in his chest, strong enough to be attraction, even desire. His hand was still on the table; with barely a thought, he caught hers and squeezed.

“You’re a real special woman, Abigail.”

Her eyes dropped to his hand over hers and held there for a moment. Then, slowly, they came up to fix on his face. Their eyes locked, and the atmosphere in the room seemed to grow suddenly heavier, like the last second before a lightning strike.

When she began to slip her hand free, his hand clenched and held her fast.

He hadn’t meant to do that; it had been a reflex.

But now he couldn’t let her go.

©2025 Susan Fanetti