C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 28

OUT NOW: Birds of a Feather

Out now ~ only via my Ko-Fi

Well, I did it. Not professionally edited, this one, so it’s not on general sale, but it IS available via my KoFi shop.

The results of my 3 week creative mania back in July/August is the 2.0 draft of a complete 77K novel. (This is cut down from around 95K total. The 0draft ended up at around 87K and is fully serialised, with author notes and some fun vibe songs, on Ko-Fi for all supporters in 30 parts. One-off supporters have access for 30 days, and monthly supporters get unlimited access, plus unlimited personal access to the Google Doc version).

Eldritch Family tier members get the eBook and any future updated version of it for free.
Eldritch Seeker tier members get the eBook for 99p, and any future updated version of it for free.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER is the AU world with no eldritch/cosmic horror, featuring characters from THE CROWS who meet at an earlier point in the timeline. Instead of being set in a creepy seaside town, it’s largely set on a pseudo-London council estate. In my head it’s like a mix of Cardiff and Bristol, with a bit of Newport (Gwent) chucked in the mix, but we won’t worry about that too much.

Carrie has just left Phil thanks to her work-crush, Raven, and Raven introduces her to their ex-partner, Ricky. Ricky and Carrie hit it off, unsurprisingly, after a bit of a rocky start where she finds out he’s not the most stable of individuals, and there’s a lovely corruption arc for her as she finds out just how far she’s willing to go to get Phil out of her life for good.

It’s structured around the beats of their relationship, so it’s very much about the queerplatonic partnership and the allo/ace combo. There’s space for polyamory to develop, too. Wes appears as a homicidal fuckboi with his own business (a dodgy garage), there’s a vengeful sister, some stalking that gets sorted out, an excellent dog called Boss (the Gerald equivalent to whom nothing bad happens) and a fiery finale.

Launch Price: £1.99 ~ I’ll put it up to £3.99 after it gets professionally edited and then release it on general sale. If you buy it for £1.99, I’ll send you the updates for free if you want them.

Buy it here

You can also add it to GoodReads.

#AmWriting ~ Chapter 1 Birds of a Feather

In this post, you get the 0Draft and 1.0 Draft openings side by side and a break down of my writing process!

When I first draft something I tell myself the story as it unfolds in my head, sometimes plotted and sometimes organically, so I don’t worry about any writing advice or craft in the 0draft form. I don’t write in order, either: I write the scenes that interest me and the scenes that will develop the characters most or just scenes that make me laugh.

Later, I restructure everything and that’s when I start thinking about “how does this work as a story” rather than “what is the story”.

0Draft Opening

Carrie stared at the remains of her life, spread out on the spare bed in her work colleague’s renovation project. Assorted underwear and three changes of clothes, a sponge bag of toiletries and tampons, her phone and charger, and an envelope of important papers, including her passport. 

Apart from that, and the pendant necklace she was wearing – her divorced parents’ joint graduation present to her – that was all she’d managed to grab from the flat before Phil came back. 

Raven Beaubois, a statuesque corporate goth whose pronouns were they/she and introduced themself as ‘Chelsea’s answer to Morticia Addams’ during icebreakers, was the only person who really believed her about Phil. Raven had started work at the PR department of Carrie’s insurance firm about six months ago, and found Carrie crying in the toilets once. 

Carrie’s best friends told her that she was overreacting, and Phil was a lovely man, and she was paranoid and clingy. It turned out he’d been fucking them for nearly the entire relationship, despite being so possessive and jealous over Carrie that he’d kicked a hole in the bathroom door when she had the audacity to dye her hair. Raven told her to move the fuck out of there and into her Victorian townhouse that Carrie could never dream of affording by herself. 

Not that Carrie, who had grown up on a council estate in Croydon, was complaining. Without Raven, she’d be stuck in the flat waiting for Phil to come home, the evidence of his infidelity staring at her from behind the sofa. 

