Satchmo Strikes Again

[erastes]

Do please pop along to Jessewave’s Blog for my column this week.  I’m discussing the Hero. We love him on the page, but would you REALLY want to live with him?

Come along and share your heroes and the reasons why you’d DEFINTELY not move in with him (or whether you would!)

In other news, the novella (Tributary) is getting there.  I would say it’s “almost done” because it IS, in a way—but it’s only half written.  As usual I’m writing it in rather a jigsaw fashion; the main bulk of the book moves forward, but I work on scenes that may or may not make their way into the whole thing, and of course, I’m writing the end. Meant to do it yesterday but felt too much like crap. Better today, thank you!  Still got a nascent cough and a snuffle, but nowhere near what I was expecting after yesterday.

What' I’ve realised is one of my characters has to have a name change.  His name is Louis and his lover’s name is (surname) Armstrong.  Is this my subliminal guilt that all my characters are white?

Have a small sniplet:

He rested like that for a moment, stealing the still moments from Louis when he could—God knows they were rare enough, the boy was eternally restless.  He rested his hand on the curve of Louis' back, that warm space which might lead to delight in a moment, if Louis kept still long enough.  He felt Louis' lips against his shoulder and the flutter love stretched again, deep in his being, for it was more poetic than saying it happened in one's belly. Stupid old man, he castigated himself. What a predicament to find yourself in, after all these years.  In love.  At your age.

Louis shifted, predictably, unable to stay in one place, sliding from James' grasp.  James didn't try to hold on; he couldn't force Louis to stay, not in his employ, and not in his arms.  He was only grateful that he did.  But Louis granted him a brief, dazzling smile before turning away into the bedroom.  As James changed into his pyjamas he could hear the boy humming from the other room and it took effort not to watch him through the crack in the door.

Instead he sat on the edge of the bath and washed his face again. As he stood up, he shivered. He'd been feeling a little dizzy since he took the stairs and now his joints were aching.  He hadn't paid attention to them much during the evening, but they'd been complaining since before dinner. Oh no.  Not again.  Looking at his lined face in the mirror he could not resist a grimace at the comedy of errors he was in.  He knew he was obsessed.  Knew he was caught in the saddest of things—an older man's fancy for something he could never keep, and he played his part.  He didn't cling. Didn't go overboard. Louis had to know that he could trust him to be there—so far, and no more.  How Louis would shy from the truth—the truth about all of it.  How he'd hate to know the depths of feeling running under the surface, he'd run from that.

Comments

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Oh, lovely. Play it again, Sam.

Re the race thing... next time you do sci-fi, you could make one of the characters a different race -- in a universe that doesn't have this one's social issues. Or you could have a charcter who had a great-grandmother from India, with a bit of gene-mixing but not enough to create issues that would get in the way of your story.

I have to admit that after all the race-fail and other (justified, but I think sometimes out of proportion) uproar, I'm leery of doing any characters who are other than vanilla, even though I've got some Native American (a term some American Indians hate) genes myself, and have been allowed to learn from a couple of tribal elders. No matter how a thing's written, there are bound to be people who will hate it and turn it into an argument, and I've got enough aggravation with the 'you shouldn't write m/m' brigade.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Oh I wasn't being at ALL serious. Other than sticking in an equivalent of a Ms Schwartz from Vanity Fair, it's unlikely that I'll be writing any people of colour in my books - as you say - we get enough stick writing about men, as I said on the Dear Author thread, and people will give me hell if I start writing people of colour. And I think a Ms Schwartz was more acceptable than a Mr Schwartz would ever have been!!!