#i thought these two new novellas looked short but damn

[bloody-wonder]

making progress on old series

let it not be said that i can only start new series🧐

new releases:

empire of the damned by jay kristoff (book two in: empire of the vampire). i might have mentioned this one once or twice already so let's keep it brief. i loved it! even more than book one, i think. love liathe joining the main cast, love jean françois' everything, love how everyone got queerer, love the reveals at the end. very excited for the last book in this series, altho i'm a bit disappointed that it's now three books instead of five - since there are five vampire houses i wanted them to keep taking on a house in each book, with blood chastain being the final boss. very rude of kristoff to betray my vision.

the sunshine court by nora sakavic (book four in: all for the game). i don't think this spin off continuation was necessary and i didn't particularly enjoy it but i'm glad jean stans now have their own sacred text. my biggest fear was that nora would retcon something about the og trilogy and that didn't happen so i can just keep living in peace while mostly ignoring tsc fan content. more thoughts on why i didn't vibe with tsc in these posts.

mislaid in parts half-known by seanan mcguire (book nine in: wayward children). so this series consists of books focused on individual wayward children as well as of ensemble books which are usually weaker and this particular novella unfortunately belongs to the latter category. i still liked it fine and it was a quick read but tbh i'm ready for this series to wrap up so i hope goodreads isn't lying about the next book being the final installment.

fence vol. 6: redemption by cs pacat & johanna the mad. i rated it five stars but ngl i have no memory of what happened in this volume altho i read it in february😅 i like this series overall but i feel like the first few volumes were more exciting. weirdly now that the slow burn is finally starting to pay off i suddenly lose interest😕

heartstopper: volume five by alice oseman. i'm not a big fan of heartstopper in general, i think it's overhyped, but i did like this volume more than the previous ones. maybe i'm biased bc it features tori coming out as ace which prompted me to pick up solitaire which i loved and so it retroactively cast a more favorable light on the graphic novel. looking forward to reading the last volume bc i like finishing things and then i might as well read the nick and charlie novellas - at which point i will have become a person who doesn't like oseman's books all that much and yet has somehow read all but one of them🫤

mammoths at the gates and the brides of high hill by nghi vo (books four and five in: the singing hills cycle). i have only really liked the second singing hills novella so at this point it would be smart to admit that this series is simply not for me and stop reading it but. these books are so short and perfect for when you want to get through something quickly even if you know you're not likely to enjoy it. and if indeed eight stories are planned then it means i have now read more than half so i might as well complete the series🤷‍♀️ *gets shot by sunk cost fallacy police*

series i completed:

regency faerie tales by olivia atwater (read books two and three: ten thousand stitches and longshadow). love love LOVE these books!! i read half a soul last october and ten thousand stitches this january - both times when i was sick in bed and i couldn't have wished for better books to help me recover from a cold. the first one is pride & prejudice meets jonathan strange & mr norrell, the second one is a cinderella retelling, both have lovely romances and can be read as standalones. i think half a soul is fairly popular (and constantly compared to the book that shall not be named😒) but ten thousand stitches is very underappreciated. i for one think it's at least as good, if not better, than half a soul - apparently people just can't appreciate a love interest who isn't angsty and brooding😒 longshadow is a companion novel too but imo it features too many characters and concepts from the previous books so it should definitely be read last. i didn't like it as much bc i think it relies too much on the stuff we already know and love instead of giving its protagonists enough time to shine but it is queer which made me realize we don't have nearly enough queer fae books. what a disgrace🧐

noumena by lindsay ellis (read book three: apostles of mercy). so this was unfortunately mind-bogglingly boring. this type of sci fi is usually not my cup of tea and so i stay away from it but i decided to give this series a try bc it was written by lindsay ellis. the first book was entertaining enough but both sequels bored me to tears. it seems i was under a misconception that the story was gonna be about a sad girl trying to navigate a third thing type of relationship with a freaky alien but it was instead about her navigating instalovey relationships with random humans and the alien was also there sometimes. big disappointment👎

series i'm slowly working my way through:

the memoirs of lady trent by marie brennan (read books two, three and four: the tropic of serpents, the voyage of the basilisk and in the labyrinth of drakes). i read book one last december and liked it just enough to continue the series but every next book after that turned out to be amazing. follow lady trent, a 19th century dragon naturalist and adventurer, legendary as she is scandalous, as she travels through fantasy africa, oceania and arabia in search of dragons living and extinct, starts various political upheavals, makes breathtaking discoveries and finds love - a life journey she recounts as an old woman in a delightfully snarky narrative voice.

book two is my favorite so far bc it found a perfect balance of fast-paced adventurous plot on the one hand and character and relationship development on the other. i'm a bit sad that natalie left the main cast after this book - one of the only two criticisms i have of this series is that the titular lady trent remains the only important woman character. i think it wouldn't be too far-fetched to have one more woman on the team and natalie was a perfect protegée who, might i add, is also canonically ace. hate to see her leave😒

book three introduces a love interest who i at first found kinda bland but he grew on me in book four. my favorite relationship in the series however remains the one between lady trent and her trusted colleague tom wilker with whom they used to butt heads when they first met but who is now her dearest friend and longtime companion on her journeys. there are many books about romance and friendship but not so many about the utter satisfaction of having a coworker you can absolutely rely on. my prediction/wish for the last book is for wilker to turn out to be gay and find love too🤞

the other criticism i have has to do with the worldbuilding and i'll elaborate on it when i complete the series later this year.

the witcher by andrzej sapkowski (read books two and three: the time of contempt and baptism of fire). i'm enjoying this series much more than i thought i would. the key to success here is to leave behind all expectations you have from reading western epic fantasy or indeed from the witcher adaptations. this saga started as short stories and sapkowski remains a short story author first and foremost which might irritate a reader expecting a novel with a neat three act structure but which i personally found fascinating. the opening chapter of book two told from the pov of a messenger who encounters all major characters on the road, gets a death prophecy from a girl he doesn't know to be ciri and indeed dies as the chapter ends - i think that was a very creative way to reintroduce the reader to the main cast and plot essentially through the format of a short story.

another thing sapkowski does a lot is conveying everything through dialogue which, as you might know, is like bookish catnip to me lol. some dialogues are there just for the sake of dialogue, only bc the author wanted some side characters he made up to have a funny conversation. to be fair, at worst this structure becomes too meandering but i gotta say i find that chapters that are focused on mundane scenes seemingly going nowhere are more fun than plot focused chapters about sorceresses and wizards fighting or whatever. the witch trial chapter in baptism of fire - that's where it's at for me.

the thing i'm still not so sure about is the way women and women's issues are represented. very mixed feelings on what happens to milva in book three, tho i think i wouldn't be so skeptical had she not been the only woman on the main cast in that book. (cahir and regis are such fun characters with interesting motivations and stuff so ig i'm pissed that the only female character's deal has to be about that). ciri on the other hand is written very well imo and i totally did not expect her to be in a sapphic relationship. sure hope nothing bad happens to her gf🥲

vorkosigan saga by lois mcmaster bujold (read books one, two and four (??): shards of honor, barrayar and the vor game). so after reading the warrior's apprentice and the mountains of mourning last year i took a step back and read cordelia's books which i unfortunately didn't like. cordelia is a type of female character i don't vibe with and the gender themes in her books, while likely very progressive for their time, often made me roll my eyes, grind my teeth etc. in my goodreads reviews i explain my issues in more detail. the ethical implications of uterine replicators haunt me still😕

returning to miles in the vor game was both welcome and disappointing bc i keep expecting more from this man and he keeps falling short of my grand lymondesque expectations. in this book in particular i was immediately hooked on the arctic base plot only for it to be cut short bc this is a space opera and miles needs to go do pew pew pew in space, just like in book one. boo. now that i know weatherman was formerly a short story bujold later incorporated into the vor game i think it's curious that i seem to like miles a lot in short stories and novellas (the mountains of mourning remains my favorite) but am underwhelmed by the full length novel miles.

i will say however that now i have sufficiently adjusted my expectations and am very motivated to find out if there is a vorkosigan book out there that i will absolutely love. so i'll keep reading a few books per year - there's something soothing about slowly working one's way through a very long series😌

the realm of the elderlings by robin hobb (read books two and three: royal assassin and assassin's quest). the farseer books are the longest and (for the most part) the most boring books i have read this year. normally i don't torture myself like this but i wanted to do it for the fool and see how his relationship with fitz develops. was it worth it? i would say yes but only bc i let myself curate my own perfect reading experience and skimmed aggressively, sometimes skipping entire chapters. and i will do it again!👿 bc i will keep reading the elderlings books to see how the one million page yaoi plays out.

the only part of the farseer trilogy i really enjoyed was the second half of assassin's quest - not just bc fitz and the fool were cute and heart-wrenching together but bc of the entire unlikely fellowship on this quest. nighteyes is my favorite which is a feat on hobb's part bc normally i don't care about animal companions or am annoyed by them. kettle is iconic, always remember to take an auld woman on a quest (or she will chase you down and join despite your protests and prevarications). i hated starling but in a series where most characters provoke zero emotions that was a welcome change. kettricken was also there. their group dynamic was delightful and i wish the entirety of this series (or at least of this last book) was this slow burn psychological character study in close proximity group dynamics. but you can't always have what you want ig🤷‍♀️

what's next:

finishing the memoirs of lady trent - only one book in the main series is left and then there's also a spin off about her granddaughter, i think

rereading swordspoint which i first read back in 2020 and found underwhelming but it may just have been bc captive prince was such a hard act to follow for many gay books i tried back then. i hope i will like it more now that i can meet it halfway and if it goes well i want to complete the riverside trilogy right away

sometime this fall i'm gonna read pandora and vittorio the vampire. finishing the vampire chronicles is on my bookish bucket list and now, two whole years after i reread three of them to refresh my memory, i finally feel sane and brave enough to keep working towards that goal. so wish me luck🥲

finishing joanne harris' st oswald's series which started with one of my favorite dark academia novels gentlemen and players. i read the sequel last year and liked it a lot so now i want to read the final book a narrow door which also seems like a perfect autumnal read

the new evander mills mystery comes out in october and i'd like to read it before the year ends

2024 reading updates | goodreads

[dragonofeternal]

So this year has been really, really good in terms of like... reminding/validating that I'm actually like smart and good at what I do?

Like.

First off, I got my new job which whips ass and is super fun and challenging and pays way better and where my ability to do nine million different things is like very valuable. Like oh yeah, I can reformat this word doc/that powerpoint. Do you want me to do a little bit of graphic design to make this actually look nicer? Oh, you need this video for a presentation but it's on a site other than youtube? Yeah sure, I'll rip it for you. And also just the day-to-day of being able to take good notes, and being able to help copyedit training materials, and generally being a pleasant and mostly on top of things person in the office.

THEN, I took one of Killian's creative writing classes along with them. Which, for one thing, was super fun, good teacher, nice to have an organized space/time to hang out and talk about writing. But also it was really validating to have someone outside of the internet/my inner circle of friends read and critique my work who was like... I dunno another adult/serious writer type person? Our teacher is a published poet -- Though more specifically she's prolific as a TRANSLATOR of poetry. A fair number of the translated Palestinian poets you've seen being posted around tumblr recently are most certainly her work. -- and when she realized the level I was writing at she started critiquing my work a lot harder. Still had nice stuff to say! Just also being willing to dig in and point out places where I could improve.

We actually hung out with her last night at a fellow classmate's band's show and she took both me and Killian aside for expanded critique/thoughts on our final pieces, and said some really nice stuff which included that she sees both of us as like professional-grade writers who should continue to hone their craft and who she really wants to see succeed/get shit published/etc. I'm currently letting a short story (that is... probably gonna end up as a novella orz) that I wrote for class sit before I do another draft of it, and then she's offered to do a more critical line edit for me so I can shop it around and get it published somewhere really good.

(Which is also interesting because I see myself as working very much in genre spaces and she's very in the "literary" sort of mode, and she said that she saw a lot of literary prowess and style in how I wrote which she could see getting it published in a more literary type journal. And that's like a weird/wild thought bc of my complicated thoughts on the way the literary/publishing world looks at and treats genre writing blah blah blah....)

At the SAME show, though, our teacher had brought along a friend, who is also a teacher at the community college. Said friend works for the theatre department and recognized me from volunteering to act at a one-day event last semester for Killian's playwriting class. Like this was an event where I was acting for MAYBE a grand total of fifteen minutes. And she basically said "HEY YOU'RE REALLY GOOD, WHY HAVEN'T I SEEN YOU AT ANY OF THE AUDITIONS?" So then I chatted with her some about how I've done a lot of theatre over the years but time/jobs/money meant I haven't had a chance to in a long time...

But now my job is a 9-5! So I gave her my number and I'm now basically the understudy for if/when someone drops out of the productions currently going on. Apparently they have a lot of issues with people dropping suddenly so it's likely that I'll end up doing something next semester! Which is good cuz like. Damn, do I love the theatre, and I've missed it A LOT.

I dunno just having two different people being really impressed about my creative work in a short time was really, really mood/ego boosting? I dunno. When I last did theater in Pittsburgh I ended up feeling really burnt out by the exhausting sense of always having to hunt for work, feeling like I wasn't good enough, etc... And last year I was struggling a lot with feeling like all my writing was futile/unwanted/etc... So having people remember me and be super complimentary was. Nice.

[jamescarstairs]

so the jessa part of that novella was only like 4 pages long okay

[luna-the-moth]

Satan and Lucifer Holding Hands for 24 Hours (SFW/Crack)

Hello love! Thanks for this was request, it was a delight to write! SFW. Here’s the link to the first part, if anyone missed it.

Also, I am so sorry I haven’t been writing the past few days, irl and fandom drama took at toll on my mental and physical health, and I had to step back for a bit. I’m back now though, and will be starting a consistent schedule with my writing.

My ask box is open, but please read my rules and guidelines before requesting! Reblogs, likes, and comments are lovely and greatly appreciated!

Lucifer and Satan Holding Hands for 24 Hours (SFW/Crack)

Oohhhh boy

After the previous incident, Mammon and Levi had grown closer, but not in the way Lucifer would wish.

The pair wanted vengeance, after all, their reputations were spat upon, and were made to look like fools!

Levi couldn’t join a single raid without someone making a reference to his predicament, as his punishment had become a viral meme thanks to a certain Avatar of Lust.

Mammon got less professional gigs, and got ridiculed more often than before, demons and their spawn laughing at him on the streets.

Whearas Lucifer had stood and laughed, sadistic bastard.

They wanted revenge, but unfortunately, neither Mammon nor Levi had the expertise and experience to curse a demon of such power like Lucifer.

However, a certain sorcerer was more than willing to help.

Solomon had watched as Mammon’s and Levi’s punishment unfolded, enjoying popcorn as the two struggled.

Seeing Lucifer in the same situation would be so much more entertaining, and it’d surely make headlines.

So when Mammon and Levi showed up at his door, asking for help, how could he turn down such a tempting opportunity?

After tedious preparation and bargaining for ingredients, the snow-haired wizard had procured an flask, with a iridescent liquid swishing inside.

“Pour this on Lucifer and the being of your choice, when they have physical contact with each other. This is like a strong adhesive, and neither will be able to detach, until it wears off in 24 hours.”

Levi and Mammon had taken it eagerly, anticipating the spectacle of the century, the Lucifer Morningstar, having his hand stuck to someone else’s.

But who, was the question.

As they were pondering the thought in Mammon’s room, they suddenly heard a loud thud, and the beginnings of an argument.

Specifically, one between Lucifer and Satan.

It seemed that Lucifer had spoiled another novella that Satan was reading, and Satan seemed particularly pissy about this one.

Why not?

After all, Satan had laughed at their expense, offering no help or solutions.

In fact, he was one of the ones who spread the meme of their punishment!

So, Mammon and Levi decided to enact their plan at dinner, where they would have the best chance at executing the prank.

That night, Satan had made dinner, and the plan was going smoothly so far.

It went as chaotically as per usual, at least one pair of brothers bickering, Beel was devouring his portion, and Belphie was snoozing on the side.

As dishes were being cleaned, Levi ‘accidentally’ pushed Satan into Lucifer, colliding the two.

Quick as lightening, Mammon dumped the vial’s contents onto their fingers, effectively lacing Lucifer’s and Satan’s hands in a classic, rom-com position.

At that moment, the house was dead silent, perhaps the first time silence had ruled the household in eons.

In sync, Lucifer and Satan whipped their heads toward Mammon, fury burning in both of their eyes.

Like father like son

“Mammon, release our hands immediately.”

To their chagrin, they had spoken in sync as well, only adding fuel to the flames.

But by that time, the two had already snapped pictures, and a short clip.

With a shit-eating grin, Mammon held up his phone,

“Don’t ya worry, Lucifer! It’ll only last ya 24 hours!”

And with that, Lucifer and Satan stumbled over each other in an attempt to grab the phones, but unfortunately fell on top of each other due to being uncoordinated.

Snickering, Mammon and Levi watched as the videos gained traction, raising in likes and comments.

That night, Lucifer and Satan had refused to let the other sleep in their bedroom, and begrudgingly slept in your room, asking demanding you to  sleep on the couch for a night.

Which you reluctantly agreed to, as both avatars looked like they were about to bite off each other’s heads.

For their nightly routine, it was...awkward to say the least.

Satan had taken advantage of his situation, to make Lucifer miserable.

Lucifer’s skincare routine ‘miraculously’ spoiled, emitting a rotten scent.

He ‘accidentally’ hit Lucifer’s elbow with his own, in order to knock toothpaste foam onto his nightgown.

Then spilled Lucifer’s nightly glass of wine over said nightgown, resulting in them bickering for hours.

Satan argued that if Lucifer hadn’t punished Mammon and Levi in such a manner, then this wouldn’t have happen.

Lucifer retaliated, saying that it was a necessary punishment, digging in his heels.

For the rest of the night, neither one had accumulated any sleep, as both slept in opposite positions. Lucifer slept on his back, while Satan slept in a curled up, fetal position.

In the morning, they had noticeable eye strain, and had to use concealer in order to hide the signs of their exhaustion.

Aside from meals, they had locked themselves in your room, not wanting anyone to see them in such an embarrassing state.

At breakfast, Lucifer had spilled coffee on Satan as Satan reached for something in the opposite direction at the same time.

“Satan, stop trying to tug me away while I’m pouring cof-”

“......”

Oops.

Before long, Satan was shooting insults and criticism at Lucifer, saying that his new sweater was ruined because of his carelessness.

Which, as you may have guessed, did not boil over well.

Levi and Mammon had mercifully chosen a weekend to commit to their prank, so Satan and Lucifer were spared from the humility.

At least, face to face.

Online, posts and fanfic were thriving, pictures of Lucifer and Satan holding hands in the center of the chaos.

Especially Diavolo.

For the rest of the day, both demons decided to stay off social media, in order to cause less destruction.

However, it didn’t stop them from constantly attacking each other.

Lucifer was unable to do paperwork, as Satan would jerk his hands erratically when signing, intentionally messing his signature up.

In return, Lucifer would play cat noises in inconspicuous parts of the room they were in, watching as Satan looked around, curious to see if a feline were hiding nearby.

All the while Mammon and Levi hid around the house, waiting for a chance to catch their brothers holding hands.

As the day went by, you could hear various objects shattering and the deep voice of Lucifer scolding Satan.

Every.

Damn.

Hour.

At this point everyone (besides Mammon and Levi), was getting tired.

In the early stages of their punishment, it was greatly amusing, but gradually turned irritating.

The two demons couldn’t stop bickering for one hour, and while their fights were petty, it often escalated into greater arguments.

By the time the magic had worn off, it was father/son duo shot away from each other, fast as lightning.

“Finally, I was getting tired of being stuck to your ego all day.”

Satan spat, placing a hand on his hip.

Opting to simply give a tired sigh, Lucifer turned towards Mammon and Levi, a dark aura surrounding him.

Summoning a large spool of rope, he deadpanned.

“Now as for the both of you. Don’t think your actions will go unpunished.”

[essaysbyciara]

Old Habits Die Hard | Part Seven: Backseat

SYNOPSIS | PART ONE: DAYS BEFORE | PART TWO: JUST BE GOOD TO ME | PART THREE: RECOGNIZE THE BUTTERFLIES | PART FOUR: DOWN THE STAIRS AND TO YOUR LEFT| PART FIVE: JUST KNOW | PART SIX: JUST & RIGHTEOUS

Warnings: Language, mentions of sexual situations

Peace, loves! We’re back. Thank you to all who hit me up about this story. My laptop died back in July so I’ve been trying to write on a tablet which…yeah. A struggle is a nice way to put it lol😔. Go ahead and catch the vibes and thank you for the reads, likes, comments and follows. Y'all are the realest. 

