Barahir: Blog

1) I just finished a top-to-bottom edit of Fidèle and Trois Feux. 98% of which was correcting errors, capitalizing the first letter in quoted sentences, deleting extraneous punctuation, fixing awkward phrasing, eliminating as many of my personal clichés as I could (I will live a happy life if I never type "he took a deep, steadying breath" again), clarifying ambiguous passages, and reintroducing commas after a regrettable anti-comma jihad in the initial editing phase.

Changes? Few to none. I added one very brief dream sequence to the Epilogue that somehow got dropped from draft to post; I found it in an "outtakes" document and couldn't figure out why I deleted it. Anyway, it's back where it belongs. I de-aged Rose by three years after a rigorous examination of the timeline. And there was a sequence related to pregnancy and how one tests for it - to be more specific would be a spoiler - that was intended to be a clue regarding its context, but about which I received so many complaints before the explanatory chapter had been posted that I've finally given in and fixed it. No one's characters or character arcs have changed, and the story's exactly the same.

I'm pretty sure that's it. If you find more errors, please let me know.

2) Trois Feux's rating hasn't been publicly visible for long, but the highest it received was 8.42, which I think is extraordinarily high for a story that's incomprehensible unless you've read the War, Peace, and Boning, Except Longer prequel.

Also, Trois Feux is now canon, though I'm not going to change the headnote until that declaration matters. More on that in a minute.

3) Fidèle's current rating of 8.60 is its highest, or at least that I've noticed, and again I'm immensely satisfied. Its core subject is one that immediately turns off a fair number of readers, plus it lacks aliens, the military, harems - well, okay, it kinda doesn't lack those - spaceships, Mustangs (unless you count Alejandro), apocalypses, age-coming (did I phrase that incorrectly?), high school nudity, excessive semen production - well, *sigh*, okay, I admit... - or any hint of an Alpha, save for some Greek dude that Kathryn probably had sex with while on her inaugural European holiday.

4) The story I promised before the end of 2020. Yeah, about that. It was intended to be a micro-epic, but the sex scenes were killing me. Until I realized that the sex scenes were irrelevant to the story I wanted to tell. So, distilling what was intended to be three weeks of sweaty nonsense down to about 75% of one or two reasonable-length chapters has been...interesting? Anyway, it's close. March, one hopes.

5) When I break a promise, I really, really, really break a promise. Not the one about being in touch with folks, which by this point I've completely shattered. No, the other one. The "I will never" one.

To repeat: Trois Feux is now canon.

Look...I took a break. I needed one. The plague was rough on people I know and love and I lost my energy for reading/writing/talking about erotica. I definitely lost my creative energy.

I'll be reengaging slowly. Those of you who've written...I'll write back. Those of you who've voted...thank you. Those of you still waiting for the "bonus" story I swore I'd post a zillion weeks ago...I'll post it shortly.

Those of you who wrote longer messages will take longer to answer. Those of you who engaged at (great, great, so very long and great) length on the forum will get your own answers. But I'll catch up to all of this, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, of all the new stories there's only one I think I can finish this year. So that'll get posted. Another deconstructing-while-embracing a trope, just like Fidèle.

I'll say that I didn't realize just how much of a creative vampire Fidèle would be. But it took it out of me. It exhausted me. It was so very much the story that needed to be told but everything about it, including both the narrative and the ending(s), ripped my heart out. It's been hard to lasso it back. I don't think I'll ever be able to put as much of myself into a story as I did into that one.

That said, the writing has resumed.

I want to express my deepest gratitude for the response to Fidèle, both the ratings and the endlessly thoughtful feedback. I've tried to write back to all of you and will continue to do so.

What follows will include spoilers for the story, so if you haven't read it all the way through (and intend to) you should stop now.

Many readers found the ending moving and most found it devastating. That was intentional. As hard as it was for some to read, it was even harder for the author to write. I'd lived a very intense internal emotional life with these characters for about a year and a half, after all. Doing that to them was as heartbreaking as it was necessary.

But it wasn't the original ending. The first outline had Luke and Kathryn living out their lives in the bliss of true love and sexual adventure. Except that after I started writing and realized that, because I wanted my characters to be well-meaning but, to one extent or another, flawed, I couldn't proceed to such a facile ending without great care.

The ending then became Kathryn's letter to Luke, just after Bill's funeral. But that was too much the other extreme; everyone was either miserable or dead.

Ultimately, it was my lingering indecision over just what sort of ending I wanted that led me to the ending I actually wrote: first the illusory triumph, then the relentless downward spiral, and finally the poignant, melancholy, tragic, and ultimately ambiguous "inconclusion."

Luke and Kathryn both brought flaws to the relationship, but the most deformative flaws were a result of the relationship. Kathryn arrived with a history of trauma and a need for emotional control that she wouldn't fully understand until long after it was too late. Luke entered with swaggering self-confidence in everything but actual love, met unattainable perfection, and blindly dove into an ocean he never believed he could successfully traverse, losing himself along the way. They were a couple that were meant to be together yet proved themselves incapable of being together.

Since many have asked: this is all I'll ever tell of Luke's story. Everyone is free to imagine their own continuation, if they wish. Does Luke fall back into his quicksand of misery and regret? Does he redefine his life and try to make a new life with Rose? Does he patch things up with Wendy? Or is his future something completely different? I don't know, and I actually mean that: I got about a half-page into an outline for each of the two "main" branches and decided I'd rather not know what happened. The story's better for it.

