Leto Armitage: Blog

I've heard from a couple of kind souls that expressed that they wished I could put out chapters faster. I wish I could too! I'm actually taking a few days off this coming week so maybe I can get some extra writing done.

Chapter sixteen is well underway though so, for now, there is no risk in the weekly schedule falling behind and I know roughly where the story is going for chapter 17. I assure everyone Robert, Melissa and Lavi are going to have a lot of fun on their vacation. Robert has been making restaurant reservations with great enthusiasm while the girls might have some plans of their own.

I had one person ask about the name Xinyi, the name is Chinese and is pronounced 'Shenee'. This gets into details that I don't think will ever make it into the story as it would require excessive exposition. But I can share them in a blog post.

The family name for Ji and Xinyi is Guo. Ji is short for Jiang, she often goes by Jen or Jenny for a more American name. Xinyi, however, doesn't like her American name, Shirley. Jenny is persistently known as Ji among the other cheerleaders in part because her mother, Ai, comes to every cheer event and keeps forgetting to call her Jenny. Lavi latched onto it and used it during their freshman year to annoy Ji and it stuck with the cheerleaders. Lavi and Ji have never been outright hateful to each other but never liked each other. Both Guo girls were given their American names by the parents when the family moved to the states when they were young and Xinyi decided it made her like an old woman so by the time she started high school she insisted on being Xinyi again.

Although both are cheerleaders they have very different personalities as everyone will eventually see.

Chapter 13 is in proofer hands now so it will be out soon. It took longer to write than I expected. It grew in content as I wrote. As always I start out with a rough idea of what will happen but as characters do things sometimes how they respond pulls in other directions.

Part of the delay was that there is content to come in the next few chapters that needed a bit of setup and I had to think carefully about it. Another part was ... life. My father's health isn't good and he lives a ways away but close enough for a day trip, even if it makes it a very long day.

The COVID-19 situation doesn't make it any easier. I know others must be feeling strain and disruption in their lives. Some writers whose work I really enjoy I see have slowed down a lot I hope everyone is keeping body and soul together and wish the best for everyone out there.

I've had an internal debate on the Pool Girl about tagging it for MaleDom and BDSM content. There is certainly an element of power exchange present but it's not ... for lack of a better phrase, storybook BDSM. The power exchange between Melissa and Robert is casual, they don't have safewords, he's not (yet) wrapping her in rope. And while Melissa has strong submissive traits she is a challenging sub who likes to get his goat as readers have undoubtedly already noticed. As a sub she likes to play the brat, which is not her normal personality and isn't something she's fully aware she's doing. Robert has certainly noticed though.

My concern is that tagging it will imply a higher degree of BDSM content than is present which may increase in later chapters but probably not to a high degree. I don't want to mislead potential readers into thinking that this is a BDSM title, where in reality it's a romance with some power exchange.

I've been fiddling with chapter 10. It took a turn I didn't expect but not in a major way. I expect to do one more pass before I give it to my kind proofreader. I'm currently imagining there will be somewhere around 16 to 20 chapters before I wrap it up.

So, chapter nine is with my proofreader Pertinax. I had intended to publish it this weekend but life got busy but I'm going to stick to one chapter a week at a minimum.

I have a stand-alone story called Trapped in the Stacks in limbo right now. I wrote it for someone who may or not ever read it. I've given her veto rights since it uses her public name. I feel like we pervs in the age of the internet need a term more appropriate than nom de guerre. My french is nearly non-existant but nom de pervertir? If she doesn't care for it I may rework it to be a character more fully of my creation though still inspired by her.