“I thought you didn’t smoke”

“I don’t. Doesn’t mean I haven’t…”

You take a strong pull of Dave’s blunt in conjunction with heavy breathing caused by his right hand causing a madness in the between. The cracked window of your car brings enough of a cool down so that the both of you won’t pass out from the nighttime haze and the heat travelling from your bodies. Finally, after two weeks, Dave understands your love language; he can’t keep his hands off of you even as you try to take a break from him. He lifts up your left leg with ease, draping your thickness over his right toned, tatted up thigh. The madness is now turning into magic.

“Dave…let me ch-chill. Shit.” He immediately relents, pinching your quivering thigh with that same right hand while grabbing his dutch away from you.. As you sit in puddles of sweat and Dave’s ruins, you stare at the stars above you. It’s the clearest night you’ve seen since you arrived in the city. It just so happens to be your last.

Dave catches your gaze at the night sky through the skylight above you. “You good, shorty?”

“Yeah, I just…” a slight chuckle escapes your lips. “…I can’t believe I’m smoking blunts and fucking in a backseat like high school.”

Dave feels the ping of your words. It’s the first time in the two weeks of your summertime escapade that he’s reminded of how different you two are.

He felt the slight of your words. You and his relationship always reminded Dave that he had some growing up to do. Because of his lack of a place – and the privacy that comes along with it – you two got it in whenever and wherever you could; after his brother went to work in the AM hours, when Aunt Jerri left the house for bingo, in the backseat of your car. Your surroundings would never get in the way of what you two were there for.

Just like Dave wouldn’t let anything stop him from getting at you the day you met. It was an unseasonably cool day for a block party. He and his boys were on the stoop, shooting the shit as always, when Dave saw you walk outside of Aunt’s Jerri’s house carrying trays of food. He knew all the girls from the neighborhood but he never laid eyes on you before. Your cut off shorts toed the line between modest and disrespectful. A white crop top tee and Air Max 90s sandwiched your goodness in the booty shorts you bought with the intention of showing off.

You turned around to see this caramel-covered king, 6’5, tatted from root to tip, body sweating through a white tank top inquiring if you needed any help. You froze like the bucket of ice Aunt Jerri laid down in front of you. He caught you by surprise. You didn’t remember boys from this part of town looking this damn fine. Dave was beyond that. The man you were supposed to be in the Bahamas with didn’t look like him either. Suddenly you were happy he bailed on you.

“Oh. My bad. I didn’t see you there…” You acknowledged Dave’s reach around you to grab a bottle of water from the same ice bucket that mimicked your gaze.

“Yeah, you bad…” Your right eyebrow never arched so high. It wasn’t the only body part that moved. You didn’t know how to respond to Dave’s street-laced flirtation, only to let your tongue peek out the side of your mouth, leaving Dave no choice but to stare at your lips. Dave’s stare and loitering in your presence caught the attention of your Uncle Trace. As Trace schemed Dave down to the basement to grab more lawn chairs, Aunt Jerri gleefully tapped you on the shoulder to remind you that what happens in Philly, stays in Philly. Trace told Dave to not let anything happen.

But as you kept talking, Dave slowly fell into your grooves. Dave didn’t know that you fit in so well because of your summers visiting Aunt Jerri, Uncle Terrence and the rest of the characters that made up your Dad’s side of the family. You acclimated to the energy. Half of your DNA was Reed Street, North Philly; the same as Dave. You two fit especially well in the spare rooms, backseats and basement meetups to you hid from Trace and the rest of the world that thought you had no business together.

But after this last backseat episode, you would be going back to the place that made you so different; to your senior grant writing job, your townhouse and your Roth IRA. Dave was just months into an overnight warehouse job that paid just enough to give him some change to save money to move out of the spare bedroom of Pardi’s already packed rowhouse. He was a work in progress while some would look at Dave as a sign of regression.

But for you, in that moment, nothing – and no one – would or could be better than Dave.

Until he disappeared and you met Yahya.

Right now, you hate Yahya’s guts. It’s been weeks since he told you that he’s taking on Dave’s case on a pro bono basis as a favor to Aunt Jerri. Still seething as you tried on wedding dresses, you kept your cool just enough to keep peace between your mother and her arch nemesis. This time you sided with your mother.

Yahya caught the rest of your static. He caught the silent treatment all weekend, the AM news radio station being the only background noise as you and him drove Aunt Jerri to Union Station. Once her and her hot pink suitcase rolled out of view, you went at Yahya’s neck. You never called Yahya so many words for “inconsiderate”, your Masters in Communication coming in way too clutch. But Yahya passed the bar, so his combative energy matched your loquaciousness. Onlookers got a good look at you two spar as he weaved through Beltway traffic.

To say that you were mad that Yahya took a case this close to the wedding would be a lie. You knew him to have a kind and caring heart, a heart that wouldn’t let injustice slip by. If this was anyone else’s plight, you’d be all for Yahya’s gracious spirit. But it was Dave. Dave who ignored you not once but twice. Dave who, in the very backseat of the car you’re yelling at Yahya in, told you to give him a few weeks and he’d be down to see you. The same Dave who defied all of the rules – and Uncle Trace’s threats– to get at you. Only to leave you. Dave needed to reap that.

But the Dave you knew – despite what others thought – wouldn’t hurt anyone. He was just a hair over eighteen when he caught the gun charge that sent him to prison. A gun he carried because he witnessed his brother die in front of him. He kept it on the straight ever since. Dave was saving up money for his own place, you understood the grind. He was a stone-cold sweetheart covered in a North Philly veneer. He didn’t sow a seed worth anything for this to happen.

Despite the battle on the Capitol Beltway, Yahya and you came home to convene the most obnoxious session of make up sex known to man. Damn the celibacy. Y’all needed to be on good terms and he needed to get Dave out of jail.

—

“How it’s going, love?” Your dining room is becoming Yahya’s makeshift work office. You couldn’t help to sneak down at night to read some of what Yahya’s been putting together for the case. Seeing Dave’s name all over his papers remind you of how many times Dave’s name escaped from your lips.

“Man, it’s good. We got enough for this bail hearing. I think we can secure a bail low enough that his family and the local justice coalition can afford.”

“Good. Let’s get him home…”

Yahya smiles at your enthusiasm toward Dave’s case. Despite the ninth-circle-of-Hell type of sex you two had in the aftermath of that fight, Yahya knew you steamed from him taking a case just mere months before the wedding. Yet your insistence to know details – like spotting you reading his notes – remind him of why he wants to marry you in the first place. “What date is the hearing?”

“The sixth of next month. You should come up with me. Watch me in action…”

“I can’t. I can’t be in that courtroom. I’d make you nervous.” And make yourself nervous to see Dave.

“You make me nervous regardless, Y/N. But I was thinking you’d want to see your friend get out of jail…”

Your breath stops dead in its tracks.

“My friend? Dave isn’t my friend.”

“That’s not what Jerri told me…”

Although you support Yahya, you still kept you and Dave’s past relationship a secret. Knowing Aunt Jerri, keeping secrets ain’t in her resume. You grip the kitchen counter to brace yourself for Yahya’s inquisition. He passed the bar on his first try; you got some work to do.

“Yeah, about that, I … didn’t think it was relevant.”

“Of course some puppy love shit ain’t relevant. It’s cute, actually.”

Nothing about what Yahya is saying to you makes sense like it does to him. As Aunt Jerri told Yahya about Dave’s case, she slipped in a farce that you and Dave “dated” when you both were kids, Dave buying you water ices and shrimp egg rolls from the “chinese store” whenever you asked. You two allegedly fell out once puberty hit the both of you like a ton of bricks.

So when Yahya peeped Dave staring at you from across the living room of Aunt Jerri’s house, he knew that as the look of a man who now knew he let something good get away. He knew Dave ventured down to the basement not to grab a bottle for Trace but to rspit game at you. Yahya knew you would turn him down, having seen it before. When Dave grabbed your hand , Yahya wasn’t jealous nor hurt: you were set to be his wife. He won. The baddest girl in the world belonged to him.

You start breathing again as Yahya explains Aunt Jerri’s novella of you and Dave’s teenage love affair. In her own twisted, demented yet genius way, Aunt Jerri covered for you. She knew that if she gave Yahya the honest details, he would – as a man –hesitate to help Dave. Apparently you both thought Yahya wasn’t mature enough to handle the truth.

Aunt Jerri’s lie is broken up by the high pitch screeching of your cell phone. You run to answer.

“You have a collect call from PICC. Do you accept the charges? …”

How many times can you stop breathing in one night?

“Hello?”

“Hey, yo… it’s Dave. I hope ain’t hitting you up at a bad time. Ms. Jerri gave me your number…”

“Oh, no … it-it’s cool. I, uh… how are you holding up?”

Dave couldn’t believe that you asked your fiance to help him get out of jail. At least, that’s the narrative that Aunt Jerri sold Dave on as she and Dave’s mother sat in front of him during their biweekly visits. Dave’s face, once pretty-boy and perfect, carried more wear. His jaw slipped when he talked, causing him a pain sometimes much worse than what happened that night in the store.

“This bail hearing is in two weeks.”

“Yeah, Yahya just tol-” You didn’t want to keep bringing up Yahya’s name. Though that man is Dave’s savior, he’s still the one that’s in the way of a final go around with Dave. “…the 6th, yeah.”

“I want you there.”

“You do?” Your aversion toward sitting in the courtroom subsides as Dave’s voice – sexy as ever, even through a prison phone – calls for you to be there for him.

“Yeah. If I get out, I got a chance. Especially with your dude as my lawyer. Thank you for that, for real. That’s why I’m calling, to be real. And I want you to be one of the first people I see when I get out..”

You wonder what story Aunt Jerri told Dave but you can’t take any more of her creativity. “So you comin’…?”

“…you have less than fifteen seconds left on this call…”

“I’ll…”

“…this call has ended. Goodbye…”

“…be there, Dave.”

Taglist: @yoursoulstea​​​​​​ @harleycativy ​​​​​ @twistedcharismaaa ​​​​​ @dorkskinneded ​​​​​​ @need-my-fics​​​​​ @ghostfacekill-monger ​​​​​ @writerbee-ffs ​​​​​ @chaneajoyyy ​​​​​ @amyhennessyhouse

[thisblogisalsoboundforglory]

WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

Kage Baker’s Company Series

In the Garden of Iden

Sky Coyote

Mendoza in Hollywood

The Graveyard Game

The Life of the World to Come

The Children of the Company

The Machine's Child

The Sons of Heaven

The Empress of Mars

Not Less than Gods

Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

Gods and Pawns

In the Company of Thieves

Ø  Science Fiction written by a woman with Asperger’s. Wildly uneven. Main protagonist is female, but there are lots of POV characters, male and female.

Ø  Big ideas.

Ø  Lots of adventure, some action.

Ø   Small doses of humor.

 Neil Gaiman

Good Omens (with Sir Terry Pratchett)

Neverwhere

Stardust

American Gods

Anansi Boys

The Graveyard Book

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Ø  Neil’s books are a road trip with Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a baggie full of sativa.

Ø  Ideas are incidental. The Milieu’s in charge.

Ø  Adventure happens whether you like it or not.

Ø   Cosmic humor. The joke’s on us.

 Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel Series

Firewatch

Doomsday Book

To Say Nothing of the Dog (and the novel that inspired it – Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat)

Blackout/All Clear

Assorted:

The Last of the Winnebagos

Ø  Connie loves her historical research. Blackout/All Clear actually lasts as long as the Blitz, but anything in the Oxford Time Travel series is worth reading. Doomsday Book reads like prophecy in retrospect.

Ø  One idea: Hi! This is the human condition! How fucking amazing is that?!?

Ø  Gut-punch adventure with extra consequences. Background action.

Ø   I’d have to say that Doomsday Book is the funniest book about the black death I’ve ever read, which isn’t saying much. To Say Nothing of the Dog is classic farce, though. Girl’s got range.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash (After the apocalypse, the world will be ruled by Home-Owners Associations. Be afraid.)

Cryptonomicon

Anathem

Seveneves

Ø  Neal writes big, undisciplined, unfocused books that keep unfolding in your mind for months after you’ve read them. He’s a very guy-type writer, in spite of a female protagonist or two. Seveneves, be warned, starts out brilliant and devolves into extreme meh.

Ø  Big. Fucking. Ideas.

Ø  Battles, crashes, fistfights, parachute jumps, nuclear powered motorcycles and extreme gardening action. Is there an MPAA acronym for that?

Ø   Humor dry enough to be garnished with two green olives on a stick.

  Christopher Moore

Pine Cove Series:

Practical Demonkeeping

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Okay, yeah, Christmas. But Christmas with zombies, so that’s all right.)

Fluke (Not strictly Pine Cove, but in the same universe. Ever wonder why whales sing? They’re ordering Pastrami sandwiches. I’m not kidding.)

Death Merchant Chronicles:

A Dirty Job

Secondhand Souls (Best literary dogs this side of Jack London)

Coyote Blue (Kind of an outlier. Overlapping characters)

Shakespeare Series:

Fool

The Serpent of Venice

Shakespeare for Squirrels

Assorted:

Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Cargo cults with Pine Cove crossovers. I have a theory that the characters in this book are direct descendants of certain characters in Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.)

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (So I have a favorite first-century wonder rabbi. Who doesn’t?)

Sacre Bleu

Noir

Ø  Not for the squeamish, the easily offended, or those who can’t lovingly embrace the fact that the human species is pretty much a bunch of idiots snatching at moments of grace.

Ø  No big ideas whatever. Barely any half-baked notions.

Ø  Enthusiastic geek adventure. Action as a last resort.

Ø   Nonstop funny from beginning to end.

 Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London Series

Rivers of London

Moon Over Soho

Whispers Under Ground

Broken Homes

Foxglove Summer

The Hanging Tree

The Furthest Station

Lies Sleeping

The October Man

False Value

Tales From the Folly

Ø  Lean, self-deprecating police procedurals disguised as fantasy novels. Excellent writing.

Ø  These will not expand your mind. They might expand your Latin vocabulary.

Ø  Crisply described action, judiciously used. Whodunnit adventure. It’s all about good storytelling.

Ø  Generous servings of sly humor. Aaronovitch is a geek culture blueblood who drops so many inside jokes, there are websites devoted to indexing them.

  John Scalzi

Old Man’s War Series:

Old Man’s War

Questions for a Soldier

The Ghost Brigades

The Sagan Diary

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

After the Coup

The Human Division

The End of All Things

Ø  Star Trek with realpolitik instead of optimism.

Ø  The Big Idea is that there’s nothing new under the sun. Nor over it.

Ø  Action-adventure final frontier saga with high stakes.

Ø  It’s funny when the characters are being funny, and precisely to the same degree that the character is funny.

Assorted:

The Dispatcher

Murder by Other Means

Redshirts (Star Trek, sideways, with occasional optimism)

Ø  Scalzi abandons (or skewers) his space-opera tendencies with these three little gems of speculative fiction. Scalzi’s gift is patience. He lets the scenario unfold like a striptease.

Ø  What-if thought experiments that jolt the brain like espresso shots.

Ø  Action/misadventure as necessary to accomplish the psychological special effects.

Ø  Redshirts is satire, so the humor is built-in, but it’s buried in the mix.

  David Wong/Jason Pargin

John Dies at the End

This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It

What the Hell Did I Just Read?

Ø  Pargin clearly starts his novels with a handful of arresting scenes and images, then looses the characters on an unsuspecting world to wander wither they will.

Ø  Ideas aren’t as big or obvious as Heinlein, but they are there to challenge all your assumptions in the same way that Heinlein’s were.

Ø  Classic action/adventure for anyone raised on Scooby-Doo.

Ø  Occasional gusts of humor in a climate that’s predominantly tongue-in-cheek.

 Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St. Mary’s Series

Just One Damned Thing After Another

The Very First Damned Thing

A Symphony of Echoes

When a Child is Born*

A Second Chance

Roman Holiday*

A Trail Through Time

Christmas Present*

No Time Like the Past

What Could Possible Go Wrong?

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings*

Lies, Damned Lies and History

The Great St Mary’s Day Out*

My Name is Markham*

And the Rest is History

A Perfect Storm*

Christmas Past*

An Argumentation of Historians

The Battersea Barricades*

The Steam Pump Jump*

And Now for Something Completely Different*

Hope for the Best

When Did You Last See Your Father?*

Why Is Nothing Ever Simple*

Plan For The Worst

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room

Ø  The * denotes a short story or novella. Okay, try to imagine Indiana Jones as a smartassed redheaded woman with a time machine and a merry band of full contact historians. I love history, and I especially love history narrated by a woman who can kick T. Rex ass.

Ø  The ideas are toys, not themes. Soapy in spots.

Ø  Action! Adventure! More action! More adventure! Tea break. Action again!

Ø  Big, squishy dollops of snort-worthy stuff.

 Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell Series

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Letter of Mary

The Moor

Jerusalem

Justice Hall

The Game

Locked Rooms

The Language of Bees

The God of the Hive

Beekeeping for Beginners

Pirate King

Garment of Shadows

Dreaming Spies

The Marriage of Mary Russell

The Murder of Mary Russell

Mary Russell's War And Other Stories of Suspense

Island of the Mad

Riviera Gold

The Art of Detection (Strictly speaking, this is in the action!lesbian Detective Kate Martinelli series, but it crosses over to the Sherlock Holmes genre. If you’ve ever wondered how Holmes would deal with the transgendered, this is the book.)

Ø  Sherlock Holmes retires to Sussex, keeps bees, marries a nice Jewish girl who is smarter than he is and less than half his age and he’s mentored since she was fifteen in an extremely problematic power dynamic relationship that should repulse me but doesn’t, somehow, because this is the best Sherlock Holmes pastiche out there. Mary should have been a rabbi, but it is 1920, so she learns martial arts and becomes an international detective instead. Guest appearances by Conan Doyle, Kimball O’Hara, T.E. Lawrence, Cole Porter, and the Oxford Comma.

Ø  Nothing mind-expanding here, unless the levels of meta present in a fictional world that is about how the fictional world might not be as fictional as you thought come as a surprise to anyone in the era of tie-in books, films, tv, interactive social media and RPGs.

Ø  If these two geniuses can’t catch the bad guys with their dazzling brilliance, they will happily kick some ass. Adventure takes center stage and the action sequences are especially creative.

Ø  Amusement is afoot.

 Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next Series

The Eyre Affair

Lost in a Good Book

The Well of Lost Plots

Something Rotten

First Among Sequels

One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Woman Who Died a Lot

Ø  In a world where Librarians are revered and Shakespeare is more popular than the Beatles, someone has to facilitate the weekly anger-management sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights, if only to keep them from killing each other before the novel actually ends. That someone is Thursday Next – Literature Cop.

Ø  Mind-bending enough to give Noam Chomsky material for another hundred years.

Ø  Adventure aplenty. Action? Even the punctuation will try to kill you.

Ø  This is a frolicsome look at humorous situations filled with funny people. Pretty much a full house in the laugh department.

 Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Series/City Watch Arc

Guards! Guards!

Men at Arms

Feet of Clay

Jingo

The Fifth Elephant

Night Watch

Thud!

Snuff

Raising Steam

Ø  If this were a game of CLUE, the answer would be Niccolo Machiavelli in Narnia with a Monty Python. Everything you think you know about books with dragons and trolls and dwarves and wizards is expertly ripped to shreds and reassembled as social satire that can save your soul, even if it turns out you don’t really have one. Do not be fooled by the Tolkien chassis – there’s a Vonnegut-class engine at work.

Ø  Caution: Ideas in the Mirror Universe May be Larger Than They Appear

Ø  The City Watch arc has plenty of thrilling action sequences. Some other of the fifty-million Discworld novels have less. Every one of them is nonstop adventure. Most of the adventure, however, takes the form of characters desperately trying to avoid thrilling action sequences.

Ø  Funny? Even though I’ve read every book in the series at least ten times, I still have to make sure I have cold packs on hand in case I laugh so hard I rupture something.

