The Fourth Brother was the original title of Stregoni Benefici, well, at least after I decided my fic Absolution, which was to barrel straight through from 1644 to 2005 would not work as a single coherent narrative. It all began when someone in the Ithaca is Gorges Twilighted thread (man, remember those days? It’s a ghost town over there now) mentioned the extraordinary similarities between what we might assume Carlisle’s father was like, and what Aro is like.
Both of them want Carlisle to be something he’s not, even though all the while, they are fascinated by and even want to on some level protect who he is. And for a time Carlisle feels comforted in both their shelter, but as he grows more into himself, what once felt like protection begins to feel like a vise.
I have a friend, M, with whom I talk over a lot of my writing, both profic and fanfic, and way back in early 2010, as I finished Ithaca and was starting on Da Capo, I talked to her about this theory, and how I wanted to intertwine the story of Carlisle leaving his father with the story of Carlisle leaving Aro.
And she said, “Yes, but why would either of those stories matter? In what context do they make sense for him to bother to even recount them?”
And that was when I realized Stregoni needed a third narrative, and that to tie those two together, I was going to need to show how they resulted in the man who, on a cold October night, snatched a dying seventeen-year-old out of a hospital in Chicago and turned him into the vampire we all grew to love through Bella Swan’s eyes.
That’s always what this is about for me. There are, I think, vast similarities in all three storylines, and I’m dong my level best to make them all surface as makes sense.
I said in the author’s note to my last chapter that I was disappointed in my own posting speed and would do my best to change that. So I took advantage of Camp NaNoWriMo, and this work is now drafted to within three chapters of its end. Starting with this post, Stregoni will post weekly, every Thursday, until its completion. It is written out to within three chapters of the end, and I expect to finish one of the three chapters tonight. If I feel I’ve gotten ahead on the editorial work, I’ll try to post a chapter on a Monday as well. If you’d like to re-read, or if you’re reading for the first time, I’ve put together a quick-and-dirty PDF version of chapters 1-14 for you to download and read at your leisure.
Thank you for reading, as always.
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