#she is a DEEP ROMANTIC she wrote romance novels in the tower

[socialprawn]

post rose agape after finding a faraway tree to gush about alistair in solitude

[misscrawfords]

Top 5... Comfort reads.

So, this is quite difficult for me to be specific about because I very rarely re-read books. (Or rewatch films.) But let's try!

1. Agatha Christie. The exception to the rule. I re-read Agatha Christie all the time; she wrote so many books that I can just keep cycling through them whenever I need a comfort read. This usually happens at the beginning of holidays when I'm pretty brain dead.

2. Other detective books. You might think I'm a romance reader but I'm really not. My comfort genre is cosy, often historical crime novels. I'm a fan of Lindsey Davis (though recently I'm finding her Flavia Albia books a bit tired), Elizabeth Peters (though she's quite hard to get hold of these days) and I'm really looking forward to reading more Perveen Mistry mysteries. A new one was published in June and I've not got it yet. Very promising series. Suzette Hill's novels are extremely easy reads but I'm fond of them. And towering over them all, Dorothy L Sayers, though they're not always exactly "comfort reads". I'm not sure anyone would describe Gaudy Night as "comforting" exactly, even if it is one of the greatest novels ever written.

3. Harry Potter fanfiction. Yes, you read that right. Sometimes, if I just want to feel nostalgic, what I really want is to sink back into the wizarding world that I inhabited as a teenager. Not the canon books (see above re re-reading and also JKR is not actually an amazing writer) but the universe. I go on AO3 and find a 50 chapter epic Dramione fic and it's just extremely soothing to me.

4. Something purely comic. Think Cold Comfort Farm or PG Wodehouse. Usually I turn to these books when I need comfort for romantic disappointment. Or sometimes my Tintin collection for similar reasons.

5. A non-fiction book about literature or history. Sometimes fiction can seem too on-the-nose and I want to deal in facts and detached scholarship. That can be very soothing.

Bonus 6: The Bible. Sometimes in deep distress and when I don't know where to turn to at all, I get out the King James Bible and read some Psalms. If nothing else, the elegant language can be very comforting.

Ask me my Top 5 Anything

[fandomn00blr]

In Deep, Chapter 4 Excerpt

[Ok, so this is probably longer than an excerpt, but Alarion is so cute and I couldn’t bring myself to cut this random, unimportant scene after I’d written it, inspired by finding the love letter here in Origins. The actual letter in-game is a spoof on romance novel covers...I’m pretending that Solona and Leliana, in all their wlw solidarity wrote that one themselves to sell to “R” and cover for these precious young lovebirds. Oh, and IDK why, but I guess I’m also head canoning that everyone Solona befriends starts making awful puns. It’s a disease I guess. Or maybe a side effect of her magic? IDK...]

...

They followed the road around the lake to the docks outside the abandoned Spoiled Princess Inn. It had clearly been looted several times over and had perhaps even served as a shelter for various waves of squatters and refugees during the turbulence of the past decade and a half, but it was completely empty now. Of people and anything that might have been useful to them.

“I used to know the innkeeper here…” Anders reminisced. “He was mostly loyal to the Templars, but he did eventually warm up to me after I helped him out with a bad infection during one of my escape attempts.”

Alarion just smiled and shook his head at him. He couldn’t imagine anyone not warming up to a young Anders.

“Poor man.” Anders sighed. “First the Blight hit, then the war with the Templars…” He looked sadly around at what remained of the inn for any sign of his fate. “I hope he got out before things got too bad.”

Alarion didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t exactly an expert on the Blight or the Mage-Templar War in Ferelden, so he couldn’t offer much reassurance or any suggestions about the innkeeper’s fate. He tried to busy himself with looking around the wreckage of the place as well.

In a little room off to the side, he found a chest that had already been pried open and emptied of any valuables that it might have once contained. But there was a letter, neatly folded, laying undisturbed at the bottom. It was one of only a few things in the entire place that wasn't completely ruined or plundered, though he could tell by the yellowing of the paper, that it was at least a few years old.

“My dearest Virginia Trueroyal…” Alarion began to read aloud as he gently unfolded it.

He looked to Anders for any sign of recognition, but the mage just shook his head and laughed. “That has to be a fake name!”

“Words are a sad substitute for basking in the glory of your presence…” Alarion continued.

Anders groaned and walked back into the main dining room of the little inn in search of something less trite and ridiculous.

“Forgive me for my extended absence, my love, but Mother has insisted on my entertaining an endless stream of suitors now that I am of ‘a respectable marrying age.’

Don’t worry. They are all men. None could ever come close to competing with you for my heart and my...more carnal desires, as well. I blush from my cheeks all the way down to my thighs as I write this and my mind begins to picture all the things I wish to do to you the next time that we are alone together.

We shall see each other in a few weeks at the summer estate in Highever, but our reunion can’t come soon enough. Mother keeps reminding me that your brother Rory will be there, and that he is still single. Do you think he’ll still be up to playing along? He was such a good sport last time, and I don’t think he minded a chance to be alone with the horses and away from the chittering hens that have replaced our mothers in their advancing years.

Thinking only of you...and your lips...and your neck...and the rest of you,

A.”

Alarion smiled, amused, and carefully re-folded the letter, placing it back in the otherwise-empty chest for someone else to hopefully find some day and enjoy.

“All done?” Anders asked, popping his head back in the door to the little side room.

