#project darwin

I've been drifting in and out of here pretty intermittently over the last wee while and life is lifing heavily right now so I'm here but not really.

Please keep tagging me in writing games if you'd like to. I'm keeping a stash of tags to catch up on when I'm able to catch up. In the meantime, I'm checking in and reblogging your posts and it's always lovely to see those.

Onto the WIPs...

I'm about to start structural edits on Spin Cylinder. I have notes. I have plans. It's my priority when I have time and energy for writing (which is pretty minimal at the moment). There's not much more to say about it other than I'm looking forward to tearing it apart and rebuilding it.

Name From Nowhere is resting. I'm giving the discovery draft some time to sit before I come back to it and start shuffling things around, but I don't think it'll need a huge amount of structural work. I'm going to stop using the Project Aria tag for posts relating to it and stick to only the Name From Nowhere tag now that it has a definite title.

Project Darwin had a flurry of activity after I finished the discovery drafts of my other two WIPs, but is most likely going to rest again while I focus on Spin Cylinder. Because it's fully outlined with a ridiculous amount of detail and it's so different in tone from the other books I'm working on, it's easy to dip in and out of so it's become my palate cleanser WIP.

Thanks to @talesofsorrowandofruin for the tag!

These seven snippets are from Project Darwin...

01

It was like the whole world was whispering to me at once, nothing will ever be the same again.

02

“Be a force for love,” said Gran, “but still be a force.”

03

We spent the rest of our weekends in the park in Hawk's Glen, imagining ourselves to be much more counter-culture than our reality allowed and still making sure we were home before dark as our parents insisted.

04

There was a careful polish to the Eaveses' house that contrasted with the memory-soaked comfort of mine.

05

Darwin pushed her sleeves up, always long sleeves even in summer, and encircled her wrists in turn with opposite thumbs and index fingers. I think she did that when she was trying not to be upset, but I didn’t know why.

06

Amber's skin was summer gold and her hair shone vibrant copper, as if spending a few weeks somewhere else had painted her with brighter colours.

07

I began to feel like I was only really alive at night, like daytime was an artificial blur, a pretence crafted for the comfort of other people, normal people.

Thanks to @autumnalwalker for the tag!

Rules: Search your your writing for the colours of the rainbow and post the excerpt.

RED from BRIDGE FROM ASHES

My boss’s boss runs his hands across the slick red mess of my bare chest and holds up a gold-framed mirror. He tells me not to close my eyes. He tells me to look. He doesn’t know I can’t see myself anymore. He asks me what it feels like to be beautiful.

ORANGE from PROJECT DARWIN

Later that summer, Amber and I were lounging in her back garden on a scratchy blanket with satin edging that we’d stolen from one of the spare bedrooms, drinking cartons of sugary orange juice cold from the milkman’s truck and playing with the kitten.

YELLOW from PROJECT DARWIN

A year passed and the following spring danced in shades of green and yellow across Hawk’s Glen, the last of the snowdrops replaced by daffodils and the sun rising earlier to greet days that no longer pinched our cheeks with cold fingers.

GREEN from the short story CODE in my collection FIVE

And the light in my eyes and my clenched fists and the green line of my heartbeat and the person in the mask and the paper cup and every secret swallowed and every meaning lost.

BLUE from SPIN CYLINDER

I open the door onto the patio with a view of the ocean, turquoise reaching to sapphire blue beyond.

INDIGO from NOVEMBER BREAKS

My hand finds the texture left by the bullet. It’s too dark to see much, but I can fill in the detail from my fingertips and it manifests as a wireframe diagram with writhing veins and glowing indigo scar tissue piercing his body.

VIOLET PURPLE from NAME FROM NOWHERE

I look up and the sky fades from daylight to sunset to deep purple night. The air is velvet and time sinks into a slipstream of bliss and emptiness.

Thanks for the ask 💜

For Spin Cylinder, it's the *clears throat* mouth-fucking with the gun scene (Brett's POV). Here's a snippet...

