Writings

The Halfway Point. After too, too long.

This is a terrifying thing for me to do, posting this, but I’m going to do it anyway, because the guilt that I have a chapter in the bag and haven’t posted it is weighing on me. I hate, probably more than any of you do, that my posting speed with this story has dropped off as precipitously as it has. I had sort of an insane spring which marked several major hurdles in my professional life—I began writing fanfiction three and a half years ago as a happy-go-lucky student on her first winter break of her graduate career, but as of March, I now sit as a Ph.D. candidate with only a dissertation standing between me and the title of “Dr.” It blows my mind that so much time has passed…but I also find my world is different as term papers have given way to articles and taking courses have given way to teaching them.

I’ve been careful throughout the writing of Stregoni to keep at least one chapter ahead of where I was posting (back in the beginning, it was two). But I’m posting my buffer chapter. Most of the next one is finished, but I will resume posting when I have a more solid buffer, and perhaps when I’ve written out to close to the end. And given the size of my last break (I’m sorry!) it’s entirely possible that it actually won’t be any longer than it has been before I post next. If anything, I’ve tended to find that when I acknowledge that it’s taking me more time than I thought, I tend to start writing like a madwoman. This is the exact halfway point of this novel, but the more I write it the more I realize it’s meant to be read as a novel, not as a serial. I know where everything is going and of course I remember everywhere it’s been, without needing to re-read. But of course, you don’t, and I would rather give you something that allows you to experience it as a whole.

I wrote in my first author’s note to this piece that this is my magnum opus of sorts-I began writing a draft of the story which would become Stregoni the day after I posted my first one-shot, “The Talk,” even though it took me over two years to actually solidify what its plot would look like. Carlisle’s story has been the story I’ve yearned to tell since I first read the words “He just celebrated his three hundred-and sixty-second birthday” the very first time I read Twilight. I can no more leave it unfinished than I could kill a member of my family. I have to tell this story, and I thank you, again and again, for coming along on the ride.

As always, I owe a great debt to Openhome and Julie for their feedback on the chapter (and advance thanks for the ones to come). Any remaining flub-ups are entirely of my own doing.

Thank you for your continued readership. It means the world to me.

The Volterra chapters are harder for me to write, I admit. And part of it is because although deep down I know where the conflict is, it’s hard to put on the page (and it’s also a very slow-moving conflict, unlike the 1918 conflict and the 1667 conflict). One of the questions you have to ask about the tensions between the brothers and Carlisle is, “What’s not to like?” Because it’s hard not to admire and be drawn to Carlisle. I’ve even developed a bit of the idea that this might be his superpower—his ability to draw people to him and connect them to others.

So, for me, it’s interesting to explore why it is that Carlisle is so unnerving. Malianani first pointed it out in her review of the first Volterra chapter, when she commented on my unintentional imagery of Carlisle standing all wet and dripping on the floor in the Volturi main chambers. He is, more than anything, an upset to their balance. Simply by his existence, he challenges everything they stand for. What they consider unchangeable–that their kind must prey on humans–he proves to be a choice. They want power, he wants love. They have beautiful floors, he goes out in the rain and brings the wet and the muck—and all of the life that goes with it—back in.

I often post chapters on my website first, if I’m unable to do a full 5-site post at once as I was this afternoon. So sometimes I get feedback before I’ve really had time to compose my note. In this instance, it was invaluable. Sisterglitch comments:

Caius seeks to destroy him for not caring. Aro seeks to seduce him with powerful intimacy. They glorify their own importance but Carlisle’s honesty and relative innocence negate it effortlessly.

And I think that’s really what this boils down to. Yes, it’s a slow burning conflict, in part because the characters themselves don’t realize what they’re fighting. Carlisle is fighting to figure out what he wants, which is not what the brothers Volturi want him to want. And they’re figuring he’s going to fight them for what they want, but they’re wrong.

Carlisle’s simply not after the same things. So the question is, who’s going to figure that out first?

As always, thanks to my intrepid betas, Openhome and Julie, without whom this story wouldn’t be what it is. Miaokuancha also gets my great thanks for catching an important anachronism in the last chapter, and Camilla my thanks for catching an Italian topography mishap. Haven’t edited those yet, but I will tonight.

And so finally, we truly meet Edward.

There are a lot of things I’m moving with in this story that aren’t completely laid out for us in canon. One of them is, why Edward? He was seventeen, Carlisle really needed a companion, not a child, or at least, that’s what he thought he wanted. So I’ve chosen to focus a little more on the Carlisle-Elizabeth relationship (and to foreground it with Elizabeth Bradshawe!) so that the business of turning Edward becomes this passing of the reins from Elizabeth to Carlisle. A number of people asked why I chose Elizabeth’s POV as the second POV for 1918—this is why.

