Author Note: First Drops

This is an expanded version of the author note I included for First Drops on Wattpad.

First I want to address the one part of this story that I admit is pretty fucked up: the fact that Cal admits she pretty much expected Lucas to attack her at some point and yet she's still with him anyway. Is that okay? No, it really isn't. In real life I would tell someone who felt like that about their partner to run away as fast as they can. That this is part of what drew Cal to Lucas doesn't mitigate that fact very much. However this is fantasy fiction with flawed characters and they have a relationship that will never be normal simply because of who they are. Sometimes it's sweet and romantic and sometimes it crosses that line into a darker place. Considering that I'm writing these stories it's more likely to be dark than romantic.

Of course, the whole story is a not-so-subtle metaphor for sex. Isn't that what vampiric blood lust is all about? More than that, I meant it to be about negotiating limits in a relationship. Even as messed up as their relationship is at this point it's still very much consensual and they talk about it. This is something I think is really important. So I've tried to draw on some of my own experience negotiating new activities with partners and discussions with other people about consent.

Real life often bears little resemblance to fiction, in reality if you didn't immediately run away from someone who wanted to drink your blood you wouldn't just agree to let them bite into your carotid artery. I think most people would want to discuss it a bit and probably want to have at least a little bit of control over what happens. I enjoy writing these short stories where I try to take a very normal situation, like having sex for the first time with a new partner, and translating that to a fantastic scenario. How would someone who has accepted that all this stuff exists, who has lived in this world her whole life because she is a mage, actually react? It's a nice shift from the longer ones I have in the works that get even more fantastical.

Chance Meeting - Introduction

Starting on FridayI have a brand new short story. It's been cut into three parts which are a little longer than I like to post but it was where the natural breaks in the story are.

This isn't a story I planned to write at first but while working on my novel I found myself needing more of Cal's backstory with Lucas. The problem with this is of course that I don't write love stories, not out of any objection to them, I just have no sense of romance (which every guy I've ever been with can attest to). So instead I approached this story in two ways:

First I wanted to play with some tropes of both vampire stories and romances, either subverting them or making them fully justified by the circumstances (actually playing with genre tropes is one of my favorite parts of writing). For example, fabulous sexy wardrobes are a staple of romances but Cal and Lucas are both pretty casual dressers most of the time. So the circumstances they meet under justifies being dressed in sexier outfits than their everyday wardrobes which lean heavily to jeans and tshirts.

Second I wanted to explore why Cal would choose to start a relationship with a vampire. I'm not a fan of soul mates, love at first sight, or overpowering attraction as the reason for a relationship, it seems like a lazy way to throw two people together who otherwise would never otherwise get together. Real relationship grow into love, they don't start that way, so why would anyone start dating a monster who sees them as food? Cal has her reasons and I wanted to explore them (Lucas of course has reasons of his own but most of the story is from Cal's POV).

I have more I want to say about Chance Meeting but I'm going to save it for the wrap-up post. 

Few Thoughts on Writing

One of the reasons I started writing was as a way to relax, I create art for a living so as satisfying as that is it's still work. Writing is solely for fun, any sales on ebooks or anything is just a nice bonus. I have other creative pursuits that pay the bills.

I've always been a bit disappointed with certain types of books and TV shows. Too often the "strong" female characters really aren't that strong or if they are that all goes to hell once they fall in love. This even happens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer at times as much as I love that show, Angel and then later Riley and even Spike made her weaker not stronger. So if I'm writing a female lead character I don't want her to need rescuing all the time, not that she never needs help (because that would be boring and unrealistic even in a universe where magic and vampires exist), but she is quite competent and formidable all on her own and it is not the job of her love interest to save her. In my mind Cal's a bit like a female Harry Dresden.

Yeah, this doesn't happen in my writing. Period. Not even with a freaky chaos inducing spell on Halloween.

 This isn't a happy nice world, again magic and creatures that eat people exist in it and that doesn't lend itself to sunshine and puppies. Even if it did, that would be boring. It seems like the more I write using these characters the darker it gets, the Blue Lady has a pretty tidy happy ending but the novella I'm working on right now probably won't (I'm still fuzzy on how I'll end it, but I'm far from that point in the writing) and I'm torturing my characters in the process.

You could could make a pretty good drinking game out of spotting my kinks in my writing and they aren't light and fluffy ones. I'll admit now that there's a certain amount of what I write that is blatantly pulled from my own fantasies (ahem, Lucas's accent). In a lot of vampire stories it's implied that blood drinking is a metaphor or substitute for penetrative sex, I'm going to say right now that in my stories it's not. Doesn't mean the blood drinking isn't sexual, because it certainly is, but it's more of a masochistic blood fetish because that's a lot more fun to explore.

This is how I like to approach my writing. I ask myself what sort of scenarios would be fun to explore and go from there. This is why I've chosen to have Cal and Lucas already in a relationship that has existed long enough for them to be living together because figuring out how you actually make a long term relationship with a vampire work is more interesting to me than how they fell in love (I am writing a short story about how they met, because the idea I came up with was kind of fun and I couldn't leave it just as something in my notes). I hope people enjoy it but I write to please myself first and my audience second.