osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2020-06-30 08:12 am
osprey_archer) wrote2020-06-30 08:12 am
June Writing and July Goals
Drumroll, please! I’ve finished major edits on Honeytrap, provided that I don’t get the proof copy and shriek “How could I believe this was acceptable, I need to change EVERYTHING” once I’ve got the 350-page paperback in my hot little hands.
I’ve also written a bunch of extras, which I hope to raffle off to raise oodles of money for good causes once the book has been released and brought me fame, fortune, and legions of adoring fans. We shall see! Even if that never comes to fruition, it was nice to write new material. I really haven’t done much of that since the pandemic really got rolling back in March.
Hopefully now that I’ve gotten that ball rolling, it will keep on going, because my goal for July is to finish a couple of short stories. They’re for a pair of charity anthologies, one f/f and one m/m, with the theme of magical pets. I’ve already begun work on the f/f story, an epistolary tale in which a flying cat carries messages between an established academic couple while one of them does fieldwork on teleporting warblers. (The theme may have gone to my head.) I’m still brainstorming the m/m story, but I’m sure I can come up with something cute.
I’ve also written a bunch of extras, which I hope to raffle off to raise oodles of money for good causes once the book has been released and brought me fame, fortune, and legions of adoring fans. We shall see! Even if that never comes to fruition, it was nice to write new material. I really haven’t done much of that since the pandemic really got rolling back in March.
Hopefully now that I’ve gotten that ball rolling, it will keep on going, because my goal for July is to finish a couple of short stories. They’re for a pair of charity anthologies, one f/f and one m/m, with the theme of magical pets. I’ve already begun work on the f/f story, an epistolary tale in which a flying cat carries messages between an established academic couple while one of them does fieldwork on teleporting warblers. (The theme may have gone to my head.) I’m still brainstorming the m/m story, but I’m sure I can come up with something cute.
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I WANT MY BROODY RUSSIAN SPY
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(I love Daniel too, but Gennady omg)
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Gennady shot and needing some h/c (tough guy who is shot and HAS to accept help is so my jam) (sorry Gennady)
Gennady drunk and revealing Feelings! but not remembering, or remembering and OH NO
....Gennady with his awful boss was also hot (sorry Gennady)
I don't thiiiink you had a 'Gennady has to withstand interrogation/prove loyalty on his own side' in the excerpts I read? (the bit with the awful boss was like it tho!)
I also like Gennady being pulled between the actual awfulness of Soviet rule and the ideals and people he has grown up with. Or Gennady being drunk and reciting poetry, because I am a sap.
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And I think you will be pleased with the book, because there is definitely.... some of this in there.
Also I could not resist writing a little ficlet.
***
They closed down the bar, and now are walking home in the darkness, with the snow drifting around them in soft floating feathers. Gennady, too, seems to be floating: he drank quite a lot, and now he is giddy, hopping sometimes as he walks, giggling when he slips on the slick pavement.
They are walking through a park when he begins trying to recite some poem from Emily Dickinson, but he can’t get farther than the first line, “I counted till they danced so,” and Daniel is not familiar with the poem. “You Americans,” Gennady scoffs. “Do you learn any poetry in school?” And then he begins to recite Pushkin, his recitation piece, “Ya va lyubil.”
Daniel collapses giggling on a snowy bench. Gennady’s recitation grows sterner and more stentorian, until he is nearly shouting the last line; and then he flings himself on the snowy bench next to Daniel, right by his side, their arms touching.
“You said last fall you did not know what this means,” Gennady said, teasing, half-accusing, “but now I know you speak Russian, of course you must have understood.”
“Only parts of it,” Daniel insists. “Poetry’s not like everyday speech, you can’t just hear it and understand.”
“So? So?” Gennady pokes him with each so. “How much did you understand?”
“Well, the beginning… ‘I loved you,’” Daniel says, and even though he’s just translating the poem, his face heats, and their eyes lock, and he feels dizzy with the sudden certainty that Gennady is about to kiss him.
But Gennady does not. He presses his face in Daniel’s shoulder, and puts his arms around Daniel, and clings onto him. “I like you so much,” Gennady says, and he sounds distressed, almost choked. “I like you too much, I shouldn’t like you so much.”
Daniel pats his back awkwardly. His heart is still thudding, and he hopes Gennady can’t feel it, or at least isn’t thinking about what it means. He really ought to push Gennady away, but instead his arms close around him. “It’s all right,” Daniel says, his voice cracking.
But Gennady shakes his head, his hair brushing Daniel’s chin. Then he pushes away Daniel’s arms, and sits up, and pokes him again. “You’re an American,” Gennady says, smiling, playful now, so that Daniel wonders if he imagined that earlier distress. “It’s very bad to like you.”
“Well, imagine how I feel,” Daniel says. “Palling around with a card-carrying Communist.”
Gennady laughs. He hops to his feet again, so fast that he falls over into the snow. He lies in the snow, looking stunned by this reversal, and Daniel laughs at him, and offers him a hand up.
Gennady keeps hold of Daniel’s hand afterward. He is looking into Daniel’s face, intent again, as if he is looking for something. Then he sighs, and rocks forward, resting his forehead against Daniel’s shoulder. “You ought to like me less,” Gennady urges. “It would be better, it would be safer.”
“Who says I like you at all?” Daniel teases. Gennady stiffens, hurt, too drunk to recognize sarcasm, and impulsively Daniel kisses the top of his head. “Of course I like you,” he says, “tovarisch,” and he grins as Gennady sputters over his pronunciation. “C’mon. Let’s get moving before the snow gets worse.”
***
“Do you want to look up that poem?” Daniel asks, the next morning, as they sit in the diner waiting for the roads to be plowed.
Gennady blinks at him. “Poem?”
“The one by Emily Dickinson, about the snow. You were trying to remember it last night.”
“I have forgotten,” Gennady says, and sighs, “all of last night.”
Of course he has.
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YES possibly REPEATEDLY (belt-biting! might be a kink! maybe!)
And I think you will be pleased with the book, because there is definitely.... some of this in there.
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY
Also I could not resist writing a little ficlet.
OMFG you wrote a ficlet for ME? With drunk Gennady and poetry and Dickinson and PUSHKIN? I FAINT, I FAIL, I DIE, I'M FUCKING DEAD
Aww, OMG Daniel teasing and then making up and kissing the top of his head. It is so lovely.
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There's something very Gennady about Gennady being like YOU SHOULDN'T LIKE ME SO MUCH and then being all SADFACE when it sounds like Daniel is maybe taking him up on it.
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YESSSS
Yes, Gennady wants to come off as so tough! (And he is tough!) But also when it comes to Daniel, he's really vulnerable. Which makes him want to be more tough. GENNADY <3
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And then I need to decide whether to go with this cover or not.
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ETA: So outside opinions are helpful, yes!
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I greatly like the obscured silhouettes but the actual shapes as executed -- of their heads in particular -- are distorted enough to fall into the Uncanny Valley for me, so that I find them quite off-putting.
Otherwise: concept yes, colors yes, layout very much yes, typography super yes. (The Y in the title especially slays me and makes me want a martini right now.)
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I know it's classist to call something classy, but my origins are working class, so can I call this cover classy? I think it's classy.
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