Virtue III

Hoping For Electric Dreams
When I was first trying to understand cyberpunk I went knee deep in research and one author I kept coming across was Philip K. Dick, who wrote the book Bladerunner is based on. This year  Amazon is making an anthology show based on his work called Electric Dreams and I'm excited to watch it and see if it gets the cyberpunk plot bunnies moving. I'm kind of getting into the cyberpunk/ scifi thing and...IDK I'd love to venture away from the Shy Cartel-verse. 'Lucky' is kind of going to be a foray into that.

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, apparently in the new Bladerunner 2049 they created a futuristic version of the 80s instead of the 2010s, so companies like Pan-AM still exist in that world. It seems to me the 80's is so ingrained in cyberpunk since it came about around that time and that in my head some of the "fashion" (I'm real bad at describing clothes) in this serial is more 80's. Particularly with  Charlotte, whose look with the dress and carvat is based off this 80's trend:

Oh, did anyone catch my teensy tiney Sunday Nights in Savannah reference in the last chapter ?

Luce suddenly takes extreme care chewing his food as he thinks it over. He picks up an errant blueberry from Haley’s plate.

I never describe what Haley is eating but in my head it's the same thing Rose ordered at the restaurant in Sunday Nights in Savannah.



Virtue Part III

Recap  
Haley has settled into working  as an escort at Control,  Jean Dory's private brothel within a brothel, and is getting closer to Luce Grace but now Rayne and Minnow are asking him to take on the police commissioner's son as a client so they can spy on him.
 
Time is going to move in this chapter and this comment is going to be explored...

Virtue Part III
Playlist
- 1 -  The Moment I Said It by Imogen Heap
- 2 - Unsteady by X Ambassadors 
- 3- The Poet by U317 (Yes, I am pilfering through the QC playlist)
- 4 -  Forever Ago by Woodlock
- 5- Feed Me Diamonds

Hey, there 2018...let's talk in gifs

Obligatory, sorry I haven't posted

But I have been really enjoying Lile's short stories like crazy 

Greetings From Le Visnet had me like

 Sunday Nights in Savannah had me like

Anti-Cinnamon Buns / School Shuffle Had Me Like

As for me ? Well...my writing process

looks a lot less like this

And has looked more like this

 

Although sometimes it feels like I'm doing this

 COME BACK TO ME PLOTBUNNIES !

I'm not sure if I'll ever write another serial again, but I like dipping in and out of these worlds and I'll keep doing that in serials as long as I can.

Virtue +

To be honest when I posted the first part of Virtue I hadn't finished it, I'd just wanted to get a piece of it out there so I had something to show for ALL my NaNo-ing. But now I've finished it and will be posting it in three parts (so...one more part after this part). Also, I think I told someone there would be "rage wear" and there actually isn't. My bad.

I...also...am currently writing  two companion pieces to Virtue. Let's just codename one, hmm...Glassdoor and the other one...um, let's call it Lucky. I'm not sure if they are canon (especially Lucky) and they're both kind of over angsty, self-indulg-y and weird. I don't know... I'm just really trying to work this Haley/Maxwell thing I started out.

I really feel like my muse has left me  lately, but the plotbunny for Lucky just attacked me out of nowhere. It was so bizarre to have this story come to me and then not leave....but yeah, not sure if it's cannon

Also, those codenames mean literally nothing.

UL Sidepiece 

I do have 5,000 words on this UL follow up. I know where I want it to go but I'm not sure how to end it. I hope to post it soon-ish though. It's a lot of Clark family fluff with a pinch of drama.

FZA

This is still going slowly, but I think when I run out of things I may just post the prologue of this just to give you all a taste.

So, as you can tell I have been having trouble with endings. There is actually a short story collection called Massive Cleansing Fire and it features interconnected short stories that all end in a massive cleansing fire and you guys....I'm tempted sometimes (mostly with Vice stories).

Virtue Part II

Recap

Virtue takes place after Alex Haley is released from Ft. Pride, an RLA prison camp where he'd been locked in a cell with murderer and tattoo artists Forge DeCartes by Kenneth Maxwell.

He's been working in the factory of the Shy Cartel's cover company, The Mojave Blade Company, to pay for a hit on Maxwell. However after a year, Maxwell becomes a federal judge and the price goes up. To earn more money Haley agrees to work in Control, the secret brothel within the brothel run by Jean Dory.

This passage is going to come back up:

The conversations lull the moment Haley steps in and for a moment he gets the feeling they are all staring at him, but their eyes are well above his head and directed at Jean. 

