#wip: the ruby of ranpur

[sarahlizziewrites]

the funny thing about writing a novel all in one go is that I'VE BEEN AT THIS DAMN PARTY FOR A MONTH

[sarahlizziewrites]

WIP Pre-Intro: The Ruby of Ranpur

Motorboat races, hidden bombs and a gem worth dying for.

That's right! The Crime-Fighting Husbands are back for Unnamed Novel Writing Challenge 2024! I will be writing a 50k word follow-up to Til Death Do Us Part over the course of October and November (averaging 820 words a day), set a few weeks after the first story at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Expect more reluctant detective work from Williamson Jones, more campy shenanigans, and much! more! backstory! Plus, Nazis, flirting photographers and a very suspicious mime. The spy vibes in this story are immaculate, though at its heart, it's still a goofy, gay whodunnit.

TDDUP taglist (+/-): @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @mrbexwrites, @hippiewrites

[sarahlizziewrites]

Friday Kiss Tag

Posting this for the second time, because Tumblr deleted my last one! I was tagged by @sarandipitywrites here with their steamy kiss scene <3 <3

Here's an extra long snippet from The Ruby of Ranpur, because we all need extra romance in our lives right now, I think. This is a flashback to when the crime-fighting husbands first became crime-fighting boyfriends.

Since the night of the fireworks, Raj had been a guest at my home as often as we thought we could get away with. Intimacy like this - even if nothing had actually happened; nothing condemnable, at any rate, not yet - was always a risk, but we had both figured out that being apart was an option that hadn’t suited either of us. 

And even if nothing had happened, yet… the taut, struck-crystal tension between us put everything into sharper focus when he was around: someday, it would break. Since the night on the mountainside when I realised I loved him, I had only grown more magnetised to his presence, like a compass, oriented north at all times. 

“Ah,” he said, coming in and closing the door behind him. “I should have told you it’s Maha Shivaratri - she’s probably at home, praying with her family.”

“Damn,” I said. “Well, there’s nothing to eat. We could go out, try and find a restaurant in the city that will seat us–”

“Nonsense,” he said, turning down the corridor that led to the kitchen. “I can cook.”

In moments, Raj had whipped up a storm in the kitchen, placing the mutton joint in a shallow iron pot and adorning it with spices and a good glug of water. For each spice he placed in the pot, he crushed it in his hands and held out his palms for me to smell it, explaining the flavour profile and the role each one played in the cooking.

Little of it stuck, to my regret, because I was too distracted by the competent way he moved around the kitchen, and the enthusiasm in his smile. I was growing dizzy with the smells and the warmth of the hearth and his attention, and I hadn’t even had a drop of alcohol to drink. I didn’t want any.

“Try this,” he said, proferring a spoon. Somehow, both his bright kurta and my white shirt had been spared splashes of the oily, tomato-rich curry, and now, I leaned forward to carefully blow on the taste he offered me. This close, I was hyper-aware of how wonderful it felt to have the heat of his body close to mine, how I had to tilt my chin up to see his smile properly, and how becoming his thick, dark eyelashes looked against his cheeks.

Almost as soon as I closed my lips around the spoon and tasted the thick, creamy sauce, I’m ashamed to admit that I let out a noise somewhere between indelicate and sinful. My eyes slid closed in bliss. The flavours that exploded over my tongue were nothing short of exquisite: there was heat, and spice, and richness, but then, there was a surprisingly delicate herbal-citrus aftertaste that made my mouth water for more. 

I was so focussed on the pure sensation of the flavour that I hardly noticed when Raj slipped the spoon away and replaced it with his lips.

My mouth parted in surprise, but it was as though he was chasing up the rich heat of the curry with his kiss, soft and slow. I quickly determined that the taste of him was no less tempting. Something warm - something other than the curry - settled below my breastbone, tingling against my heart. 

