How times change.

[erastes]

I'm editing "Transgressions," as a lot of you know. This was the magnum opus I began 3 years ago, and which was shelved as I discovered fanfiction and was only recently finished.

I won't say it sucks, because it doesn't completely (and my beta-readers will all yell) but it does need work. Oh Boy. Yes.

The thing is that in bits it has a tendancy to over-soppy-ize itself. Talk about women with male appendage syndrome! The boys are always weeping or raving or "marvelling" at the other boy's "impossible eyes" or "silken tresses" and I want to hide under a rock and give the whole thing to Simon Sheppard to Butch Up.

You see, I wrote "Standish" purely because i didn't know anyone was writing gay historical fiction. As gehayi pointed out to me last night, as far as I knew, I was inventing my own genre, so I had nothing to compare it against. So Standish (and buttock clenchingly more so, Transgressions) are very "romantic genre" based with loads of uber-sweeping emotions. If I'd left it as it was, the cover of Transgressions should have had two men, both Fabio look-a-likes, clinging together in a strong wind, their shirts ripped, their hair streaming behind them... well, you get the gist. Standish was more deliberate, it was a Regency Romance and followed the genre, transposing the heroine with Ambrose and the brooding male prescence with Rafe, but Transgressions doesn't follow a specific time-genre.

Anyway. I'm working on it. My boys will still be emotionally charged, but they will be a little more controlled and a little less like a couple of heroines. And will be an improvement as a result!

The thing that brought it home to me was re-reading a piece I submitted to Outlook Arizona earlier in the year. I resubbed it yesterday to Blithe Quarterly (don't have a HOPE, but you've got to aim for the stars) and as I read it I got that (oh so rare) feeling that I'm sure you've all had - "Did I write this? It's bloody good!"

I have fanfiction to thank for that progression. Left to my own devices with no-one to compare against I would probably still be writing girlie men crying at the drop of a hat, men who FELT a lot, but hardly ever had a conversation. Fanfic and RPG have helped me a great deal in those respects. The protagonists in The Snow Queen are both a lot more repressed, vulnerable and both (frankly) deserve a slap around the head to realise what would make them happy. But that's probably what makes them more real?