The gun trailing ice along my skin, stopping under my chin with a pressure that shouldn't feel as tender as it does. Your lips on my neck. Your fingers tightening over my pulse. "What do you want now?" And I turn the question on you because we all have our weapons. We all know exactly how to use them. We're all experts in something that fucks someone else up. "What do you want now?" The gun lowers. And you step back. And you let go. "I don't know." And your eyes are emptier than I've ever seen them.

For Name From Nowhere, it's when Aria (deeply traumatised, fuck off don't touch me) and Rafe (deeply traumatised, I break everything I touch) have a tender Friendship Moment™...

The ghosts in my head reach for each other, gathering strength, gathering substance, flowing from my brain through my limbs. I unfold my legs and sink forward until my forehead’s resting against Rafe’s, my arms over his shoulders, hands clasped behind his neck. “I’m so sorry,” he says again, barely above a whisper. The closeness should scare me, but I don’t think anything’s ever going to scare me again, at least not the way it used to. If there’s fear in my future, let it be power. Let it be a weapon.

And for Project Darwin, it's the prologue because I woke up with the whole thing word-for-word in my head and scribbled it down as fast as I could before I forgot it, then the whole story unfolded by itself from that short scene. It begins with...

The last stubborn leaves clung desperately to the trees against tearing November winds when Darwin Eaves arrived home for the first time in almost a decade. There would have been a certain poetry to the storm having followed her, but the truth is the storm was here first. Perhaps she invited it to stay though, to distract from her own force of disruption. I’m not saying Darwin could command the weather, but I’m also not saying she couldn’t.

Thanks to @ahordeofwasps for the tag!

These are from Project Darwin...

I hadn’t seen Darwin in six months but I’d been wishing on astral bodies and weather systems that she would still be working at the university and I would somehow have cause to run into her. The natural forces that heard my prayers when god didn’t were kind enough to work in my favour because arranging a meeting between two people in the same city was a lighter demand than bringing a lost girl home or raising the dead. Edinburgh gathered mist and promise around the steep shoulders of its winding streets with the birth of autumn, grey skies heavy and cobblestones slick with rain that didn’t fall as much as linger in the air. I wore a mask of adulthood with my knee-length chocolate-brown suede coat, but carried my teenage core in the pockets of jeans so long and oversized that they drank up the damp from the ground. There was a delight in the unknownness of everything and the sweet potential of it all, creating a more confident version of myself to step into in the company of new people. This Tobie, university student Tobie, was braver and stronger and more adventurous than I’d ever felt in Hawk’s Glen. And, most importantly, this version of me made no pretence of being interested in boys.

Thanks to @indecentpause for the tag!

This is the last line I added to Project Darwin...

I didn’t want to ask her what there was to worry about. I didn’t want to hear the answer in case I was part of it.

Thanks for the tag, @autumnalwalker!

This is the first line (OK, it's two lines, shut up) of the latest chapter of Project Darwin...

That winter was the coldest I could remember, made all the more bleak by Amber’s absence. Weeks of desperately wishing, bargaining with whatever forces of fate might have had the power to intervene, dragged raw against a backdrop of bitter sleet and pavements frozen black and treacherous.

@deanwax tagged me to search my WIP for blue, brown, black, bed, and bell. Thank you!

These are from Project Darwin...

BLUE

The kitten stretched and flopped over the side of the shallow bowl onto the tiles, yawning and opening blue eyes for a moment before folding back in on himself and returning to sleep.

BROWN

She slid slender, brown cigarettes from narrow green boxes with manicured fingernails and my memories of her from that time are clouded by the drift of menthol smoke.

BLACK

Weeks of desperately wishing, bargaining with whatever forces of fate might have had the power to intervene, dragged raw against a backdrop of bitter sleet and pavements frozen black and treacherous.

BED

I lay in bed and stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, replaying every second of the kitten’s naming ceremony in my head, committing every breath of Darwin’s quiet voice to memory.

BELL

They staged their own quiet rebellion by scuffing their new boots on purpose, trying on smudged eyeliner in bedrooms the size of small apartments, and stealing shots of gin and vodka from bottles topped up with water in their parents' drinks cabinets.

Tagging @aziz-reads, @andromedaexists and @calicohyde if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in.