A few years ago I posted this excerpt of a rewritten fantasy short story, ‘Red Amber’, a M/M erotic romance about creativity, grief, pride, and lost love.
Here’s the current mood board for it.
While I’m waiting on edit letters for THE PURIST, I’m settling back into this story. I have 12K of it written, so expanding it to somewhere around 25K-30K shouldn’t be too difficult.
My first inspiration was this tiny red amber bear talisman, which was so cool when I saw it back in 1989 that it spawned an awkward story…with decent roots. I knew I wasn’t good enough for the idea, so I set it aside.
‘In a fantasy setting inspired by Neolithic North Africa, Tarhan Carver is the last of his reclusive clan of amber-workers. Shattered by the loss of his true love Aio, a young man sold into chaste religious servitude, Tarhan becomes obsessed with hoarding amber until he has enough to buy back Aio. But along the way they’ll both learn some things cost more than mere wealth.’
A M/M romance anthology call in 2014 made me take another look at my het little romance, and realize it could be any two people, not just a man and a woman. The rewritten version worked as a story, but not for that antho. So I set it aside for a few more months. Stuck in the waiting room for jury duty, I realized this was a whole book. I outlined a rough path to expand and interweave the short story, set later in the characters’ lives, with earlier sections showing how they got there.
On a whim last week, I sent the proposal to my current publisher. They liked it. The editor who saw the newest partial version wanted to offer a contract then and there. I’m reluctant to contract something until it’s finished…because life happens, and schedules get derailed.
Finishing this is a good distraction, especially if I can write 2650 words in three hours, and still like them the next morning. The characters are ‘chatty’: their dialogue and actions spin out naturally from my skimpy notes. Tarhan, like many of my characters, makes stuff, which is kind of a Thing I like to read (but other people get bored). Aio is giving me an excuse to read up on the Dinka herdsmen of East Africa.
And some gorgeous cave art from the Sahara.
Mood board sources:
Model M’Baye Ford, photo Maltchique
Ethopian woman, photo Timothy Allen
Cobra, photo by W. Klein, Angola field Group
Amber, lava, and malachite beads, Artfire
Thunderbird, ‘best thunderbird’, Deviant Art
Ancient Nile landscape, History Channel
Neanderthal male face reconstruction, Germany
Dinka herdsman and cattle, photo Irene Abdou
‘Horned Goddess’, Tassili cave art