#and hadrian is very bi in the agnomen au

[flowerprose]

WAIT A MINUTE. NAMESAKE HAS A MODERN AU????? SINCE WHEN GOD I AM SO OUT OF THE LOOP AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *screaming crying going feral*

-inhales-

i don't talk about it often!

namesake has had quite the writing journey. i have stopped and started it for nearly a decade. back in early 2021, i was in a novel writing class with my fav prof and really wanted her feedback on the characters and their arcs, to see if they had any potential. i reverted it to a modern setting with magical realism elements, to bypass the 'no fantasy' clause in her syllabus. (also emailed ahead of time for express permission, which she was fine with!)

this was a few months after a very difficult fall semester, and i was a little raw at the time. pandemic woes, real-life woes, not-sure-what-my-style-was-anymore woes. a boy in my class left some charming feedback on my first submission, and it turned me off even touching that story for a while. i reverted it back to a fairy tale retelling in june 2021, and then left it alone again after some real-life havoc, retouching it sparsely as i dove into my current namesake draft.

i've spent almost a year in the heads of persephone and hades now, and i'm finding it hard to let them go. so i picked up agnomen - which is the name of the modern AU - with a fun prompt, and i've been slowly revising the outline i wrote two years ago. it's much heavier than i remembered it, and my ideas for the characters then really don't match their current renditions. but i'm tenderly hatching a baby draft. i think i thrive more naturally when writing contemporary settings over historical/fantasy. i might even post this one on wattpad, because i'm not committed to querying it.

-exhales-