“Mr. Dory-,” a  gorgeous man in his thirties, with dark hair and impeccably Roman features, calls walking up to them. “I’d like to talk to  you  later tonight about--,”

“Not today, I’m afraid.” Jean says, reaching out to  stroke the man’s now distraught face. “Talk to Charlotte about fitting you in my schedule. I’ve got a new employee to show around.”

Virtue Part II

Playlist

-1- Where the Light Gets In by Sennen

-2-  Kill Em' With Kindness by Selena Gomez

-3- This is What it Feels Like by Banks

-4-  Cringe by Matt Masean

Virtue

Me Fixing Up My NaNoWriMos 

(I think I've used this gif set before)

I usually save my moving on's and Let's Try Something's for new serial but Virtue is  is edging in on 20,000 words so it feels like a big thing.

Virtue takes place in between Bright Lines and Sweet Prince...I mean... kind of. It's confusing  but I kind of wrote Virtue like it was a standalone so hopefully there are enough context clues to fill in any gaps.


Quick Recap
At  Camp Harmony, a prison camp run by the RLA  Alex Haley became entangled with Sgt. Kenneth Maxwell. When Camp Harmony is infiltrated by Alan Gray posed as Corp. Strange--who lets three POWs escape as a distraction--Maxwell is sent away to be warden of Ft. Pride, an isolated, maximum security prison camp and he takes Haley with him.

Six years later , the war ends and the RLA is disbanded. Maxwell reveals he's been giving information to the opposition and when they take over Maxwell leaves Haley locked in a cell with Forge DeCartes, a sadistic tattoo artist and serial killer

18 months later, Ft. Pride is being shut down and Haley is released. The outside world has changed and the RLA has been replaced by a new government run by the East and West called The Federation.  Haley goes to St. Grace, a care center for people with trauma , unable to shake what happened to him, he agrees to have an experiential lombotomy to have the memories taken out.

But then he sees Maxwell in the media and he is successful, married and a rising star in The Federation. Haley decided before he has his memroies taken away he wants Maxwell dead. He leaves St. Grace's and goes to find the Shy Cartel because he knows they can help him and he has a connection to Alan Gray

He finds the cartel and ends up on a doorstep with Luce Grace pointing a gun in his face because his tattoos look like Mjollner tattoos.

The gunman lowers his gun into a holster, but he still holds Haley’s arm pinned against the house.

“What brings you to Mojave ?”

“I'm looking for...Alan Gray.” Haley says quietly.

Something pulses in the gunman’s eyes, like he was fighting to not roll them.

“I knew him at Camp Harmony,” Haley continues

The gunman’s expression hardens.

“Why do you want Alan Gray?,” he asks and then looks at the hand hanging at Haley’s side. “Your hand ? It’ll cost you half  a mil and there’s a two year waiting list.”

“No...I ....Alan Gray kind of owes me and I wanted…I just wanted him to help me get an audience with Rayne Washington.”

Haley looks up and the gunman tilts his head down until their eyes meet again.

The gunman smiles. It’s a strained smile.

“You have shit timing, then," he says.

Haley looks down. Had Rayne Washington died ?  Had he been jailed ? He tries not to let his frustration show. He reminded himself that is this didn’t work out there were other ways. 

“Seems like you’ve had enough torture in your life,” the gunman observes. “ What do you want from us ?,”

Us. He must be with the Shy Cartel.

“I want Senator Kenneth Maxwell assassinated." Haley tells him.

The gunman smiles, this smile lights up his whole face. He kicks open the door to the townhouse, and walks inside, pulling Haley gently behind him. 

Virtue takes place a little over a year after this...

-1- Silhouette
-2-  Boys by Charlie XCX
-3- Axolotl

Playlist
Virtue I

12,479

How I imagined some  of you on December 1st

I currently have an interesting relationship with my muse. I'll have "shower moments" where I get these great ideas from my muse and then when I sit down to write its like:

And then nothing.

Word Count
I'm calling my official NaNoWriMo word count at 12479. It's not great, but it's better than I did last time I tried NaNo. I thought I'd  share a little about how it's distributed.

Sweet Prince Adjacent Story: 7,462 words

One Last Thing Adjacent Story: 4,043 words

FZA: 974 words

FZA was my weakest and I think it's because I have no real grasp of the characters yet. I wanted to go back and re-work the prologue I'd been working on, but it would have been to hard to figure out a new word count for that (although know that I think about it I guess I could have just subtracted the original word count from the new one at the end...). I don't know what will become of this story but I'll chip away at it.

Sweet Prince Novelette ?