This chapter, for reasons unknown, took almost two months to pen (I write a chapter ahead—the chapter just completed was chapter 12.) It turns a page in this story, to be certain. From now on, this is as much Edward’s story as it is his sire’s.

Thank you to Openhome and Julie for their intrepid beta skills as always, and thank you to everyone for reading.

One of the things about good canon, in my opinion, has always been that there should be more going on than just a retelling of what might have happened to the characters in any given time period. It’s one of the reasons I don’t fault people who say they find canon fic boring; the truth is, much of it can be. The strongest canon fics have purpose unto themselves; the characters have a story arc and conflict and growth just as they would if they weren’t part of a larger story.

When I set out to write Stregoni, my challenge was to find what the arc was for it. Where is the story in Carlisle’s background? And, with the help of M, my friend of ten years who gives me much inspiration for my stories, I realized that the story of Stregoni is the story of turning Edward; that in some way, each and every bit of every chapter leads us closer and closer to that evening at a hospital in Chicago in 1918, when Carlisle makes the decision that will change his life forever.  It’s not enough just to write Carlisle’s history—it’s too long and too circuitous for that. Plus, he is far too purposeful a man to tell his story without purpose.

Making that happen, however, continues to be a right sight more difficult than I thought. Despite that this novel has an outline more detailed than any I’ve ever written (if you’re familiar with Moleskine’s Cahier line, this story has a cahier all to itself), segments of it keep throwing me far off kilter. Chapters 10 and 11, the current one posting and the one just finished being penned, turn both the 1667 and 1918 plots to deeper conflict—Carlisle’s struggle with his father becomes more defined, and he now knows he has to make some decisions if he’s going to keep Elizabeth the way he’d like to.  My beta was kind enough to throw this one “back over the wall” as I like to term it, i.e., she asked for some revisions to change the shape of the argument between William and Carlisle. All in all, I don’t know how much I tweaked it (I’m sure Openhome will tell me), but getting the movement between these two to feel right is complicated, to say the least.

A second reason for the delay, which I’ll put here as my site is a bit less public, is that I’ve spent much of the summer preparing a profic work to go out. Although SB is my seventh serious novel I’ve written (I put as much work into my fanwork as I do any of my other work, and therefore I number them among my novels written), I’ve never taken a novel through the process of final revision to get it ready to show to publishers and agents. It’s been an interesting journey, to say the least. I have zero intention of pulling back from fandom, as frankly, it’s too fun (and at this time, I’m choosing to largely keep my profic identity and fanfic identities separate so as to protect my fic postings from anyone who might ask me to take it down), but I’m still learning how to balance the two. I felt I owe you that explanation at least, and I  thank you immensely for your patience while I figure out how to keep all these balls in the air.

At any rate. Enough of me rambling on about it. Go read it, if you haven’t already. I’ll be curious to hear what people think.

Also, many, many thanks to those anonymous souls who keep assuring that SB pops up on fanfic award nominations all over fandom. I am floored and continually humbled. Although SB didn’t win in its category for the Hopeless Romantic Awards, “Form 1040” took home “Best Renesmee” (which I find surprising, as I personally hated her before writing that fic), and it absolutely made my day.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Chapter 9 “came in heavy” as I like to say, and so I axed this little ditty because it didn’t add enough to the chapter to warrant staying in. But it’s still a neat flashback, if I do say so myself, so I thought I’d post it here. This takes place when Carlisle is lying on the glacier in the Alps, looking up into the night sky.

~||x||~

As he lay staring to the heavens, a memory came to him. The human memories were almost unknowable, what he imagined dreams must have felt like, when last he had been able to sleep—wisps of thought that raced away as quickly as they came. He had been a boy, standing in the churchyard on an unusually clear night like this one. He had asked his father about the stars, and had been met with the same answer as to everything; they had been made by the Lord.

When he had pressed, however, for once his father had not angered—he remembered now that this was the more common response—but instead had told the story of the promise to Abraham. How Abraham had nearly given in to siring an heir by another, but the Lord had insisted that he would sire his own heir, with his wife. Then how Abraham had been instructed to look to the heavens, and had been told, “Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them…So shall thy seed be.”

Carlisle’s father had placed a hand on his shoulder as they both looked upward. “A reminder, child,” his father had said. “A reminder that thou art among that seed, that thou art a child of Abraham.”

The memory whirled away.

“That thou art a child of Abraham,” he muttered.

He wondered if this was still the case.