Sorry, I'm so late with this! Thank you so much. I love that people are still finding Pense-bête and reading despite the missing chapters. Working on those stories taught me a lot.

I would love to write a screenplay! In typical me fashion, my first attempt was too ambitious--I don't know how to start small. Yes, please share your wisdom with me. Message me!

🍭 here's something from chapter 4 of I. Allegro con brio tempo (Piano Sonata in G Major, "Pense-bête"):

The car was fancy. Fancier than anything else he’d ever seen on their block. DeShawn didn’t even think about it, he walked across the street, shovel in one hand. His older brother’s switchblade in the other. Stuck it in the tire and pulled it back out. Then he went back to his corner. He went right on back to clearing and salting. Only this time, he breathed great big ragged breaths like he’d been the one cut and opened.

thank you for the ask, @angel-in-the-city-blog! ❤️

💖 What do you like most about your own writing?

I answered this here and I'm already feeling like a clown about it.

😐 What embarrasses you most about your own writing?

Oh, that it's not very good. I have decent ideas and enjoy getting taken away by them, but the rest? It's hard. I lack the skill to really deliver on the things I want to do and that bums me out. Plus, improving is such slow going, and so elusive. While I wish my writing was easier to read, I don't want it to lose complexity. I want it to be beautiful, smart, and take hold somehow in readers. But then I look at it and it feels so ordinary. There's a divide there.

🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc).

RECENTLY? What is time?

No one knows better than you how proud I am for writing and finishing Rest Easy. I wrote for a time in the Veronica Mars fandom, writing character studies instead of case fics. Even though I love mysteries. Then I wandered into the SKAM fandom, and this whole ass mystery story came out of a joking, riffing conversation about an aged-up version of these characters, whose canon selves never saw much less solved a single violent crime. RE will be polished up before it can continue with another story, but I am forever proud that I started and finished it.

Recently, though...hmm. I'm proud of March's chapter of the red squirrel, which had to impart quite a bit of information without exposition. Revealing reveals that aren't overt. That chapter was really rough in that first draft. I'm proud that it got better.

🍰 Name one of your fave comfort fics (doesn’t have to be your all time fave).

You know what it's gonna be.

Childhood friends to lovers, summer on an island. Working in a kiosk. An abandoned hotel. Painting a fence. Sun, sweat. Flora and fauna. First love. Waiting on you-u-u-u.

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thank you for the ask, @irazor 💗💗

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🍬something from a work-in-progress, you'll know what from.

“January. No later. Okay?” Isak narrows his eyes and shoves Per lightly on the shoulder.  Per shakes his head, eyes trained on his plate. He picks at his kebab. “Not Christmas?” Isak knows that look. It’s the look that keeps him coming back to Trondheim. He moves his suitcase and swivels slowly on the dining stool. Per’s mouth is set in a taut, thin line. He’s chewed his chapped bottom lip raw. “What do you want for Christmas?” The boy huffs. “I don’t want anything. I’m not a kid.”  Per might have convinced himself he wasn’t allowed to want presents, but everyone wants something. Isak checks his phone, no notifications, and turns to face the street―the half-empty REMA, the closed bar with a garish red sign next to it, his and Per’s reflections superimposed over the view.

- O -

Thank you for the ask, sweet @irazor❤️

Te deseamos lo mejor junto a esta belleza 😘

💖 A drabble that made you want 100K more words

You know I have a terrible memory for drabbles. I do remember @irazor* did a tumblr prompt where someone had to say "you have my sword," and I was like, yessss, yesss, gimme that warring factions and castle grime and fur collars etc.

Luckily for me, she did expand it and I volunteered myself to her team of beta readers (LOL, "casually") and now you can all read it on AO3 as my kingdom for your graces and really, you should.

*I swear I love a lot of writers, not just the phenomenal blithers and irazor, but many more. ask me things, peeps, so I can talk about more of them. 🤣

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Thank you for the ask, #@angel-in-the-city-blog

💖 What do you like most about your own writing?

I like that despite never feeling particularly confident about my skill level, there is always something that surprises me. It might be a description, a turn of phrase, or a situation that I think has the sparkle of difference.

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

Rest Easy or The Boyfriend Experience. Leave me/us comments for those.

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

I am some hellish combination of the three. I plan, go off-road, make shit up, carefully craft--it is never fucking consistent. But. I will try and work on my writing a little bit each week. Even if it's only one rewritten sentence. I just want to get better.

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thank you for the ask, @theawkwardterrier 💗

18.😭 A fic that ripped your heart out (but it hurt so good)

I am likely to never know what the title of A Silky Nightmare refers to and I kind of love that it sounds like it's a a Gothic romance about a man who is a super hot Lord of the Manor by day, man-eating spider by night.

While that sounds kind of awesome, the story is about something else entirely.

I hesitate to say too much about the story, which doesn't fuck around too much with complication. It is a beautifully realized SKAM AU set in the not-distant-enough past when homosexuality was illegal in Oslo. It is about what is forbidden, it's about sex and how it reveals character, it's about eating ice cream in a bank holiday-empty park with someone you have fallen in love with. It's about fear. And hope.

SKAM's Even and Isak are posited by canon as unavoidable in any universe--which somehow makes them the perfect ship to explore difficulties with in fic. Unerringly, they meet and connect, no matter the obstacle, and the obstacle here--living in a world where they cannot risk holding hands in public--packs a wallop because it is not made up. This was true once.

A Silky Nightmare is not perfect, but so much of it is, and it is so beautifully felt, I reread it once a year to feel the good pain that it brings. The anger, loneliness, and frustration of the situation, the setting. But also the joy, and the love. Every time I read the ending, I feel like I've been through it in the best way.

The author kindly orphaned rather than deleted, and I thank them for their kindness. I will recommend it forever and ever.

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Thank you for the ask, @yulyasupreme