#shivadhverse

I mean, I have the characters fleshed out and the setting -- the excavation of the Roman vacation spa that happens to be under Gerald's estate -- but I don't have a conflict either internal to the romance or external within the setting. This could become, as they say, A Problem. I've done the nemeses-to-lovers to varying degrees twice already, and recently, but I've also done the Situation Is Against Us plotline recently. Obviously there are endless other options, but I'm going to have to brainstorm about which would be both good for the story and, well, easy to write. I've been on a break of about six months and I need something a little unchallenging to get me back into things.

So far I've got "protagonist accused of antiquity theft", "evil competing archaeologist trying to steal our dig" (which could also fall under "Mystery saboteur keeps fucking with the dig"), or "can't breathe without tourists trying to invade the dig" which has the lightest touch and is reminiscent of Fete, where most of the non-romance conflict was about Eddie crashing the tourism website. Although thinking about Michaelis being a grumpy bastard in the first book also suggests "getting past the Grumpy Bastard's shell" as an internal-romance conflict. Not quite enemies to lovers, more like "I'm going to charm you into liking me if it kills us both".

Possibly that one. Protagonist one is a grumpy bastard very defensive of the dig and their position in its hierarchy, protagonist two is from a university known for trying to poach digs, and protagonist two is ignorant of the fact that one of their colleagues is very much trying to poach the dig by continually sabotaging it. Very scooby-doo but in a fun way and I'm ready for some fun.

Well, let's give that one a shot and see what happens.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61274209

And I suddenly remembered that their culture was part Welsh for reasons…

I found myself wondering how they might have incorporated this delightful bit of Welsh culture into the general Askazer-Shivadlakia mayhem?

--The Royals and the Ramblers, by Sam Starbuck

"Back in the day," Jerry said, eyes still on his phone, "the duke of Shivadlakia was the king's general -- the duchy kept the standing military, which is why it was always so important that the king and the duke had a strong relationship. They used to foster ducal children in the palace to make sure they were loyal to the kings. For a couple of hundred years at least, documents always refer to the sitting duke as The Army and I don't think that status was ever repealed. We might have to put Michaelis and Jes on this to see, but I think legally I am, in fact, not man nor woman but a military." He looked up at Gregory and smiled.