[sometimesrosy]

It’s adult, that’s why I’m freaking out so much! I’m not even sure I’ll publish it, I was just really happy for finally writing and liking what I was writing and now I’m suffering of anticipation and anxiety because, of what I plotted, I’m not sure I’ll even reach 60k words. Now I think that when I finish it, I won’t feel like I’ll finish it because it’ll seem... incomplete. I’ve been thinking of ways to overcome it, such as developing certain scenes more, certain emotions and moments. Maybe +

+ even add a side story that I was meant to put before, some years ago, but now decided against because I thought it would become too long? Guess I crowned myself though lol. I guess I’ll try to write this plot as it is and finish it and then worry about length when editing. Is this a good choice? Hope my anxiety lets me because I was really enjoying it

+++

Oh. Don’t worry about the length right now. Just don’t worry about it. You’re just telling yourself the story at this point.

Write the story. Get it DONE.

You can absolutely fix the length later. 100%. Especially if you have things you left out. Sometimes the subconscious knows more than the conscious mind when you’re writing. You probably needed that extra side story for the length/pacing/complexity, but you second guessed yourself. Luckily you have it to add in. Subplot? Excellent for new words. It will probably deepen the rest of the story. 

But here’s another thing.... a little while ago, I pantsed a story (I prefer planning the ending at least,) and I got to the end, and it looked to be about 80k. Like you, I’m used to writing epics and space operas, so like 100-120k. And I just couldn’t find an ending for the damn story. I was going to make do with the 80k because it’s kinda in the range, but then after forever not being able to finish, I realized WHY.

I had only written the first two acts. The story wasn’t over yet and I kept trying to force an ending. I have to add another, escalated conflict where we see the MC learn from all the growth she had, and she could come back in her new self and be victorious. This problem with the story structure has kept me gummed up in this novel. All because I wanted to right it RIGHT AWAY and didn’t want to plan. Now I’ve done intuitive pantsing before, but it did not work for this novel. 

Anyway, I’m just saying, revision is where we discover what’s missing, where we went off track, what we’ want to develop more or what we want to cut out. It’s REAL easy to add words revision, and if you have a whole subplot, you can weave that thing through the other story and add, add, add, wherever you go. Think of it like a novella all by itself.

Your first draft does NOT have to be perfect or figured out. It has to be done so you can work on it. Don’t freak out if it’s missing something.  You’re ahead of the game. You know it’s missing a subplot. And you know it’s missing some words, so you can add the subplot, add description, add backstory, add character development, add action, add dialogue. You can make your story richer. That’s the fun stuff. 

I’ve been ghostwriting these 50k word romances, and they’re just not as NUANCED as the longer novels. 

ADD. Play. Really get into your characters and the setting. Whenever I write these things a little short, it’s the easiest thing in the world to go in there and punch up the sentences to make it longer, and I’m not even adding depth. All I have to do is add description to make it more vivid and I ALWAYS get to my word goal.

[rachaelslibrary]

Let’s Talk Books - Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

Or the alternative title “The Kids are Grownup”.  This book follows ten years after the Red Rising Trilogy, and catches everyone up with what happened since Darrow and crew “won” their war and Mustang became Sovereign.  It also introduces several new characters and side plots and is an overall BRICK of a book.

I say that it’s a brick lovingly, but also for a reason.  Six hundred pages of political plots, tension, and backstory to explain what happened during the missing decade.  There isn’t as much action in this book as there is in the original trilogy, and this one definitely feels much more “adult” than the previous three.  This is a reread for me, and I remember the first time I read through it, it took me a while since it had been so long since I read the originals. This time, reading it directly after the first three, it definitely was easier to understand.  Little Easter eggs stood out more and I wasn’t as confused reading about past events that had happened and wondering “did I just forget about it?” The answer is NO, you didn’t forget about it, it just happened in between books.

Long story short, if you enjoyed Red Rising, you’ll still enjoy this book, but go into it knowing that it is not nearly as fast paced and feels a bit clunky at times.  HOWEVER, I definitely enjoyed it more the second time through, felt all the feels, laughed all the laughs, etc.  It’s a great addition to the series and I like that it kind of separates itself from the original trilogy because it definitely has a different overall vibe.  The next book in the series (Dark Age) has the same more adult vibe, but adds more of the original action that we all know and love.  Iron Gold is a great opening act to the trilogy of Darrow’s adult life.

Alright, so into the nitty gritty.  Iron Gold has four POV characters, a stark difference to the one of the original three.  Of course Darrow is one of them.  He’s a renowned war hero, legend and practically a god across the new Republic, but he’s also tired.  He’s barely been home to see his son or wife in the last ten years and he fears that he’s losing out on a relationship with them.  His storyline really takes off when he takes his control of the military way to far and decides to go off on his own against the Senate’s will.  Of course Sevro is there to help him along.

Then there’s Lyria, a red whose family was liberated from the mines and taken to a sort of “assimilation camp” until the Republic can figure out what to do with them.  The assimilation camp is it’s own kind of mine though, with disease rampant, food scarce, and people living on top of each other in one bedroom tents.  An attack on their camp leaves Lyria in charge of her young nephew, and she has to take matters into her own hands to create a better life for them.

Ephraim might be a name familiar to you if you have a good memory.  Remember way back at the beginning of Morning Star, Holiday’s brother Trigg who died getting Darrow out of the Jackal’s prison?  It’s his fiance.  After Trigg died Ephraim worked for the Rising, but now he works as a thief.  His storyline starts when he’s forced to take a job that has the payout of a lifetime, but also the biggest risks he’s ever taken.

And finally....Lysander au Lune.  We remember him as the ten year old grandson of the Sovereign who watched her be beheaded and was taken under Cassius’ wing.  Now he’s twenty-years-old, has been out in the asteroid belt with Cassius this whole time being a sort of vigilante and rescuing people from space pirates.  But when they answer a distress call and find a mysterious gold girl, they’re pulled back into the old political feuds of the Rim, and it doesn’t end well.

Pierce Brown does a great job of weaving everyone’s story lines together while keeping them on separate planets, all the while bringing up old story lines from the original trilogy that we all thought were wrapped up.  (Spoiler alert: They aren’t).  It’s really a great read and thoroughly enjoyable but be prepared to spend more time and focus in this book than the previous ones.  All in all, a great opener to the new trilogy.  4/5 stars.

Now without further ado, please view my spoilery rants :)

Damn I don’t know where to begin.  I guess I can start with my absolute faves, and that’s Darrow, Mustang, Sevro, and Victra.  I love how they’re raising their children together (Sevro and Victra now have three daughters with a fourth on the way), and how Sevro and Darrow are still best friends and so loyal to each other even though this much time has passed.  The end where Sevro gets so mad at Darrow because he won’t go back to Luna broke my heart, but I’m also 100% on Sevro’s side because I do believe that Darrow has started to buy into his own myth.

What made their argument even worse though was that at the time they were fighting about going back to rescue their children, we as readers thought the children were safe and on the way to Mustang so it was kind of a “Don’t fight, they’re okay just call your wives” moment.  Of course, at the end of it the ship that the kids were on crash landed so it’s kind of a good thing that Sevro is on his way back to help but still...

On the topic of my faves, I love how Sevro is almost just as much of a legend as Darrow.  Like they really are famous across the solar system, and feared.  When Lyria tells Liam to “be brave like the Goblin.” It’s like damn...even kids know who they are and they know that Sevro’s nickname is the goblin.  Look at my babies being so successful. 

Also Electra....she’s great.  That’s literally all I have to say about her.  When Ephraim was looking at her and thinking she was a kid but then also remembering who her parents are so she must be psychotic...I laughed.  Like this little girl is a force to be reckoned with and it’s all because of her parents.

There’s one quote in particular that stood out to me.  When Mustang was threatening Ephraim about running away she says “One night you will wake in the middle of the dark and find a shadow standing over you.  If you are lucky, it will be me.  If you are unlucky, it will be Sevro or my husband, and you will die shitting yourself in a foreign bed.” Like I just love so much how they’ve all made names for themselves, and it seems like the four of them are really a unit instead of just two couples raising their kids who occasionally get together.

By the end of the book, with everything just starting to kind of fall apart, I was emotionally exhausted.  But that’s a good thing!! Because it means I was just that invested in what was going on.

Few more little notes: Lysander, I started off liking you but then you made some dumb decisions.  Like I don’t really blame you for some of them but like...you opened the vault because you didn’t want this girl that kind of betrayed you to die.  Like come on man.  Also for Cassius but he wanted to die.  You should have just let him.

Also Apollonius....I want a novella or short story or something about when he broke into Darrow’s house to kill him.  There’s a line about Darrow waking up with a shadow standing over him that was Apollonius...I want to know exactly what happened there.  Did Darrow somehow win even though he was sleeping with no armor and weapons?  Did they know Apollonius was coming?  Did Mustang save the day?  These are things I need to knowwwwwww.

What we got of Victra was great, but I needed more of her.  Her and Sevro’s proposal/wedding/just relationship in general in Morningstar was my favorite and I need more of them being together as a married couple.

[hardlyfatal]

gary’s writing workshop: lesson 6: point of view, part 2

aka: POVs/Subplots Are My OTP

To discuss the connection between POVs and subplots, first we must revisit the topics of plot structure, flow, continuity, purpose, and readability.

Subplots add complexity and depth to a story.

They give the writer the opportunity to show another aspect of the main character’s personality, how people can wear multiple hats in their lives. Brienne is a fearsome warrior, but she’s also sensitive and gentle. Jaime is a snarkmaster deluxe, but he’s also a huge romantic and secret chivalric hero.

Unless you can find a main plot that somehow showcases all of the above at once – not easy – you need to add a subplot or two in order to provide opportunities to display all the facets of their personalities, not just the ones that are used in the main plot. If you don’t, you run the risk of a story that feels monotonous and characters that feel flat.

Likewise, when a story gains the complexity of subplots, it can start to feel unrealistic, too busy, or even claustrophobic when everything is from a single character’s POV. She’s everywhere at once, has a finger in every pie and no time off. My recommendation is that no main character should be the POV of more than two plots. If your story has more than two plots, it might be best to have the third one related by another character, to permit some fresh air into the narrative.

In the Plot Structuring lesson, we discussed how scenes need to have a purpose: they must connect the prior scenes to the next, and push the plot forward in a substantive way. They need to make sense within the timeline, in forming one in a series of steps from the story’s start to its finish. Similarly, scenes need to make sense regarding whose POV they are placed in.

Who Should Get a POV?

Choosing who gets a POV in a story is a very big and important decision, because they are the character(s) who the story will be filtered through. Their thoughts and feelings and motivations will be visible to us in ways they will not be to the other characters.

The strength of narration tends to become weakened with each character added, because the reader becomes used to one person’s headspace, and then you’re shoving them into someone else. And many writers get so invested in the ratio of POV trade-off1 that the plot’s needs are ignored in order to follow this pattern. Instead of carrying through with the momentum created from the prior chapter, “It’s a Jaime chapter!” they exclaim, and so they switch to him even though they really should be sticking with Brienne, etc.

In other words, there should be a point to why we’re in another person all of a sudden, and that point should not be “It’s easier to describe this scene from the other characters’s POV”. POVs should belong to characters who are either primary in the main plot, or primary in their own subplot. In a romance, that would probably be two people: both halves of the romantic couple. In non-romantic plots or sub-plots, whoever are primary2 characters in them might have the POV.

If you do choose to have multiple POVs in a story, it shouldn’t just be for a single scene or chapter – POVs should not be squandered, as they’re more integral to the flow and continuity of a story than many people think. Shoehorning in a new POV for only one chapter can be a Chekhov’s Gun; if there’s no future to the person having their own POV, if there won’t be follow-through later on, it weakens the story. The reader is left wondering why we’ve been granted access to the new POV character’s head, only to never visit it again.

Exceptions: Sometimes at the beginning or end of a story, an alternate POV can serve as a quasi-omniscient POV, serving to provide information that the main characters have no access to but with a more personal touch, thanks to the character’s limited POV. I’ve done this twice, and looking back, I’m not sure I’d do it again, because in hindsight it feels like one of them is a Chekhov’s Gun and the other is a Deux Ex Machina.

Questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not to add another POV to a story:

What inner voice/narrative/introspection is so important for the reader to witness that it justifies adding another POV to the story?

What inner voice/narrative/introspection is so important for the reader to witness that it justifies adding another POV to the story?

Will the story lose something if you don’t have access to the other character’s POV?

Is suspense an integral part of your story? If so, this is an especially important decision, because including other POVs can kill the mystery you need to maintain. OR will the suspense be enhanced because switching to another POV means that the cliffhanger you left the previous chapter on will be permitted to ripen?

If the conclusion you draw to these is that yes, adding another POV to the story will be a good idea, then go for it.

Headhopping

Headhopping is frequent switching of POV from one character to the next. How you define ‘frequent’ is subjective; IMO, more than twice a chapter is too much. Unless there’s a damned good reason for it – i.e. there are multiple strong and important subplots that take place in different locations3 – it’s best to limit the number of narrating characters to the minimum required to write a good story, without dumping in superfluous POV just ‘cuz.

Otherwise, you run the risk of the story feeling chaotic and disorganized to the reader: who’s the main character? Who are we supposed to identify with? Oh, we’re back to the first guy now? Who’s next? If your reader is questioning what’s going on, you’ve killed your readability4.

Having many characters as focal points can prevent the reader from making a connection with them, with the result that they become acquainted but don’t really get to know and identify with any, and thus they don’t become too emotionally invested, losing the compulsion to keep reading. Worse, they might take a disliking to a character and skip chapters featuring him/her5.

Pantser alert: I find that people who don’t plan out their plots, and whose POV each chapter will be written in, ahead of time end up being headhoppers. They’re just writing the story as it occurs to them, one chapter at a time, and when they hit a snag, or can’t figure out how to describe something they want to show, they hit on switching POVs as the solution instead of restructuring.

This tends to result in not only a weaker narrative but also weak characterization in the new additions, since little to no thought was put into it and there’s little actual function the new POV provides besides fixing the corner the author wrote themselves into.

If you want to reveal an event occurring without the main character(s) being present, instead of introducing yet another character6, maybe try to restructure the plot instead; can it be captured on video that the character can see later? Featured on the news/in the paper? Recounted by another character who was there? If the character is perceptive/deductive/good at drawing conclusions, perhaps include hints and signs of what occurred and have them figure it out on their own?

Bottom line: Including more than two characters without compromising the flow of the narrative and without becoming chaotic is possible, of course. It’s just not as easy as many people think it is and often can lead to a weak story. Be critical and selective when you choose to add another POV to your story, and see if there are alternatives, first.

How Many Is Too Many?

There’s no law stating how many – or how few – POVs you are allowed to have. However, a general rule of thumb is that the shorter the story, the fewer subplots (and thus, the fewer POVs) your story should have. More POVs = more complexity, and shorter stories just don’t have the length needed to do each of them justice. You need time to develop a character’s inner voice, and it’s just not possible7 with fewer than ~5,000 words per POV.

Here’s a rough idea of how long various types of stories are, and a recommended maximum number of POVs in each.

Drabble: 250 – 1,000 words. One POV, one plot.

Short story: 1,000 – 10,000. One POV, one plot.

Novelette: 10,000 – 30,000. Up to two POVs, max of two plots if done carefully, otherwise one plot.

Novella: 30,000 – 60,000. One or two POVs, at least two plots.

Novel: 60,000 – 80,000. At least two POVs, at least two plots and max of three plots.

Super Novel: 80,000 – 100,000. At least two POVs, at least two plots and max of four plots.

Epic: 100,000+. At least two POVs, at least three plots.

Switching POVs

Making your way, as a writer, from one character’s POV to another can be done in two ways: a hard, clear break, such as beginning a new chapter or inserting a scene break; and a gradual, smooth transition in the middle of the narrative.

I used to use the latter, and you can see it frequently in my Bleach fic, Become A Ghost. I have come to feel that it weakens the narrative because when you a read a scene, you become accustomed and settle into the mindset of one character… and then sliiiiiide into another’s, and it causes a moment of realization that you’re now in the head of someone else.

It’s not hugely objectionable, but I think it does compromise the readability of the story, and thus I’ve come to eliminate it. My stories now only feature hard POV switches, or don’t switch at all, remaining in a single character’s POV the entire time.

Deep POV

Deep POV is a narrative technique that works to eliminate the distance between the reader and the POV character. There is no headhopping, no visible narrator, and as few marks of authorship as possible. Its purpose is to coax the reader to submerge themselves in the character’s perspective and ‘become one’ with the character as much as possible.

Marks of authorship are things like filter words, dialogue tags8, and any wording that would be unnatural to a character’s narrative. To write with Deep POV, you have to commit to limiting the character’s knowledge to only what they’d personally be aware of.

The first Jaime POV scene in Desperado is a decent example of Deep POV because it’s very introspective and mostly avoids these characteristics. Some still exist, however, so I’ve revised instances of them to be more in line with a deep POV. 

Depending on word choice, it can be as purple9 as you want… or not. Just tone it down, if you have concerns about things becoming too overwrought.

Footnotes

1 1:1, 2:2, etc. i.e. a chapter featuring one main character, then a chapter with the other main character, then the first again, back and forth, etc.

2 This doesn’t mean “anyone who has any involvement whatsoever in the sub-plot”, just those to whom it pertains critically.

3 For example, in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books, Jon’s at the Wall, Sansa’s in King’s Landing, Daenerys is in Essos, Brienne and Jaime are fucking about in the Riverlands, Sandor and Arya are fucking about in the Vale, Bran is prancing about the North, Tyrion is all over the damned place, etc.

4 Readability being defined, as mentioned in prior lessons, as how effortlessly a reader can become immersed in a story and move without interruption through it. Readability means there are the fewest number possible of things that can snag the reader’s attention, confuse them, or otherwise drag them back out of the story to the real world. Our goal as writers is to infuse our work with as much effortless readability as possible.

5 As someone who has been told many times that readers are skipping chapters in one story because they feature characters or pairings they don’t like, it’s really fucking annoying. You work so hard to create a complex story, build people and relationships, and weave the plot and subplots through it all in a way that’s at least marginally coherent, and you get “LOL I just haaaaate this character, I don’t read those chapters!” and “Gawd, these other characters bore me, I skip those! Tee hee!”. Well, fuck you very much.

6 Especially if you’ll only be using them for a single scene in the middle of the story: that’s a Chekhov’s Gun situation where the character his/herself is the gun, and not an item or situation.  

7 At least, it’s not possible to do well with fewer than ~5,000 words per POV.

8 We will go over both filter words and dialogue tags in more detail in later lessons.

9 Prose can be called “purple” when it’s so overblown, ornate, or fancy that it distracts the reader and draws attention to itself, and not in a good way.

© 2019 to me

[pellicano-sanguino]

The Long Carmilla Post 2 - Return of the Long Post about the Queen of Lesbian Vampires

When Tumblr tightened its policy about censoring nudity, they targeted a long post I'd made about Carmilla, since I showed photos of Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard with their bare breasts in it. I have now censored the post, edited it and added a little. Carmilla is my favourite vampire of all time, and I have a long history with her different incarnations, so I wanted to bring the Long Carmilla Post back.

When I first posted the Long Carmilla Post, I had just seen the movie made by the Carmilla webseries folks. The sudden fame of the webseries surprised me. I can't help but think, that there must be a lot of new Carmilla fans, who instantly think of Natasha Negovanlis when they hear that name. If this series had been around when I was a teen, damn, would I have loved it! I would have been obsessed with it. But it was not, and I can't really become as obsessed with it now as the new fans do. Because when I hear the name Carmilla, several different faces appear in my imagination. I have already been obsessed with Carmilla from a rather young age, and while I love the webseries and this movie, for me it's just one of Carmilla's newer incarnations, not her default form.

I don't want to sound like a hipster (”I liked Carmilla before the webseries made her cool!”), I just thought that as a lesbian vampire lover I should make a post about my favourite vampire, and the history I have with the character.

There are some images of blood under the cut.

When I was younger, there really wasn't any lesbian litterature around (well, there probably was but I didn't know what books to search). I had a habit of switching genders in the books I read, making everyone female so I could get the girl romances I craved for, but this always felt forced and not ”real.” I read lots of vampire stories, because I've always loved that genre, but it was very much dominated by stories of male vampires. When I read Dracula, it had a short introduction speech that talked about the history of modern vampire stories, and it mentioned Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.

