"The Pretty Horsebreaker" is done
My contribution to the second Circlet Press steampunk erotica anthology is done. "The Pretty Horsebreaker" checks in at 12,400 words, Elevator pitch: "A courtesan searches for the lost pornographic manuscript of a former client at the behest of his widow, set in a pseudo-Victorian world."
Sometimes I wish I could write short, fun, fluffy stories. Instead, I end up trying to be Kitsilano's answer to Alan Moore (minus the genius and the mysticism and the beard), talking about 19th century classism/sexism/racism, and working in cameos and in jokes that I think are great but are too obscure for anybody else. Most of the characters are based on real people (sometimes combined into one character), and I couldn't resist working in appearances by other Victorian eccentrics and social deviants. Oh, and most of the characters have Welsh names. How does one pronounce "Miss Ccri" anyway? I saw it in a list of Welsh baby girl names and it was too interesting to pass up. I think it's "cree" or "sh-ree".
There were a few bits I had trouble with. First, it's written from a female character's point of view, a famous courtesan inspired by the great Catherine "Skittles" Walters, a remarkable woman who epitomized the "bad girls go everywhere" philosophy. I considered doing it first-person, but ultimately I wanted a little distance, as I felt a bit wrong about doing a female first person in sexual situations. Third person provided a certain distance.
That problem continued with the FF sex scenes. In my original notes, it was something like, "Miss Ccri goes to Mrs. Braen's house. Talk. Sex." No more motivation or integration than that. I knew I had to work in a certain amount of fairly explicit sex. My previous story was set in a brothel/theatre and the two main characters were both sex workers, but there weren't many actual sex scenes. I knew I had to change that to get this story in this market. I think I managed to make the scenes between the women plausible and well-written, including that their reasons for having sex aren't exactly ideal (one is salving her wounded pride, the other is grieving) but there's also affection between them.
The other problem was the action scenes. I don't like writing fights or chases, since nothing on the page or screen seems as fast or exciting as what I can imagine or remember from movies and TV. I can imagine the scene in which the protagonist crashes a gathering of elite gentlemen, but what I put in the story seems quite far from the excitement I imagined. I think visually, but I express in prose.
I'm currently reading Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas (one of the Culture novels). The novel follows one unaligned character stuck in middle of a galaxy-spanning war. There are world-destroying weapons and the fates of trillions at stake, but also scenes of the protagonist trying to escape from a cannibal cult on an island or getting run over by a hovercraft while trying to kill the guy he's supposed to impersonate. Maybe it's because I never found the protagonist terribly sympathetic, but I had a ho hum reaction to the action scenes, yet I was fascinated by the setting and the larger story of a supposedly Utopian society going to war. Maybe to have action on a human scale is not that different from older forms of adventure fiction. If a guy's trying to escape from a cannibal cult on an island, does it matter that the island is on a Ringworld?
After pulling a late night to finish it, I submitted the story on the last day of the reading period, and now I'm doing my usual stressing and stewing. Did I get the email address right? Did it get lost in the Net? Did I miss the deadline? Why didn't they send a response? All this for a market that pays $35. OTOH, I've invested a hell of a lot of work on this story and I want people to see it, or rather, more people than if I posted it here.
Sometimes I wish I could write short, fun, fluffy stories. Instead, I end up trying to be Kitsilano's answer to Alan Moore (minus the genius and the mysticism and the beard), talking about 19th century classism/sexism/racism, and working in cameos and in jokes that I think are great but are too obscure for anybody else. Most of the characters are based on real people (sometimes combined into one character), and I couldn't resist working in appearances by other Victorian eccentrics and social deviants. Oh, and most of the characters have Welsh names. How does one pronounce "Miss Ccri" anyway? I saw it in a list of Welsh baby girl names and it was too interesting to pass up. I think it's "cree" or "sh-ree".
There were a few bits I had trouble with. First, it's written from a female character's point of view, a famous courtesan inspired by the great Catherine "Skittles" Walters, a remarkable woman who epitomized the "bad girls go everywhere" philosophy. I considered doing it first-person, but ultimately I wanted a little distance, as I felt a bit wrong about doing a female first person in sexual situations. Third person provided a certain distance.
That problem continued with the FF sex scenes. In my original notes, it was something like, "Miss Ccri goes to Mrs. Braen's house. Talk. Sex." No more motivation or integration than that. I knew I had to work in a certain amount of fairly explicit sex. My previous story was set in a brothel/theatre and the two main characters were both sex workers, but there weren't many actual sex scenes. I knew I had to change that to get this story in this market. I think I managed to make the scenes between the women plausible and well-written, including that their reasons for having sex aren't exactly ideal (one is salving her wounded pride, the other is grieving) but there's also affection between them.
The other problem was the action scenes. I don't like writing fights or chases, since nothing on the page or screen seems as fast or exciting as what I can imagine or remember from movies and TV. I can imagine the scene in which the protagonist crashes a gathering of elite gentlemen, but what I put in the story seems quite far from the excitement I imagined. I think visually, but I express in prose.
I'm currently reading Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas (one of the Culture novels). The novel follows one unaligned character stuck in middle of a galaxy-spanning war. There are world-destroying weapons and the fates of trillions at stake, but also scenes of the protagonist trying to escape from a cannibal cult on an island or getting run over by a hovercraft while trying to kill the guy he's supposed to impersonate. Maybe it's because I never found the protagonist terribly sympathetic, but I had a ho hum reaction to the action scenes, yet I was fascinated by the setting and the larger story of a supposedly Utopian society going to war. Maybe to have action on a human scale is not that different from older forms of adventure fiction. If a guy's trying to escape from a cannibal cult on an island, does it matter that the island is on a Ringworld?
After pulling a late night to finish it, I submitted the story on the last day of the reading period, and now I'm doing my usual stressing and stewing. Did I get the email address right? Did it get lost in the Net? Did I miss the deadline? Why didn't they send a response? All this for a market that pays $35. OTOH, I've invested a hell of a lot of work on this story and I want people to see it, or rather, more people than if I posted it here.