Sebastian Nothwell's Blog - Posts Tagged "sebastian-nothwell"
Update on Works-in-Progress
Thank-you to all my readers, and especially those who’ve given feedback! I’m particularly excited by reviewers who express desire for sequels or eager anticipation for new works. Reading these makes me even more excited to write than before.
With that in mind, here’s a preview of what I’m working on now, and what you can expect from me in the future. I divulge this because I don’t want to spring a nasty surprise on readers who may be more sensitive to certain themes, subjects, and material.
There are two short stories coming up, both involving characters established in Mr Warren's Profession. Minor spoilers for that novel below!
One, as of yet untitled, involves Rowena Althorp in a shocking tryst on a train with an entirely new character. It’s roughly half-plot, half-smut. (Speaking of which—if anyone has insight into the London underground circa 1892 and is willing to pre-read for maximum train accuracy, please drop me a line!)
The other is about John Halloway and Lord Cyril Graves. Its working title is A Willing Canvas, and it’s one-hundred-percent BDSM smut. For those of you who’d rather not read BDSM smut, this might not be the story for you.
Short stories aside, I’m also working on three novels.
The whaling romance (working title: Take Me Like a Sailor) is the story of a whaling harpooner who inherits a baronetcy and falls in love with his estate agent. In bringing this story to fruition, what started as a lighthearted concept turned out a little more serious than I’d originally intended. Themes include survival of childhood sexual abuse, sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, and learning that trusted loved ones may be unworthy of the faith placed in them. Reading it back, it sounds an awful lot like the themes present in Mr Warren’s Profession. The overall tone of Take Me Like a Sailor feels much bleaker, and these topics are delved into more deeply. However, as with all romances, I can promise that it ends Happily Ever After for the two heroes. It’ll just be a longer and more difficult journey than Aubrey and Lindsey had.
The Gothic lesbian romance (no working title) is, as the description implies, a Gothic romance. An American heiress is captivated by the eerily beautiful sister of a visiting English baronet, and makes an ill-advised marriage in an effort to bring herself closer to the woman who’s stolen her heart. Inspired by stories such as Rebecca and Crimson Peak, expect an ancient house set on lonely windswept moors, desperate pining, and grim portents. Maybe even a ghost or two. Again, I promise a Happily Ever After for the heroines, who will richly deserve it after all the story puts them through. You can also expect some mutilation not unlike what’s depicted in Mr Warren’s Profession—and perhaps a little more intense than that.
The murder-mystery romance (working title: The Dose Makes the Poison) is the tale of a surgeon and a journalist, each hiding behind a false identity in an effort to escape their sordid pasts, who meet through tragic circumstances and fall in love despite them. As you may have guessed, it contains murders and surgery. It also depicts still more mutilation (those with sensitivity to things happening to eyes may want to skip a chapter or two), mentions of child abuse and how it shapes its survivors, and mentions of a loved one’s suicide and how that affects those left behind. There is a Happily Ever After awaiting our heroes, but they’ll go through a lot to get it.
I hope some of you are as excited to read these stories as I am to write them. For those of you who feel some trepidation at the details laid out above, please feel free to message me here on Goodreads (or email me directly at nothwellsebastian@gmail.com) if you’d like more information on what exactly will happen in these stories, and whether or not it’s something you’d prefer to avoid entirely. Like I said above, I don’t want to spring any nasty surprises on anyone. It sucks to be in the middle of a great story, only to get pulled out of it by an unexpected upset.
If you’d like to see more updates on these stories, I encourage you to check out my blog. I’m posting snippets of the whaling romance (almost done with the second draft!), inspirational material and research for the Gothic lesbian romance and the murder-mystery romance, and giveaways. You can also connect with me on Facebook, and of course, here on Goodreads. Thanks for reading!
Sunday Snippet, 8.14.22
~
The sheer strength of Shrike’s frame proved itself through his strapping shoulders and sinewy arms. To Wren, he appeared all the more breath-taking when he bent over work so fine and delicate as plying the merest sliver of a blade to the thin sheet of pale white hart’s hide and slicing the leather into lace. Rough yet gentle hands, whose touch could make Wren tremble, now split a slender piece of wire in twain—a boar bristle, Shrike explained when he caught Wren’s curious gaze—and wound with catgut for needle and thread to piece together a patchwork harlequin who would’ve been the envy of all in Venice’s Carnivale. Wren felt his pencil scribblings hardly did justice to the man he knew and loved. Still, as the house passed in comfortable silence, he filled his sketch-book’s pages with his attempts to capture the knife’s-edge balance between brutish brawn and elfin grace.
~
Sunday Snippet, 8.21.22
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“Then, if none but friends may enter Blackthorn, why did you draw your sword when you found someone already in the cottage?”