Tracking the novella down was a bit hard, considering that back then I didn't have internet and so could only read books that I found in the library and bookstores. Fortunately the translation of Carmilla was included in one horror anthology that our library had. I managed to get my hands on it, and this cover illustration was the first ”face” of Carmilla that I knew.

I can't really put a finger on why I became so obsessed with this story. It's not that great of a novella. A very basic old-timey vampire story about a monster who threatens the life of the protagonist, who is saved when the monster's true nature is revealed, after which it is hunted down and destroyed. And the lesbian subtext is very, very subtle. There was just something very mysterious and fascinating about Carmilla. She is still among the few vampires who actually frighten me. Though Le Fanu's story isn't very scary by modern standards, Laura's nightmare scenes somehow got under my skin. There's something very creepy in the way vampires in older stories used to steal blood from their victims while they were sleeping. The idea, that there exists a predator who instead of straight up attacking its prey, approaces it by a cover of flawless mimicry, is horrifying. You are being slowly eaten alive and you're not even aware of it happening, or that it's your charming friend doing it to you.

I started having dreams about Carmilla. The first ones were nightmares, but even if they were scary, they didn't make me anxious, just excited. I was scared of Carmilla, but I wanted to see her, I wanted to hear her voice. It was as if I had fallen under her spell, much like Laura, but unlike Laura, I was aware of her true nature. I knew what she wanted, I knew that in my dreams, her kisses would lead to bites. But to a young lesbian who loved vampire stories, those kisses were worth losing a few drops of blood in the dream kingdom. She was one of ”my people.” She was not a genderswapped male hero, she was ”real.” She genuinely loved women and blood, and I loved her.

Halloween isn't really celebrated where I live, but one October a friend of mine decided that she'd hold a Halloween party (which became a yearly tradition for us for many years to come). She invited a group of her friends to watch horror movies at her house, and everyone should wear a costume. There was no competition what I would go as. I had a light blue dress that I decorated with blood stains, and over it I wore a dark gray cape, on which I had painted purple flower patterns to make it resemble the coat Carmilla wears on the cover illustration. It must be almost twenty years old, but I still have that cape.

Little Pellicano as Carmilla. I think I must have been 13 or 14 when this party was held.

Then I saw my first Carmilla movie. A Hammer film called Vampire Lovers.

This is a very silly movie. Very cheesy. But young Pellicano loved it. I can still quote many of the scenes from memory. The movie follows LeFanu's novella rather loosely, but I think it's one of the most faithful adaptations. It included the basic ”plot” that Carmilla uses to get close to her victims, has the nightmares (including Carmilla's monstrous cat form), keeps the plot point that she must form her new names anagrammically and makes her killer be a man who lost his daughter to the vampire. So far I think it's the only movie version that includes the scene where Carmilla sees the funeral procession of a girl she killed and loses it completely. I've always found that scene interesting, many claim that her fit of anxiety is caused by hearing the chanting (being unholy creature who's weak to christian things) but I think it's more than that. Either she has horrifying flashbacks to her own funerals (waking to vampirism and having to claw her way out of her own grave, that would scar me for sure) or she is genuinely sorry for killing the girl and terrified of having to face the truth that her love will always end in death.

I want to interpret Carmilla as a vampire who really loves her victims, not as playthings but as real lovers. But she wasn't a reluctant vampire either, she embraced the monstrous side of herself. It was natural to her, and so it was inevitable that the women she loved would eventually die. Maybe she preferred to ignore this knowledge in the daytime, and when she was forced to see what her night time activities had resulted in, the fit of anxiety happened.

A bit off topic, but one scene from the novella that I've never seen make it into a movie, is when a wandering salesman offers his dentistry services to Carmilla, offering to file down her fangs, which sends Carmilla into a fit of rage. I don't know, I always thought that scene pretty funny. Poor guy, offering to de-fang a vampire and getting a HOW DARE YOU rant in response.

So, the next ”face” of Carmilla was obviously Ingrid Pitt. While this movie wasn't particularly explicit (all the sex happens off screen), the lesbian subtext was much less subtle, which pleased young Pellicano. And then there was the infamous bathing scene (would show pics, but gotta censor for Tumblr. You can easily find them by image googling.).

When I was younger, I suffered from being underweight for a long time (had always been a small girl). Seeing Ingrid Pitt's figure motivated me to try to gain weight. She was so beautifully soft and curved, not just her chest, but her shoulders and legs and everything just looked so smooth and nice, while I had thin, pointy, stick-like limbs with sharp edges and none of that lovely roundness. I know teens should not look at celebrities and actresses as body models, but I think having Ingrid Pitt's shape as body goal was healthy for me. I never reached that goal, of course, but I did eventually reach normal weight limits (50kg, the weight needed for blood donors).

That friend of mine, who hosted Halloween parties, watched the movie with me and knew that I was obsessed with Carmilla. One day she got me a fake gold necklace with a red plastic gem on it, shaped like a blood drop. I don't know where she got this trinket from, but it was similar to the pendant Carmilla wears in the movie, and even if it was just cheap junk, I treasured it. And totally wore it during the next Halloween party, going as Carmilla like I always did. I've lost the gold chain, but I still have the gem.

Also still have the VHS. I don't know why I've kept it, I have no VHS player anymore.

Before I move on from Ingrid Pitt, I’d like to mention a pet peeve of mine. Ingrid Pitt has done two vampire roles (three if Elisabeth Bathory from Countess Dracula is counted). The more famous role is obviously Carmilla, it’s probably her most famous role ever, period. Her other vampire role is Carla Lynde from House that Dripped Blood. Now, the thing that annoys me is that article writers tend to always mix these two up. Whenever they write something about Carmilla or female vampires in general, they always mention Ingrid Pitt’s role as Carmilla in Vampire Lovers, but they always use the same damn stupid promo photo that is from House that Dripped Blood. That’s lazy research! Do they just image google “Ingrid Pitt vampire” and fail to check if the photo they use is actually from the movie they’re talking about?! The roles don’t even look identical, Carmilla’s a brunette while Carla Lynde is blonde, Vampire Lovers is set in 1800s, House that Dripped Blood is set in 20th century. The worst one was when the museum in my home city had a vampire themed exhibition and even they used the wrong photo for Vampire Lovers. If a museum can’t get their facts straight, that’s just sad.

Here is an example of my pet peeve in action, an article about vampire movies, using the wrong fucking photo for Vampire Lovers. And yes, I know why they like using this particular photo (”höhöhöö boobs, I’m so mature”). But that just makes me more angry when they do it.

Hammer made a sequel to Vampire Lovers called Lust for a Vampire. It was...  disappointing. It introduced a male love interest for Carmilla, which in my opinion was complete bullshit. If you want to make a story about a female vampire who falls in love with a human boy, by all means make it, but don't call it Carmilla, call it something else. That being said, there were a good amount of lesbian action going on as well (this time Carmilla plotted her way into an all girls' school...) and if there's one thing Hammer rarely fails at delivering, it's the bucketloads of unconvincing bright red fake blood. I skipped the icky het sex, but always enjoyed this scene:

Yeah, Yutte Stensgaard was the third ”face” of Carmilla. When I think of that name, this blood-covered, sleepy-looking vampire maiden is among the images that instantly pop into my mind.

The third Carmilla movie I saw was titled just Carmilla and starred Meg Tilly.

This was clearly a cheaper (maybe made for TV) adaptation. Meg Tilly didn't leave as big an impression as Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard did. But I do remember one line from the movie clearly. When Marie (the southerner ”Laura” of this version) asks about Carmilla's past, Carmilla brushes it aside by saying ”That was another lifetime. I'm much happier now.” I adopted this phrase into use. Whenever people are unknowingly asking about a painful thing from my past that I don't want to talk about, I will say it to let them know that nothing good comes from digging old wounds that have already scarred. That was another lifetime. I'm much happier now.

I do remember that Meg Tilly's Carmilla was the movie with the ”awkward floaty blood drinking pose.”

I'm sorry, but that just doesn't look comfortable. Or functional.

Then the big day came – my family got a computer that could access internet. It was an awful piece of junk that could barely be used for writing emails and visiting messageboards. It wouldn't play videos, loading images took forever and big pictures often made it freeze. However, I had access to the internet now. The first word I ever googled was obviously ”carmilla.” Among the sites I found back then, was one about a German play, starring a woman called Ulrike Schneidewind.

The site had big, beautiful promo photos of the play. They took forever to load, but I returned to watch them often. There was something captivating in Ulrike Schneidewind's look for Carmilla. I'm not usually a fan of vampires with the white face+red lipstick+loads of mascara-look, but hers was beautiful, like a painting, like a creature that really wasn't human.

I don’t know if they used fake blood in the actual play or if it was only for these promo photos, but it looks incredibly pretty and surprisingly convincing.

I have no idea what this demon looking thing is supposed to be - Carmilla’s monstrous cat form maybe?

Ulrike Schneidewind became the next ”face” of Carmilla, even though I have never seen her act. All I've seen are these promo photos of the play (I have heard her speak. There's a couple minutes long news clip on Youtube about a vampire lifestyler event she attended). Supposedly there exists a VHS of the Carmilla play they performed on a Romanian tour, but they must have only made a handful of those, since I've never seen it on sale anywhere. I check the German eBay every now and then in faint hopes of finding a copy but I've come to accept that I'll probably never see this show. But still, Ulrike Schneidewind's look left an impression on my mind.

Around those times I started to draw comics in which my self-insert character shared a house with six vampire roommates (Carmilla, who owned the house, Brunhilda from Wake Not the Dead, Teresa from Last Lords of Gardonal, Ruthven, Dracula and Francis Varney) and an OC named Charity (Brunhilda's donor and girlfriend). I mostly pulled the designs for my vampires out of thin air, really (well, Dracula was as he was descrided in the novel, with fuzzy moustache and bushy eyebrows) but Carmilla's design was based on Ulrike Schneidewind's look, with blue veins shining through the white skin and lots of dark makeup and black hair.

Sad part is that it's been over ten years and my drawing skills have not improved at all. This is not ”art” this is doodles. But drawing these was super fun back then, so I shouldn't feel ashamed of them now, I think.

Besides these comics, I wrote some fanfics too. But I'm very glad I never put those anywhere public, because damn, they are embarrassing to read now. It's because my fanfics were actually serious business, full of drama and sturm und drang, and they turned out rather cheesy. Also full of, ahem, erotic content written by someone who had no personal experience on the subject yet. The comics on the other hand were just made for shits and giggles, and I think they've survived the test of time better (by which I mean, that I have actually shown my comics to other people, because occasionally I think I made a fun one, while I've never shown my fics to anyone and have already burned the worst ones.).

When the wonderland of internet was opened to me, I gained access to all the books in the world. I was no longer restricted by what our library and book stores had, I could buy stuff that wasn't published here. So obviously I got a copy of Kyle Marffin's Carmilla sequel. It's not a very good book. Quite silly, childish and badly written (men really shouldn't write about lesbians, they know nothing about them and enjoying an erotic scene becomes rather hard when you imagine some gross het dude writing it while drooling on his keyboard). But it was the first time I read a rather explicit lesbian sex scene, and that got me very excited, because finally all the subtext was thrown to garbage. Here it was, black on white, proof that Carmilla was into girls, not just their blood but their bodies as well. My late discovery of lesbian erotica may seem weird now, when anyone can gain access to mountains of lesbian smut in the internet, but back when I lived with my parents I never dared to look up smut on the home computer, in fear that they'd find out. Until I moved out, my only access to lesbian erotica was books, and Carmilla's Return was the first one I got.

Rant time: I might also add, that annoyingly enough I had been encountering explicit het sex scenes in books, movies and TV years before. And while I never intentionally searched naughty stuff on the net, I had bumped into het porn there accidentally as well. I wonder if heteros understand how freaking frustrating this kind of thing was. Their smut was all over the place, in every book, every film and all around the net, pretty much rubbed to my face, while MY stuff was so obscure I didn't even know where to look for it. And then they had the nerve to claim that we are ”flaunting it” and ”making it all about ourselves” whenever there was a gay sidecharacter somewhere. Grr. Grrr. Rant over.

I bumped into some incarnations of Carmilla later too, but none left an impression on my mind like these early ones did. The worst Carmilla I ever saw was the main villain in Lesbian Vampire Killers. That movie is easily the worst vampire movie I have ever seen (maybe even the worst movie I've seen, period), it's an ”erotic horror comedy” that is neither sexy, scary or funny. It is nice that when they were thinking of a character to star in a movie about lesbian vampires, they chose Carmilla. But the movie is such utter garbage, I'd rather they'd left my favourite vampire out of it. Save your money and sanity -  don't watch this movie. It's bad.

I feel like a lot of time people want to take Carmilla's name and make a whole new character with it (like Reimi Urara's character in Vampire Succession, who is named Carmilla but isn't even a vampire at all). These ”Carmilla in name only” kind of characters don't count, and frankly speaking I'm not that fond of them. I guess it is nice that people want to pay respect to the legendary vampire by naming a character after her, but my opinion still is that if you don't want to tell the story of a lesbian vampire, call your character something else. If you take away either of Carmilla's two passions; that of women or that of blood, the character loses her trademark characteristics and stops being ”real.” You don't make a Godzilla movie where the king of the monsters isn't allowed to have his trademark atomic breath, and you don't make a Carmilla who doesn't love women and blood.

Now that I have said that, you probably guess my opinion about the (*spoilers*) ending of the webseries's third season. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of humanizing Carmilla. So, I went to see the movie with rather low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. This movie is more Carmilla than all of the webseries's seasons together.

But let's speak about the webseries first. I was very positively surprised by it. One day I ended up googling Carmilla again (was probably looking for fanfics) and discovered this little gem. It had very little to do with Le Fanu's original, but what it decided to change was so good that I didn't care. And it had still lots of little nods to the novella. Carmilla's anagrammical names, the nightmares, they freaking included Laura's governesses De Lafontaine and Perrodon (I would totally watch a spin-off that just follows the adventures of Laf and Perry) and there's even a scene where Carmilla is watching over sleeping Laura, looking a bit similar to a famous illustration of the novella. Also, the theme song ”Love will have it's sacrifices”, is a direct quote, from a scene where Carmilla is describing to Laura the night when the curse of vampirism was passed on to her (of course, she doesn't out right say it, but the reader knows what she's talking about).

”--- I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here," she touched her breast, "and never was the same since."

"Were you near dying?"

"Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.---”

I'm not going to say the webseries doesn't have its flaws, a little lazy writing here and there, plot holes and inconsistent characters occasionally (I feel sorry for Danny. She just can't win.). But it was incredibly entertaining, it made me laugh and it made me care about what happens to everyone. And like probably a lot of the fans, I adored the fact that they didn't dance around the lesbian thing. When Laura understands that Carmilla's advances weren't blood-related, her reaction isn't any dumb ”But we're both girls, how can this be?!” Whoever understood to make Laura gay too was a genius. When she gets all flattered and blushing after learning that a beautiful girl finds her attractive, it's such a relatable feeling. It's the lesbian romance I so wanted as a teen! Not stories of a predatory lesbian seducing dumb clueless het girls to the dark side, but girls experiencing all the usual things female leads in romantic stories do, only with another girl as their love interest.

The first season of the webseries is my favourite. The second was pretty good, too. Third, in my opinion, a bit unnecessary (here I think you could see the writing starting to slip). Then came the movie.

They could have completely abandoned the vampire theme and proceeded with the heroes' further adventures. But they didn't and thank goodness for it. They return to draw inspiration from the original source; the novella. We have nightmares, and I admit they actually made me uneasy, reminding me of that creepy feel Laura's dream scenes gave me in the novella. The image of Carmilla laying down in a coffin filled with blood is also from the story. There's a scene where Carmilla is forced to reveal her vampiric nature, and it really reminds me of the scene where it happens in the book.  

And they freaking quote it, probably being the first adaptation ever to use straight quotes from the book. ”Die together so they can live together”-speech isn't quite right word-to-word, I think, but still, it's an identifiable quote. I used to be able to quote the ”You are mine, you shall be mine”-speech in English, Swedish and German, but have now forgotten most versions (yeah, I read Carmilla in several languages when I was younger. I was freaking obsessed with the story). I still think it's the most memorable quote from the novella. Also, the book-reading scene with ”Girls are caterpillars who undergo several larval stages before becoming butterflies”-speech is also from the novella. I think the only famous quote missing in this movie is the ”I've never been in love and never shall unless it should be with you”-speech.

As a fan of the ”old” Carmilla I adore how they pay homage to the origin respectfully, while still making their very own story. Again, teenaged Pellicano would have been all over this stuff. But I had to make my lesbian vampire stories from other versions, and while those also have their flaws, I adore them just as much. I am just happy that Carmilla lives on, not forgotten and left in the shadow of the countless more famous male vampires (seriously, where the fuck are all the female vampires? Ones that are actually main characters in their story and pass the freaking vampiric Bechdel test?)

Carmilla lives on, indeed. She has made a new comeback in Netflix's Castlevania series. I watched the first season and liked it quite a bit. It was a bit too gorey for my personal taste, but that wasn’t a dealbreaker. I liked the art style and was interested to see where they take the story. When I heard rumours that the second season would have a character named Carmilla, my reaction was pretty much “Carmilla is part of the Castlevania franchise?! Why did no one tell me this before?!”

Of course I’m always eager to see new adaptations of my favourite vampire. So, I did some research to know which games she appears in, made some popcorn and sat down to watch some Let’s Play videos (I’m not a gamer and don’t own game consoles so the only way I get to experience videogames is through Let’s Plays in Youtube.). But I ended up rather disappointed. Carmilla in the Castlevania games is cartoonishly silly at best, downright insulting to the original at worst.

So, after seeing how poorly the games treated my favourite vampire, I looked forward to the second season of the Netflix series with mixed feelings. I was hopeful, thinking that they can't go anywhere but up from here. And I was pleasantly surprised. The character design made her a bit silly looking with eeeevil face and her body language is very femme fatale-ish (I don’t really see the appeal of the femme fatale trope, but then again, it’s usually written for male audience), but they didn't put her in an ugly, revealing costume and the camera focused on her face instead of her breasts.

It's disappointing that she isn't a lesbian in this one (she makes one joke that hints she might be into girls too, but because Dracula's war council is mostly one big sausage fest, we don't see her interact with other females much).

I am so, so happy that the makers of the show understood that Carmilla is not some boot-licking notice-me-senpai Dracula fangirl (an aspect of her I loathed in the games). The only reasons for a lesbian vampire to ally with a male one are if they have a common goal (such as defending themselves against vampire hunters) or if she has no other choice. Netflix Carmilla is the latter. Dracula is a powerful, dangerous monster, who is also very much insane and therefore unpredictable. When he summons Carmilla to join his senseless crusade against humankind, Carmilla can't afford to refuse and take the chance of the mad vampire king killing her for disobedience and making a warning example of her. She has to go to war she herself deems pointless (well, Godbrand had a point in his ”If vampires kill all the humans, what will the vampires eat?”-speech.). So she begins to plot to prevent the genocide (she actually wants humankind to keep existing as opposed to wiping them from the face of the Earth, remind me again why she is the one every fan hates while they love Dracula the Kill All Humans-madman? Oh right, she assaults one of the male fan favourite characters on screen and is therefore deemed much more evil than Dracula who slaughters countless innocent humans offscreen without mercy. Got it.).

I love that she uses cunning instead of seduction when putting her plot to gain freedom from Dracula's servitude in action. Admittedly, some of the scenes where she's manipulating Hector seem a bit seductive-ish, but are still nothing compared to the ”Oh great master let me lick the blood off your sword!”-bullshit from the games. Also, was I the only one who could see right through her mindgames? Every time she complimented some man, I was shaking my head ”Lady, even blind Reetta can see that you are full of shit.” So it really surprised me when Hector fell for it. How do you fall for such an obvious trap?

I like that Carmilla's reasons for her schemes are reasonable and based on common sense and war strategy rather than just being evil for the sake of being evil. That being said, the scene where she beats Hector felt unnecessary, the man was tied up and would have gone with her even without getting his ass handed to him, because he's a prisoner and has no choice. I understand that it's an important scene symbolically, tying back to the scene where the animal-loving Hector compares vampires to cats, to which Isaac points out that cats play cruelly with their prey. It's a turning point for Hector, who abandoned humanity and tried to find a new family among monsters only to realize that they are, well, monsters. What did you expect voting for Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party would bring to you? Anyway, I understand that the scene is important to the plot and character growth, but I can't help but feel that making Carmilla assault a fan favourite character so brutally was the writers way of making sure the audience hates her. I have a feeling that they want to be sure the audience hates her, because they have something disgusting in mind for her for the third season.