Okay, so in these few paragraphs I can picture the room, but it’s nebulous. I don’t have a clear vision of it in my head so I’m not interested in situating it there. I don’t know who Raven is yet – I’m telling myself the key features, the things I want to put in, and then work out later if that is correct for that character and if that stays. I’m working out how much of Carrie’s backstory I’m keeping from the original novel THE CROWS (this is the alternative universe [AU] version of that story with all the supernatural stuff taken out).

I can picture the characters but I’m not interested in how to introduce them to the reader yet. I want to introduce them to myself. I’m describing to myself what backstory I want, and then deciding how much of that to keep or not.

This section was written in one go with no edits, as a stream of consciousness. I edit the first drafts, and then when that draft is complete, and we get to next round revisions and rewrites, that is what I class as “2.0 Draft” and that’s what betas get to see. They might then advise me to restructure some things, that bits and pieces don’t work, and so on. That’s also the sensitivity stage if required. The next phase is the one before, or the one parallel to, a professional editor. I then work on all the comments (beta and pro) and the final draft is the one that is published.

I’m not precious about changes, because by 2.0 Draft my priority is not my vision for the story (with the exception of the characters developing the way that I want them to develop, as long as that’s realistic/logical for their established psychology) but the polishing of the book as a product. I want to get that as good as I can before it goes out.

So here’s the opening of 0Draft vs 1.0 Draft.

You can read the full 0Draft with my annotations and highlights on Ko-Fi – the full first chapter is here, and not what I’d call readable as a book chapter, but that’s not the point of it as a post.

1.0 Draft Opening

Carrie stared at the remains of her life, spread out on the spare bed in her work colleague’s renovation project. Everything she had to show for herself was on the creamy cotton sheets: assorted underwear and three changes of clothes, a sponge bag of toiletries and tampons, her laptop, phone and respective chargers, and an envelope of important papers, including her passport. 

Apart from that, and her emotional support box set of Hammer Horror films she’d had hidden in the wardrobe that Phil had always hated, that was all she’d managed to grab from the flat before Phil came back. It was a sad, pathetic testament to the last four years, and even more so for all she’d managed to amass by the age of twenty-six.

By the end of the month, she wouldn’t even have a job anymore.

“Hey,” Raven said, knocking on the door. “How are you doing?”

Carrie didn’t know what to say. She offered a shrug open to Raven’s interpretation.

Raven gave her a knowing look and arched her eyebrow. “Oh. Like that.”

“I did it, though,” Carrie said. She had no idea how she felt, or if there were supposed to be fireworks in her chest rather than this icy, numbing calm. “I did it at the worst possible time.”

So I decided to keep the action to this bedroom, and to maintain the mirror of the THE CROWS’ opening chapter, but to work out what info to give and what to hold off saying yet. I’ve developed the sense of the room (not the dimensions yet), and a bit more of a picture of Carrie (descriptions will weave through the chapter), and introduced Raven in an active way not a passive way so you get an idea of the dynamic between the two of them.

I also added in a better sense of Carrie’s interior world, a sense of her emotional state, her age, and things she’s considered ‘essential’. They aren’t the best things, but it gives you a sense of who she is and what she values. It also gives a better indication of the relationship between Carrie and Phil.

This is also a set up for Carrie and Ricky’s dynamic because they share a taste in films and that’s the start of their bonding experience.

Some of this written style doesn’t work and the sentences are clunky, so that will be reworked in 2.0 Draft.

I think there’s also a better way to open this: Carrie actively unpacking and showing you what she’s got is better than the passive beginning, perhaps, and that’s something I will revisit in 1.1 Draft.

(When I think about my work, to me, the difference between 1.0 and 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 Drafts and 2.0 Draft is that the STRUCTURE remains the same and there are no whole chapter rewrites only paragraph rewrites and some section rewrites. 2.0 Draft is the overhauled one, with more significant changes.)

My playlist for the AU is below, courtesy of Spotify! Each section on Ko-Fi has a song from this playlist embedded.

#AmWriting ~ Plotting Revision Process

Plot Structures

If you’re following my annotations on the 0draft I’m posting to Ko-Fi, you’ll notice that the story as it is now doesn’t follow any beats or structure. As of now, we’re on Part 22, so beyond the midpoint, and there’s a petty crime/action subplot going on with a stalker ex antagonist.

The relationship is intertwined around these and is mainly slice-of-life scenes that I’ve experimented with and tied together into loose chapter sections.

Here are the options:

ROMANCE BEATS
Romance Novel Beats – Plotting a Romance Novel ~ Really useful links
Romance Beat Sheet – Get a Beat Sheet

ACTION BEATS
Action Genre – How to Tell an Exciting Story
What even is Guy Ritchie’s style anyway – Medium article

CONTEMPORARY FICTION
The Snowflake Method of plotting ~ How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method (advancedfictionwriting.com)
In Media Res ~ In Medias Res: Definition and Examples for Writers (thewritepractice.com)
The Eight Sequences method ~ The Eight Sequences (thescriptlab.com)
24 Chapter Sequence (adaptable) ~ Free fiction writing template to help you outline your novel (Word, Scrivener, G-Docs, Plottr) – Creativindie

Birds of a Feather: Replotting

I am leaning towards “three disasters plus an ending”, which is sort of what this is already:

Disaster 1 is Phil finding Carrie and Carrie realising she’s being stalked
Disaster 2 is the drugged wine and flowers left at Raven’s
Disaster 3 is Phil losing a finger and it snowballs to the conclusion

EXCEPT that there’s a 4th disaster (or catalyst): Ricky and Wes catching Phil with Dahlia and Wes sending the evidence to Dahlia’s husband, ruining Phil, so it escalates from there and the climax comes out of desperation.

This is the central thread of the plot interwoven with Ricky feuding with the Pierces (Phil is deliberately placed in the crossfire and gets hospitalised as a result, taking him out of the equation for long enough for Carrie and Ricky to get to know each other better, except he comes out with a thirst for vengeance).

I’m going to take out some strands and some of the moving parts of the plot, and try to tighten everything up so they are much more tightly linked, and because I’ve got 4 discernible main Phil points, I might look at the Eight Sequences instead. The subplot needs to be strong to carry the action until we get to the climax, and that is (I hope) what the whole thing with Ricky/Carrie is, as they build to being each others’ person.

My main thing with revisions is to decide on the shape of the plot and hang the chapters and scenes around that, reshaping the skeleton of it to create something that’s a clear structure.

This is hopefully going to be a good way for me to get back into THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD, which is also undergoing a structural revision. I don’t tend to have a preferred plot structure except that I usually aim for a dramatic midpoint build, and then hurtle to a climax (but the second act can sag or not be long enough if I have too much or too little going on). But I also like to have a few peaks building up to the midpoint and so on, and I often have too many strands at once because I want to tell too many stories (it’s the ADHD).

Anyway: happy fun times with my joy project await. Hope some of those links are helpful for others too!

You can read the 0draft with all my annotations on my writing process and out-of-order sequence writing and how I worked out the contemporary setting and characterisations on Ko-Fi. The first part is free to all, the rest is for supporters only (one-off supporters get 30 day access to all my subscriber-only posts, and monthly subscribers get unlimited access to everything).

#AmWriting ~ Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather an AU Novel ~ eBook coverThis song (Fred Astaire by Jukebox The Ghost) is kind of how a very socialised, much better adjusted Ricky & a more recently traumatised Carrie’s dynamic plays out if they met in a pub when she had just left Phil, rather than several months later and under eldritch horror circumstances.Premise

Carrie has just inherited a nest egg from her grandad and left her abusive partner of 4 years to move in with the co-worker she has a slight crush on, Raven, a corporate goth also moving on from (but staying friends with) her on-again/off-again ace/arospec ex, Ricky.

Ricky, a self-employed jack-of-most-trades renovating Raven’s townhouse, is embroiled in his cousin’s criminal endeavours and a violent feud with a rival tradesman, and pretty positive that if he can’t make things work with Raven, he’ll never meet his person… until Raven introduces him to Carrie.

When all three find themselves targeted by Carrie’s vengeful ex, Phil, desperate to get her back so she can pay his gambling debts, Carrie finds she has a much darker side than she thought, and Ricky thinks he’s found his soulmate, but is he right, or will Phil’s escalating vendetta push them to extremes and further apart?

Tropes & Content Notes

~only one bed
~corruption arc
~mutual rescuing
~polycule potential?
~an elderly emotional support dog called Boss (nothing bad happens to the dog)

~mental health issues featured: anxiety, depression, ADHD – characters variously are managing them or absolutely not managing them or are trying to/helping each other out. Ricky (ADHD/anxiety/depression) drinks on his medication and/or forgets to take it.

~Neurodivergent asexual spec/aromantic spec character who is pan-orientated navigating sexual and romantic expectations and his own boundaries (messily/badly)
~everyone’s pan/bi or lesbian
~messy disaster cis and trans queers being messy disasters

~weed and cocaine consumption
~binge-drinking in British drinking culture context
~self-medicating with alcohol and food, depression weight gain and dysfunctional eating
~blood, finger severing, some violence
~reference to accidental death of a young boxer in a boxing match
~arson, threats of immolating someone, fire

August & September Ko-Fi Rewards

So this August, the Ko-Fi rewards for top tier members is access to the complete 0draft of my AU novel, a contemporary “if Guy Ritchie wrote a romcom with an ace/arospec MC” based on the beats of THE CROWS, but if Carrie and Ricky had no eldritch horror going on and they met on a pseudo-London council estate instead.

I’m serialising this for top tier & lower tier members with each part I post going up with my annotations as a demo of my writing process, in case the way I do it is useful to anyone else (maybe if you also have ADHD you do something similar to me! I’d love to know if that’s the case!)

If you support me as a one-off, you’ll also have access to all these posts for 30 days. Members have unlimited access.

In September, top tier members are getting the whole revised novel as an eBook for free (it’s currently 87.5K and I’ll cut it down to around 80K). Lower tier members will be getting it for £1.99 (discounted). It will retail on my Ko-Fi for £3.99.

Letters from the residents of Fairwood House will resume in October!

Untitled AU Novel on Ko-Fi

The first section of this 80+K novel is now on Ko-Fi, and the first part is open to everyone so you can see what I’m doing with the annotations and what elements and phrases I’ve kept the same from THE CROWS.

It’s not there yet, but the annotations show you what my writing process is like and how I work on my novels.

This is the contemporary working-class Alternative Universe version, which will eventually be a complete eBook available from my Ko-Fi Shop. The core of it is Carrie & Ricky healing from their respective traumas through their unexpectedly intimate friendship, the antagonist is Carrie’s stalker ex, Phil, and I’m going to go back and build in a few other moving parts to dovetail into the climax better.

I’m writing this purely for myself, so it’s an aromantic spectrum/asexual spectrum “rom”com as written by Guy Ritchie, featuring a violent feud between rival dodgy builders, Wes as a Tesco-value Bond villain wannabe who runs a garage, and Ricky as an ex-semi-pro boxer who has a prison record.

CWs: alcohol use/abuse mentioned/on page, mainly binge-drinking; recreational drug use mentioned/on page/implied (weed, cocaine), disordered eating, different kinds of toxic relationships and ways of handling break-ups/pseudo break-ups, navigating asexuality and romantic orientations messily and badly, trauma, stalking and harassment, drink-spiking (but no sexual assault as a result), drug & alcohol induced emesis, physical violence and the threat of physical violence, accidental finger-removal, blood, psychological/emotional/physical abuse by parents and domestic partner, messy pan-orientated arospec/acespec character discussing and navigating his orientation/(lack of)desires /boundaries; physical violence; strong language. 

Nothing bad happens to the dog.

Writing Demo & AU Carrie and Ricky

Untitled AU

So this is what I’ve been working on for fun: the idea I’ve had for a really long time which was an experiment to see what the story/characters of THE CROWS would be like if there was no eldritch horror.

It would be a contemporary working class slice-of-life fic with a central intimate friendship developing due to accidental/forced proximity, so might be classed as a “romance” but it’s more like a queerplatonic relationship with some elements that mirror a romantic relationship, in this case. Everybody’s qpr is different so this isn’t meant to be representational or universal, it’s literally an exploration of what Ricky/Carrie would look like if he was actually socialised, had a strong support system with a few very close, very loving friends, had been to a therapist at some point in his life, and was on ADHD medication when he remembered to take it. This is possibly the best version of this character that I could create given the constraints, without him being a totally different person. As it is, he’s pretty far removed.

You can also see where his arc could go in Canon, but he’ll never make it this far across because those avenues of growth are not possible for him as he is now… but there are glimpses of the man he could have been, and that’s what I’m working on to construct this version of him.

Carrie, meanwhile, gets a different kind of arc, where her fundamental trait of needing to fit in and her trauma from her betrayed friendships and abusive relationship play out in a similar way to make her stand up for herself in a more satisfying way (I think) because she isn’t getting any supernatural support.

This version might count as a corruption arc? Because Ricky is much more charismatic (to Carrie, anyway, and we know she has questionable taste), and he’s still totally fine with throwing his weight around and doing really dramatic shit, he doesn’t so much rub off on her as draw out that side of her where she’s happy to go along with it. They see the world in very similar ways and it’s their similarities that draw them together, and the fact that Carrie is NOT “not like other girls” – she’s very similar to his existing close friends, and reminds him of them, so that makes them recognise those similarities in each other and bond more quickly. If Carrie was too “special”, it wouldn’t work at all.

[Case in point: Ricky and Raven are too different, and that’s why it doesn’t work between them. Raven brings Carrie and Ricky together, while remaining friends with Ricky, so there are strong Fairwood House parallels there.]

This is the first section and I’ll post the rest over the course of Aug/Sept, but it’s essentially a full novel around 70-80K when complete, and these posts are the draft of me telling the story to myself not writing it as a “product”, which will look very different. 

weeping bc I'm 70K into this AU now and it has a plot, but it's like Guy Ritchie wrote an aro-spec ace romcom but with escalating feuds b/w rival dodgy tradesmen on a council estate in a nameless London-ish borough

— C. M. Rosens (@CMRosens) August 11, 2022

A volatile {pan-orientated aro-spec-asexual} builder/handyman, RICKY PORTER, trying to get out of his malaise following a bad breakup, starts an escalating feud with a rival dodgy tradesman, and an unexpected intimate friendship with his ex-partner’s housemate, CARRIE RICKARD, a traumatised woman due to receive a modest inheritance, who’s being stalked by her abusive, debt-riddled ex-boyfriend.

When Carrie’s ex breaks into the house she shares with Ricky’s ex and leaves her flowers and a drugged bottle of wine, Carrie moves in with Ricky instead, but his attempts to keep her safe are jeopardised by his angry rival, who robs Ricky’s cousin’s garage and promptly burns through £20K of their gangster uncle’s cash.

Now also forced to lean on Carrie to recoup the loss, Ricky realises he’s put her in more danger, and unless he comes up with something fast, he could lose everything he’s worked for, including their deepening relationship.

First attempt at a blurb, telling myself the story and how to condense it

I’ll be posting the pieces of the draft with annotations to show where I’ll be making changes and what things I want to expand on, and the different options I think I have for its direction. So this isn’t just me posting snippets of the draft, it’s also a private demo of my writing process. 

Ko-Fi isn’t the best for annotation format, so the bits I wanted to keep the same are in bold and I’ll work out how to show not tell / rewrite these bits into the story somewhere else so they sound more natural. 

***

CWs: psychologically and emotionally abusive stalker ex; home invasion; ingestion of a rohypnol dose with emesis as side-effect, but no sexual assault takes place; binge-drinking; disordered eating; some mention of recreational drug use; messy pan-orientated arospec/acespec character discussing and navigating his orientation/(lack of)desires /boundaries; physical violence; strong language. 

Nothing bad happens to the dog.

You can support me on Ko-Fi and read the first section of it here.

Fan Art Alert!

So excited to get tagged in a work in progress by Daniel Beswick who enjoyed THE CROWS and THIRTEENTH! You can already get a print of Ricky Porter by Daniel from his shop. I love the projection of an aged-up Ricky (28-29 years old in the books so far) and now a buff, cross-country champion Katy (17 years old in the books so far).

Ricky always wears a grey hoodie, and Katy is permanently attached to her phone. If you look closely at Ricky’s visible forearm you can see his tattoos from Book 1.

Get the novels 50% off on Smashwords in their summer sale: lasts until 30th July!
OR
2-4-1 eBook with a gorgeous cover by Rebecca F. Kenney
OR
All the links to THE CROWS [paperback, hardback, audiobook and eBook] here and all the links to THIRTEENTH paperback and eBook] here.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniel Beswick (@visceralrevolt)

Buy from here or here

The newest work in progress inspired by my novels – Katy post-transformation with her scorpion tail:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Daniel Beswick (@visceralrevolt)

THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD is the next book in the series and will be coming out in October (I hope!) – Ricky’s transformation is in THE CROWS, Katy’s is in THIRTEENTH, and Wes’s full transformation story is in TDWAG. Exciting times.

Thoughts on Writing ~ Summer Update

I haven’t posted much, as I’ve been trying to get my novel revisions done for August and figure out the trajectory for the next few months of letters for my Ko-Fi supporters (there are a few arcs I can take them on, but I’m running out of July to post this month’s!).

I’ve also revived my TikTok, and so obviously my phone camera has stopped working.

The podcast will return in Autumn with the next book – and I have the bonus episodes to plan, including all the author interviews.

I have beta-read a whole novel this summer which is not the same as pleasure-reading, but I really enjoyed that even though it took me a long time! Or at least, it felt like it did! I am hoping to read for pleasure too: I want to finish a few books by the end of the year.

Books I want to finish:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by C. M. Rosens (@cm.rosens)

The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper (novella, started this week)

Wyrd Derelictions by Adam Nevill (I think I started it in 2020; it’s a short story collection)

+ one more that’s maybe actual novel length. People have compared my books to Phil Rickman and I’ve never read him, but I do have The Wine of Angels that I bought several years ago and never opened. So maybe I’ll start there? I don’t know why I bought it or anything about it. Is that a good place to start?

I might try being more interactive with my reading to see if this holds my interest more. Let me know if you’d like live-tweet threads or more reviews from me!

July Half Price Sale ~ Smashwords

With Book 3 coming out in October, now is your chance to read my first 2 novels half price (or grab the eBook box set with all 10 illustrations!) OVEREXPOSURE (usually £1.99) is now only 99p.

Go to the Smashwords Sale

OR

Get the Box SetCover Design by Rebecca F. Kenney (RFK Cover Design)

Pagham-on-Sea Pride ~ Katy & Wes Porter

The last post was on RICKY PORTER and I didn’t really reach a conclusion about his identity (aroaceflux? grey? Definitely apothisexual or could be aegosexual based on his arousal watching Wes and Layla that one time? Maybe even Myrsexual and Myrromantic, which I didn’t add into the previous post, but also could describe him quite well if he actually ever thought about it?). I updated that post to add in some extra thoughts but left out the myr- label.

Definition of Myrsexual from asexuals.net

Here’s another post ~ demi brother and sister (Katy is heteroromantic demisexual, and Wes is demiromantic pansexual). Apart from their trans brother Dave, they are the only LGBTQ members of their brood of thirteen. This was MUCH easier because Wes absolutely has thought about his sexuality and Katy is still learning about hers, but it’s far more straightforward than her cousin’s to figure out.

Demisexual flag

KATHERINE “KATY” PORTER is heteroromantic and demisexual, which means she is only sexually attracted to people once an emotional bond has been formed with them. This can happen for some parasocial relationships, like if she gets a crush on a media personality (emphasis on personality) but in terms of actors, she’ll only be interested in the characters they play rather than the actor as a person. This means she’ll have a crush on a specific character an actor plays, not on the actor himself, and if she saw the actor as himself doing an interview or something, she wouldn’t think he was attractive because he’s no longer playing that particular role. Katy also can’t find someone attractive just from meeting them once, or from a picture of them.

Katy is a sexually active teen who just has crushes/relationships within her own friendship group. The books are about her relationships with her immediate family, and apart from her crush in THIRTEENTH, there’s no love interest on the horizon. She’ll have to meet people and get to know them for a while first. Note that just because she likes the attention from Wes’s fuckbuddy Justin in THIRTEENTH doesn’t mean she finds him sexually attractive, and also it’s in Wes’s POV so he doesn’t know what she’s thinking/feeling, and she’s probably deliberately winding him up.

Demiromantic flag

WESLEY EDWARD PORTER is a demiromantic pansexual. This means he’s sexually attracted to any gender, and gender doesn’t play a role in his attraction (unlike omnisexuality, where gender is recognised and plays a part in the attraction). As an allosexual he can experience sexual attraction at any time to people he doesn’t know (I know, it’s weird, I don’t get it either).

He cannot, however, fall in love with someone or experience romantic feelings/attraction to people he doesn’t already know very well, as there must be a pre-existing emotional bond there for him to ‘crush’ on people, or be able to think of them as a romantic partner/even think if they have romantic partner potential.

Pansexual flag

This is why, despite having a non-monogamy lifestyle, Wes only has two committed romantic partners, and one of them is someone he knew for four years prior to them getting together. This is his girlfriend’s best friend, and feelings had to develop between them over time.

Wes and his [alloromantic] bisexual girlfriend Charlie are swingers, and enjoy going to sex parties and kink clubs. The BDSM side of their relationship doesn’t come up in the books, and as Charlie is literally addicted to Wes and he can’t cure her or leave her, and she can’t be weaned off successfully, that side of it is used to increase Charlie’s sense of control and agency (Wes is a switch, and happy to play any role in a scene). Charlie also dates separately from Wes and he isn’t involved in any of her other relationships.

Hugo, Wes’s other partner, is alloromantic and gay, and doesn’t often date – he’s comfortable and happy being monogamous to Wes for the most part, and things might change for the right person, but Hugo tends to be cautious romantically, often not acting on his feelings for others.

I mention this, because when discussing romantic/sexual identity, attraction can get (wrongly) conflated with action. Wes is allosexual (so experiences sexual attraction) and pan-orientated, so he can be sexually attracted to pretty much anyone regardless of gender or presentation. In terms of falling in love though – that’s different.

Hugo’s romantic inaction is different to Wes’s demiromantic identity, in that Wes does not have those feelings to begin with. They can’t develop until there’s an established emotional bond which doesn’t have a ‘recipe’ or set of conditions that must be met in order to be created. It’s either made or it isn’t, and once the bond is there, that’s ALSO not a guarantee romantic feelings will follow.

Eight times out of ten, a friend is just a friend. If you’re Wes, there’s no reason why that can’t be a Friends With Benefits situation, but he won’t feel romantic love for you, and he may never do. You’d probably get fairly good sex though.

The relationship Wes is in with Hugo and Charlie is an open V, where he is the ‘hinge partner’, the one that the other two have in common. Obviously as Charlie is a woman, Hugo isn’t dating her. They are best friends though, and their friendship predates Wes.

For Polyamory terms and FAQs see: https://www.polyphilia.blog/faq

An alternative Polyamory flag designed by Molly W.