Mercy Leroux

And other burning questions.

In truth? We Are Not Strangers was conceived as a standalone. Mercy’s sister then nagged her about all the other interesting parts of Revolutionary War history she knows too much about and begged her to make it a trilogy. Mercy said that was impossible because it’s all interesting, and opted for a septology.

This is also why there are two MCs who both bear the name “Matthew.” Who both happen to be grenadiers. And illiterate. It wasn’t on purpose and they are actually quite different as characters. In our defense, though, the list of common names during this time period is pretty dang short!

Should they be read in any order?

Nope. Each story works as a standalone. However, if you get attached to any historical side characters in particular, they might well pop up in another book. (And there is one particular historical character who will be connected to every story.) Oh, and if Easter eggs are your thing, there will be plenty of them.

When will the books be out?

Vol 2, We Are Not Strangers, should be out February 14, 2026. The others will be out as they are finished… with hopefully not terribly long between them! The broad strokes for all seven books are already crafted, so Mercy is aiming for 2-3 per year, though it all depends on how busy her day job keeps her.

Do the books have happily ever afters?

All of the main couples will have a HEA. Unfortunately for Mercy’s twin, we’re bound by historical accuracy for side characters, which really leaves it out of Mercy’s hands.

Why omegaverse?

Why not? And sure, it’s hot. But also… at the risk of sounding pretentious, omegaverse, while traditionally associated with erotica tropes, also offers some really interesting insight into how people perceive gender. What “aspects” of gender does society respond to differently? What would change about that if biology and society were both tweaked in certain ways? Genuinely, it’s interesting to consider, and we’re nerds!

What tropes are involved?

Varies by book, but there’s a lot of hurt/comfort and angst.

Content warnings?

These books are intended for mature readers. The series covers a war and contains honest depictions of such violence. While not sugarcoating historical realities, we also shan’t be choosing a ‘good’ side in war, so there will be humanity as well as cruelty on display from all ‘sides.’ If you have a question about the specific content of a specific book or would like a list of warnings for your wellbeing, please contact us and we’re happy to provide.

What’s the blog about?

See, the reason Mercy finds everything about the time period interesting is because context is fascinating, and it’s hard to convey in a story just which fun fact about a grandmother being a major founder of evangelicalism or rumor about a different grandmother sleeping with her brother may have impacted the psyche of side characters (yes these are both true things–about different people–that will be covered on the blog). To quote Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot:

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”

Blog schedule?

The current plan is for two posts a week, and most weeks will have one “context” history post and one “about the world/books” post. This is not strict and may shift as needed (and is possible one post a week will happen sometimes, because Life, but we’ll try to notify when that happens).

Regularly scheduled posts will start next week. In the meantime, Happy Holidays if you celebrate, and in the words of John Adams to his wife Abigail in 1779:

I wish you an happy new Year,  and many happy Years — and all the Blessings of Life.