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Project: Goth geek chick-lit vampire thing
Okay. Rant over. I'm also proud of how I made the transition back to flippant once they were done having (totally fantastic) sex and she was heading for the bathroom. This narrator is a very cheerful and breezy sort, and even amazing sex doesn't turn her into a swoony and serious thing for very long.
Next up is a Q&A about (F*cking) Vampires, How Do They Work -- well, she's already gotten the score (pun intended!) on the parenthetical part, because she has priorities, but now that they're into the postcoital cuddling stage, it's time for the REST of the questions.
In which I will get to scatter MORE Easter egg clues. Like how long he's been a vampire, and where he came to be one (Greece), and he'll probably shy away from details of his personal life before he was turned.
Heh. I think I will be able to drop a GIANT clue, actually. Our narrator will hit the bullseye, without realizing it, and he'll just flinch and ask her not to say that again.
And then I think the narration will segue back to "and so, he became my boyfriend, and we started living together, and this is our life now," with more of the silly lines I thought of for a girl to deflect questions in a way that keeps her from needing to say "he's a vampire," because this is not one of those paranormals where everyone KNOWS there are vampires and werewolves and they all go around having Jets-and-Sharks fights all over the city and need vampire-hunting lady cops to arrest them and fall in love with them and stuff. Nope, this is a world where almost everyone believes vampires are fictional and almost nobody has evidence to the contrary. So she makes jokes about how her freelance programmer boyfriend is just one of those geeks who's gone nocturnal, and that's why he's not at brunch, she's stopped trying to drag him out in the daytime, the sunlight would probably kill him.
She gets a kick out of doing that, actually.
So that is where my brain has gone. Into this silly, silly vampire story. Which I think I can make hit 10K (watch, it'll go 14K, like the last one I was worried about), and which might need a smaller, second sex scene to make it fit the genre, or perhaps just her enthusiastic mention.
Then I just have to figure out where to send it.
Market: Etopia Press, maybe? There's gotta be plenty of markets for contemporary vampire het short stories.
Deadline: I want to finish it before Arisia
Total words so far: 6493
Mean things: Cold tile floors
Fun things: Vampire physiology is awesome; also, quoting Lost Boys
Related Google searches: bloodborne diseases carried by rats and deer, duration of single unit blood donation, stuff I can't tell you because Easter egg
Well, I've managed to get through the major sex scene without wrecking the tone of the narration. She's less flippant than she is in the clothed parts, which is reasonable, I think, but she's just as acute an observer, and I think I managed to keep the language feeling modern without being crass or juvenile.
Speaking of which. Can we talk for a minute about how there are practically NO USEFULLY SEXY WORDS FOR FEMALE GENITALIA?
In a sensible world, the counterpart to "cock" would be "cunt". Both short, plain English, not medical Latin or flowery euphemism.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angevin2 would say that it should be "yard" instead of "cock", but hardly anybody says that any more. But that to one side, as Stephen Maturin would say. "Cock" is a perfectly useful word. It's easy to say without laughing, and in terms of emotional connotations, it's pretty neutral. But "cunt"? In modern American English, it's hateful.
Fuck the patriarchy.
And there's nothing else. "Pussy" can be friendly, in an affectionate sort of way, but if I try to use it in a sex scene, it sounds like a '70s porno flick. "Twat" is kinda gross, and only a watered-down version of "cunt"'s hatefulness. "Ladyparts", "girlbits", and "vajayjay" are silly and flippant, and "cooch" and "cooter" are ridiculous. I can in fact use ALL of those when writing modern girl talk involving stuff like periods, bikini waxing, underwear that crawls up your butt, and so on, but when you want hotness, they just won't do.
Let's not even talk about "slit" or "hole". Ew.
And "vagina" and "vulva" and "labia" are things your gynecologist writes on a medical form. Not sexy.
The best I've been able to do is to use simple unadorned English for the component parts of the genital region. Mound, lips, folds, clit ("clit" is less clinical-sounding to me than "clitoris"), and the ever popular "in", "into", and "inside".
At least I'm not resorting to "down there".
Fuck the patriarchy.
Well, I've managed to get through the major sex scene without wrecking the tone of the narration. She's less flippant than she is in the clothed parts, which is reasonable, I think, but she's just as acute an observer, and I think I managed to keep the language feeling modern without being crass or juvenile.
Speaking of which. Can we talk for a minute about how there are practically NO USEFULLY SEXY WORDS FOR FEMALE GENITALIA?
In a sensible world, the counterpart to "cock" would be "cunt". Both short, plain English, not medical Latin or flowery euphemism.
angevin2 would say that it should be "yard" instead of "cock", but hardly anybody says that any more. But that to one side, as Stephen Maturin would say. "Cock" is a perfectly useful word. It's easy to say without laughing, and in terms of emotional connotations, it's pretty neutral. But "cunt"? In modern American English, it's hateful.Fuck the patriarchy.
And there's nothing else. "Pussy" can be friendly, in an affectionate sort of way, but if I try to use it in a sex scene, it sounds like a '70s porno flick. "Twat" is kinda gross, and only a watered-down version of "cunt"'s hatefulness. "Ladyparts", "girlbits", and "vajayjay" are silly and flippant, and "cooch" and "cooter" are ridiculous. I can in fact use ALL of those when writing modern girl talk involving stuff like periods, bikini waxing, underwear that crawls up your butt, and so on, but when you want hotness, they just won't do.
Let's not even talk about "slit" or "hole". Ew.
And "vagina" and "vulva" and "labia" are things your gynecologist writes on a medical form. Not sexy.
The best I've been able to do is to use simple unadorned English for the component parts of the genital region. Mound, lips, folds, clit ("clit" is less clinical-sounding to me than "clitoris"), and the ever popular "in", "into", and "inside".
At least I'm not resorting to "down there".
Fuck the patriarchy.
Okay. Rant over. I'm also proud of how I made the transition back to flippant once they were done having (totally fantastic) sex and she was heading for the bathroom. This narrator is a very cheerful and breezy sort, and even amazing sex doesn't turn her into a swoony and serious thing for very long.
Next up is a Q&A about (F*cking) Vampires, How Do They Work -- well, she's already gotten the score (pun intended!) on the parenthetical part, because she has priorities, but now that they're into the postcoital cuddling stage, it's time for the REST of the questions.
In which I will get to scatter MORE Easter egg clues. Like how long he's been a vampire, and where he came to be one (Greece), and he'll probably shy away from details of his personal life before he was turned.
Heh. I think I will be able to drop a GIANT clue, actually. Our narrator will hit the bullseye, without realizing it, and he'll just flinch and ask her not to say that again.
And then I think the narration will segue back to "and so, he became my boyfriend, and we started living together, and this is our life now," with more of the silly lines I thought of for a girl to deflect questions in a way that keeps her from needing to say "he's a vampire," because this is not one of those paranormals where everyone KNOWS there are vampires and werewolves and they all go around having Jets-and-Sharks fights all over the city and need vampire-hunting lady cops to arrest them and fall in love with them and stuff. Nope, this is a world where almost everyone believes vampires are fictional and almost nobody has evidence to the contrary. So she makes jokes about how her freelance programmer boyfriend is just one of those geeks who's gone nocturnal, and that's why he's not at brunch, she's stopped trying to drag him out in the daytime, the sunlight would probably kill him.
She gets a kick out of doing that, actually.
So that is where my brain has gone. Into this silly, silly vampire story. Which I think I can make hit 10K (watch, it'll go 14K, like the last one I was worried about), and which might need a smaller, second sex scene to make it fit the genre, or perhaps just her enthusiastic mention.
Then I just have to figure out where to send it.
