Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff

This is the last weekend of April, and I'm ending the month on a good (writing) note (because everything outside writing still leaves a lot to be desired). I'm now just short of 10K words for Voices in the Briars, and so far things are moving pretty smoothly. I do have to be a lot more aware of the pace since the book's got two alternating POVs, and each is allowed no more than 13 chapters if I want some room for extra text during the revisions. 

Starting next weekend, I'll be juggling writing this book and revising The Dubious Commode, which will be a lot slower as a result (not complaining, actually, since I've got plenty of time until the July release date). I've also updated the Book News page with the rest of this year's calendar, and Voices in the Briars now has a November 1 release date. 

In other news, I'm still a bit hung up on Young Royals and have been reading a handful of fanfics here and there. Again that's nostalgia at work considering how involved I was in some fandoms back in the day. Those were the earlier years of writing practice, for which I'm grateful. Had it not been for fanfiction and the supportive communities I was a part in, I wouldn't have developed my confidence in taking on original characters after cutting my teeth on derivative work. 

Not gonna lie, but the series really called to mind my early years writing and publishing gay YA books. I guess my current output has some of those elements in there since they now tend to skew New Adult, but those were the days. If I have the story for it, I'll dip back in to the YA pool, but I found my comfortable little corner now, writing about older characters (however slightly older they might be compared to my mid-teen characters before). And I'm enjoying this semi-limbo state of development between adolescence and adulthood, but who knows what the future holds? I might ease further into older adulthood in time, and I'm down with that.

I also finally watched the second season of Heartstopper, which I liked a little less than the first season, I'm afraid. The Paris trip felt like a filler, and I found the more interesting and significant events in those episodes where the kids were back home. I might be tarred and feathered for saying this, but I wish the Paris trip were excluded in this season in favor of exploring the more serious issues involving Charlie's eating disorder, Tara's family's bigotry, and Nick's family troubles. That said, if the season was just following the graphic novel, the cliffhanger-ish ending is okay since there's a third season in the works. 

I'm still greedily snapping up whatever e-books catch my attention, and my Kindle app is filling up faster than I can chip away at it. Going over my library to clean it up and hold on to those books I consider to be keepers is another deep dive into nostalgia and those writers whose books I used to eat up the moment they're published. 

So many talented authors who were active in the past, especially when the gay romance market exploded with so many small presses appearing to cover that niche, are nowhere to be seen anymore, and even their websites are gone. It's really depressing as a fan of their work, and I do hope they're at least doing well in their personal lives even if they've given up on writing and publishing. There are new writers coming out every day, so these favorite authors do get their works pushed to the back as a result, which is doing their talent a great disservice, but it is what it is. I do have copies of their books in my app, and at least I can reread them at my leisure, which is one way of honoring their hard work.

'The Dubious Commode': Done!

All I need to do is point at the post subject and squeal. And grieve. This marks the end of the journey for Prue, Freddy, Brody, Jonathan, Felicity, Linford, and everyone else involved in the wild workings of this special universe that's been part of my writerly world for a few years. 

Writing epistolary fiction was a great exercise -- mentally and creatively -- and now that the genie's out of the bottle, you bet I'm going to take advantage of this narrative form again in future books. And epistolary fiction is my favorite method of storytelling because of the way letters and journal entries force readers to make mental connections given the limitations of the form. 

I tried as much as I could to avoid falling into the same trap as I've seen in classic works like Dracula (which was my primary inspiration source for this series), where letters end up reading like standard narratives complete with impossibly exhaustive dialogues. No one writes letters like that in the real world, but for the sake of the story, some dialogue needs to find its way in the text. So I tried to limit it as much as I could, using the journal entries more like standard narratives in this case -- though still with strict limits. 

But, yeah -- I've always wanted to try my hand at writing epistolary fiction, particularly novel-length fiction, and I managed it somehow. And proved to myself I can also do it in long novella form, too, which opens the floodgates for future books -- as long as the narrative form fits the story, obvs. I'm not keen on shoehorning an epistolary in every book I work on. 

Anyway, the book's done, and now it's a matter of revisions and edits and all the good stuff. I'll write an afterword, naturally. Be assured Prue and Freddy's ghostly adventures will carry on well beyond the final journal entry. I'll be taking a break from this book for the rest of the month so I can clear my head in readiness for the revisions and polishing up, which I plan to do in May. 