To Wren’s surprise, Shrike appeared chastened by the question. He glanced away and hesitated, the silence broken only by the slight clink of his sword in its scabbard as his fingers played upon the pommel. When he met Wren’s gaze again, the fathomless depths of his dark eyes shone soft with reverence. In a much-abashed tone, he replied, “I have far more to lose now than ever I had before.”
To be wanted was one thing. To be cherished and defended was another. To be loved… Wren dared not think so far as that. But nevertheless his heart sang with the knowledge that Shrike considered him worthy of protection, and that the loss of Wren would pain Shrike as much as the loss of Shrike would pain Wren.
No words seemed sufficient to express even a fraction of what Wren felt. As such, he abandoned language entirely. Instead he reached out his hand to Shrike’s scarred cheek, turning his face so he might capture his mouth in a kiss.
~
Sunday Snippet, 9.4.22
~
Wren took advantage of their absence to collapse into his desk chair.
Shrike strode toward him, hand outstretched.
Wren stayed him with a glance—half warning, half desperation—and Shrike settled his hand on the back of Wren’s chair rather than on his shoulder, where his warmth might have suffused and soothed Wren’s aching muscles.
“You should go,” Wren forced himself to say. “While they’re distracted. Before they start asking questions.”
Shrike gazed down at him a moment longer with an expression no less handsome for its mournful cast. Still, he nodded his assent and turned to go.
“Wait,” Wren blurted, his exhausted mind belatedly recalling what he’d nearly forgotten.
Shrike halted, looking somewhere between confused and concerned.
But before he could enquire, Wren had already dived into his satchel and fished out the laudanum.
“It’s for easing pain,” Wren explained as Shrike studied the bottle. “Just a drop or two mixed into drink. Any more and it becomes deadly poison.”
“Such is the way of all medicine,” Shrike murmured.
Wren held it out to him. Shrike took it. His fingertips brushed Wren’s knuckles. The touch sent a shiver across Wren’s skin. He wanted nothing more than to reach for Shrike, to seize his cloak and drag him down into an embrace, throw his arms about his shoulders and collapse into him.
Instead, Wren dropped his hand to the arm of his chair and clenched it hard.
Shrike’s eyes followed the gesture. He tucked the laudanum into the folds of his cloak and said, “Whenever you can get away…”
“I will run to you,” Wren finished for him.
~
Sunday Snippet, 9.18.22
~
“Are you all right, sir?” asked Mr Hull.
Ephraim didn’t quite know how to answer him. In an abstracted sort of way, he quite liked to be held so gently in the brawny arms of his very handsome clerk. On the other hand, he was not quite so old yet as to feel totally bereft of dignity, and dignity demanded he put a stop to this sort of nonsense.
~
Sunday Snippet, 12.4.22
~
“Well,” said Wren, forcing a casual tone over his thunderous pulse. “What do the fae think of men who lie with men?”
The ensuing pause drew out into a lengthy silence as the two men stared each other down. Then, in a single stride, Butcher was upon him. Even barefoot, he towered over Wren. Near enough to fill Wren’s lungs with his woodsmoke musk. Near enough for Wren to feel the heat of his body radiating through his woollen tunic.
And near enough for Butcher to raise his hand to Wren’s jaw and gently lift his chin.
Wren’s heart pounded in his ears. He gazed into those dark eyes, their depths glinting with warmth and curiosity like the night sky shot through with stars.
Then those eyes shut, and Butcher bent down, and Wren tilted his head to meet his kiss.
Wren hadn’t received a kiss in more years than he cared to tell, though he’d imagined many. He could never have imagined this. Butcher’s lips kindled the curious spark into a bonfire, which raged through Wren’s heart as he opened his mouth to taste him, devour him, consume him as he felt himself consumed by the overwhelming flame of his own desire. He burned with need above and below and found himself clutching Butcher’s arms with the grip of a drowning man. All too soon, however, his need for breath forced him to break away. He opened his eyes, gasping, and beheld Butcher gazing down on him with a fascination that matched his own passion.
“I think,” Butcher murmured, “a man who lies with men is the sort of man I like.”
~
Happy Winter Solstice! + Excerpt
~
As the two kings reached the centre mark, the Holly King turned to cast one final glance back up at the queen’s bower. The glimmer in his eyes froze before it ever reached his cheeks. He raised his two-handed longsword aloft in salute, then resheathed it, as to begin the fight fair.
Shrike did no such thing. Instead he cast his gaze over the crowd in a last desperate quest for Wren. He’d almost consigned himself to defeat when he spied him at last—a pale bespeckled face, chestnut locks tumbling in disarray over his brow, his dark eyes wide and deep with a longing that sang through Shrike’s own heart.
