Ah, a new novella in the works. More erotica. I wasn’t expecting to write it at all – it’s sci fi romance, which I’d never even considered. I mean, I love sci fi. I have a “A Space Traveller’s Handbook”*. But I’ve never got my head around combining my fledging sci fi plots**

(some of what’s under the cut isn’t family friendly, though there’s nothing excitingly erotic either)

If I spend too much time thinking about the story I lose the impulse to write. I write to find out what happens. If I know, then I don’t bother write it down. So I’m only thinking about the plot when I have a keyboard in front of me. When I don’t, I worldbuild (because if I do that with a keyboard in front of me I also lose the impulse to write. It’s wonderful procrastination).

I don’t have muses or share my headspace with the characters, but I do like to imagine doing Q&As and interviews, a la famous published author. So I interview my characters, like I might do here some day.

Dear god they’re talkative. I’ve been struggling to write sex scenes in this – I keep wanting to fade to black – and it wasn’t until I started imagining interviewing them that I reaised one. One’s naturally chatty, and the other always has to have the last word. They don’t shut up.

(I also discovered the posh one has two sisters, one planned and the other not, while the scruffy one comes from a family that never left earth, which is pretty unusual. I didn’t even know it was unusualy until last night)

I also need to think of a better name than “Space Romance” at some point, but the name is definitely settling (like “the selkie story” did). I’ve got a skeleton, bullet-point plot, with some that just have “- ?” or even “- ???” where I probably ought to think of the plot point sooner rather than later. Like why the scruffy one is being arrested at the beginning – thief? assassin? conman? corporate spy? smuggler? stealing the handcuffs?

I’ll figure it out. In the mean time, I’m going to continue writing the most dialogue-heavy sex scenes I’ve ever considered. That is if they ever get to the sex. 1500 words since the scruffy one suggested they passed the next nine hours by shagging, and the posh one’s only just fetched the lube.

This may require some editing at a later date.

*it’s from the 80s, set in the 2080s, and written like a Dorling Kinderson guide to space travel – too vague for the experienced, too detailed for the tourist, and focusing unsurprisingly on the first twenty years of space travel. Apparently, we’ve already built a base on the moon

**It’s a planet! Covered in water! It fucks up the electromagnetism stuff! And some other science. And then some stuff happens there… Yeah. I read hard sci fi. I can’t write it.