I already talked about this in my ”If you have to kill female vampires on screen, please don't make it look like a rape”-post. I am worried what they are going to do with Carmilla. She's obviously going to get killed, but I hope they allow her to go down with dignity. Lords of Shadows 2 already gave us a really disgusting, rapey killing scene (I’ve only seen one killing scene with an even clearer “lesbianism can be cured by rape”-theme, in Lesbian Vampire Killers where Carmilla is impaled by a dick-shaped sword), we do not need another. I don't want Hector or Isaac or Dracula impaling her body slowly and looking downward at her in disgust as she painfully dies. Yes, Dracula will be coming back, it's Castlevania after all. I'm also worried of the possibility that instead of killing her, they make Dracula force her back into his servitude, which would also be super gross.

I am happy that the character of Carmilla lives on, that new fans get to experience her with these new incarnations, but whenever a new Carmilla surfaces, I am also a bit worried at how they are going to handle her character this time. I will have to wait and see how the third season of Castlevania ends, until then it is useless to speculate.

[momo-de-avis]

Do you have any writing tips for someone that is definitely not a writer but wants to be better at writing anyway? That might be too vague so I'll say this, I have a lot of trouble getting an idea that isn't either something really small that doesn't make a narrative or something gigantic and complicated that I dont have the will to take on. No middle sliders in my life.

You have an issue my boyfriend has, he has great ideas but either believes they’re just something too small for a long narrative or so long and complex he doesn’t know how to plot them.

I can’t tell you what the right way is, because everyone is different of course, but I think there’s two ways you can go about it to try and figure out which might help you best.

First of all, take notes on every idea you have. I’m serious. However small it seems, just write it down. Even if it’s something as trivial as ‘man eats an apple while staring at a tree’, whatever. I find that, when something really tiny like that pops into my head with that thing of ‘dang, I need to write this’ but it just seems way too trivial for me to care, it’s because of how I’m visualizing it. I’ll tell you this, this one time I was having a cup of coffee near the library after a break and I saw this woman in the gardens looking at a tree, and that’s what gripped me in that moment. It was really stupid, but the thing I saw was what made me explore that for some reason. I thought she looked sad, I don’t know why, it just looked really sad, and it looked like that sad woman just casually looked up at a cypress tree like she wanted to see something pretty on a shitty day. Later on, must have been years, I was trying to write a scene where a character was supposed to compose a text for school about why she mattered and the only thing that came to mind was that woman looking up at that tree. I’m telling you this because the littlest thing can really help. If you get that unexpected pang of ‘damn, this is cool’ or ‘wow, this is really pretty’, take the chance to write down the what and why at least. Because you never know! 

Now, as for development, there’s two ways to go about it that might help you. You can explore the character-driven side of narrative, or the plot-driven. These are, I’ll be honest, two things I have a hard time distinguishing but I mostly follow character-driven.

Plot-driven stuff generally has people planning beforehand (hence why I suck at it lmao). Some people follow the 3 Act structure, or other ways to go about it with planning (this is a good place to check out a few). As the name says, the plot is the star. There is a narrative you want to develop. There’s a central plot with probably very little sub-plots, but that one plot is the main goal. Most likely, one protagonist or two, both with goals that they will achieve or not at the end.

Character-driven, though... the characters make the story. It’s really hard to explain, so I’ll explain how I do it. I essentially have to have the characters very well established. Who they are, psychologically. Once I know them, I let the story flow naturally.

This has helped me a lot because most of the times I have a premise, not a plot, and on my first draft (not even a first draft, more like preliminary exercise lmao), I just try that approach to try and understand who these characters are or what I want them to be, so that they can move the story. Eventually, what happens is I have the inciting incident settled, the lowpoint as well or just something in the middle that is a plot device, and the ending established, but as I progress, since I know the characters, new things emerge like, completely new conflicts and reactions that just occur to me as I progress. But this is my method, it’s how I work.

For me, personally, sitting down just TRYING to find a plot, or an extra for the already existing plot, is tiresome and it drains me. So I just go ahead and do something and see where it goes. I follow the character instead of the plot (ask stuff like “what would she do if a stranger bumped into her on the subway, what should do if she witnessed this or that, what would she say if someone asked her this and that”, and go from there).

Another thing is: find your voice. I mean mostly style. I find that most of the times people struggle with this because they are struggling with finding their style, because once you get your voice established it might become easier in developing your story. For example, I always loved bullshitting my way through stuff if it involves words lmao, and when it came to creating long stories, I had an issue with planning. I remember at school my teachers would have us write a detailed plan of our story before the actual story, and we were forced to turn them both in for grading, which fucking sucked, because I don’t plan.

Then I read Virginia Woolf and learned about this neat little thing called ‘stream of consciousness’ and thought, fuck you, 9th grade teacher. Stream of consciousness is essentially a style where the author focuses on one small detail, seemingly trivial, and then develops an entire fluid string of throughs that interconnect with each other however contrasting they are (why the sentence “Mrs. Dalloway thought she’d buy the flowers herself” is so remarkable, because for the WHOLE BOOK, Woolf debates about many things, seldom being flowers. Hell, one of my favourite short stories is her meditating on a fly that lands on a bowl of milk).

So what I learned with this was: bullshitting your way out of purple prose has an academic word for it! Great! This also validated a lot my lack of planning, meaning that every time I drivelled instead of following a step-by-step plot I was actually building something worth a damn, because that exercise of developing a string of thoughts that are born from one shitty thing is something that can happen inside a novel. 

So you see, finding my style, in this case, helped me find my voice and it became very easy ever since to juggle my methods with my ideas. This is my experience, of course, and it’s worth what it’s worth, but this little thing is what helped me establish that, I might have an idea, but if I let it flow, it might grow into something.

Of course, there’s that last advice: read more, watch more TV shows and movies within the genre you’d like to explore, etc etc, but I think it always goes without saying.

And one more thing: no story, for me, is too small or too long. It has its own natural length. Sometimes, we have ideas that are naturally shorter. It just means they’re short stories, or novellas, or novelettes. When my boyfriend told me he had that same problem -- that he had ideas he just didn’t know how to develop into full books -- I told him: then they’re short stories. And that’s fantastic. 

The thing is, being a writer isn’t like something immutable, you’re not the same always, you know, you’re not always in this place, with this style, writing about this thing. You keep changing, keep finding new voices, keep exploring new angles, just continuously growing, as with any other artistic field. So maybe right now, those might be short stories, but who knows in the future? 

I was reading American Gods and Neil Gaiman apparently republished it a second time, a much longer version his former editor had told him to cut down, and at the beginning he quotes Stephen King on why he did it: cause there were small bits in it, sub-plots if you will, editors are keen on thinking they don’t add to the main plot, but they build the story as a whole, paint the colours needed for the setting, the ambience, the narrative outside the main plot, and both authors felt their concepts, their ideas, weren’t complete without them.

My first advice when someone has an idea is always this: write it down, however it is, with whatever you have. It might be one paragraph. It might be 400 pages. Whatever you have, it’s just a first draft, and the goal of a first draft is getting it down on paper, not turning it into the finished work. It’s the first step.

And if it’s gigantic? Make it gigantic. This is Miss Only Writes Gigantic Shit speaking. I mean monstrous. Especially first and second and even like, third and fourth draft (man I have a lot of drafts), it’s so brutally long I seriously have to take a step back and think “bitch, slow down”. Eventually, I chop down stuff. Scenes that don’t add anything, repeated stuff, scenes that establish what is already established -- just stuff that misses the eye. 

Just to say, let the story have its natural rhythm in the beginning stages. Writing is like baking, as I say: you need to set it aside and let it settle for a while, and then when you come back to it with a clear head, you’ll be able to compose it better. Eventually, it drives you down misery road and actually have to do the dreadful thing of leaving stuff out -- it’s sad, I won’t deny, looking at this one character and saying “goodbye, you were a good one, but I have to put you into the Unused Character Pile, maybe one day you’ll find your light, but not today, and I’m so sorry, but where you are right now, you’re useless lmao”. It’s a step that comes eventually, but it’s not needed in the early stages.

But in the end, it all comes down to motivation, I think. So first and foremost, I would say... find your motivation to write whatever you have. You could read more into the genre you’re thinking of, or you could try and write small vignettes of the story you have in mind (just pick a scene and try writing it down, just to see). You could try a challenge of sorts, like picking up a concept, a word, a sentence, and try developing it. Create a habit too -- don’t mind that “write every day” stuff, do it whenever you feel like it, whenever you get that tingle of ‘damn I feel like writing’, just answer that call. And always believe in your ideas, and I say this because I find that a lot of lack of motivation comes from ‘my idea sucks’ or ‘it’s been done before’. Your ideas are yours alone, so explore them as much as you can.

I used to have a website saved that I lost and this is the closest thing to it I found, but try this out for like a first plot, or just to generally get an outline of your idea. It has HELPED ME TREMENDOUSLY when I have a new idea that just makes me think “Great! now what the fuck do I do with it?”

I hope this helped, anon!! And sweet, sweet writing, my friend!

[laylainalaska]

Good Omens TV

So I watched the Good Omens TV adaptation, and my reaction was decidedly mixed. Parts of it worked for me, and parts really didn’t. If you loved every minute of it, there may be squee harshing under the readmore, but I really did love parts of it! So YMMV.

FWIW, I haven’t read the book in a really long time, and had actually forgotten a lot of the specifics of the book plot, which was a good way to watch the miniseries! So a lot of the plot was effectively new to me, while I also remembered it as it went along from the book, and that was really fun. I actually thought some of the scenes were new for the movie and then rediscovered that they actually were in the book, it’s just that I never paid much attention to anything going on with Newt and Anathema and most of what happened with the kids. Oops. >_> (I actually found the kids’ scenes a lot more engaging in the movie than in the book. The child actors were really fun.)

I guess I’ll just get what I didn’t like out of the way first -- the way the entire series was filmed and acted in such an OTT, stage-acting kind of way was really, really not my thing. This is entirely down to personal taste because it’s not like I can say it’s out of keeping with the book, but I think the version of the book in my head had a lot more ... gravitas? solemnity? It’s hard to say -- whatever that quality is, this adaptation didn’t have nearly enough of it, and I found parts of it so cringey that I had to look away (e.g. the possession scene with Madame Tracy). And I think this largely comes down to the book being more dramatic and less silly in my head, which I was never going to get from an adaptation, so that’s fair enough.

But even leaving aside what it did to the gravitas of the show/book, the humor, I felt, was also undermined by the extreme hamminess of the acting, as well as by the adaptation’s need to explain the jokes or hold up a big sign saying THIS IS FUNNY. It would’ve been more genuinely funny if it had been underplayed a bit. Some of the jokes still land really well, usually the ones that are delivered in deadpan or not actually explained. The book is so funny in large part because the humor is so downplayed.

But the over-explaining ... it’s things like, for example, the scene with Agnes’s skirts blowing up everyone was darkly funny all on its own; it didn’t need an immediate explanation in the narration that there was dynamite in her skirts. It worked great in the books because you couldn’t see it, but the explanation becomes redundant and just feels like we’re getting the joke explained. Or the bit with the unicorns running around in the background in the Noah’s Ark scene, which is a lot funnier when you just notice them on your own and it’s this low-key silly thing happening behind the characters, but gets a lot less funny once the characters notice them and start pointing out the unicorns running away. It wasn’t just one or two instances; a lot of the humor in the movie was like that. I was rereading bits of the book last night and noticing all over again that I really prefer the book’s style of deadpan, underplayed humor.

And since I’m being salty anyway, I gotta say, I am going to be forever salty, or at least baffled, that my very favorite scene from the book isn’t in the movie -- baffled, in large part, because it’s an important scene and a very cinematic scene, and they just ... didn’t do it? It’s the bit during the climax when Crowley and Aziraphale are just like “fuck it” and spread their wings and prepare to throw themselves at the Powers That Be of heaven and hell even though they’re certainly gonna die. I mean, it was kind of in there, but they took that doomed-last-stand image that I loved and instead had a scene with the two of them coaxing Adam into changing things. The wing-spreading scene and the sword flaming up were just so dramatic in the book, and maybe it was more dramatic in my head than it could ever have been in the movie, and I guess the entire “willing to die for their cause” aspect is already implied by everything Aziraphale and Crowley have done up to that point, but damn it, I wanted that.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering now what I actually liked about it, but the answer is, quite a lot! I appreciate that it was such a close and faithful adaptation of the book; sure, they left out a few things, and some of the ways they imagined it into life were not at all how I’ve imagined it all these years, but that’s not the fault of the adaptation. I still feel like Sheen and Tennant’s Aziraphale and Crowley are not quite my Aziraphale and Crowley, but I was way more sold on them than I expected to be, and in particular, Tennant’s Crowley, while not precisely book Crowley (rereading the book last night reminded me how much more low-key he typically is), is a really delightful Crowley. I still think I might prefer the book’s more buttoned-down Crowley, but I ended up appreciating them both a lot in different ways, and particularly loved how much emotion and conflictedness TV!Crowley has with his relationship with Hell and falling and Aziraphale and generally being a decent person doing demon things. I think a lot of what’s there subtextually in book!Crowley is right out in the open in TV!Crowley, which goes along with the TV version being a lot less subtle in general, but this is one of the places where it really worked for me.

And just in general, getting so much more with Aziraphale and Crowley, so many new scenes actually written by their (co)creator was absolutely delightful. It really felt like getting, if not a whole new novel, then at least a new novella or a series of short stories about them, focused on them and their relationship in the best possible way. I think knowing the adaptation was written by Gaiman made a lot of difference here, because things like Crowley calling Aziraphale his best friend, and his utter distress and misery when he thinks Aziraphale is dead (and it’s not even dead dead, just gone and on the opposite side), is an extra gut-punch because of knowing that this isn’t just someone running off with it in filmed fanfic; this feels like the actual characters doing it, part of the bookverse creator’s view of their relationship, and that does matter to me. “You killed my best friend” - I just never would have thought we’d ever get that much emotion between them, and it kills me in the best way.

The new stuff at the end was also extra delightful because of that same “this could potentially be book canon and not just TV canon” feeling, and because it was new, so I didn’t know where it was going, and then the trickster-ish swap was so good.

I also remember reading beforehand that Sheen had said he tried to play Aziraphale being in love with Crowley, and I, er, wasn’t expecting it to be so obvious. The fact that he absolutely loves and adores Crowley is vividly clear in every scene they’re in, even if his words are saying something entirely different.

I mean, I had my problems with the adaptation and they were significant ones, but the entire thing was basically a big ginormous love letter to Aziraphale and Crowley and the fact that, whatever form that love might take, they absolutely love the hell (and heaven) out of each other. That aspect was not only not downplayed in the adaptation, it was absolutely its core and its heart. And whatever problems I had with how it was done, at the end of the day I got my live-action Aziraphale and Crowley Show that I’ve wanted for 20 years, and it made me feel really good and rekindled my affection for them in the best way.

[deborahwilsonbooks-blog]

Regency Romance: The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 1

Hey there, my name is Deborah Wilson, an author of regency romance. I have a short novella to share with you guys. ☺

If you’re looking for gentle, yet a undemanding sort of romance in the charming depiction of the Regency and Victorian period era, this novella could very well fit the bill nicely.

Synopsis:

Lady Delia Scarborough will not let her sister’s murderer go free. Every clue points to Kieran Dearborne, the Duke of Cowanfield. But their mutual attraction throws her plans into chaos. 

Can Kieran’s love save Delia from danger, or is her fate already sealed?

Check it out below ...

P R O L O G U E

May 1805

The storm had been threatening for days. Later, they would say that it was one of the worst storms of the last decade. The road would have been inky black, with nothing to mark the perilous turns. Were the driver and team reliable? Was Lissa afraid?

Probably not, Delia decided. Her little sister might have been dreamy, and perhaps she was inclined to leap before she looked, but no one would ever have called her a coward.

The storm would have broken quickly in the night, rolling down on the carriage like an ancient and terrible wrath. The horses ran along the road, eager for shelter, but then a thunder clap deafened them. One reared, taking its mate with it, and the carriage tilted on two wheels. For a moment, just a moment, there was a chance it would right itself. But no.

The horses, the slick road, the darkness… It was all too much. The carriage rolled, the wooden shell cracking like an egg, the timbers as sharp as teeth and—

"And as she was loved, so she will be loved, and as she wept, so now she brings tears..."

Delia realized that she must have made some kind of sound. All around her, bonneted heads turned toward her subtly, some in concern, some for gossip's sake, and all unwelcome.

Behind her black veil, Delia lowered her eyes, mutinous until she felt her father's hand fumble for hers. There was a palsy to his grip that had gotten worse when the news came to them of Lissa's death, and she squeezed his hand hard, wishing she could give him some of her strength.

She was Delia Scarborough, the daughter of the Marquess of Winsbury, who had fought at Marseilles and even farther afield. She was the descendant of eight generations of noblemen who had all served their country, loved their families, and died doing what they knew was right. She would not disgrace herself at her sister's graveside, no matter how hot her eyes felt or how thick the lump in her throat.

She almost made it. It was only when they began to lower her sister's casket into the ground that a small voice piped up in the back of her mind, a dusty memory.

Delia, it's so very dark, can I sleep with you?

Suddenly, it was as if the very air had been knocked from her lungs. Delia wavered, and for a moment, she was certain she would simply faint from the weight of the grief that dropped upon her.

She had a sudden mad impulse to insist that they stop. Lissa hated the dark; she hated the crawling things that burrowed through the earth. They could not do this.

The only thing that kept her back was the sight of her father, positioned in his elegant wheeled chair at the head of the grave. The marquess's sorrow ravaged him, left him a frame of a man rather than the full one he should have been, and Delia took a deep breath.

I will survive this. This is as hard as it ever gets. I will walk through this, and on the other side, I will have vengeance for Lissa.

That night, after the mourners had been seen off, the curate paid, and her father seen to his bed, Delia retired to her room earlier than usual. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to crawl off to her familiar bed, placing her round spectacles in their accustomed place, and hope she dreamed of Lissa in some happy land.

Instead, she carefully laid her black crepe gown over the top of her chair for her maid, and she went to her closet where she removed a gown of drab serviceable gray linen. It was one of four, the other three already packed in her small worn bag. They were identical to one another, and only the excellent fit saved her from looking like a servant who worked below stairs.

Dressed in the gray gown, Delia pulled her brown hair down from its fashionable braids and pulled the fine strands straight back from her face, scraping it all into a large bun at the nape of her neck.

When she examined herself in the mirror, she found no trace of a marquess's daughter, not even the eldest bookish girl who had few marriage prospects and little interest in looking for one.

I look like a governess. The thought satisfied her, and again, she glanced at the white handkerchief that she had seldom let out of her sight since she had received it from the wreckage.

It was clutched in Miss Scarborough's hand, Miss Delia. She hung on to it so tight, we could barely pry it out.

Her baby sister had held on to it as she lay dying on a lonely road heading north. Their driver was killed in the same accident, but of the man in the carriage with her, the one who had booked it, who had held her sister's arm as if they were already married, there was no trace.

The inn where they had spent the previous night had thought they were husband and wife, and if they had made it to Gretna Green, they would have been.

Delia's thoughts were ice-cold.

Imagine. In another world, I would be scolding Lissa for her insane recklessness and meeting my new brother-in-law. I would have no idea that he was the kind of blaggard who would seduce a girl and leave her to die in a wrecked carriage.

She wondered if Lissa would have called for him in her last moments, if she would have brought the handkerchief to her lips in prayer, listening for his return.

It didn't matter now. Her sister was dead, and the man who had caused her death was still alive. He was missing a handkerchief, however, and that was careless of him, especially as the initials on the corner and the meticulously stitched crest identified him as swiftly as an actor's spotlight on Drury Lane.

Delia slipped out of the home she had lived in all her life, avoiding the creaky floorboards and the reluctant doors. There was a note for her father left folded on his bedside, and there was a man in the village who was willing to take her to Hove, where she could find her way onto the Royal Mail coach.

Folded tightly into a tiny package at the bottom of her bag was the damning handkerchief, and as she made her way into the night, Delia's thoughts were grim.

