Uncaged welcomes J.L. Delavega
Welcome to Uncaged! You have 2 books in The Revere Trilogy released, Smoke and Other Storms and Ash Like Vengeance. Can you tell us more about this series? When will the third book release?
The Revere Trilogy started with one small question: what motivates the antagonist in treasure hunt books and movies other than greed?
And one simple idea: a family who lives on a train.
I also longed for a book with a positive representation of introversion where it’s treated as a character trait, not an obstacle to be overcome.
The series follows the Reveres, a multi-generational family of women outlaws on a quest to save their sister’s eyesight and subvert the patriarchy that keeps them from having a home.
Adelaide is host to a shadow entity known as the Stranger that allows her to remember everything, her grandmother Moira has clairvoyant dreams. Moira’s daughter, Tesla, is the mastermind of the family and train engineer.
These ladies are swindling, bloodthirsty con-artists who will do anything to protect each other. Everyone else is fair game. The Rim is feral and sabotage is a lifestyle.
The third book, Solace By Fire, will release May 13, 2025. So mark your calendars, it’s going to be a bloody last ride.
What inspired you to write stories in the western/gothic/fantasy world? This is not a genre you come across very often.
I love the Wild West. It’s my favorite historical era, favorite vibe, favorite fashion, but I’ve always been dissatisfied by the lack of women represented in the genre. It’s always focused on men. Women are usually just the love interest, the sex worker in the saloon, the damsel or the shriveling violet wife. If a woman is given some agency in a western, she’s always getting revenge for her dead husband or father (one again, male focus) and ALWAYS teams up with the sharp shooting man to get her vengeance. I decided to change that.
And of course, I needed to make things a little weird, just for fun, so I added the fantasy elements.
How do you use social media as an author?
Instagram is my main platform (@ninjenaiyauthor). I use it to share what I’m reading, give book updates and show off my cats. They’re very cute.
I’ve tried the others but IG is the one I like best so I’ve decided to focus on that and not feel pressure to be everywhere.
Read the rest of the interview in the issue below
Her bones belong to the desert and mountains, but her soul belongs to cats. When not writing she makes other stuff and believes Victorian era fashion should absolutely make a comeback, as long as sweatpants still exist.
Her work has been recognized for its unique blend of southwestern gothic meets dark fantasy and received the Reader’s Favorite silver medal for western fiction (2024).
She could say she makes all her own clothes but that would be a lie. JLDelavega.com
Enjoy an excerpt from Smoke and other Storms
Smoke and Other Storms
J.L. Delavega
Historical Fantasy
Welcome to the Rim. Come seek your fortune in a paradise of endless sun. Land is cheap and the possibilities endless, where the edge of the map meets the end.
The mining campaigns always forget a few details. Moon Season makes storms volatile. You’re more likely to be killed by your neighbor than strike a crystal vein, and there’s only one name you should bother knowing around here: Revere.
Moira and her granddaughter Adelaide are professionals. Smugglers, thieves, and arms dealers, the Revere women have lifted their family business from the dust, and with their train they’ve become the most notorious gang in the territory.
After an accident damages her sister’s eyes, Adelaide finds an opportunity that will not only pay for a sight-saving operation but pull the family from the shadows of the back market for good. Accompanied by her sisters, Adelaide guides a survey crew into the uncharted West Rim –a poisonous desert concealing untapped riches– with the full intent to claim the fortune for themselves.
But when Moira learns a bounty has been placed on the family, she discovers a deeper plan already in motion that will change the Rim forever.
Excerpt
–Arrival–
My name is Adelaide. I am twenty-one years old, eyes like bastard gray quartz. Where I come from doesn’t matter, but to anyone that asks, they call me the Stranger, and there’s only one name you should bother knowing around here. Ours. Revere.
Welcome to the Rim.
Adelaide
I was born with two shadows. One is thrown by the sun. The other is the Stranger.
The dried brush hugs the abandoned walls as I leave the rough grass and walk toward the fort, a thing of dust and focus. It looks dead, but there is a difference between things that are dead and those that only appear that way.
Twenty-nine—the number of steps I take before the fort shadow hits me. The Stranger counts them for me.
Few people can see her. But she’s always with me. Watching my back, counting my steps. It’s not enough to notice details if you can’t remember them later. The Stranger remembers everything. She is a second pulse, sensing danger, sharp edges that frighten others. The one thing my mother managed to give me.
My shoulder to the bleached wall, I listen deeper. Around me, the Rim hisses behind a slow-moving wind. Behind the fort’s chipped stone is silence. I drag my scarf off my face and whistle to my sister Leagan waiting downslope with the wagon.
We are alone, the Stranger confirms.
Rock cracks as the horses get moving.
I slip my hand through the gap to lift the plank from the inside slot, walking the gate open as the wagon rolls inside.
Leagan hops from the high seat, landing with a fresh cloud of dust. Her face is muffled with a blue scarf and goggles. The right eye is a red sniper’s lens with distance dials, the left all-purpose amber to dull the sun.
I drop the plank back into its slot and shake the gate. There will be no surprises from behind.
The smuggler’s cache is in the jail room.
“Eighty-six crates of Exodus brand ammunition…” Leagan tugs at one of her buns and stabs another pin through it. “And we get to carry all of them. Thanks a fart-load to our favorite arms dealer, Raleigh.”
Leagan’s hair is fire red, twisted on top of her head like two cinnamon buns, lipstick always black. The colors of her two moods. “You’re my favorite arms dealer,” I say.
She blushes.
The familiar tic rises in my chest with each step. It doubles when my gaze makes a pass over the other five doors facing the courtyard. The Stranger again.
I’ve picked through all those rooms before, but the Stranger won’t let me leave here without doing it again. It’s always been this way.
After we get the ammo dug up and loaded.
Read the rest of the excerpt below:
