Barahir: Blog

I've received less for this story than for the vastly less popular Tolkien fanfic. I think that's because it's always been clear where Fidèle was headed. But every single message has been interesting, and it's enjoyable to engage. Like this:

"We the readers are being dominated in ways no story has."

This from a reader who didn't necessarily love the BDSM-heavy chapter I just posted. But s/he saw something I was trying to achieve: the idea that every sexual encounter matters. That it's not just sex. That the principals learn and grow (or recede) and that there's no going back. That's it's *all* in service of character growth and of the story.

I do like a good sex scene. I like it more when it matters.

Fidéle is a story about people.

I hope that by the end (the part where I'm going to make everyone cry for about five chapters, which I'll grant isn't something folks necessarily expect from literary porn, but I'm all about my readers expelling fluids) people think it's a good story, but it's also a commentary.

For example...and these are spoilers if you haven't read that far...chapters 19-26 are an examination of the "unfaithful woman experiences a huge dick" trope in erotic literature. Luke inhabits the trope. Kathryn stands resolutely athwart the trope. Alejandro (possessor of the enormous schlong in question) is an exegetic commentary on the trope. And Faith offers a metatetxual commentary on the trope, as has (another spoiler) Wendy and as will Irina.

This will happen a lot. It's already happened a lot, and it will continue to happen, because that's part of the soil from which the story eventually blossomed. Most of the events in Fidéle will be familiar to readers of other tales of infidelity. But Fidéle rarely treats them at face value. Each of them will be examined as clichés within the genre, usually in dialogue between Kathryn and Luke. Not overtly. It's not a lecture. But it is a reaction.

Why? Because I read a ton of stories about infidelity along the way to finishing Fidéle, and while they were sometimes rife with hot sex scenes they almost never gave me what I truly wanted. Even the POV of Fidéle - the "other man" - is the rarest POV in the entire genre, only wheeled out when it's a "my years as a bull" adventure. It's so rare that I was actually stunned at how hard it was to find stories from that POV, and when I did all of them were eager cuckold stories. Every single one. And that's fine - this absolutely isn't about judgment regarding people's kinks - but that's not what I wanted to write.

I wanted to write a story in which everyone was right and everyone was wrong. In which one could sympathize with and even love every single character no matter what horrible things they were doing. In which there would be eminently real regrets and actual consequences - those are coming, of course - for behaviors people know are wrong yet commit to anyway. In which there were no pure, omniscient characters offering the truth, only flawed people doing and saying things that are meant to be helpful or useful but aren't always right.

Humans, in other words. Real people making real decisions with all the flaws and errors and misbehaviors inherent in being an actual person rather than a series of tropes.

Fidéle is a story about people.

As readers arrive at the end of Chapter 19 of Fidèle, thinking what's coming next is obvious, I'll offer this: while I've no problem exploiting tropes as long as it's done well, I find exploding them much more enjoyable.

I'm receiving email regarding details in Fidèle, which fills me with bliss because it means that people are recognizing the extent to which I've obsessed over those details.

That my other published stories were Tolkien fanfic should explain this obsession. I'm vague when I have to be (the identity of "the city" even though it's fairly obviously New York City, which will be made clear in a dozen chapters or so, the village in Wales that appears in the prologue and that I'll never identify because it's too small to get the geography wrong) and very, very specific when I want to be. I did indeed engage in world-building for this story. I know things about the characters that will never appear in the main narrative. I have a day-by-day record of everything that happened and where everyone was at the time.

But I do most definitely encourage scrutiny. If a detail seems off, let me know.

Chapter 11 of Fidèle ended on a tiny cliffhanger, but was short and (nearly) sexless. Chapter 12's "cliffhanger" is much more precarious, so I decided to go ahead and post it the same day.

That's probably it for 2019, though. See you next year.