You are going to pay for what you did to my sister, my lord Duke of Cowanfield.

C H A P T E R    0 1

"All right, that one was worse than the first. Cross her off the list."

"Before I do, exactly what reason can you give for your dislike? She had excellent references, and she wasn't so hard on the eyes either.”

Kieran Dearborn, twelfth Duke of Cowanfield, glared at his best friend, who was seated at the secretary with his quill held imperiously over a list with a diminishing number of unrejected names. Hiring a governess was woman's work, but where he could find a woman to do this for him, he had no idea.

"I didn't like the look of her. She looked shifty, as if she might give Alice laudanum on days where she was feeling too tired to deal."

Neil Marsh, the Earl of Cottering, raised an eyebrow. "Really? You've been reading too many of those lurid broadsides. They do that in the slums, not in the finer houses."

"Oh, yes, and I'm sure that all London gentlemen are the pictures of restraint when it comes to the gambling table and all London ladies are as faithful to their husbands as old dogs are to their masters."

Neil laughed. "Well, I suppose that you know something about that, don't you, Cowanfield?"

"Shut your mouth about that. We don't talk about that in front of her."

They both glanced at the divan set alongside the window, where Alice Dearborn slept as deeply as it seemed only a three-year-old could. She had pale blond hair, as unlike Kieran's own dark hair as possible, but the moment he had seen her green eyes, twin to the ones he saw in the mirror every morning, there was no doubt in his mind that she was his.

Along with that realization had come a sudden rush of desperate and protective love unlike anything he had ever felt in his dissipated thirty-two years. She was his; he had to protect her, nurture her, and see her grown... and he had no idea at all how to do it.

The governess had been something that finally occurred to him after Alice had cried herself out on her first night at Brixby Hall, the ancestral home of all Dearborns. The little girl had fallen asleep in a pile of tears and wails, and still, Kieran couldn't leave her alone. He sat in the darkness of the nursery, holding her tiny soft hand, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Neil, when next he spoke, was more sympathetic, but his voice was firm. "She is a child, not some rare and delicate bird from the southern lands that will die if she is splashed with cold water. She needs to be cared for, and unless you are hiding depths of which I have been heretofore unaware, you need to find someone to do it. I suggest that the next woman who comes in, as long as she does not have an obvious affiliation with a London street gang, should do the trick."

Kieran started to snap something that Neil probably did not deserve at all, but they were saved by the butler coming in and announcing the next woman on the list.

Well, she's definitely not affiliated with any London street gangs.

As a matter of fact, she embodied the very spirit of a governess, perfectly erect in carriage, her brown hair scraped back into an unworldly bun and a pinched look to her face as if she never smiled.

The spectacles gave her an owlish look, and Kieran might have laughed out loud at how perfectly a governess she looked before he met her eyes. They were a pale gray that flashed with a kind of silvery light he had never seen before. For some reason, looking into her gaze soothed something in him he had never before known was jagged.

Well, hello, beautiful, something in him whispered, and then, almost against his will, he noticed her lush figure under the painstakingly fitted but plain gown she wore. It was hard to imagine a pin out of place on her, and briefly, Kieran wondered what it would take to make her look unsettled or even in the least rumpled.

At Neil's polite cough, Kieran looked up to see that the object of his attention was giving him a rather stern look. If she had felt that brief electric shock between them, she gave no sign, and he hastily sat up straighter.

"This is Miss Delia Jones, late of Hove, aged twenty-two years. She has served as a governess in a single home since the age of eighteen, the residence of Lord and Lady Heatherford, overseeing the needs of their three daughters."

Neil looked up briefly from the sheet he read from, fixing Kieran with a sharp eye. "Her reference looks beyond reproach to me, Cowanfield."

Kieran glared at his friend, and then turned back to the young lady in gray. Delia seemed too fanciful a name for such a stern creature, or at least it did if you discounted her extraordinary eyes.

"Well, Miss Jones, what have you to say for yourself?"

"I say that I hope very much I will be suited to the post you offer, your grace. I know that every situation is different, but given the nature of your advertisement, I have some hope that we may suit."

Her voice was pitched lower than he had expected. The slightly husky timbre gave her an air that was at once grave and oddly sensual, and he shook that thought off in a hurry. It had apparently been too long since he had gone carousing in London if he was entertaining a fascination with a governess.

"And why do you think that you might suit?"

"You were looking for someone who would broaden your child's horizons in the ladylike arts. As you can see from my character, I have instructed the Wembly sisters in history, deportment, dance, penmanship, French, and art. They are well-launched into Society, and the only reason I left was because their youngest was a son, and therefore had his own tutor."

"And it has nothing to do with the 200 pounds a year that I am offering."

It was a ludicrous sum to offer a governess, who might ordinarily make a tenth of it, but Kieran had thought it would bring out the best. Instead, it had brought out a mix of real candidates and fortune-hunters, and he was beginning to be jaded about the whole thing.

Instead of being flustered or offended, Miss Jones only inclined her head slight.

"Of course, it does. I can see that you are willing to pay into the idea of giving your daughter the best foundation on which to base her life. I am confident that you will be satisfied with my work and that you will not have cause to regret that sum."

She was so self-possessed that she made Kieran feel oddly ashamed of himself. It was hardly a feeling he enjoyed, and so he shrugged it off.

"You're very assured for one so young."

"If I were not, I would not be here applying for this position."

Neil laughed, a bright sound in the quiet tension of the room. "Well, she is certainly fit to instruct you, Cowanfield. That's obviously clear."

Kieran glared at his friend, but he could hardly argue with him. He searched for some reason to deny her, something that he didn't like, something that would make him toss out her application just as he had all the women who had come before her.

There was nothing there, and that in its own way was shocking. He nodded, almost reluctantly.

"All right. I'm willing to see how you do with Alice."

Miss Jones nodded, looking at him expectantly. "I would like to meet her and to ensure that we are a good fit, my lord."

He nodded toward Alice, who was still sleeping in a sprawl of limbs and silk on the divan. He supposed she was easy to miss, given the fact that she looked like nothing so much as a frilled pink cushion.

"There she is."

For the first time, Miss Jones looked surprised. Her gaze traveled from the toddler to Kieran and back again.

"My lord, how old is Alice?"

"I suppose I should have said in the paper, but she is three. Is there some problem?"

Miss Jones pursed her lips, as if she were fighting with herself on some inward matter. "She is terribly young for a governess. At her age, children are still inclined to be with their nurses."

Kieran scowled, already not relishing the idea of interviewing yet more women.

"What is the difference?"

Miss Jones shot him a particularly scathing look. "Your grace, my repertoire includes French and dance. Miss Alice very much seems as if she needs to be taught how to handle stairs and how to play with a kitten."

Kieran tilted his head at her. "Are you trying to talk yourself out of the job?"

For the first time, Miss Jones looked disturbed. She seemed so diligent that he wondered if there was a chance she would give up the job simply because she was not the best person for it. Somehow, it made him want to hire her all the more.

"I am not, but—"

The topic of all the talk had apparently had enough sleep. All three adults in the room turned when she uttered a small cry, and then, to Kieran's shock, she tumbled straight off the side of the divan. Alice hit the ground with a surprisingly loud thump. For a moment, she simply sat in her own surprise, and then her round pink face screwed up for a scream.

Kieran was ready to rush over and to scoop her up to make sure she was not injured, but Miss Jones got there first. Kneeling down by the weeping child, she assessed her with a cool eye.

"All right, Alice, let's look you over and see if you are hurt. Stand still please."

The woman's cool and firm tone stopped Alice's tears dead in their tracks, and she looked up at her new governess with surprise.

In return, Miss Jones gave her a sunny smile and though Kieran knew he should be more worried about his daughter, he found himself drawn to the sheer sweetness of that smile, the way it made the stern young governess look positively pretty.

She's not such a long way off from beauty, truly...

Alice stood still, hiccupping a little as Miss Jones checked her for any bumps or injuries.

"Well, there we go, my girl. You're just fine, nothing but a bit of surprise to worry about."

Alice looked uncertain, but Miss Jones reached out and tapped her nose gently.

"Wouldn't you rather play than worry about crying?"

That elicited an immediate grin from Alice. "Can we go outside?"

Her voice was soft and babyish but clear, and Kieran felt a tug at his heart.

Miss Jones rose from the floor, turning toward Kieran with a slightly hesitant look on her face.

"She wants to go out. Is that something you—"

"You can do it. You're her governess now."

Miss Jones looked at him, that same slightly flushed expression on her face. "Your grace—"

"It's decided. She may be too young to have a governess, but call yourself whatever you want. You will be taking care of her."

C H A P T E R    0 2

Later that afternoon, Delia unpacked her meager belongings into the governess's bedroom and wondered what in the world had happened.

I thought I would be working with an older girl, one closer to thirteen or fourteen. I had not expected such a little child.

The advertisement, she now realized, was placed not by a woman who would know such things but by a man who had no clue how a nursery was run.

It was mere chance how she had found the advertisement in the first place. She read the paper every day, but it was the address that had leaped out to her. She had spent every day since discovering the handkerchief from her sister's death researching the Duke of Cowanfield. His country address at Brixby Hall had lunged out at her like a tiger from the page.

From there, the references were forged, rather expertly if she said so herself, and then she had made her way to Hove to travel out to Brixby Hall.

Now that she was assured the job, she had to wonder at her reluctance to take it. She had put a great deal of time and effort into coming to Brixby Hall specifically for this reason, but now that she was here, her feet were getting increasingly cold.

Alice is simply so little. Where in the world is her mother?

Her gaze darkened as she thought of the man she had met that afternoon seducing Lissa while he had this little girl at home. Had Lissa known about this child or who her mother might have been? Surely, the mother was dead, or was she simply gone?

Delia shook her head, willing to put her questions aside for now. The important thing was that she was where she needed to be, and soon enough, she would be free to do the investigative work that she needed to do.

She was still lost in thought, however, when a humble little knock came at the door that connected her small suite to Alice's far larger bedroom. She looked up, and then crossed over to open the door.

Alice looked up at her hopefully, her small hands clasped in front of her. "Do you want to draw?"

Despite her resolution to stay detached and to only use her position to investigate, Delia could feel herself melt a little looking at Alice. There was something at once so hopeful and so very lonely about her that it broke Delia's heart.

"Of course, poppet. Why don't you show me where your pencils are kept?"

Alice guided her to a drawer full of scrap paper and lead pencils. Delia would have been pleased enough to watch her, but the little girl pressed paper and pencil on her as well.

Well, I suppose if I keep her entertained and cared for, I will not ruin her.

Alice was concentrating so hard on her drawings that the tip of her tongue protruded from her mouth, and when Delia looked down at her paper, she could see the little girl was drawing distinctly human shapes.

"Can you tell me about your drawing, Alice?"

Alice smiled at her shyly and pointed at one figure, blond and floating close to the top of the page.

"That's Mama. Mama lives in heaven now. We used to live in Shefford, but then Mama got sick and left."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."

Alice nodded, and even if there was a troubled look in her eyes, she moved her finger to another figure, this one wrapped in a bubble of some sort with what looked like stick ponies in front of it.

"After Mama went to Heaven, Grandmother and Grandfather talked about sending me to a workhouse or to an orph'nage."

"I see..."

"And then Papa came and took me away in a carriage. He yelled at Grandmother and Grandfather for a long time, and then we came here."

Her finger traced a rectangular structure Delia assumed was Brixby Hall, and she went on to make little lumpy shrubs all the way around it.

Workhouse? Orphanage? What kind of grandparents would think of such a thing when a child was so young and her mother so newly dead? Delia had heard some people were simply so poor that there was no other recourse than to farm the children out, but somehow, she did not think that Alice's parents were in that number.

"I'm glad your Papa came to get you, Alice."

"I am, too! We went into his carriage, and sometimes, he let me pet the horses."

Her obvious awe for the carriage horses made Delia smile. She wondered, just a little wistful, if there had ever been a time in her past when everything could be fixed by petting a carriage horse.

"Well, thank you for telling me that, Alice."

"S'okay."

"I did not yell a lot at your grandparents, Alice."

Delia jumped a little, looking up in alarm. The duke leaned against the door jamb, casual in shirtsleeves and trousers. He watched them both with a considering look in his eyes.

"You did, Papa. You yelled a lot."

"Hm. Perhaps I did, darling, but that was only because I was so concerned for you."

Again, Delia felt that uncomfortable surge of attraction for this man, the one who had ruined her family. It had first struck her in their strange interview, but now she felt it again.

In another time, another place, she might have passed him the street without thinking anything except how handsome he was. He was as dark as his daughter was fair, but his eyes gleamed green like those of some large stalking cat. He was tall and lean with a natural athleticism and grace, and obviously, he could walk as quietly as a cat when he wished to do so.

Belatedly, Delia realized that she was a servant in the presence of her lord, and she rose up before dipping in a curtsy. "Your grace."

The duke waved her off, coming into the room to stand behind them at the table. "Don't bother with that sort of thing while you're in the house. No one has the time for that nonsense."

Delia frowned. "It is hardly appropriate for Alice to allow servants to become so very familiar with her and her family."

The duke gave her a slow lazy smile that made her stomach do a slow roll, and alarm bells went off in her head. Was this how it had been for Lissa?

"And I say it is fine. You're her governess or her nurse or something like that. You'll be taking care of her. The only way it would be a problem is if you intended to abuse her trust. You don't intend to do that, do you?"

"Certainly not, your grace!"

Alice looked up at the pair of them, a tiny wrinkle between her fair brows.

Kieran looked down at her fondly.

"What's the matter, Alice?"

"Why's... why's Miss Jones calling you that? Does that mean she doesn't like you? Grandmother and Grandfather called you that."

Kieran grinned. "And they certainly didn't like me. I don't know, Alice, maybe it does mean that Miss Jones doesn't like me."

He turned to her with a surprisingly innocent look on his face. "Is that what you are saying, Miss Jones?"

Delia felt her face flush with heat. She knew she was being teased, but it didn't seem to matter.

"I'm not saying that I don't like you at all, your—"

"Well, if you like me, then certainly we must find you something else to call me. You ought not use the same terms of address as someone who dislikes me. Alice, don't you agree?"

"Yes, Papa! Miss Jones should call you something else!"

"I see that I am outnumbered, even if this is not at all appropriate!"

For some reason, both father and child seemed to find her comment ridiculously funny. She might have been angrier, but Alice leaned against her sweetly, and she felt her pique run out.

"You could call him Papa."

"Certainly not, Alice. That is a title for the two of you. He is not my papa. I have one of my own far away from here."

"Try Kieran."

She blinked at the mention of the duke's Christian name. Suddenly, what had started off as a ridiculous joke at the governess's expense turned into something else. It was simply not done for a governess to call a duke by his first name. It would not even have been allowed to her as a marquess's daughter, not without a great deal of scandal.

"Yes, call him that! Not your grace!"

Alice seemed so enthusiastic that Delia didn't want to refuse. She turned to the man who was supposed to be her most hated enemy.

"All right. But only in the house and not in front of guests. Someone must teach Alice how to behave in company."

"Whatever you like, of course."

"Well, good. Now that that's settled—"

"I'd like to hear you say it."

"What?"

"My name. I would like to hear you say it."

There was something strangely vulnerable in those green eyes, and again, she felt that strange tug at her heart. How long had it been since he had heard someone say his first name?

"All right. Kieran."

Instead of coming out as brisk and businesslike as she intended, it came out wistfully, almost like a sigh. Even as Delia blushed, Kieran broke out into a smile, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

"Well, there, that's fine."

"Papa and Miss Jones are friends!" Alice seemed enormously pleased by that fact, dropping her pencil to clap loudly in delight. Delia wished that her own feelings were that clear.

"I... I suppose we are."

"Well, we will be living with one another for some time, so I should hope we are. We dine at seven in this household. Make sure that Alice is presentable then, and that you are as well."

"Kieran?" How did that name already slip past her lips? Why was she so comfortable using it already?

"I have a hankering to dine in the family style tonight, and of course you will join us... Delia."

It was one thing to be asked to use the duke's first name. She told herself it probably had more to do with Alice's comfort than anything else. It felt like quite another to hear her own name on the man's lips. She wondered if he had said Lissa's name like that, and a chill ran down her spine.

"I did not give you permission to use my name."

Instead of coming out stiff and icy as she intended it to, it came out slightly cross and humorous instead. She almost couldn't blame him if he smiled at her.

"Then it is a very good thing that I am simply going to take the liberty on myself instead. See you at seven."

He was out the door, and Alice was babbling about all the lovely things she had gotten to eat since she came to Brixby Hall, from cakes to toast to cucumbers. Delia listened with half an ear, and she realized that in just a few hours, she would be dining with the man who had abandoned her sister to die on a dark road.

I cannot let him sway me with sweet words. I cannot. I will not.

C H A P T E R    0 3

There was a time when Kieran had eaten nearly every meal out. Brixby Hall kept an excellent cook, but most of the time, the only people she cooked for were the servants. Kieran's lifestyle kept him out on the town at all hours, and he patronized many fine restaurants.

Ever since Alice had come to live with him, however, he never went to restaurants anymore, and he had even come to enjoy the comforts of eating in his own house.

Tonight, he was, strangely enough, looking forward to dining with his daughter and her very odd governess.

She really was a bit of a conundrum, Kieran decided. On one hand, she looked stern enough to keep a battalion of Roman soldiers in line. On the other, there was the look he had seen on her face when she was drawing with Alice. He had listened with a stone in his heart as Alice had described her grandparents. Some part of him had hoped that she was too young to remember the things they had said about her and how she needed to be farmed out.

To hear her talking about it so matter-of-factually was terrible, but then he had heard her speak of him, and well, also of the carriage horses, but he felt ten feet tall.

He had wondered, before entering the room, what Delia had made of all of that. He had been ready to throw her out on her ear if she said anything that made Delia feel the least little bit unhappy, but the soft look on her face convinced him that he had made the right choice in governesses.

A footman announced Miss Jones, and Kieran stood, expecting to see Alice and belatedly mindful of Delia's admonitions about propriety. To his surprise, however, Delia was alone.

"Alice?"

"I'm afraid she rather wore herself out. After you left, we went for a walk in the garden, and she was thrilled dash about seeing and experiencing everything. Just a few minutes ago, she fell into a deep sleep, and I thought it best not to wake her."

Kieran raised his eyebrows. "That's good. She has been up at all hours and sleeping during the day."

Delia gave him a rather severe look, but he supposed that having a toddler up with him at four in the morning was hardly a good impression.

"She should be sleeping at night and awake during the day, your grace. She is a child, not a bat."

"And I asked you to call me Kieran. Maybe you are no better at listening than she is."

To Kieran's delight, instead of looking cowed or apologetic, Delia only tilted her chin up stubbornly. "Alice is incredibly biddable. You only need to ask her to do a thing and she does it. I think the problem must be laid at your door."

"Ah. Well, I will certainly take that into consideration."

She gave him a look that told him precisely what she thought of that, but she nodded.

"I wanted to tell you that, and to bid you a good night."

"Delia. Stay."

She turned to look at him with surprise and a touch of wariness. He realized belatedly that it was certainly a strange situation, a governess being asked to dine with a lord without his child present.

He frowned.

"I'm not going to do anything untoward, I promise you. If you do not like the thought of dining with me, you may leave, but I had thought to talk about Alice."

The moment he mentioned his child's name, her brow smoothed out, and she allowed him to pull out a chair for her. Kieran felt a twinge of guilt, because the offer initially had more to do with enjoying her company,y than it had to do with Alice.

Ah well. I suppose I'm not so virtuous as all that, but it is true; we do need to speak about Alice.

Dinner was a simple meal of roast and boiled vegetables, and after the servants had set the plates on the table, they were alone in the family dining room, a more intimate affair than the grand dining room.

Kieran noticed Delia watching him as she cut into her meat, something wary in her gaze. Still, she had decided to stay when he had given her the option to leave, so he supposed that counted for something.

"I heard Alice telling you about the fight I had with her grandparents."

"She said you yelled a rather lot."

"As a matter of fact, I did. Believe me, I started out reasonably enough. I did lose my temper when they brought up the idea of payment."

Delia frowned. "What?"

"They'd been ready to give Alice to a poorhouse or an orphanage, but when I arrived after discovering that her mother had died, they wanted me to pay for her, as if she were a leg of lamb."