And for the time being, I can get started on Voices in the Briars. I'd post a celebratory disco video, but I'm going to lose myself in videos and some reading instead. But yay! Another book under my belt!

And Here We Go!

Down to the last two chapters for The Dubious Commode, and I have a last-minute time off arrangement for this coming Friday (a desperately needed one, btw, since I'm getting way too close to burning out at the day job). That'll add to my writing time, which will also mean my first dive into Voices in the Briars. So excited! And with that said, I finally have something a little more substantial to share about the next book.

SETTING: As a nod to the grotesque legend surrounding Elizabeth Báthory, I decided to set the story in Hungary. Obviously an AU version of the country since there's vampirism and dark magic at work, but I'm also (as usual) dipping into my Catholic background and will be working a lot of Catholic imagery, iconography, and tradition to the story. And as always, we're looking at somewhere in the early to mid-19th century for the timeline though it won't be clear / specified. That's always been my preferred period when it comes to writing historical fiction though I've dipped into earlier eras before. 

GENRES: While obviously a gothic horror, it's got an equal serving of gay romance since the POVs will switch from one character to another. So -- a gothic gay romance, then. My books are always HEA or HFN in that rare occasion (The Glass Minstrel) since I prefer to offer readers an escape and a more hopeful take on the future in spite of my own cynicism (which is a character flaw of mine, frankly). There's also that mix of fairy tale / folklore since the book's a retelling of "Bluebeard", so I hope to run wild with that. 

EXTRAS: Even though I can't find the actual text for the Estonian variant of the fairy tale, I'm using it, anyway, as inspiration for the resolution because compared to Perrault's version, I prefer it. That is, in the Estonian variant, it's the bride's childhood friend who's poorer / humbler than the bride's family in the French variant who ultimately rescues her. There won't be any rescuing in my book; rather, it's more of a joint effort at escaping and destroying. 

Oh, and here's a doozy. Two songs I've added to my playlist for this book (which I aim to listen to while I write) can't be any weirder when taken as a combo. But they make a hell of a lot of sense in my world. So firstly, childhood innocence:

I've seen different interpretations of the song online, but I've always thought of it as a song of almost painful hope. That's coming from a place of experience, though, and an unhealthy amount of bitterness aimed at humanity in general. But I still remember how it was like being a child, and I love the imagery in the song. It might be sentimental, but it's key to establishing the relationship between Lóránt Kárpáthy and Alexander Dávid Bodnár. 

Of course, to really, REALLY counteract that, we've got:

There are no devils or demons in the book unless one considers vampires as such. That said, this specific composition sets the mood perfectly and highlights a ton of stuff about Gyula Boros. I'm not spoiling much by talking superficially about my characters and the book's general story idea -- there's nothing much to spoil, seeing as how it's a retelling of "Bluebeard", but everything else going on in the background is my secret to keep until the time comes to unveil them. Many of them, anyway. 

Did I say I'm excited? I'm excited. Totally stoked.

Down the Homestretch and Looking Ahead (Like WAY Ahead)

By this weekend's end, I'll be down to less than 10K words for The Dubious Commode, and I've yet to get going with Voices in the Briars even though I'm champing at the bit. What's keeping me back at the moment is setting for that book, which is pretty stupid considering it's a dark fantasy story that's set in a vaguely European country. I thought at first to settle down with French names, etc., seeing as how the Bluebeard tale is most known through Charles Perrault's version. But I saw that there are variants, and one of those was from Estonia. Naturally, I can't find any text on it, so I'm defaulting to Perrault's take. However, I'm still sitting on the story's main setting, and I'm hoping to decide for sure tomorrow. There's not much left to write for The Dubious Commode, and I really need to get a move on with the next book.

I did mention before that we'll be back in the world of revenants for Voices in the Briars, and I'm also back to digging up stuff on Elizabeth Báthory ("the Blood Countess") and the legend (mostly falsehoods) behind her gruesome reputation. Because I'm making all kinds of connections between the Bluebeard character (still unnamed) in my story and the legend of the Blood Countess, and I hope to mine the holy hell out of history. 

In the process of writing today's chapter for The Dubious Commode, I made Prue blurt something out in reference to Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, which made me look for the ballad's text online, which led me to consider the legend and all the sumptuous visuals in the poem. I love that poem, btw, and it's got nothing to do with all the literary analyses done about it (though those are really interesting explorations of the text) but really about the story on a more literal level. I think it's gorgeous and eerie and tragic, which also led me to explore the folklore of weaving. 

