#we won't talk about the OTR sequels

[onekisstotakewithme]

For the fave fic meme: Ally, how am I to choose when you only post bangers? Let's limit it to a couple of finished ones. Obviously, None of Us are More than Caretakers is nothing short of incredible and you know how much I'll sing its praises... The Butch & Sundance series and your ability to predict things forever, and A Night to Watch is just so romantic to me. (And OTR and how seamlessly worked with canon to add more special stuff? God.)

🥰 these are all CHOICE choices, bestie.

Caretakers my beloved....

actually I'm pretty happy with all my published tww work so far... but THANK YOU, ily 💜

[pretensesoup]

Queer Books 2024: Old Time Religion

I have been trying to figure out how to talk about Old Time Religion.

The problem is that it's the second book in a series, which makes it a little confusing if you haven't read the first. I think you probably could jump in here, but it's not quite the same as reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe without having read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy first. The relationships you're jumping into are a little more complex. But regardless, I'm going to give it a go, because I was recently called out for not mentioning the sequel, and to do that, I kinda need to explain how we got there.

So. I knew when I wrote Dionysus in Wisconsin that Ulysses was bi/pan. I won't go into detail about my specific associations with each of those sexualities because as a person who is myself pansexual, I'm not sure of the difference all the time. Also, I don't recall hearing the term pansexual in use until about 2004 (when I said, "Why do we need that?" Then about 12 years later...) So it felt historically inaccurate to call Ulysses (and many of the other bloodline magic people) pansexual. On the other hand, since I wrote that, I've also written various non-binary characters who use the singular "they" as their pronoun, which is also historically inaccurate (not the non-binary part—of course nb/agender always existed, and so did the singular they, but as far as I can tell it was more likely that they'd use neo pronouns or some other arrangement up until relatively recently). So pick your poison, I guess? 

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. When we meet Ulysses in DIW, he's hot and single, but he's not going out with a lot of people. He's actually keeping to himself to the point where Celeste is a little bit concerned about him and how shut off from being an integrated whole person he is. So I knew he'd had someone in the past who had messed him up a little bit, and it turned out to be a woman named Livia. 

Livia is a character that I like much better than almost anybody who has read the novel. My mother read OTR and when I mentioned one of the characters from it was coming back for book 5, which will be the grand conclusion of the Julius Sterling Arc, she was very emphatic that it not the Livia coming back unless she did a lot of apologizing. I thought that was interesting because as a writer, you wind up with these different perspectives on the characters and the work. I think it's necessary to be more sympathetic to what everyone is trying to accomplish if you want to write a really human story. Of course there are always villains like the Empire in Star Wars or, I don't know, Dr. Octopus, who are hard to sympathize with, and probably if I were writing them I'd also find them hard to sympathize with. But I always try. And I liked Livia a lot. I like her snappishness, and her refusal to be cowed by Ulysses, who is really a great dude but has very emphatic opinions about things. I like her willingness to try dangerous things to get what she wants.

That's the background. And then Livia shows up at the beginning of Old Time Religion. (I hope that doesn't sound like a spoiler. It's chapter one.) She wants things. She's a little bit ruthless. And Sam and Ulysses have to work out how to deal with her, and how to deal with each other at a time during which the way that they connect is changing. They have a deepening relationship because they've been together for about 6 months at this point, but also they are learning that they may have some magical connection. Don't have sex with gods, I guess, is the lesson. If there's one lesson we could take from all of Greek mythology I think that would be it, it's don't get involved with God's in a sexual way. Unfortunately Ulysses doesn't listen.

Of course the provenance of books is people who make bad choices, and no one makes worse choices than PhD candidates. And Ulysses is amply taken to task for this at various points. 

Quote from Troth:

“Is that what you were trying to tell me about, back in April?” She snorted. “Ah, yes.” Lesko sat back in her chair. “That’s right,” she said, in a dry tone. “What did I say? Is this wise? And you told me—what was it again?” “That it was a fait accompli.” Dr. Lesko nodded, lips pressed together. “In other words, you were given a warning, which you chose to ignore, presumably because you were horny.”  Ulysses briefly wondered if he could just die where he sat in order to escape from this.

Livia's appearance makes Sam incredibly jealous, which is also an emotion he doesn't deal with very well. Key quote:

"Ulysses was with someone else," he said, in the too-earnest way he had after too many drinks. "A lady." Harry shrugged. "So?" Sam leaned forward as though imparting a secret. "He also likes women," he said carefully. Harry, sitting across from him, looked unmoved by this revelation. Ellen was carefully peeling the wrapper off of her beer bottle. "Sam, I thought it was going well between you guys," she said, with probably more patience than he deserved. "What's the worry here? Did you talk about going steady?" "No, because this isn't a production of Bye, Bye, Birdie," Sam snapped, and then immediately felt bad. Ellen punched him in the arm, not gently.

And at the end, I wrote about the one time I dropped acid.

No. Uh. But there is some drug use. And Ulysses defends his PhD. And there's a musical version of Macbeth that @tryxhyjinks helped me write songs for. And despite my inability to talk about it, I think it's an excellent novel. 

That brings me to book 3, Troth, which is coming out October 7th. (Muffled screaming.) There's a lot to like about Troth, but in the interests of not spoiling anything, I'll just say it brings Ulysses's brother Laz back from the war. Laz is the type of pathetic little meow meow that authors love, and I love every moment of his appearance, and he gets his own book later (book 4, Lazarus Home from the War, will be out in 2025). Troth is currently up for preorder in ebook and will be available in paperback on the day and thereafter. You can find all three books here (Amazon) or here (B&N).