Delia drew her breath in hard, and her silver eyes went ice cold. At that moment, if Alice's grandparents had seen her look, Kieran thought there was a chance they might have just handed Alice over immediately.

"How dare they, that little girl is their own flesh and blood."

"And mine, which I tried to remind them of. In the end, I gave them six hundred pounds and told them never, ever to contact me again or to try to seek out Alice."

"And they agreed?"

"Readily."

Delia shook her head, and she still looked as if she would like to go find those people and wring their necks. "How terrible of them. I am so glad you were able to rescue Alice from those vultures."

"I'm not telling you this to pat myself on the back. I need you to understand how things stand with Alice, and where she came from."

Delia stiffened. Something in her changed, and Kieran could not tell what.

"Your grace—"

"Kieran."

"Kieran, then. I do not need to know about... about your family situation. I am not at all sure that it is appropriate to—"

Kieran's dark look made her stutter to a stop. "I'm afraid you do. Alice is very special to me, and I would not have her harmed for all the world. However, she is a little girl with something of a difficult past, and it would be altogether too easy for someone who did not know to say something hurtful to her. Do you understand?"

Delia nodded, and even if she looked a little nervous still, she seemed to genuinely see why he was telling her all of this information.

"All right. I want what is best for Alice as well. Tell me what you wish."

It flashed to Kieran's mind how very different Delia was from the women he tended to meet. Whether they were debutantes in the ballroom or women in the brothels, they could never ask him enough about himself. They were looking for leverage, for intimacy, for information they could use to better themselves and draw closer to him. Delia was nothing like that, and he had never known that it would be such a relief to be with someone like that.

"I met Alice's mother some years ago when I was out in the country on some business. She worked at the inn in Denby that I was staying at. I was hoping to acquire some property in the area, though I suppose that is hardly relevant."

Kieran paused, thinking that the next part was surprisingly difficult to say. One did not speak of such things with women. He had barely done more than outline the situation to Neil.

"I came back to my rooms one night and found her waiting in my bed."

He glanced up at Delia to gauge her reaction, and he was startled to see not censure nor contempt but instead confusion.

Well, she's been in service for the last five years. She might actually be that innocent.

"She was, er, there to offer me her favors. Do... do you know what that means?"

Delia gave him a narrow look. "Please, Kieran, I am not a child. I have at least a rough idea of why she was in your bed. I have read books."

The image flashed through Kieran's mind of Delia tucked into bed on a winter night, her nose not more than four inches from the page and a becoming blush on her cheeks. He imagined her lips slightly parted, and then he pulled his mind away. He had truly become a lecher sometime in the past few days; that was the only explanation for it.

"Ah, yes. Well. We kept up our assignation for the four weeks I stayed at the inn, and then we left things with a kiss and smile."

Delia's eyebrow raised. "And... she was content with that? That was all she desired from you?"

Kieran shrugged. "We did not speak so very much. She came to my room willingly. I gave her gifts that she did not ask for or turn away. What more needs to be said?"

"A great deal, I would think, but please, continue."

Now he could see a faint blush on Delia's cheeks, but as truly charming as it was, he was not telling this story to titillate a pretty young woman.

"Well, I went back to London and thought no more about it for almost four years. Then I got a letter in the mail from that same girl, telling me that she was dying and I must come and take our daughter."

"You mean she never told you about the fact that she was pregnant?"

"Believe me, if I had known, I would certainly not have left it that long before I met my child. The girl herself was clever and wild, and I could not guess her motives. Perhaps she thought I would not believe her, or perhaps given that her parents owned the inn and had money, she felt secure despite the scandal. I have no idea.

"In any case, I flew back to Denby just as they were putting her into the ground, and there I found Alice."

For a moment, something flickered across Delia's face, anger or grief or something similar. She trembled, and without thinking of what he was doing at all, Kieran reached out to take her hand. She flinched, and then she squeezed it hard before pulling away, the image of a proper governess.

"Please, go on."

"There was no doubt in my mind that Alice was my child after I saw those eyes. They run in my family, and she looks very much like the children of some of my more distant cousins. Even with that, I might have left her to stay with her grandparents, if they were loving caregivers, but—"

"But they certainly were not. Yes."

Kieran sighed. "So, I bought my daughter from her own blood, because I could not do otherwise, and here I am. And I told you all of this because I do not care how competent you are or how good your references, if you make my daughter regret her birth or the circumstances of her coming to live with me for one moment, I will shout you into the street."

He had no idea how Delia was going to react to all of this. It was a strange story, and the potential for scandal was intense. She might have been disgusted with all of it or contemptuous or cowed by his threat, but instead, she only laughed.

The laugh sounded almost reluctant, and it was a lighter sound than Kieran might have expected from her speaking voice.

She looked shocked at her own laughter, raising her hand to cover her mouth, and then she shook her head.

"Rightly so. I would think that any good father would want to protect his daughter the way that you are looking to do."

Kieran tilted his head to look at Delia a little more closely. "You do not have the reaction I thought you might have."

"I did not expect you to be so involved a parent, so I suppose we are even."

Kieran wondered if he should take offense to that but given the parenting he had seen in the ton, where children were left to servants to raise and parents saw their well-behaved and utterly silent children only at mealtimes, he supposed that she had a point.

When Delia spoke next, it was not about parentage or bastardy. Instead, she spoke of getting reading primers from a special firm in London, to see if Alice might be persuaded to read more quickly. Kieran was certainly pleased to discover that she took her position seriously, but still, he was slightly disappointed not to hear more about the reading that she had apparently done...

C H A P T E R    0 4

A week later, Delia collapsed into her bed exhausted, staring up at the ceiling blankly

My goodness, how in the world did my own nurse get on when there were two of us and not just one?

Alice was a lively little girl, and once she had become comfortable with Delia, she never stopped wanting to play with her, to show her things and to simply be with her. Delia guessed that the little girl had been starved for love and attention ever since her mother died, and though Kieran wanted the best for her, he was fairly hapless as to how to handle that.

A real nurse, Delia decided, would have pointedly told Kieran that fathers were an unusual presence in the nursery, perhaps even a disruptive one, but Delia had not had the heart to do so.

After all, I am here to learn all his secrets and to make sure that nothing about his situation escapes my notice. This is a good way to do that.

That was her excuse, but deep in her heart, she knew that it likely had far more to do how Kieran could sit and watch Alice babble for hours and how he took such a serious interest in teaching her to recognize her letters. It was still a work in progress, but Alice's mind was as limber as soft clay, holding all the impressions that Kieran and Delia left on it.

Outside her window, a distant storm rumbled. There was meant to be a soaking rain in the morning, but until then, the air was still and hot.

Today had been especially trying, with Kieran called away for shipping concerns in London and Alice fretful and nervous about the unusual summer weather. More than once, Delia had had to ask her to sit still on a stool, away from her toys and drawing pens, and simply breathe to calm down.

Poor little mite. I want to crawl out of my skin a little bit as well.

Delia made a face, thinking of how little progress she had made. She had come to find information linking the Duke of Cowanfield to her sister, but so far, she had only managed to do an excellent imitation of a nurse.

Well, no time like the present to get to work, is there?

It occurred to her suddenly that on a night like this, most of the servants would have taken to their beds to try to sleep out the heat, leaving the upper portion of Brixby Hall completely empty. Kieran himself—really, when had she started thinking of him as Kieran, even in her thoughts?—was not due back from London until tomorrow afternoon. That meant that this was the perfect time for her to start her investigation.

She rose from her bed, but the idea of reaching for her heavy gown and putting it on again made her despair. It would be fine to go in her light sleeping shift. She could always claim that she wanted a drink of water and was only going to bed, after all.

Delia was careful to avoid the creaking floorboards in her room that might wake Alice up and tell her it was time to play again. They had only recently convinced her that sleeping at night was far superior to sleeping during the day, and Delia was loath to disturb that.

I am not a nurse, I am the daughter of the Marquess of Winsbury. I am here to find my vengeance.

The stern reminder did not prevent her from peeking into Alice's adjoining room to make sure that the little girl was still sleeping, however. Shaking her head at herself, Delia padded to Kieran's study.

Like most of Brixby Hall, the study itself was large, elegant, and to Delia's eye, relentlessly masculine. Dark shelves filled with serious tomes lined the walls, and save for a little ornamentation in the molding and above the door, it was plain, almost stark.

She knew that Kieran kept a journal of sorts on his desk. He noted the events of the day, partially for business, partially as a memory aid, and he had mentioned that he had kept it for years. That meant that there was a chance Lissa was in it somewhere, and it would be a good place to start.

The journal was a handsome thing with an embossed leather cover and crisp thick white pages, and it rested neatly squared up at the corner of Kieran's desk. She noted how it was positioned, and opened it to the bookmark, paging back.

With a strange and almost guilty pleasure, she saw that she and Alice were the primary topics of the past week, and against her will, she smiled at the entry from two days ago.

July 11

-Meals with A & D

-Played at war with A, and D served as my military council

-A shows a talent for strategy and D for treason

Well, perhaps it hadn't been fair to gang up on Kieran with Alice, but in the end, she and Alice had ended up triumphant and claimed a basket of strawberries as their prize. Alice had even proved gracious upon victory and insisted on sharing the strawberries with her father.

What in the world is wrong with me? I'm not looking for pleasant memories with the man.

Determinedly, she flipped further back in the journals. Though she was determined to find evidence of Kieran anywhere near where she and Lissa had lived with their father, she couldn't stop herself from briefly looking over the time he had spent in Denby, convincing Alice's grandparents to give her up. The entries were terse to the point of confusion. Kieran mentioned travel and the address of the inn. Underlined in one entry, without any explanation, was a notation for the sum of six hundred pounds.

That's how much Alice's grandparents demanded. Delia shivered as she touched the page and could almost feel Kieran's fury bleeding through the ink and paper.

She went further back and hesitated briefly on June 18th, the day of her sister's funeral. There was nothing there, only some household notes about servants and requests for time away, and she felt a brief stab of the old anger coming up again.

She went back to May, when Lissa would have started the affair, and for a moment, she only sat and stared. The pages carefully pre-numbered for the last two weeks of May were empty, completely empty. Their blank smoothness woke in in her an urge to mar them, to tear them with a pen knife and her own nails until she calmed herself.

Did you not want any memory of her? Did you want to make sure that someday, someone like me wouldn't discover what you had done?

Delia's rage had been blunted over the last few days of watching Kieran act the doting father with Alice and with Alice's own sweetness. For a short while, she had been able to forget her grief and her rage and simply take care of Alice. Now she could see what a fool she had been and how she had been fooled.

What was I expecting? He had an affair with an inn girl and never saw her again. He only knew about his own daughter because he was told in a dying woman's letter.

She paged back to the beginning of the empty entries, and what she saw took her breath away.

13 May

-asked coachman to prepare team for long journey

-sent ahead to secure lodgings in Anniston

-preparations for extended stay

Anniston was the town closest to her father's property. Lissa had gone there frequently for sewing supplies, ribbons, and sweets. Sometimes, she dragged Delia along, and Delia felt a deep pain in her heart, thinking of how impatient she had always been when Lissa insisted on her presence.

Couldn't I have been a little more patient with her? Even a little? All she wanted was to spend time with me.

She stared at the ceiling until her breath came easier. There was no time for grieving now.

She heard the step in the hallway just as she was putting the journal back where she found it, squared up and in the corner. She was just thinking that she should find some dark corner to hide in when the door opened, and in the doorway stood Kieran.

Delia froze, in her shift, a candle in her hand, as guilty as a thief with her hand in the till.

C H A P T E R    0 5

As it turned out, Kieran hadn't had to go all the way to London. The ship's captain had shown up at the halfway point, as he had family in the town, and there they had been able to conduct the pertinent business. Kieran might have been more irritated if it hadn't meant that he would be back home in half the time.

On the carriage ride back to Brixby Hall, Kieran had to laugh at himself a little. There was a time when he wouldn’t have been so eager to return to his ancestral estate in the country. Now, the pleasures of London seemed to pale to bleached white when compared to spending the day with Alice and Delia.

I'm sure that at some point, the newness will wear off, and then I will find myself bored with life in the country and doting on my daughter... but damned if I can tell when that would be.

The only problem was that he was hoping to pick up a decent set of paints for Alice in London, and now he would have to send away for them.

If he were honest, Alice wasn't the only person for whom he had considered purchasing gifts. If there was one thing he was familiar with, it was presents that would delight a pretty girl, but as the carriage had rumbled ever toward London, he’d realized that that expertise was entirely wrong.

Delia had no need for beautiful jewelry or expensive scents from Paris or Milan. She wouldn't thrill to a new hat trimmed with ostrich feathers, and he could see the look she would shoot him over the top of her spectacles at the idea of receiving a pair of leather dancing slippers.

Books then, or perhaps a modiste to come and make her some new gowns. Hers are so very gray.

He was bone tired in the carriage, but when he finally gained the house, Kieran realized that he didn't quite want to sleep yet.

I can read for a little while, perhaps...

He had not expected to see a candle burning in his library, and he certainly had not expected to see Delia, clad in nothing but her shift, standing there holding it, a guilty look on her face.

"And what in the world are you doing here?"

His mind flashed from simple theft to Delia letting in thieves from her London gang to arson and to how grieved Alice would be to lose her, and then sense asserted itself. This was Delia.

"I was on my way back from the kitchen for a drink, and, well, I thought I would get something to read."

"That explains the shift, I suppose."

"You know, a gentleman might not mention it and might allow me to make my way back to my room without any odd or pointed questions."

"Is that what a gentleman would do?"

"I am sure of it!" She spoke with such indignant conviction that Kieran laughed, stripping his own light linen jacket from his shoulders.

She jumped a little when he stepped closer, but after he draped the black jacket around her, she pulled it close with all the dignity of a queen offered her regalia.

Kieran thought abruptly about the time she had mentioned reading before, when they had been discussing what went on between a man and a woman in bed, and he couldn't stop himself from grinning.

"So, you were looking for something to read?"

Something about his tone must have irritated her, because she stood up very straight and glared at him.

"I was, and now I will be returning to my rooms."

"But you have not yet found anything to read. Shall I help you?"

Delia hesitated, looking momentarily unsure, and Kieran closed the study door behind him, setting his own candle in a small depression in the wall. It was cunningly outfitted with mirrors, and the dancing candle flame set a reflection of light throughout the room

"Perhaps I can help you. It is, after all, my study."

"You needn't trouble yourself..."

"I would like to take the trouble. What do you like to read?"

Delia seemed to come to a decision, and she offered him a smile that was small but seemed genuine.

"Truthfully? I like just about everything. I like romances, of course, but I also like adventure novels, of the kind that they write for young boys. I like history and science, and I even like reading about mathematics if the writer is good at what they do."

Kieran laughed with delight at her answer. "Quite the little scholar, aren't you? Have you read all your life?"

To his delight, Delia drifted closer to him, perhaps to hear his quiet voice more clearly, perhaps simply because she wanted to. He abruptly became more aware than ever that she was only in her shift and his jacket; a thin and nearly transparent layer of cotton lawn and another layer of fine linen were all that stood between her soft skin and his hands... or his mouth...

"I have. I'm afraid I wasted many days when I should have been out playing or interacting with others in my rooms with my nose buried in a book. My mother was quite in despair."

The slight hint of melancholy in her tone wiped away Kieran's thoughts about seducing her over one of the books that were kept on the very top shelf, behind a completely innocuous copy of the works of Marcus Aurelius. He coughed slightly, wondering when he had become such a lecher.

"Well, let's see, I have plenty of adventure, not much romance, I am afraid, and plenty of history as well..."

She came closer just as he turned toward the shelves, and somehow, somehow, they ended up standing with less than four inches of space between them, Delia's back to the shelves and Kieran looming over her. He noticed that her hair, usually scraped back in a bun, was in a plait now, and soft wisps escaped to frame her face.

Without thinking, he reached up to tuck one errant lock behind her ear, and then almost as if hypnotized, he cupped her face in his hand. Her skin was terribly soft under his palm, and when she looked up at him, her spectacles slid down her nose, revealing her wide gray eyes.

"Your eyes look darker in this light, like a storm instead of a pool of quicksilver."

"Kieran..."

He wasn't sure whether she meant to urge him on or to push him back. Her voice trailed off, and underneath it, he heard a breath of longing, something with its own gravity, and heedless, he was falling.

The moment his lips touched hers, something in him was set on fire, like a burning beacon. She felt like passion, like life, like a flower blooming alone in an empty desert. He knew, somehow in his mind, that she felt the same thing, that she needed this as much as he did. When he felt her small hand reach blindly up for a handful of his shirt, grabbing the fabric and hanging on, he thought that there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for her.

Kieran wasn't sure which of them deepened the kiss, but then he was tasting her mouth more completely, her head tilted back so he could sweep his tongue between her soft lips. She was perfect... and then she pulled away.

He almost reached for her again, but then, in the candlelight, he could see her spectacles were askew and her eyes behind them were wild.

"We cannot do this! I cannot… Oh. Oh, goodnight, Kieran, I can't..."

He started to ask her what was wrong, but she snatched up her candle and pelted from the room, taking his jacket with him.

Kieran stared after her, every bone in his body telling him to run after her. Then he thought of what it would look like, the lord of the manor racing after the governess in the middle of the night, and he cursed.

C H A P T E R    0 6

Delia came awake to the feeling of little fingers prying at her lips. She sputtered, sitting up, and with confusion, she saw that it was Alice, sitting beside her and looking at her with concern.

"Why, Alice, what are you doing in my room? Did you have a bad dream?

"I'm not in your bedroom. Why are you wearing Papa's jacket?"

Delia awakened all the way, and her memory came back with a rush. Her face reddened when she thought of what had almost happened in the study, what actually had happened. She felt as if she was being torn in a dozen different directions. One part of her was still brutally and terrible enraged by the evidence she had found in Kieran's journal. It wasn't anything a court would accept, and it would prove nothing at all, but it was more proof than she’d had before. It told her she was on the right track and that she had to keep digging.

The fact that she had kissed Kieran, or allowed him to kiss her, was something else.

The other part of her, the part that she couldn't ignore no matter how hard she tried, wanted more of that. The moment Kieran's hands had ended up on her body, all she could think was how right it had felt. He felt warm and sweet and perfect, and it was as if everything in her life had been leading up to this.

She had no idea what would have become of them if she hadn't pulled away, if the realization that she was in the dark with a man she had only met a week ago hadn't struck her like a ton of bricks.

"Er, well, I am wearing your Papa's jacket because I was cold last night. We were talking in the study."

Alice frowned at her. "But it was so warm last night..."

"Temperatures drop in the dark, and I was out of bed, wanting a drink of water. I was being very silly. Not like you, sweet girl, who stayed in bed all night."

Oh, I certainly hope this won't convince her that it is all right to go roaming after dark...

"And it is time for us to get dressed anyway, so I shall put Papa's coat over this chair for him. I shall get dressed, and I shall help you get dressed. How does that sound?"

It sounded just fine to Alice, and by the time Delia was once more securely dressed in drab gray, and she had helped Alice into a sturdy blue dress that she could wear outside to play, Delia was feeling much better. She sent to the kitchen for some breakfast for the two of them, and they were just finishing when there was a knock, and then the door opened.

Kieran looked, Delia thought with some dismay, more handsome than he had any right to after being up as late as he had been. He wore black trousers that clung to his long legs, and the dark gray waistcoat over a gleaming white shirt only served to make his hair look even darker.

"Papa!"

Alice left her breakfast and pelted over to be picked up, and Delia didn't have the heart to tell her that that was far from proper table manners.

"Oof, there's my sweet girl." Kieran hefted her up into the air before bringing her in for a close hug. "I missed you yesterday.'

"I missed you, too, Papa, but Delia let me draw, and we drew you pictures..."

As Alice chattered on about the pictures they had drawn, Delia met Kieran's gaze over Alice's shoulder. If she had guessed what she might have expected after the previous night, she might have predicted glee or triumph, or worse, some kind of terrible secret lust. Instead, Kieran looked as cautious as she felt. Somehow that made her feel a little better.

I am only relieved because he does not expect anything. It is only because I need him to believe that I am nothing more than what I pretend to be.

Eventually, Kieran brought Alice back down to the floor, where she scampered for the drawings that she had made for him.

"I was thinking perhaps we could go for a picnic today."

"A picnic, your grace?"

His title popped out automatically, an attempt, perhaps to put some kind of distance between them, something to remind them both of who they were.

Kieran frowned. "No."