He pulled away, and a breath of air fell between us. His hand had come to rest against my shoulder, fingers just brushing the short hair at the back of my neck. The expression on his face was somewhat tentative, almost worried.

“Say something,” he said, after a few long moments of silence. “Say anything. Tell me if this isn’t welcome. Curse at me and kick me out. I’ll leave forever, if you’d like me to.”

“God, don’t leave,” I whispered, regaining my wits and pulling myself closer to him. Those fingers tightened in my hair. “It’s only… I’m trying hard not to rip your clothes off and have you right here by the stove.”

He laughed, relieved and light, then tugged me close to kiss again, more insistent this time. In one movement, he pressed me against the brick wall surrounding the hearth, and dropped his spoon, letting it clatter against the tiled floor. I barely noticed: every inch he was touching me was alight with need, that crystal having shattered and spilled me like a spirit. I felt I could catch fire. 

“The curry,” he murmured between kisses. 

“Curry later,” I replied, digging my fingers into his kurta and trying to pull him closer, closer. He sunk his teeth into my bottom lip, and I groaned. “Kiss me now.”

I'm going to tag @queen-tashie, @theburnedoutnerd, @kaylinalexanderbooks and @late-to-the-fandom

TDDUP taglist (+/-): @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @mrbexwrites, @glbettwrites, @writingrosesonneptune (+/-)

gorgeous dividers from @cafekitsune

[sarahlizziewrites]

Silent Saturday

Thank you @late-to-the-fandom for the tag!

Rules: Write something without dialogue. Inner dialogue is allowed, but that's it. Thoughts and actions, to keep the scene/snippet silent.

It's Saturday for me now, so have a snippet from The Ruby of Ranpur, in which Williamson Jones privately enjoys this detective lark.

After making a note of all the grimy things Barnaby Herons had heard about Lord and Lady Ashleigh - some of which were certainly not true, and others of which may have been true but I was certainly going to be keeping to myself - Sir Bradley led Raj and I to a room that seemed to have been reclaimed from a group of smokers, judging by the heavy fug of tobacco in the air and the half-completed card game on the table. On the side was a decanter of brandy, which Lord Ashleigh had apparently already helped himself to. He was eyeing up the amber liquid within as though either judging its quality, or appraising the value of the crystalware. At the other end of the rose-pink damask settee sat Lady Ashleigh, and I thought the pair of them looked rather like chastised schoolchildren waiting for a caning. I stood before them, leaning on my stick, not trying in particular to look schoolmasterly, but not not trying to, either.

I'm going to tag @glbettwrites, @mrbexwrites, @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife and @writingrosesonneptune, and anyone who would like to!

[sarahlizziewrites]

Williamson Jones has a little bit of a thing for feet, ok? Don't bring it up.

divider from @strangergraphics

[sarahlizziewrites]

“Beats me,” I replied, washing everything down with a swig of tea. I grimaced. How disappointing that tea never quite tasted right abroad, even in the former king’s household.

Give British people one fucking minute to talk and all they will tell you is about how tea isn't ever as good abroad as it is at home

[sarahlizziewrites]

Slightly tempted to finish this challenge in a way that makes the graph just go boingboingboing

Anyway - after a few days off, I've rallied and just hit 20k!

App is trackbear

[sarahlizziewrites]

Where my WIPs are at:

Chrissie's of London - ~70% of the way through a second draft of Book 1 (Chrissie's, Strand), hopefully to be completed by start of September. I had promised I'd either start querying or get a Patreon set up by the time I finished this, but... I haven't done any querying at all. Motivate me?

Book 2 (The Electric Pavilion) is my go-to project at the moment when I'm sick of editing - currently 17k words.

The Adventures of Sitora Lux - Book 1 (Honesty's Cost) is still out for beta feedback after draft 2. I haven't really worked on Book 2 (A Different Kind of Courage) since last year (currently sitting at 13k words). This series is functionally on hiatus until I work out what to do with it. I think I need to pitch it solidly as YA even though it wasn't written that way.

Grey Sky Lark - this has always been a back-burner project and I haven't worked on it much lately. It's at about 12k words.

Brazen Sparrow - I got some good work done on this in the last few weeks, but I have to be in the right mood for my pirate girlies. Currently sitting at 12k words.

Crime-Fighting Husbands - I finished 'Til Death Do Us Part during NaNo 2023 and haven't really touched it since then. I have had two alpha readers provide feedback, but nobody has really been brutal enough about it. I know it needs more meat to the mystery but I can't figure out what. If there are any seasoned mystery readers/writers out there who are willing to give me brutal feedback, lmk!

Book 2 (The Ruby of Ranpur) is in the planning stage and I intend to start this for a chilled NaNo-esque challenge over October and November. Tbh this is a better mystery as a whole, and I learned a lot from my first one. I'm excited! Check on me by Thanksgiving lmao.

The Melody of Your Gravity is on hiatus. Sorry. I haven't updated since like, April, and I've also slipped out of the fandom a little. I'm not caught up on Campaign 3 and I'm lacking the motivation. I do want to finish this story, though. Maybe more news about the Mighty Nein Animated will get me excited. Fingers crossed!

Dawn Meeting - my interactive fiction thing over at @tell-me-a-poll-story. I know some people were really jazzed about this, but the pressure got to me. Idk. I don't hate the story so I might carry it on. But I remember crying over the outcome of the polls at times so it wasn't really healthy tbh. I didn't have a healthy relationship to writing in 2023 at all so it was good that I took a step back. On hiatus - not dead.

Anyway this was long lol. I want to make Chrissie's public so you all can finally read it, maybe with a goal of getting it self-published, but I know that something like a Patreon will stress me the fuck out and make me avoid it (as evidenced by the manufactured pressure of NaNo and the false accountability of publishing a fanfic and my own interactive story being really unhealthy for me). I'd love any and all advice about doing this shit professionally and not losing your mind lol.

Thanks for lending me your dividers, @saradika, they are so cute.

[sarahlizziewrites]

Intro/pinned post

Hello, everyone. Sarah here. This is a blog nominally for writing, but realistically for shitposting with smatterings of fandom.

Sarah - she/her/he/him - genderfluid - 30s - Scotland

Likes:

Fantasy, and within that, romance, slice-of-life and adventure. My WIPs range from sword-and-sorcery to magical realism and gothic horror. Somehow all of these WIPs include friends-to-lovers. Weird.

Historical fiction. I'm a consumer of period drama, a researcher of historical costuming, and European history is one of my special interests.

Queer stories and characters, especially the kind I would have liked to have seen growing up <3

Critical Role, as well as an ever-shifting collection of fandoms, arranged like a detailed hierarchy of plushies in a pre-teen's bedroom. I'm sarahlizzie on AO3.

Mature content, some of which I post on my blog. If you're a minor, please consider your follow carefully.

Tag games/ask games! Or just infodump about your WIPs and OCs in my asks! I love you!

My WIPs:

Chrissie's of London - a psychedelic, high-drama adventure set in a magical version of 1920s London, starring a gregarious and irresponsible hotel owner, Silas Chrissie [character intro], his long-suffering accountant, Loretta Cramps [character intro], and his old friend, a French, shape-shifting felon called Jacques [character intro]. An exploration of what it means to be bisexual, queer identity and a love triangle that spans multiple dimensions.

The Adventures of Sitora Lux - This is an expanded and editorialized retelling of a former D&D character who I felt like didn't get a fair enough shout in the game. Sitora is a big lesbian Paladin-to-be who is still figuring stuff out as she attends an academy for training up future peacekeepers of the realm. A high fantasy coming-of-age/romance with some mystery and drama thrown in, spread over 5 books. Currently editing book 1, currently writing book 2. Have a character intro for Sitora! feat: lovely art from @rosieartsie.

I also use the tag 'Sitoraverse' for posting about the expanded world of Mithlonde

Grey-Sky Lark - my distraction project. Based on the mind-worm of 'Hebridean Vampire', I started writing a deeply introspective, totally first-person series of vignettes/short stories about my (unnamed) vampire protagonist as fate takes him on the winds and currents of history and the North Atlantic. The story starts in 9th century Faroe Islands as they are being colonized by the Norse and goes through to modern day. At the moment I'm working on the late-Victorian/Edwardian section where he is tasked with tracking down another vampire.

Brazen Sparrow - an age-of-sail romance, featuring a sapphic navy captain/pirate enemies-to-lovers storyline. Expect maps for this one!

Til Death Do Us Part - my NaNoWriMo 2023 project. A whodunnit set in 1937 featuring the groom being killed at his wedding. I use the tag 'crime fighting husbands' to refer to this and its sequels!

The Ruby of Ranpur - aforementioned sequel and the continued adventures of the crime fighting husbands. My UnNoWriCh 2024 project.

If any of these sound good to you, sign up for my taglist!

Currently Reading [Storygraph]:

Swordcrossed by Freya Marske

Next up:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

[sarahlizziewrites]

I want everyone to know that after Wills and Raj hook up, they do in fact eat the curry in bed. In case anyone was wondering 😅

Friday Kiss Tag

Posting this for the second time, because Tumblr deleted my last one! I was tagged by @sarandipitywrites here with their steamy kiss scene <3 <3

Here's an extra long snippet from The Ruby of Ranpur, because we all need extra romance in our lives right now, I think. This is a flashback to when the crime-fighting husbands first became crime-fighting boyfriends.

Since the night of the fireworks, Raj had been a guest at my home as often as we thought we could get away with. Intimacy like this - even if nothing had actually happened; nothing condemnable, at any rate, not yet - was always a risk, but we had both figured out that being apart was an option that hadn’t suited either of us. 

And even if nothing had happened, yet… the taut, struck-crystal tension between us put everything into sharper focus when he was around: someday, it would break. Since the night on the mountainside when I realised I loved him, I had only grown more magnetised to his presence, like a compass, oriented north at all times. 

“Ah,” he said, coming in and closing the door behind him. “I should have told you it’s Maha Shivaratri - she’s probably at home, praying with her family.”

“Damn,” I said. “Well, there’s nothing to eat. We could go out, try and find a restaurant in the city that will seat us–”

“Nonsense,” he said, turning down the corridor that led to the kitchen. “I can cook.”

In moments, Raj had whipped up a storm in the kitchen, placing the mutton joint in a shallow iron pot and adorning it with spices and a good glug of water. For each spice he placed in the pot, he crushed it in his hands and held out his palms for me to smell it, explaining the flavour profile and the role each one played in the cooking.

Little of it stuck, to my regret, because I was too distracted by the competent way he moved around the kitchen, and the enthusiasm in his smile. I was growing dizzy with the smells and the warmth of the hearth and his attention, and I hadn’t even had a drop of alcohol to drink. I didn’t want any.

“Try this,” he said, proferring a spoon. Somehow, both his bright kurta and my white shirt had been spared splashes of the oily, tomato-rich curry, and now, I leaned forward to carefully blow on the taste he offered me. This close, I was hyper-aware of how wonderful it felt to have the heat of his body close to mine, how I had to tilt my chin up to see his smile properly, and how becoming his thick, dark eyelashes looked against his cheeks.

Almost as soon as I closed my lips around the spoon and tasted the thick, creamy sauce, I’m ashamed to admit that I let out a noise somewhere between indelicate and sinful. My eyes slid closed in bliss. The flavours that exploded over my tongue were nothing short of exquisite: there was heat, and spice, and richness, but then, there was a surprisingly delicate herbal-citrus aftertaste that made my mouth water for more. 

