#hcmf

this is SUCH a good question for gideon specifically! it's gonna be a two-parter.

firstly, gideon's dad is a member of the siksika nation in AB, canada. he's not involved with gideon, (through no fault of his own; he has no idea gideon exists) but gideon's mom told him enough that he's done a little research on the area and knows that his ancestry goes way back. he knows that he only knows part of the history, because he only has access to the side of history that got put in the books.

secondly, when it comes to gideon's literal house, he and his sister live with a foster family on a farm on the edge nanton, AB. the house happens to be of special interest to gideon, because he found a collection of journals in the walls right when he was having a crisis of faith about his own identity and sexuality. reading about a boy named andrew (who lived in that very room in the 1930s) processing his own feelings about his best friend helped gideon to come to terms with himself. since then, he's been combing through the history of the town trying to find out how andrew's story ended, convinced that he and his best friend had a happy ending.

(he's right, they did. those familiar with my novel he called me finch will know.)

thanks for the ask! :)

hey, anon! thanks so much! it's going super well, now that i'm back into it! it's been a bumpy year, but i'm back in the flow now :)

i'm still working on hcmf (as recently as yesterday!) and i actually hit 50k the other day! hcmf has been a really interesting project, for two reasons.

1. it's a historical fiction piece that centres around a very real event, so it requires a buttload more research than i usually have to do for my projects. it also spans more than a decade of one character's life, and will absolutely be the first project i complete and have to go back and cut a significant amount of scenes to make it at all publishable if i go that direction with it.

2. i tend to start projects and finish them before they get the opportunity to lose impetus, so i got really nervous when i petered out of writing entirely around this time last year and thought it would be lost to the wind. but to my delight, it has made a thoroughly encouraging recovery!

all that to say - yes, there will be updates shortly! it's just going slowly. the more i think about it, the more i'm glad this has been my first project to span more than a couple of months in first draft stage, because it's been such a delight to grow with finch as he comes into his own. it's nice to know that people still think about it! i'll have to post an excerpt soon.

<3<3<3 - @magic-is-something-we-create

hi pax!! hope ur doing extremely well <3

this is my favourite thing i’ve written recently That I Can Share and it’s from hcmf! i love it because it makes me Feel Emotions, Not All Of Them Pleasant and also finch is oblivious and i love him forever. tw for gross adult/minor interactions (none of it overt or sexual. just weird)

hiya, quill!

yes i sure do!

HCMF, as my first historical fiction novel, is comprised of six parts, set over thirteen years:

BOYHOOD - 1933-36, following finch and andrew as they meet, become best friends, and navigate the triumphs and defeats the epic highs and lows of being 11-14

THE SETTLING - 1937-38, the most lighthearted section by far, what can i say it's the most unsubtle queer coming of age story except finch is dumb and quite literally has no idea what's going on

GROWING PAINS - 1939-40, oop there's a war and also things are Getting Dicey in their personal lives, finch comes to Some Realizations

MAGNETIC DEVIATION - 1941-42, it's Flight School Time, maybe it's gay! ft finch being an excellent pilot and all around stand up guy. also terrible things go down with petra, finch's sister.

THE GO-AROUND - 1943-44, it's war. it doesn't go well.

AFTER - 1945-46, what, you thought i was gonna spoil the whole thing?

my favourite facts about it:

finch, our narrator, is neurodivergent of the "i don't understand myself yet nobody look at me" flavour

it's my slowest slow burn yet

it's Full of the longest most existential queer crisis of all of them except nobody is full of repressed angst about it

what can i say it's just guys bein dudes ft Tender Friendship

1930s-40s canadian politics are fuckin buck wild y'all

petra ivanov (finch's sister) is dillan fletcher's great-grandmother (Do With This Information What You Will)

heya saum!!

this is actually pretty fun, because i don't usually have Origin Stories for my wips they just waltz into my brain one day with a vibe or a character and slap the inside of my skull until i give them attention BUT.

HCMF demanded real estate.

so it's mid-july. i'm reeling from a meeting with an editor that went excellently who shocked me with her suggestions of ways to make dillan fletcher's life worse in WCA (which i'm not gonna lie i had not thought possible! and yet!) but now we have to wait to hear back and i am getting stir crazy. i'm seemingly chronically ill and can't do much but sit around and think until one day i decide to take a drive to take my mind off book things. (all writers will recognize this for the terrible idea it was.)

i'm driving down south and y'all, southern alberta in the summer is a thing of beauty. i think to myself maybe one day i'll set something here and move on with my thoughts. trap #1 laid and i didn't even know.

i don't have a particular destination in mind, i'm just goin' in a direction when it occurs to me that in this direction there is a little town called Nanton and in Nanton there is a museum. now i don't know about y'all but i'm a sucker for museums and covid zapped my ability to go to them so i make a spur of the moment decision to visit it. what's the museum? bomber command museum of canada. now i'm not a ww2 type of person in general but it's a museum and beggars can't be choosers. trap #2.

i think i was in there for about two seconds when the Dread sank in. i know writers are familiar with the Dread. it's when you're minding your business and you're struck by an Idea. my eyes caught on an image of a young man in a little yellow plane. the plane was a fleet finch. you see where this is going. trap #3.

the first hallway of the museum is devoted to the history of the british commonwealth air training plan in canada and like a little museum starved neurodivergent i absorbed that shit by osmosis like a dehydrated sea sponge.

and then the dam raids. they had a whole section on the dam raids and i was captivated. i sent @paxtonwrites a variety of Oh No What's Happening To Me flavoured text messages which really meant Stop Me Or This Is Going To Happen which really meant Don't Stop Me, I'm Neck Deep In This Now.