#vssanandres edit

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WIP Reintroduction: The People vs San Andres

16 years after being acquitted for the grisly murder of his father, León San Andres keeps a low profile. He spends his days wholeheartedly dedicated to three simple things: his job as a criminal defense lawyer, supplementing his private library, and his relationship with Vicente Rivera, a tired business executive for a boat manufacturing company. With his ghosts confined to his past, León thinks he’s finally found the peace that eluded his childhood.

When León takes on a new client associated with the Hagonoy Cartel, a growing syndicate responsible for ultraviolent turf wars along America’s west coast, León’s peaceful illusions begin to crack. Uncovering that Vicente is the heir to the Hagonoy Cartel is only the beginning. Everyone is keeping secrets, and not all of them are dead like León’s.

Under the pressure of becoming the cartel’s main defense lawyer in the States, Leon’s life begins to unhinge, revealing the fate of his own ghosts while determining the future of the Hagonoy Cartel.

Genres: Adult; Contemporary (dark, literary); Thriller (legal); Romance (LGBT+); Status: Second draft [23,000 / 80,000]  POV: First person Setting: Portland, OR; California; Manila; Hagonoy || 2017 ⇢ onward Characters:

León, 34: criminal defense lawyer; anxiety is the only thing stopping him from being a true bastard; probably a goblin in a past life

Vicente, 32: executive acquisition officer; redacted; obsessed with documentaries about the Medellin Cartel; fantastic hair

Benjie, 18: redacted; Doing His Best; just wants to feed his siblings (and sleep for another two lifetimes to make up for this abhorrent one)

more: WIP page || WIP tag

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Character Posters ⇝ León San Andres

Laws are merely rules. Rules cannot care about justice or morals or the monstrous tenderness of the human condition. Rules do not care that of the tens of thousands who died in this war, the man I killed--the only one--was the one who most deserved it. The rules only care that I broke them--they want to break me in return. 

more: León’s tag || about The People vs San Andres

Taglist (please let me know if you’d like to be added/removed!): @thegreyboywrites @idreamonpaper @possibledreamswriting

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Character Moodboard: BENJIE || Give My Love to the Ocean

The gaunt-faced boy was little more than a ghoul, white knuckles bouncing on his bony knees, sitting diligently in front of my desk. Calling Benjie a boy was misleading--he was pushing 19, had more fake IDs than I did student loan debtors, and undoubtedly had more experience with a gun than I did despite all the hours of hoop-jumping and training my carrying permit required. 

He usually looked like this: sickly and trembling. Benjie had perfected the frightened, trembling composure of a mouse tangled in the lion's jaws. Not to say the mouse was defenseless--just that it did a good job of putting on a show, which is all you can ask of prey. In all the times I saw Benjie over the years, and there were many, I was never certain whether he was actually that pitiable, or if he was one of Hollywood's missing stars.

He mumbled something. Too quiet to make out: barely more than a rasp of breath. It sounded a bit like ‘I fucked up’. 

Maybe that was me being hopeful. Maybe my smile was the thing trembling. Maybe I just didn't want to hear him say 'You fucked up'. Maybe if I looked up, I'd see the lion's teeth. 

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I’ve had some doubtful thoughts about Ocean for months and today I went for a walk, and decided I had to get some of them out of my head. So.

on one hand: I know I’m not ready to address all the structural/unmarketable flaws with Ocean. I know how I work, and if I dwell too long on the flaws and all the work that has to be done, I’ll spook myself and won’t write it (or at least I’ll drop it for a few months and come back when I’m no longer spooked). I’m just Like That. 

on the other hand: I don’t want to put all this work into a novel that isn’t marketable. I mean, seriously--queer The Godfather meets Crazy Rich Asians in the structure of Lolita is, at absolute best, a niche sort of work. At its core, what Ocean touches on is still very on-brand for me--but framing it as literary/contemporary is a bit ?? considering the rest of my projects are speculative fiction. I imagine it’d be... difficult (if not straight up impossible) to sign with an agent for only one book with no current intentions to publish anything else in the genre/contemporary sphere. All the agents/presses I pay attention to are SFF-centric (and I don’t pay attention to nearly enough asdfghjkl). Yes, I could self publish, but... I don’t really want to? I mean that with all the love in my heart for my indie-pubbed friends! I just... don’t have the resources available to afford all the services I’d need to get it where I’d want it for publishing? Editing & more editing & art & formatting, etc., costs that a press would normally cover, because I’m graduating in a little under a year and will need to start saving up for grad school. My best option would be to find a small press and I! I dunno, for some reason I don’t feel confident with that being my best route. Which leads me to the really weird thought of, do I scrap half of Ocean’s premise and make it speculative while trying to keep the core concept in half? Because then I could at least pitch it to SFF agents, and I’d be building up an author brand that I’m focused on building? Can I even keep the premise intact while throwing it in a speculative world? Do I throw it in a space opera? An apocalypse/dystopia? Those are the only two speculative worlds I’m capable of writing apparently? What do I dooooooo

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This is all the dwelling I’m allowing myself to do, because this is all a problem for Future Me. I’m still going to write Ocean, because it’s a project I enjoy and if nothing else this is Highly Necessary Practice for future endeavors, but... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa