Bran's in the can…

For those of you worried that my starting Red, Redefined meant that I wouldn't be finishing Bran of Greenwood and the Scary Fairy Princess, you just don't know me very well yet. Today, I finished the rough draft at 26,648 words and a rather silly/squicky ending which is also a happy ending, and a porno ending. Aside from maybe three interlinking chapters, every chapter had a sex scene, thus allowing this novella to qualify for a proper porn definition. It is a fantasy setting without humans, so there is a lot of sex between the mains, a half-orc and a half-elf, a scene with the half-elf masturbating a nightmare, as well as a menage a trois with the half-orc's half brother. (There's a lot of halves in this book. Clearly, this book is not a halves-not.) And then just to be really different, the half-orc hero has sex with a dragon. (I had a blast making up how dragon sex works. I know I say it all the time, but man, I love writing weird shit!)

So, yay, I finally wrote my first fantasy porn. Given that it also has a huge focus on food, little in the way of scene or character description, and an almost gleeful use of cliches, I'm not going to call this "good porn." I'm just going to say "It satisfies the basic requirements to meet the label." (And boy, that's a GREAT book-selling quote, isn't it?)

In other writing news, I'm up to 29K in Red, Redefined, and this is turning into a culture clash story where Greta, the character from the past, has to adjust to life in a modern world. Greta came from a time where a large gathering of people was 20 or 30. Coming to a future world where a large gathering is now defined in the millions, she has to get used to the isolation of being one of billions of people.

Additionally, Greta is a loved child, someone who was the darling of two villages. She's used to people treating her as something special and noteworthy, and in the future, no one but Charles has time for her. It doesn't help that in the future, normal people think Greta looks "fat," even though she's not really overweight, just a little healthy due to a diet with plenty of snacks and long hours of casual games in her old timeline.

I suspect that people will say I'm being heavy handed with this one, but Greta's questions about the future lead to Charles answering in some very pessimistic ways, consistent with his role as an evil person. In his world, even good people are jerks, and his answer sound like moral grandstanding even if he's really just stating the facts.

His brand of evil doesn't really stand out until he takes Greta on a field trip to the future, and then he reveals what a wicked little wanker he can be. Anyone thinking at the start "Oh, this is a mad scientist with a heart of gold" will be sorely disappointed in Charles during part two of this book, fer sher. what he does to one lady is just…she walks away without so much as a scratch afterward, but damn, Charles is an evil little wanker. I know I said that already, but it bears repeating because he's just that evil.

Where the muse wanted to go with this was that through a paradox, another Greta was created, and then killed by "the wolves of time." Despondent over the second Greta's death and over the terrible people living in the future, Greta chose to go back to her time, but move to Britannia to avoid creating another paradox and siccing the wolves of time on herself. Then Charles would choose to stay because he couldn't leave her even if it meant living in the past.

I nixed this plan for many reasons. One because it would have called for a gruesome death scene on-camera for the second Greta, and second because I didn't like the "wolves of time" idea. It made a fantasy element for a story I've kept pretty firmly as sci-fi. Plus with all the other wolf references already used, this was one reference too far. Finally, I really didn't want the story to end with Greta wanting to move to an ancient and dreary past because the future was somehow worse to her mind. So I put my foot down and told the muse no.

However, rather than debate the issue, she proposed an alternate route, one which would completely change the ending and result in Greta and Charles remaining in the future. I won't explain how that works, obviously, as I don't want to spoil this before it comes out.

But I do have to say how surprised I am at where this story has gone so far. The muse has shown me enough to know that Charles will remain in character throughout the next two parts of the book. (Which is to say, evil.) But the point of the story really isn't about Charles, his evil plans, or his sexual deviance. The story is looking at how technology and our higher populations are resulting in people evolving to be less empathic and capable of handling confrontation. Greta, despite being young and inexperienced, is still better equipped to deal with conflicts and adversity than most of the modern people she encounters.

Which is not to say that all people in the future are bad. But until part three of the story, Greta won't be able to see any good examples of people. So in a way, this is something like Brave New World meets Lolita.

After I finish Red, Redefined, I need to regroup and take off a few days to decide what to write next. I have a lot of open projects started that I can go back to, but I've also got a lot of potential projects that me and the muse are both itching to get into. There's another short story for Vicky the vampire brewing, a cruise ship mystery for Lucas and the Colby sisters, a short story with Dimitri, another novel for Wendy Stoffel and her friends, a sequel to NINJAWORLD, the fourth and final Peter, the Wolf novel, and a sequel to Sandy Morrison's book.

Yeah. Some writers worry about running out of ideas. I just wonder if the muse will ever shut the fuck up long enough for me to take a vacation.

Oh, one last thing, for those not keeping count, my completing Bran's book means I've written 43 books. I might not publish them all, and yeah, I'm sure some of my writing is pure crap. But while some people still talk about how they'd like to write a book "someday," I'm making steps toward the middle of my first epic fantasy series. Along with that, there's a few smaller series, trilogies, and a lot of standalone fluff. So, maybe I'm not quite good enough to go pro or earn a steady check. But I have totally got the productivity part of writing down pat.

Now, if only I could sort out how to hone my promotional skills…