I was so focussed on the pure sensation of the flavour that I hardly noticed when Raj slipped the spoon away and replaced it with his lips.

My mouth parted in surprise, but it was as though he was chasing up the rich heat of the curry with his kiss, soft and slow. I quickly determined that the taste of him was no less tempting. Something warm - something other than the curry - settled below my breastbone, tingling against my heart. 

He pulled away, and a breath of air fell between us. His hand had come to rest against my shoulder, fingers just brushing the short hair at the back of my neck. The expression on his face was somewhat tentative, almost worried.

“Say something,” he said, after a few long moments of silence. “Say anything. Tell me if this isn’t welcome. Curse at me and kick me out. I’ll leave forever, if you’d like me to.”

“God, don’t leave,” I whispered, regaining my wits and pulling myself closer to him. Those fingers tightened in my hair. “It’s only… I’m trying hard not to rip your clothes off and have you right here by the stove.”

He laughed, relieved and light, then tugged me close to kiss again, more insistent this time. In one movement, he pressed me against the brick wall surrounding the hearth, and dropped his spoon, letting it clatter against the tiled floor. I barely noticed: every inch he was touching me was alight with need, that crystal having shattered and spilled me like a spirit. I felt I could catch fire. 

“The curry,” he murmured between kisses. 

“Curry later,” I replied, digging my fingers into his kurta and trying to pull him closer, closer. He sunk his teeth into my bottom lip, and I groaned. “Kiss me now.”

I'm going to tag @queen-tashie, @theburnedoutnerd, @kaylinalexanderbooks and @late-to-the-fandom

TDDUP taglist (+/-): @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @mrbexwrites, @glbettwrites, @writingrosesonneptune (+/-)

gorgeous dividers from @cafekitsune

[sarahlizziewrites]

It's been a while since I've done an update for this - I'm now on 13k words! I'm quite a bit ahead of schedule but it's also clear that this book is going to be a lot longer than 50k words T_T

I'm still having a blast!

WIP Pre-Intro: The Ruby of Ranpur

Motorboat races, hidden bombs and a gem worth dying for.

That's right! The Crime-Fighting Husbands are back for Unnamed Novel Writing Challenge 2024! I will be writing a 50k word follow-up to Til Death Do Us Part over the course of October and November (averaging 820 words a day), set a few weeks after the first story at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Expect more reluctant detective work from Williamson Jones, more campy shenanigans, and much! more! backstory! Plus, Nazis, flirting photographers and a very suspicious mime. The spy vibes in this story are immaculate, though at its heart, it's still a goofy, gay whodunnit.

TDDUP taglist (+/-): @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @mrbexwrites, @hippiewrites

[sarahlizziewrites]

Side note: do any of my followers read/speak any Bengali and can help with a few lines? I don't want to leave it to the mercies of Google Translate!

WIP Pre-Intro: The Ruby of Ranpur

Motorboat races, hidden bombs and a gem worth dying for.

That's right! The Crime-Fighting Husbands are back for Unnamed Novel Writing Challenge 2024! I will be writing a 50k word follow-up to Til Death Do Us Part over the course of October and November (averaging 820 words a day), set a few weeks after the first story at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Expect more reluctant detective work from Williamson Jones, more campy shenanigans, and much! more! backstory! Plus, Nazis, flirting photographers and a very suspicious mime. The spy vibes in this story are immaculate, though at its heart, it's still a goofy, gay whodunnit.

TDDUP taglist (+/-): @vacantgodling, @imsoveryveryconfusedatlife @mrbexwrites, @hippiewrites

[sarahlizziewrites]

boing boing boing

good news I will hit 50k by the end of November if I keep this pace

bad news I am not even halfway through this novel and it's going to be way longer than 50k words fuckkkkk

the funny thing about writing a novel all in one go is that I'VE BEEN AT THIS DAMN PARTY FOR A MONTH