"No?"

"No. You are not going to retreat back to calling me by my title whenever we are uncomfortable with each other."

"Are we uncomfortable with each other?"

"I don't know what to call it. I was hoping a picnic today might clear some things up."

"All right. But please do not bring anything disturbing or inappropriate up in front of Alice."

Instead of being angry at the reprimand, Kieran smiled crookedly.

"Wouldn't dream of it. After all of this, it is still nice to know that you are on the job."

* * *

By mid-morning, the barouche was waiting in front of Brixby Hall, and Alice was eager to go out into the summer day. It had rained hard early that morning, and everything was left gleaming and green. Even Delia, who had felt a certain amount of apprehension about going out with Kieran, felt something in her ease and loosen for being out in nature.

Instead of having a groom drive them, Kieran had stepped up to the driver's seat himself. As Alice chattered about plants and animals, Delia glanced at Kieran's broad back in front of her, wondering what he was thinking.

The picnic was delicious, and Alice was allowed to run and play in the meadow close to the blanket they had spread out if she did not go very far.

"My family came here to picnic when I was a boy. It was something we did quite often in the summer before my mother died."

"I did not know your mother was dead."

"My father as well. I was just barely of age when my father died, and I was given the entire duchy to take care of."

Other men might have been self-pitying when they said those words, but Kieran was matter-of-fact.

"I was ready for the duties, but I do not think I was ready for... for well, the loneliness."

"A loneliness that never dissipates no matter how many people are around you."

She could sympathize. She had felt much the same ever since Lissa had died. Lissa could fill a room with her bright chattering, but whenever someone was in pain, she turned into a stone-silent listener, listening so hard it was almost as if she trembled.

"Are you quite well?"

"Hm?"

Kieran frowned, sliding a little closer to her. She almost pulled back, aware of how powerful their connection could be, but when he laid his hand on her brow, his touch was as kind as hers was for Alice.

"You look slightly unwell."

Delia laughed a little. He had no idea. She shrugged.

"Perhaps I am a little unwell."

"Did my talk of family bring back some bad memories?"

"I—"

It was on the tip of her tongue to simply say of course not, that it was only the heat of the day and the sun that had made her a little distracted. That was the sensible thing to say, after all.

"I... Not bad memories, perhaps, but sad ones."

Kieran hesitated. She thought that he would simply nod and change the subject. Men, even ones as beloved as her father, were not so very sanguine when it came to women's emotions. Instead, Kieran turned to her, and the look in his green eyes was kind.

"Would you like to tell me? Sometimes unburdening yourself can help you heal. I certainly know that Neil had to listen to enough drunken rants from me after my mother died when I was sixteen."

Delia frowned, distracted. "Sixteen is too young to go on drinking binges."

Kieran shrugged. "it is the way of the quality, I am afraid. I do not do so any longer, if that is any consolation, and I certainly will not teach Alice to follow in my footsteps. But you may keep your counsel if you like. I only wished to tell you that if you did not wish to do so, you did not have to."

Again, the smart thing would have been to brush him off or to fabricate some story that he would believe. She knew painfully well that she was in a precarious position, hidden in his household like a spy. However, when she opened her mouth, it was mostly the truth that came out.

"Well, I have... had... a sister. She was only a few years younger than I am, but we could not have been more different. She was brilliant, lively as a cricket, and very beautiful and desired. I was... well, you know me."

Kieran snorted. "The sun and the moon are different, but still no less beautiful than the other. And I think I do know you. Did you get along well?"

"Less well than might be hoped for. I know I was impatient with her from time to time, and I know she was exasperated with my lonely ways. Then, the summer before I went into service, she fell in love."

"I take it from your tone that this was not a happy thing."

"It was for her. For weeks, she was walking on air, happy about everything and smiling as if she had some great secret. Our father was ill often, you understand, and he was not really present to keep her in check. I thought she was going all moon-eyed over some village romance or other, harmless enough because she was a good girl."

"But that wasn't it."

"No. She fell in love with a lord. I did not discover this until much later."

"A lord?"

Delia raised her eyes to look right at Kieran, wondering if she could see the ghost of the night her sister had died in his eyes. Instead, she only saw concern, a slow anger, and a kind of compassion that made her blink.

"Yes. He made her a passel of promises and whisked her away from us. She... she turned up dead, accident and not foul play, but... but she is gone."

Delia had meant to tell her story as coolly and as calmly as possible. However, now she found that where her sister was concerned, there was nothing cool or calm about her. To her horror, the tears came, and after a moment, when they looked like they would not stop, Kieran drew her under his arm.

It was obscene, being comforted by the man who had caused her sister's death, but she couldn't resist giving in to the tears she thought she had so cleverly locked away.

"Is Delia hurt?"

Alice's voice from behind her was frightened, and she felt a wave of guilt come over her for scaring the little girl. Before she could turn around to explain, however, Kieran spoke up.

"Delia's fine, poppet, only a little sad. You can keep playing if you like."

"I don't like it when Delia's sad."

Instead of going back to play, Alice sat on Delia's other side, one chubby hand patting her thigh as comfortingly as the three-year-old knew how to do.

"There, there," she declared, obviously repeating something she had heard someone say once upon a time.

"Thank you, that helps."

Somehow, it did.

To be continued . . . FIND OUT MORE ON THE NEXT POST - 

The Lady’s Masquerade - Part 2

[jasonvtodd]

11 QUESTION GAME

i was tagged by @kazsbrekkfast ✨❤ Rules: Answer the 11 questions you’ve been asked, nominate 11 other bloggers, ask your nominees 11 questions, let them know you’ve nominated them!

If you could be any character’s best friend, who would it be and why? default was: jason todd!! but then i thought about it and i mean yes obv him too buut... i genuinely believe that nothing would make any person feel more complete and happy and safe then if you were the wally west to dick graysons dick grayson. so... yeah dick grayson aoisuhd like boys a mess but damn if he doesnt do everything he can to let his friends and family know how much he loves them!!! 

What book is the most well-loved and well-read on your shelf? (stealing kat’s question lolol) i think the raven cycle?? i carried them all around a lot when i was doing classes in 2016 in my backpack when i was rereading them and my copy of gatsby was very worn and torn but :(( lent it to someone and have yet to have it back </3 also the things they carried by tim o’brien is also a Mess tm the spine is a wreck.

What book or book series got you into reading/creating your blog? the raven cycle got me back into reading and remembering i love books in 2015. buut then the foxhole court got me to change my url in 2016 for the first time since 2012 and go into a full lit blog for a while so aoishd i guess foxhole but wouldnt have gotten there without raven cycle?? the Best two tm

Quote one of your favourite books of all time. “I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in all its absoluteness. After all, there are many ways to die—peacefully, violently, suddenly, slowly, happily, unhappily, too soon. But to be dead—one either is or isn’t. The same cannot be said of aliveness, of which there are countless degrees. One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause—to memorize moments of the everyday.” ― Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me (its long but i dont talk about this book a lot and i really adore every aspect of it)

Would you ever consider writing poetry if you’ve never done so before? its... possible i have done so before... and no, before you ask, i do not still have it... (even if i did i wouldnt tell you kiddo)

Do you have any of your own characters/original writings? youve... seen... my Past tm.... 

Opinion on fanfiction? love it but havent read much of it for a while tbh

Most meaningful book/book series you’ve ever read? oh fuck... no no... this is... no. i cant do this no you know i cant do this aisjdh cause how ‘meaningful’ the books are... is subjective to every person you know?? plus it also changes sometimes depending on my mood/mindset... standalones that really fucked me up that i read one after another is: they both die at the end, when breath becomes air, tin man, insomniac city. series is.. a whole other thing asodiuhf but you know them all anyway so eh

A book that made you cry? lmao again. this is too hard to answer and im gonna keep saying the same answers but tin man really fucked me up ok. and insomniac city had me crying a lot too and.. again.. theres a Lot tm

Do you like short stories or long novels? mhmm i dont mind novellas if they have characters i like from a anotherseries but generally speaking id prefer longer... in saying that though... tin man (yes, gone there again) was only 200 pages and managed too... HA.. so.. i guess if youre a good enough writer you dont need a long amount of pages sometimes

Who is the most interesting female character you’ve ever encountered? lila bard but she identifies as genderfluid anyways but still amazing and schwab!! gave us!! that beautiful pirate icon!! also obvious shoutout to nina zenik as well!!! and i just realized this isnt just book related so aisudh i could go on with comic characters too but then we’d be here for another few paragraphs SO!! we’ll just!! stick to books!! 

‘nominating’: @amritasher @dqstoevsky @kingormmarius @wickerjulias @thedreamertrilogies​ @brucewaynse @hawkgirls @bluejeanbarold @brvkker @wallewest @gracelessnites

MY QUESTIONS

24hrs till the end of the world... you can get to any place, to any person in an instant though.. where do you go, who do you see.. and why?

zombie apocalypse, who do you have on your team (rl buddies or fictional, your choice mates) 

five must read before you die books (or comics if you want)

if you had the power to time travel to any point in history, where would you go and why? 

one thing you’ve done this year that you’re proud of?

what’s something everyone loves, but you think is very overrated?

going to get real controversial here (how you answer this, will possibly end our mutual engagement...) ... pineapple on pizza... should it be on there?

whats an album that is your ride or die? (or artist/band)

apple or android? why.

advice you’d give to your past self at a time when you were struggling?

something you’re looking forward to?

[todisturbtheuniverse]

2018 Year End Writing Review

Even though I haven’t been posting much fic around these parts, it’s become something of an annual tradition to look back on the year’s progress, writing-wise.

The short version: I wrote 500,206 words this year, and spent about 364 hours doing it. Since I wrote 500,017 words last year, I fully expected this year to be kind of a dip year, but instead, I’ve written a million words in the last two years. That is...pretty damn neat, honestly.

The long version, if you’re interested in a load of stuff I couldn’t post here:

What I worked on:

More of that 2013 NaNo novel. The whale, as I called it in my last year-end report. It is still that. I still love it, I still hate it, I will keep chipping away at it. I did a huge re-outline of it earlier this year and began redrafting, but late in the year I largely shelved it to focus on another project that I felt was closer to being “done” (see below).

A second draft of the novella whose first draft I finished near the end of 2017. Is it still going to be a novella when it’s done? Fuck if I know. We’ll find out eventually. This is another project I stalled on and ended up shelving near the end of the year, but I’m hoping to pick it up again in 2019 and push forward.

An old romance novel concept that I’d dropped a few years back. I picked it up again, gave it a bit of a polish, a new outline, and got some chapters written. I’m planning on pushing forward with this, too, so that the next time a certain publisher sends out their open call again that I’ll be ready to submit.

Writing the recaps for our group’s first Pathfinder game, which I was a player/recordkeeper for. They were narrative recaps. They were detailed. They took a lot of time. But I’m glad to have the record.

Worldbuilding and story prep for the Pathfinder game I started running in late September. I started working on this in March, for an introductory one-shot that I ran in May, and then continued working on it throughout the summer--and beyond, of course, because even while the game is now being played, there’s a whole wide world to develop. This is my happy sandbox place, where I get to put things like villages with sod roof houses and vast cities built into an ancient forest and twisty pantheons. Sometimes I feel crushed beneath the anxiety of actually running the game--I would probably do better with a system like 5E, with less goddamn crunch--but just creating for this place is usually a joy. 

Fic. I revisited Inquisition and Mass Effect; branched into Star Wars: Rebels; and got really, really into Stardew Valley (more fic definitely to come on that front). I’ve really allowed fic to become my happy, easy place this year; it’s not something I do unless I’m really just feeling like relaxing, and that’s really nice. But I don’t necessarily post it, unless I feel it’s ready to face the world...and sometimes, I write things that just won’t see the light of day. I’m becoming more comfortable with that. Sometimes it feels like writing without a purpose, but sometimes the purpose of entertaining myself is enough, yeah?

There was a real variety in what I wrote this year. I always felt like I had something I could work on, and this list doesn’t even really encompass the random new ideas that I scribbled down during weekly prompt sprints/while on walks/shower thoughts/etc. I had a lot of options, a lot of things in various stages of creation (brainstorming, outlining, first draft, second draft, eighth draft, whatever). So even when I was stuck on one thing, I could progress on another.

But how well did I stick to the goals I set last year? Ehhh.

Last Year’s Goals

Spend a little time writing every day: This was probably the smartest of my goals. Committing myself to spend a little time--even just five minutes--writing daily leads to me writing more, overall. And I did a fair job of it, writing somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of days every month. This is the goal I did best with, and it’s one I want to keep.

No word count goal: I’m pretty sure I set this goal and forgot all about it. I crave word count goals. I love them. They feed me. I set a bunch of them, month by month. I’m not sure they’re totally nutritious, though. More about that later.

Permission to write ficlets, drabbles, and even multi-chaptered fics as I want to: I did write--and post--more fic this year than in 2017, 35,221 words to AO3 and much more that didn’t get posted. But still hardly any, compared to my previous output. There was a different category of writing that kind of sucked up the time I would usually use for polishing fic, I think: building a world/campaign for a new Pathfinder game.

Get back to These Chains: I did not. *the world’s longest sigh* I was so optimistic when I first started posting this thing. I had it pretty much fully outlined and a draft halfway written, so I figured I would have no trouble keeping up a posting schedule, but. That didn’t happen, and then the thing has languished, and given everything that happened in 2018 I just didn’t have time to get back to it. Someday. I hope.

So. What have we learned?

Well, there’s a thing I’m good at, and a thing I’m comfortable with, and a thing I like doing above all else, and that’s churning out a first draft. Working on a new thing. Spitting out words haphazardly. That’s how I, personally, wrote a million words in two years. I love it. It feeds my soul.

But something needs to change if I ever want to really finish these six hundred projects I’m juggling with increasingly frantic speed. And fuck, do I. I feel like my 2013 NaNo novel has potential, but for five years now that’s all it’s been--potential, locked up behind five additional drafts which have not been so much refined as have been entirely new drafts. I don’t like editing. It’s hard and annoying and at the end of two hours I feel like I have pretty much nothing to show for it. No nice numbers I can plug into my fancy spreadsheet. Maybe less words than I began with. Probably less words than I began with, actually.

But editing is probably hard for me because it’s not something I like to practice, so I haven’t. Not with any real dedication. And with that in mind...

Goals for 2019

Write, brainstorm, or edit a little bit every day. I’m starting off easy in January with a totally attainable goal of 5 minutes per day, which I will surely overshoot, but toward the end of last year I really fell out of the habit of writing or writing-adjacent activities, and it showed in how my word count and time spent dropped. Habits help me, so I’m going to re-establish some good habits.

Learn some different editing techniques, and practice them. In particular, I try to do everything at once when I edit, and I want to try that top down method of: one pass for worldbuilding, one pass for plot structure, one pass for character arcs, one pass for dialogue, etc., etc.

Remember to do your fun writing when you need it. There could always stand to be more fic in the world, after all.

And that’s that! Here we go into 2019. I hope all of your creative endeavors, whatever they may be, meet with much success.

[writingdotcoffee]

#50: A novel in the making

Welcome to another Writing Update—a weekly journal where I document the ups and downs of my writing life. It’s been almost a year since I started writing my current work-in-progress novel. It seems appropriate to dedicate the 50th post in this series to the story and what I’ve learned in the process.

A little more than a year ago, an idea for a fast-paced scene with an ensemble cast started floating in my head. I was flirting with another project at the time, and so I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Every time I dismissed it, the idea came back to nag a little more. I wasn’t entirely convinced that I was ready to start writing the other project I was researching, and so I finally conceded: I would write a fast-paced 20,000-word novella to clear my mind.

I started outlining, fleshing out the details. The scene in my mind was quite climactic, and, to write it, I felt like I needed to understand where these people came from and why they were doing it. A few weeks of work later, I had a story that didn’t only satisfy my curiosity. This is more than enough for a novel, I thought.

I was excited, but facing a dilemma: should I abandon the previous project to work on this expanded novella outline that I  just stitched together? I wanted to write something with a speculative element to it which didn’t fit into this new project. After some deliberation, I decided to go for it.

I started writing the next day—15 August 2017.

The First Draft

The first days were a bit erratic as I was finding my stride. At around chapter three, I got into a routine and spent the next four months grinding one chapter after the other, writing to a goal of 6,000 words per week.

Now, I’m by no means a fast writer. The strenuous schedule took its toll, and by November, I was not only behind, but also exhausted. For the first time in years, I stopped posting on this blog just so that I could focus entirely on the draft.

Fortunately, I took V.E. Schwab’s advice and wrote the beginning first, then jumped to the ending, leaving the middle to be filled in last. I liked the ending way too much to have the heart to abandon the project. So I doubled down and typed the last words on a murky Saturday afternoon a month later — 16 December 2017. 51 chapters, 95,000 words.

Lessons learned: Word goals are essential. Pushing yourself through the first draft does work (subject to health & safety, of course).

The Winter Crisis

I listened to Stephen King’s famous recuperation advice and put the damn thing away for six weeks before editing. I celebrated Christmas by writing a few random short stories and spent January recovering. But then February came along, and I wasn’t feeling like going back to the project. Even just reading it was torture. I just didn’t want to. Resistance was having the better of me.

It took me a full month to read the thing cover to cover. In the end, I produced about 35 pages of mostly sarcastic notes of what was wrong with it. In retrospect, it would’ve been easier to make notes of what I liked instead. Characters disappeared, there were plot holes. Most chapters suffered from the lack of proper structure. But it wasn’t all just epic fails. I liked the character dynamics at the beginning and the big climactic scene at the end. It had potential.

Lesson learned: next time, I won’t wait that long before editing.

With that information, I bought a stack of index cards and re-outlined the project. My fear that I would end up scrapping the whole thing proved unfounded. I dropped 4 chapters and added 6 new ones. Out of 51, that wasn’t so catastrophic after all.

I compiled character sheets for every significant character, wrote the new chapters and was ready for the next step.

Lessons learned: Having an outline doesn’t mean that you can’t change a thing later on. Conversely, you can happily start writing even if you don’t have every single detail figured out up front. Everyone has a sweet spot between freewheeling and total control. You’ll find yours through experience.

The Rewrite

In May, I went all the way back to chapter one and started a sequential rewrite. I keep two documents open, and I’m restructuring each chapter to make it more engaging. Some chapters are good as they are, others need a major facelift. I look at things like tension and pacing. I’m doing much more characterisation.

At the time of writing, I’m about 60% done. All I can say is that this has been the most difficult and yet the most exhilarating part of the process so far. It’s hard to describe, but the writing is literally coming alive.

I know it won’t be the final editing pass yet. There are still things to fix. But they’re getting smaller and smaller.

Lesson learned: It will take much longer than you think. And that’s ok.

The Future

If you asked me a year ago whether I thought that I would be working on the same book today, I’d probably laugh and say something evasive. In my mind though, I’d think that you’re insane. A year on the same project? Don’t be silly.

When you’re in the trenches, doing the work every day, it seems inconceivable that a year later, you could find yourself at the very same desk and not be done. Some authors take 10 years to write each of their books. But every time you read a story like that you’re thinking, God, I hope that won’t be me.

Well, now I’m the silly one. But I don’t regret a minute that I spent working on this project. It taught me so much not only about writing and storytelling. Finally, after almost a year, I’m convinced that this was the book that I was supposed to write.

A day will come when I will finish this novel. I cannot wait to share it with you and the world.

Short Stories

I wrote a part of the sequel to The Dead Borough this week, but I didn’t have the time to finish it. It’s coming next week! Until then, check out part one:

SHORT STORY: The Dead Borough

I’m trying to set up the second in the series in a way that you can read it even if you haven’t read part one, but it will definitely be more enjoyable if you did.

Alternatively, here’s the one I published last week:

SHORT STORY: Beautiful Cadavers

What I am reading

I’m almost done with David Grann’s The Lost City of Z—a brilliant account of the life of a British explorer who disappeared without the trace in the Amazon while looking for evidence of an ancient civilisation that he believed could’ve developed in the depths of the jungle.

A masterfully told story. David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker who clearly spent decades honing his craft. Thumbs up!

Next, I’ll be picking up Charles Arthur’s Cyber Wars which I bought a few weeks ago in Cambridge.

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Past Editions

#49: A novel in the making, August 2018

#48: Plodding Along, July 2018

#47: The only way out is through, July 2018

#46: Deliberate practice, July 2018

#45: Us and them, July 2018