Shrike vowed to return to his arms. Then put him from his mind for the remainder of the duel.
The herald—an apple-cheeked, toad-mouthed courtier in exquisite wasp-lace—called for the combatants to take their places marked on either side of a ring some three ells wide burned into the ground. He held up the queen’s token between them. A scrap of emerald velvet, shimmering with sunbeams, a portent of the spring to come. Then he turned to the queen herself for the signal.
Shrike didn’t bother glancing back at her bower.
She gave her sign regardless, for the herald dropped the token and leapt backwards out of the fray as it fluttered to the ground.
The moment the merest corner touched the dead grass, the peal of metal against metal rang out through the cold air as the Holly King unsheathed his longsword.
Shrike did the same with his arming sword an instant after. He had time to do little else before the first blow fell from the Holly King’s blade and forced him to dive to the side. The blade sang as it cleaved the air by his head.
In its wake there came a sharp sting in the tip of Shrike’s ear. Something cold trickled down its length.
First blood.
The crowd roared in approval.
~
Sunday Snippet, 1.1.23
~
“Then, if none but friends may enter Blackthorn, why did you draw your sword when you found someone already in the cottage?”
To Wren’s surprise, Shrike appeared chastened by the question. He glanced away and hesitated, the silence broken only by the slight clink of his sword in its scabbard as his fingers played upon the pommel. When he met Wren’s gaze again, the fathomless depths of his dark eyes shone soft with reverence. In a much-abashed tone, he replied, “I have far more to lose now than ever I had before.”
To be wanted was one thing. To be cherished and defended was another. To be loved… Wren dared not think so far as that. But nevertheless his heart sang with the knowledge that Shrike considered him worthy of protection, and that the loss of Wren would pain Shrike as much as the loss of Shrike would pain Wren.
No words seemed sufficient to express even a fraction of what Wren felt. As such, he abandoned language entirely. Instead he reached out his hand to Shrike’s scarred cheek, turning his face so he might capture his mouth in a kiss.
~
Sunday Snippet, 1.8.23
~
“Nell reminded me,” Shrike added as Wren gazed at the mask. “I need something to disguise my oddities from mortal eyes.”
“They’re not oddities,” Wren said without even considering the matter, the words spilling forth from his heart rather than his head.
If Shrike minded, it showed neither in his face nor his speech. “I need your help to finish it.”
“How?” Wren blurted. He’d felt desperate to alleviate Shrike’s agonies since they’d begun and equally hopeless he might ever do so in his own mortal failings.
Shrike reached out his forefinger and tapped the centre of the mask’s brow, where a smooth field devoid of veins spanned between the two antler valleys. “It requires a cunning sigil.”
Wren’s unease increased. Even after all the hours they’d spent in each other’s company, hours in which Wren thought it woefully apparent his own mortal skill couldn’t hold a candle to Shrike’s fae mastery, Shrike thought him some manner of wizard. “What ought it to look like?”
“I know not,” said Shrike. “I’ve no gift for glamour. I’m ill-accustomed to seeming anything other than what I am.”
Wren had spent more than three decades disguising his truest self from society’s judgment. Shrike could not have chosen a more experienced practitioner in the art of deceit.
~
Sunday Snippet, 1.29.23
~
The following se’en-night passed much like the first. By the end of it, Shrike’s antlers bore twelve points, and spread far beyond the breadth of his shoulders to span over a yard—very nearly an ell.
This made passing through the cottage doorway rather more difficult than otherwise.
The first time he knocked his antlers against the door-frame it rang through his skull to his very teeth. He staggered back to clutch at the rim of the hollowed stump for support whilst he waited for the pain to recede and his vision to return. He only felt thankful Wren hadn’t witnessed his stupidity. Still, he repeated his error twice over that very morning before he learnt to turn his head aside and duck and so work his way through.
As for the pots, cobwebs, and bundles of dried herbs hanging from the hooks on the rafters—well, he gave thanks again to fortune that Wren didn’t see him tangled up in sprigs of rosemary or knocking a copper cauldron down onto his own head. Shrike spent much of the afternoon taking down the herbs and pots and stowed them elsewhere in the cottage wherever he could fit them.
For some minutes after Wren’s arrival, in the evening, Shrike hoped his idiocy might remain unknown. Until, after Wren had kissed him, he pulled away to gaze in confusion at something over Shrike’s head. Before Shrike could ask after it, Wren reached up gingerly between his antlers and plucked something out of his hair.
“Is this… parsley?” Wren asked, turning the sprig over betwixt forefinger and thumb.
“Aye,” Shrike admitted, and hurried to turn their talk toward supper.
~