The Lady of Shalott by William Maw Egley

Which then led me to another myth I've never heard of before (Philomela), and now things are working in my head that are bringing so many disparate elements together, and between Tennyson's ballad, folklore, and mythology, I'm now adding another book idea to my growing list of to-be-written stories. It's getting ridiculous, folks, not to mention painful since I'm so excited and impatient to get on with things, but I only have one brain and one pair of hands. Plus I've got a life outside writing, and there's no way for me to write the following all at once: Voices in the Briars, The Perfect Rochester, Compline, The Bells of St. Mark's Eve. And now I have one more: Loom and Mirror. 

I'm even playing with mock-ups of cover art, which says something about how seriously I'm taking this. That said, things can still happen that'll keep this new plotbunny from taking form, so I'm not committing myself fully to anything. All I can say is that the idea's there, and it's promising as hell, and I love taking three different things and making something out of them. We'll see where things go in this case, but I love these flashes of inspiration.

Boys' Love

Wow, this video takes me back. I stumbled across the "first wave" of BL fiction after spending a lot of time reading classic gay literature in the mid- to late-90s. And I'm so happy to see my two much-adored classic BL manga being touched on as examples in this video: Kaze to Ki no Uta (Song of the Wind and Trees) by Keiko Takemiya and Toma No Shinzou (The Heart of Thomas) by Moto Hagio.  

My heart's broken again!

God, those days... I got so hung up on the genre (at least on those two manga series) that I spent so much money digging around Yahoo Japan's auction pages and connecting with someone in Japan for help in bidding for me. I wired them money for all the art books I could find as well as the actual series in its original form for Takemiya's work. And I'm now the proud owner of out-of-print copies of the original Flower edition of Kaze to Ki no Uta and its art books. I ain't letting those out of my sight. I also got the original soundtrack for the anime adaptation after I saw the anime.

For Toma no Shinzou, I bagged a single-volume TRANSLATED copy of the series, and I'm dying. 

Kaze to Ki no Uta by Keiko Takemiya

I didn't get into any of the later (more explicit) books, especially those mentioned in the video that came out in the 90s with the non-con content. Even as a fan of BL, the fetishization of rape in yaoi is a massive no-no for me*. My fascination for BL had nothing to do with the exploration of my own sexuality and so on like how it was with other readers, but it was the long, florid, melodramatic romance that's set in (why, of course!) European boarding schools that floated my boat. Takemiya's sprawling epic (as I call it) goes all out in melodrama and angst. Hagio's work is shorter and more subdued by classic BL standards, and I love it just as much. 

Back then as well, I was the only one who posted fanfic for Kaze to Ki no Uta over at fanfiction.net. I've already taken them down when I deleted my account, but those were heady days. I never wrote fanfic for Toma No Shinzou, though, since I discovered Hagio's work at the tail end of my fanfic days, and I was beginning to work on original material. 

Toma no Shinzou by Moto Hagio

One thing I do want to say about both seminal works is I'm seething with jealousy over the basic plots (not necessarily the details) as well as the mere title of Kaze to Ki no Uta. To have it translated as The Song of the Wind and Trees was a massive gut-punch because it's a perfect fit for the love story between Serge and Gilbert. It doesn't help that it's a tragedy as well (yes, one of my initial dips into the "bury your gays" pool, which I swore to myself I'll never do in my own fiction -- though there's an off-screen death in The Glass Minstrel that serves as a jumping-off point for the plot, and I'll NEVER do that again, either), so the title's even more heartbreaking. 

Hell, just about all classic BL was a tragedy, I think, or maybe a majority of the manga published in that genre. But I never got to explore that with other titles since my attention had fully shifted to original work, and I'd begun entertaining ideas of publication by then. And while I haven't really sat down and considered it in full, I suspect it was this initial exposure to classic BL that started me on the path toward same-sex romances in boarding schools, particularly same-sex romances involving younger characters in their late teens or early twenties. 

It's the coming-of-age thing, I think, that draws me in. I've always been a sucker for that theme, and you can tell from what I've published. At any rate, this was a nice little trip down memory lane. 

* just to be clear, there's some non-con / sexual abuse, bullying, and even torture in the two series I talked about, but they were always depicted as brutal and damaging, not at all fetishized