(Taboo Sports Romance)
Brawl
Conflict
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FULL CIRCLE SECURITY INCORPORATED
(Contemporary/Action & Adventure Romance)
Invictus (free novella)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kylie Hillman is an International Bestselling Author who lives in South Australia. After spending the past fifteen years regularly moving around the east coast of Australia, she has recently returned to her home state and plans to finally put down roots until her children finish school.
Wife to a Harley-riding, boating and fishing, four-wheel driving, quintessential Aussie bloke and mum to two crazy, adorable, and eccentric kids, Kylie is also a Crohn's Disease sufferer and awareness campaigner.
When she's not writing, she can be found sipping tea while she scoffs copious amounts of jelly beans (except the black ones – they’re the devil’s food), sharing her appreciation for heavy metal and hard rock music with her neighbours, or stalking Tom Hardy and M. Shadows from Avenged Sevenfold online. As a devotee to the use of profanity, sarcasm, and inappropriate innuendo, it is for the best that she chooses to venture outside her 45-acre farm only on special occasions.
She loves to chat with readers and can be contacted via her Facebook Reader Group (Kylie’s Kollective), her Facebook Like Page, or her website.
FOLLOW KYLIE HILLMAN ONLINE: Instagram | Ultimate Insider | Book+Main Bites | BookBub | Spotify
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For this book, I’m going to be a complete arsehole in this section.
I acknowledge me. Yep. That’s it. Me.
This book is mine. I bled over the pages and gutted myself to finish this version of the story. I deserve all the acknowledgements. *insert bitchy laugh here*
Now, before you begin to think that I’m an egotistical twatwaffle, let me give you some back story...
I first published Craving Control back in 2016, and it’s been a burr in my butt ever since. At the time, I wasn’t happy with it, but I published it anyway as the 30,000-word novella that I’d promised my readers as a bonus extra in the Black Shamrocks MC Boxed Set, Blood & Betrayal. I think four people read it before the retailers took it down for “content issues” and I made some crazy promise to email it to everyone else who brought the boxed set without it. That turned into the clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks and I canned that pretty quickly when it hit multiple pirate sites in the first few hours. I decided that the universe was trying to tell me something, so I let Craving Control die a quiet death and never really mentioned it again.
Fast forward twelve months, and I had a brilliant idea to rewrite a toned-down version that the retailers would accept and release it to celebrate the second anniversary of the Black Shamrocks MC series. It was 2017, by this time, and I thought I’d be fine to revisit this story once again.
I was so fucking wrong it wasn’t funny.
Two days after I sat down to tackle this story again, all hell broke loose, and my past was suddenly all over the news.
You see, the main events of Seizing Control are autobiographical. Most of the story is fictional, but the main core is my life. I wrote the first draft of that story back in 2011 when I was on the cusp of marrying my Mad Dog (Literally. My husband’s name is Mick and if you ever get to meet him in person, you’ll see the similarities to Mik “Mad Dog” Kennedy immediately). I was having panic attacks in the lead up to our wedding day, that were getting worse over time—to the point that I was working from home because I couldn’t leave my house.
It was strongly suggested that I might benefit from some therapy and after some blustering on my behalf that I was fine, I eventually agreed to go to five sessions to see how it went. My therapist asked me what I thought was causing my panic attacks. I gave the stock-standard answer—I was a young mum with two kids under the age of seven, a fiancé who worked away for weeks at a time, and a chronic illness that the specialists couldn’t seem to get under control all while I was living 3,000 kilometres from my family. I was stressed. I was tired. I was overwhelmed.
She told me that wasn’t it at all. She asked me to dig deeper.
I cracked the shits and skipped my next two sessions.
Mick told me I had to go back, or he wouldn’t marry me. My panic attacks had got to the point where I couldn’t leave the house at all without him. Even staying in the car when I picked up my son from school was becoming too much to handle. He knew I couldn’t keep going on the way I was.
Begrudgingly, I went back. The therapist was surprised to see me, but she rallied. As we were talking about random shit, she asked me what I did that was just for me. I told her that I journaled on occasion and wrote poetry and short stories.
She asked to read my favourite story. I wasn’t happy about it, but after a bit of a tantrum, I gave her the short story that would eventually become Seizing Control to read (Seriously! My man is a hard arse who doesn’t take my shit). After reading it, she asked for a couple more stories. My wedding was at stake, so I gave her two more. After she read those stories, she explained that she knew what my problem was—it was right there in my stories. Of course, I scoffed and laughed. I was stressed. All I needed was a good night’s sleep and the ability to do my grocery shopping without feeling like I was going to spin off the planet. I was just tired. I wasn’t a head case. My symptoms were physical not mental.
Looking me in the eye, she quietly stated that I once had a Brendan in my life and it was my inability to even acknowledge that fact to myself that was the cause of all my problems.
I tried to argue, but eventually admitted that she was right.
She didn’t ask for details. She didn’t ask me to open up to her at all. She told me to go write my story down and to give myself the ending that I wished I’d had. I did what I was told, pouring my heart out though my fingertips. Over 100,000 words in a week. That was the first draft of Seizing Control.
It was done by my next session. I handed it to her and she gave it straight back to me. Said she didn’t even need to read it to see that I had done what I was told. She could see it in my eyes.
Once again, she was right.
I had purged my soul, and I felt stronger for being truthful with myself.