“I just don’t understand why she would make up a fake name for her lover, then mention so many traceable personal details, then sign with an initial, and not create her own pseudonym? It would be so easy to figure out who wrote this and to whom.”

“Because she was clearly just a bored, dumb, horny teenager…” Anders smiled. “Not a well-trained operative for some secretive spy network of elves.”

“Oh, I thought you had stopped listening,” Alarion smiled up at him.

“I heard ‘carnal desires’ and decided to start paying attention again.”

“I wonder what happened to them.”

"Is there a date on the letter?"

"5th of Cloudreach, 9:29"

“Well, if they didn’t die in the Blight or the War, I’m sure they both were forced to marry men they didn’t love and bear children they grew to resent. Best case scenario? They remain close and still get to fool around with one another every so often…perhaps at otherwise miserable family gatherings...”

“You’re such a romantic!” Alarion laughed.

Anders shrugged. “They probably had a great time that summer, at least? Right before the Howes sacked Highever and the Darkspawn began ravaging the country, that is...”

“Poor Rory, though.”

“Sounds like he enjoyed the company of the horses more, anyway.”

“Can’t say I really blame him,” Alarion snorted. “Horses are easy to understand...you know when you’ve won them over, at least.”

Anders looked at him a little apologetically and sighed. If only Alarion knew what a doomed disaster he was. “Come on...let’s go see if we can find a way across.” He would realize soon enough, Anders supposed.

“You actually want to cross the lake? To the tower?”

“Yes.” Anders nodded darkly, before adding, “You don’t need to come if you don’t want to…”

Alarion stood up. “Well, I’m certainly not going to let you go back there alone.”

“We may need to swim. Seems someone went through and burned or hacked up most of the boats on this side to bits.”

“Oh, that’s not foreboding…”

“For...boating, you mean?” Anders smirked awkwardly. The words had just kind of spilled out of his mouth. An old habit. Something he and Solona had done to lighten the mood in the Circle, and taken back up together at Vigil’s Keep. Something he’d almost completely forgotten about. But there was something about being back here...

“Wow…puns?” Alarion was trying hard not to laugh. He didn’t want to encourage this, obviously, though it was a bit of a relief to see the mage almost smiling. “I might actually consider going separate ways if you keep that up!”

...

[aschenink]

*slides into your inbox* hello there! I'm getting very out of the loop on projects! What's currently your main(s) wips? And what about the characters??

I wrote this last night with a lot of coffee in my body so I was able to give a somewhat comprehensive answer for once in my life!

My main WIP right now is a second draft of the novel Give My Love to the Ocean (it’s getting a new title soon, probably). It’s a contemporary/literary novel with elements of legal thrillers and dark romance incorporated, in which professional idiot and sometimes criminal defense lawyer León San Andres has a passionate affair with Vicente Rivera, a corporate executive for an international boat manufacturing company--only to discover that Vicente is also the heir to an international crime syndicate, the Hagonoy Cartel. From there his relationship with Vicente escalates and León becomes the cartel’s main defense lawyer in the States, where ultraviolent turf wars have broken out along the west coast. León struggles with anxiety and his own traumas, but he’s also a sassy, ambitious, self-destructive moron who likes cheap beer, tequila, quiet nights in, and literally any event that involves free food. Vicente is... painfully confident, and painfully intense. He’s got an insane amount of drive, terrible insomnia, and only drinks expensive wine. Other characters include Seven, Vicente’s childhood best friend and right-hand man (charismatic, extroverted, a romantic, a Fool); Ana, León’s best friend and fiancee [it’s... a marriage of convenience thing] (PsychD student, wine connoisseur, confident, heart of gold); Violeta, Seven’s fiancee (ex-yakuza, aloof, intelligent); and Benjie, one of León’s clients and a distributor for the Hagonoy Cartel (young, terrified, weasel-like).

I’m also working on a novella, Layers of Hell, which is a cyberpunk retelling of Hades & Persephone. In a future where the pantheon of Old Gods abandoned the world during the War, the survivors of the War live in city-towers over what was once the city of Seattle. Persephone lives in the city-tower of Demeter, working through deep simulations to research ways to develop agriculture in the destroyed world. Hades is a Venter, a rare and secretive class permitted to move between city-towers, maintaining the ventilation systems that filter out the radioactive air from Outside. Their relationship, an illicit thing on its own, gives way to even more illegal things--like figuring out that what they’ve each been told about the Outside doesn’t line up, and neither of them knows the truth.

And lastly I’m working on a contemporary fantasy project, Graycrest Memorial Park, which is a loosely connected series of short stories about Annihila, a witch and the graveyard keeper of Graycrest Memorial Park. In a reality where ghosts regularly wander back into the world of the living, Annihila has her hands full with organizing the dead and their games of tarot poker... and the oldest ghosts that suggest she isn’t fully human... and disposing of the bodies the Mafia brings her... and beating back the terrible, hungry thing that lives in the woods behind the graveyard. Annihila is independent and sometimes seems aloof, but she cares deeply. The only other major character so far is Elias, the love interest, who died when he was 19 in a military training accident [he was an Army soldier]. Elias is a soft guy--the youngest of four siblings, a bundle of anxiety, a gentle soul, an absolute weapon at tarot poker. 

@honeybeewriter since you asked the other night and i couldn’t!! put things into proper words and managed to forget my own projects which isn’t a good sign