One of the reasons that I've slowed down on Lies lately is that I'm working on an adult romance novel about professional chess (was i inspired by how little actual hockey was in Heated Rivalry? Who can say?).
It's fully outlined! All characters named with backstories! Chapters named! Chapter 1 started!
Unfortunately, I was already autistic about professional chess, and now that I'm writing about it myself, obviously it's imperative I consume all available chess media, so that I can synthesize influences and references and not seem ignorant about my own genre.
(I'm taking my chess nerds growing up, rising ranks together, and mating each other on and off the board book very seriously. The research is so important for this one.)
It started with reading The Queen's Gambit, which I've obviously watched and loved, and I thought reading it would help me understand how to write chess narratively. And it did! I did like the show better, though. I think it's fun when that happens, honestly.
I've tried really hard to find a chess fandom to talk to other people who follow the sport and the individuals who play and have played it, vs places where they're really just looking to play each other. And obviously, what you find when you search for a chess fandom is Chess the Musical, especially since the 2025 revival.
I have serious audio processing issues with unsubbed bootlegs, and I also preferred to watch the original UK show than either of the Broadway adaptations, so it took me a long time to work up to doing my Korean skincare style "getting ready to watch a low quality musical" routine.
I listened to the album alongside the book so I could process the lyrics and not miss the unsung or omitted parts, researched which production is the best one, managed to find like 7 slime tutorials online for all of the different and confusing performances? (Thanks Wait in the Wings for making a fascinating video essay that helped immensely and also hyped me up to watch it. I ended up watching a 2010 short term revival of the original UK show in pretty good quality. I mean, a slime tutorial.)
It was fun, and I liked it more than I thought I would, since theater folk seem to treat it as a guilty pleasure. Definitely a few great ear worms (I love ear worms, as we know), but honestly I wish it was more ABBA forward. It was fun to get a sudden rush of Bjorn and Benny when it mostly sounded like half-baked Sondheim the rest of the time.
I also read The Chess Revolution (did not like) and The Immortal Game (loved), both nonfiction histories with different scopes and vastly different appeal to me.
Am I going to write my novel or am I going to read Nabokov's The Luzhin Defence? (I did buy it.)
Instead, my current fiction read is Coldheart Canyon (loving it less than 10% in, be my goodreads friend), I'm finishing chapter 55 of Lies, and I am at least going to look at the chess novel first chapter document while telling myself paging through Kasparov's books and considering watching every chess documentary ever made is valuable research and not procrastination.
Note: Listening to Chess the Musical made me revisit some of my old faves since my voice has changed a lot 1.5 years on T. Hamilton's naivete and flaws hit different when the proshot was released in 2020 during BLM but MAN does it hit different a decade later in the midst of full raging fascism. I'm so sorry you were so wrong Lin, for all of us. Somehow RENT is turning back around though. We all grew out of it because like "ugh, just pay your rent". Well, now that's what the landlords and robber barons want you to think! idk I haven't listened to any of my RENT faves yet, it'll be interesting to be able to do the Collins parts now though.