Now, I’d like to tell you that I was magically cured, and I never had a panic attack again. No such luck. I visited that therapist twice a week for six months in the lead up to my wedding, and it still took all of my courage to get down the aisle that day. I still suffer the occasional attack, but I am better, and when they hit, I know how to cope. That therapist saved my life. She gave the coping strategies to deal with my life when it imploded in 2014 and I have to retire from accounting at the grand old age of twenty-nine because my Crohn’s was trying to kill me.
She also gave me the belief to publish my first book in 2015 after I’d spent a year at home bored out of my brains. I took a creative writing class, pulled the first draft of Seizing Control apart, and made it into the story it is today. That book kickstarted this career for me, and I’ll be eternally grateful of that fact.
Anyhow, fast forward to 2017. I had just returned to live in my home state for the first time in fifteen years. I was having a hard time adjusting. Being back home was like being slapped in the face every single fucking day by a past I’d tried to forget. I was back sliding. Hating life. Acting like a raging bitch.
My creativity was gone. I wasn’t feeling any of my current WIP’s, so I had this idea to revisit Craving Control for the Black Shamrocks MC’s second anniversary. I mean, writing my truth had saved my arse before. Maybe, it would save my arse again?
It wasn’t my smartest decision.
I read through the novella and basically scrapped it all.
I sat down to re-write it from scratch. I was ready. I was strong. I could write an entire story from the POV of someone who had robbed me of my innocence at the age of seventeen then tried to ruin my life when I eventually left him.
I was
a fucking idiot.
Even the universe agreed that I was a moron because the next thing I knew, he was all over the TV. He was suspected of killing his wife. The police were searching for her body. There were two children caught in the middle. It was huge. The news rehashed it every night. The papers had it on the front page every day. I couldn’t escape it.
Shit that I hadn’t thought about in years was haunting me every time I closed my eyes.
Then he killed himself to escape what he’d done, and I lost my shit. I guess, I’d always had in the back of my mind that I’d face him one day, that I would get closure when I was ready. Now, that was gone, and I was a big ball of angry resentment.
But I’d promised my readers, and I always try to keep my commitments.
Again, I’m a fucking idiot.
I’m also a stubborn bitch. I wrote a 55,000-word story that kinda glossed over everything. It was okay—not my best work, but the readers would love it. It had the right amount of anti-hero romanticism that was all the rage at the time. It had an ending that would piss everyone off and get readers talking. I thought it would sell pretty well.
I published it. The retailers took it down again within two hours. I tried to sell it through my website. My web lady couldn’t get it to integrate properly. All my other books worked except Craving Control. I ordered paperbacks. They arrived with bent covers and the words running off the page. I promised my advance readers review copies, but I wouldn’t send them. I literally couldn’t make myself open my email to send the file. At this point, my editor and proof-reader were the only two people on this planet who’d read the new version of the story.
Every time I tried to unleash Craving Control on the public, something went wrong.
I scrapped the damn book again, offering vague excuses whenever a reader asked about it.
Then in September one of my favourite people in this world committed suicide. Losing him rocked me to my core. I began to examine my life—as you do when these types of things happen. I’d committed to releasing other books. I had a plan for a huge comeback after some serious shitty months (pun intended – I have Crohn’s Disease. I’m allowed to make poop jokes).
I booked promo. I set up pre-orders. I made promises.
I honoured none of them.
Instead I disappeared from social media (it helped that some motherfucker reported my Facebook accounts and I ended up with 30-day suspension – but that’s a story for another time). I stopped answering my emails. I didn’t update my website. I hit pause on my career—the best job in the whole bloody world—without a word. My man, my kids, my animals, my farm, and my Aunty Jo. That’s all I needed. I was done.
I went underground. I was going to re-write a couple stories that I had set release dates for, but I hadn’t released because I’d ended up in hospital or I wasn’t happy with them or one of a million other reasons. Once I had them done, I would come back.
Can you guess what happened instead?
I opened a brand-new Word document and I started writing Craving Control from scratch again. Nine days later, I had my first 125,000-word draft. For fourteen hours a day, I purged my soul in this fictional depiction of my true story. It was hard, but I loved every second of it. For the first time since I wrote Tempting Fate, a story simply flew from my fingertips to the keyboard.
It was fucking cathartic.
I sent it to my editor. She worked her magic. I fiddled with it a bit more. She worked her magic again. I sent it to my proof-reader and she did her thing.
I did it. Craving Control is finally ready for the world.
Today, I re-read the story straight through with my reader’s cap on. Now, I might be biased, but right now, this is my best work. I pushed myself outside my comfort zone. I put myself in his shoes. I tried to understand what drives a person to hurt someone they profess to love. I cried. I screamed. I loved. I lived.
I did for him what I did for myself back in 2011.
I gave him the ending he deserved.
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Hopefully, you’ll now understand why I’m only acknowledging myself. I know there will be promo companies, bloggers, the members of my reader group, my launch team ladies, my husband, my kids, my aunty, and a hundred other people to thank once Craving Control releases, but for now, this section is for me.
Peace out,
Kylie xx
PS: I want to emphasise that Seizing Control and Craving Control are works of fiction. The events in both stories happened, not only to me, but to other women who’ve survived similar circumstances, however some creative liberties have been taken. I am not some female version of Rambo. I have never killed anyone, except in the pages of my books.
CONTENTS
Other titles by Kylie Hillman
Become an Insider
Author Note
Dedication
Playlist
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Sneak peek of Soothing Suffering, a free Black Shamrocks MC | Introductory Novella
Sneak peek of Conan, Black Shamrocks MC: First Generation | Book One
Available now by Kylie Hillman
About Kylie Hillman
Contact Kylie Hillman
Acknowledgements
Contents
Craving Control Page 36
