Thud.
I haven't had a thud in a while, so I decided to report on it. "Currer Bell Comes to America," complete today at 5765 words. It is unabashedly YA, alternate universe, and totally one of those sorts of pet stories where you get to ride around on your hobby horse like an idiot, showing everyone all the weird theories you cherish--in this case, things about the Brontës, Amelia Earhart, and the Bermuda Triangle.
Rightfully, I should probably retitle it "Currer and Acton Bell Come to America" because well, Anne is still alive (just one of the many reasons this is AU) because I posit that if Patrick Brontë had died around the same time as Emily, and Anne had been just a leeetle less sick, something interesting might have happened. More interesting than Anne dying of tuberculosis in Scarborough, anyway.
I am growing to believe that Novels Spawn Short Stories. I tend to get these little nuggets, these also-ran ideas that deserve some attention but don't fit in the novel at all. I got to know Persephone too well during The Herbalist's Apprentice The Princess Curse, so I wrote her a story, "Five Rules for Commuting to the Underworld" (forthcoming from Strange Horizons, if you missed that). Also, "Five Rules" is rather adult; Curse is not. After Curse I reworked Jane Eyre with time travelers--not so much in a ...and Zombies kind of way, more a secret history kind of way.
Anyway, I've always intended to write at least one novel about the Brontës. I actually intended to write the "What happened to Anne at Thorpe Green?" book, with one part mystery and one part romance, but it literally hurts too much to write that while heading towards her inevitable young death from tuberculosis. Charlotte, well. She died young, but she had some requited love, some happiness, and some success. Anne just got the shaft. And she wasn't fiercely shouting "Fuck you" to the world as she died, like Emily, so her death always kicks me in the gut a little harder than anyone else's in that family. Plus, I don't think she got to write her masterpiece, like the other two did. I sincerely believe she was scaling up to something truly great.
So yeah. I guess I wrote this instead. Maybe I'll still do an Anne book. It might have to be an alternate history, or maybe I'm going to have to confront my fears about too-early death--dunno. But for now, I have a story that I loved writing and that I almost certainly am not going to be able to sell. (Not that I won't try.)
Rightfully, I should probably retitle it "Currer and Acton Bell Come to America" because well, Anne is still alive (just one of the many reasons this is AU) because I posit that if Patrick Brontë had died around the same time as Emily, and Anne had been just a leeetle less sick, something interesting might have happened. More interesting than Anne dying of tuberculosis in Scarborough, anyway.
I am growing to believe that Novels Spawn Short Stories. I tend to get these little nuggets, these also-ran ideas that deserve some attention but don't fit in the novel at all. I got to know Persephone too well during The Herbalist's Apprentice The Princess Curse, so I wrote her a story, "Five Rules for Commuting to the Underworld" (forthcoming from Strange Horizons, if you missed that). Also, "Five Rules" is rather adult; Curse is not. After Curse I reworked Jane Eyre with time travelers--not so much in a ...and Zombies kind of way, more a secret history kind of way.
Anyway, I've always intended to write at least one novel about the Brontës. I actually intended to write the "What happened to Anne at Thorpe Green?" book, with one part mystery and one part romance, but it literally hurts too much to write that while heading towards her inevitable young death from tuberculosis. Charlotte, well. She died young, but she had some requited love, some happiness, and some success. Anne just got the shaft. And she wasn't fiercely shouting "Fuck you" to the world as she died, like Emily, so her death always kicks me in the gut a little harder than anyone else's in that family. Plus, I don't think she got to write her masterpiece, like the other two did. I sincerely believe she was scaling up to something truly great.
So yeah. I guess I wrote this instead. Maybe I'll still do an Anne book. It might have to be an alternate history, or maybe I'm going to have to confront my fears about too-early death--dunno. But for now, I have a story that I loved writing and that I almost certainly am not going to be able to sell. (Not that I won't try.)