This, of course, means that I can't really write more about Rose either, which is something I deeply regret as I adore the character. In the future I may (or may not) write a few "in-universe" stories about some of the supporting characters, both from the "real" world and from Luke's dream. (For example, I'd dearly love to write about Maddie.)

But after insisting to a whole bunch of correspondents that I couldn't write about Rose because anything involving her future would provide hints about Luke's future, inspiration struck and I've written a very brief story involving Rose that does no such thing. I don't know if it's canonical or not; I'd call it more of an entertaining Easter egg for people who made it to the end of Fidèle. Readers who've (correctly) observed that I seem to particularly enjoy writing dialogue won't be surprised to learn that it's a story told almost entirely via dialogue. I'll post it sometime over the next week or so.

Some have also asked for a list of the wine and food featured in Fidèle. I actually kept running lists of both just so I didn't repeat myself (unless I needed to for story purposes), so once I get those cleaned up I'll post them as blogs. I've consumed all the wines and cooked all the dishes featured in the story, and thus everything's recommended (unless I specifically suggest otherwise).

As for what's next, I have a medium-length work of speculative fiction for which I've lost some enthusiasm, so it's taking a bit of a break at chapter 4 while I rethink some things. I've got a one- or two-chapter story about a very, very popular trope in both filmic and written erotica that, like Fidèle, exists both as a narrative and as a commentary on the narrative. And I've got two rather lunatic outlines...one barreling out of the darkness into something much lighter and the other relentlessly, punishingly dark. The trope-commentary should see the light of day early this summer, though (as has been the case for many others) quarantine has sapped my creative energies. The others...no idea. I'd like to get two more out by the end of the year, but I also intend to prep Fidèle for the commercial market (don't worry, it's not going to leave SOL) and that might take priority for a while.

Thanks again, so very, very much, to those who enjoyed, or at least appreciated, the work.

There's only one more chapter of Fidèle, but then there's the 50,000-word epilogue to follow. Posting has slowed because these are very long chapters and I want readers to have enough time to absorb the material.

One note: a few people have wondered why Chapter 44 skips so quickly through time. I encourage anyone with similar concerns to read the end of 44 and then reread the beginning of 42. If it's still not clear, 45 will make it so.

And yes, I do expect Chapter 45 to be controversial.

But I'll admit that I'm fairly sad to see it end. I began writing the initial outline on June 9, 2018 at 9:57 PM, according to my word processor. In other words, this story took a long time to come to fruition.

It's not the story I set out to tell. But it's the story that insisted on being told.

Fidèle is very strictly written from Luke's point of view, and so what follows is a scene I obviously couldn't include in the story. Don't read it unless you've read through the end of Chapter 41. There are no hints or portents regarding what's to come, though it is canonical. I just thought it was a nice "scene" and wanted to see it written down.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The woman stood, silent and still. Face pale, flesh cold, eyes devoid of light as they searched for what was no longer there.

The thud of a door. Then another. The rising pitch of an engine as it disappeared into an invisible future.

She crumpled to the floor, weeping uncontrollably. Silently promising herself she'd allow no more than ten minutes.

She needed thirty.

<<<<<<<>>>>>>>

Used bottles and plastic tubes lined the bathroom sink as she showered, frantically scrubbing away another. Another time. Another person. Another love. Reaching into all her most intimate places...not to remember him, but rather to remove him. Memory circling a drain.

It needed to be done. It was a matter of respect.

Respect?!? The word lashed her soul, incrimination and accusation behind every fresh whip-fall as it echoed off the shower walls. She clawed for purchase, but it was futile. Once again, she sank to the floor.

<<<<<<<>>>>>>>

She had no need to check her phone. Any time now. With no clear direction or purpose in mind, she found herself standing on the dock, staring across a placid lake at nothing. Warm sun and blue sky were their own cruel mockery. She turned to go, but her eyes caught on the boathouse.

Inside she heard the echoes. Echoes of her. Echoes from another place. Echoes from another state of being. Echoes of someone she might never hear again.

She was back at the end of the dock, a towel hanging limply from her hand. She dropped it. Stripped off her shirt, pulling hard to stretch it over her breasts. Peeled her pants down her long legs. Added her lacy underwear to the pile. Her naked body arced into the water, a graceful dive cleanly knifing the mirrored surface. It was a frigid baptism. It was a shocking renewal. It was an icy wakeup call.

It washed away nothing.

She pulled herself back onto the dock, shivering.

So cold.

The towel mended what it could, but her voluminous hair would still be wet when the next chapter arrived. She got dressed again, hugging herself and staring listlessly at the lake. At the sky. At the past that was on its way. At the future that had already departed. At the present that had lost its hold on gravity, or clarity, or meaning.

At nothing.

"A little late in the season for a swim, don't you think?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Strong arms wrapped around hers. She sank into his solidity, whole and torn. One and three, but very far from two.

"You feel tired."

"I am. I didn't sleep very well." Or at all.

He stayed silent for a while, staring at a lake only he could see. "I've become more of an expert on saying goodbye than anyone should. Just about the only thing I've learned is that it never gets easier."

"No. No it doesn't."

"We'll see him again, you know." She nodded. An answer was impossible. The truth even more so.

He released his embrace and took her hand. "Let's go home."

For the first time, she turned to look at him. I remember, now. They kissed. Love shared between husband and wife.

"Home," she repeated, letting him guide her. For she was no longer certain of the way.