A fictional side-path
Jun. 30th, 2012 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI've been taking a brief (and not altogether intentional) break from working on either the rewrite of Daughter of Mystery or the drafting of The Mystic Marriage to deal with an attack short story. Well, not exactly a short story in structure. More in the way of a fan-fic-like extended relationship character sketch. Two thoughts crossed in my brain. One was the question of what sorts of short storylets using the characters from the DoM world might be lying around to be written, were I to want to do such a thing. And the other was the question of just how Barbara and the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac hooked up at some time previous to Daughter of Mystery. To speculate is to visualize; to visualize is to develop; to develop is to need to write lest the vividness fade and never come again.
It was an interesting logistical question. Barbara is 19 at the beginning of DoM and whatever the social realities of the pseudo-historical setting, there are practical and esthetic limitations on how much earlier I could introduce a sexual relationship into her life, especially one with a significantly older woman. And then there's the question of how to get the baron out of the way, since Barbara is far to much of a professional to be open to dalliance when she's On Duty.
I'm just about done with a first draft of it. Working title is "Three Nights at the Opera". I suspect it will not, alas, stand on its own content-wise, and should properly be read as a dessert after reading one or more of the novels. But neither would it spoil anything for Daughter of Mystery if it happened to be read first by accident. But I really should be more self-disciplined about not letting my imagination wander down fictional paths that I'm not supposed to be writing at the moment.
It was an interesting logistical question. Barbara is 19 at the beginning of DoM and whatever the social realities of the pseudo-historical setting, there are practical and esthetic limitations on how much earlier I could introduce a sexual relationship into her life, especially one with a significantly older woman. And then there's the question of how to get the baron out of the way, since Barbara is far to much of a professional to be open to dalliance when she's On Duty.
I'm just about done with a first draft of it. Working title is "Three Nights at the Opera". I suspect it will not, alas, stand on its own content-wise, and should properly be read as a dessert after reading one or more of the novels. But neither would it spoil anything for Daughter of Mystery if it happened to be read first by accident. But I really should be more self-disciplined about not letting my imagination wander down fictional paths that I'm not supposed to be writing at the moment.