I love Lile's novellas because they truly are novellas, short ,complete (and super beautiful) stories that occur in a little less than 10,000 words. The things I've been working on are like 12-13K and feel too compact to be a serial and too long to be a novella. I saw the word novelette thrown around in literary spaces so maybe it's that ? I think for now I'll call them novellas anyway.

What's Next

Anyway, I've been working on two Sweet Prince related things.  One is the NaNo mentioned in the word count above and the other I had been working on for a while and had mostly finished but had to put aside to work on NaNo. I need some time to go back and clean it up and finish it but it will be the next thing I post.

Since I'm not posting it today I thought I'd show the title and reveal a little information.

This serial is from Haley's POV and is about what happens to him after he leaves Ft. Pride and in some ways I'm doing the one thing I once said I'd never do in a comment section.For context, these comments are in  a post where I talked about researching paraphilia to write Maxwell's kink better.
:

It's the closest thing I will ever get to writing BDSM so, Lile's not the only one pushing boundaries.

Anyway here is the title:


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At this point Virtue is about 17,000 words and I don't want to say too much about it than I've already said. It's this kind of weird and subversive thing that sort of spilled out of me. It started off being about  one thing but might actually be another thing. I threw caution to the wind and did some character things I was afraid to do so  I'll be interested in your reactions.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, I know I'm always a roller coaster and hopefully by this time next year (internal scream) I'll have done another actual serial. Bye !

Let's Do This Thing ! NaNoWriMo17

I'm doing the thing.


This November I'll be working on FZA, a shortie sequel to Sweet Prince and a sequel to One Last Thing that I am calling CGTOCT. This is going to be a challenge for me because I am not going to do any revisions or editing this month (welp, already broke this rule), I'll just crank out new words which is hard since I always want to go back and revise.

My username is ShawnaHarrison and you can track my progress (or lack thereof) on the widget in the sidebar. I am typing my new words in my docs and then copy and pasting them over so it may stay stagnant for a while. I'm just excited to see where I am at the end of the month.

Okay, off I go ! See you all on the other side

Shawna is Dramatic ?

This was a thing I made a while ago

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not sure my tone was right in my last post, I think I made it sound more finite than I was ready for. I don't want to be gone gone and writing that last post made me go back and start trying to work on some stuff.

I went back to my FZA outline and started picking at it a bit and I'm getting somewhere. I actually had more than I thought. I think it will end up being like Blessed Hearts, where it's just this really weird short thing. It's more fantasy based and it feels so weird to write but I want to get there

I also picked at my UL thing and I know I want to write a about a certain thing but that aside I'm not sure there's any there there. Writing1 from Juliana's POV as an adult...it's more challenging than I thought.

My Haley novella is coming along, in fact it kind of informs a little bit of Sweet Prince. It's about 10,000 words but I've had to cut and re-write a few scenes and I think I may have to do more of that. Speaking of which...

I remembered earlier this week that Blessed Hearts had been re-written into Blessed Hearts. I re-write a lot and I'm hoping that taking this haitus will give me time to look at something and completely re-write it if I get stuck in a corner and not have to take you all along for that ride.

So, let's wrap up Sweet Prince and of course, even though I'll be gone, watch this space for gifs or updates or other things.

Sweet Prince 5

People and Terms To Know
MBC - Mojave Blade Company, the legitimate "front" for the Shy Cartel
Colette Santoro - Daughter of rival cartel leader and Twyla's best friend. She's the only female Covalcotti Rider, a motorcycle assassin. She wasn't in the last chapter so I thought I'd do a recap of her.
Lachlan Banner - Twyla's Dad. A sniper who was recruited by the Shy Cartel and who Sara married. His name will come up.
Minnow Dory - Became Rayne Washington' assistant at 17-years-old and is now training Rias. I mention Minnow because she's the character that's most different than she is in Compulsion/Vice.

Recap
Even though Rayne told him the time wasn't right Haley decides to assassinate Attorney General Kenneth Maxwell at the Mojave Blade Company Family Brunch where Maxwell's husband is speaking but when he gets in the room he changes his target to Maxwell's child. Before he can pull the trigger he is arrested, as is Twyla Banner for trying to take the gun and shoot Maxwell. 

Maxwell lets it slip he wants to run for president and  tries to make a deal with Twyla--if she turns in her cartel family and she goes free--but she refuses and Haley and Twyla are both being taken into prison transport vehicles when Twyla hears a motorcycle in the distance.

Sweet Prince 5
Playlist

- 1 - When We Were Fire by Lon-Fang 
- 2 -  Time by Mikky Ekko
- 3 -  Lost by Rictor
- 4-  Fire by Death Ditto

Thank You All

 *cue That Green Day Song*

I almost want to add "not clickbait" to the title of this blog post.

If you go back to the UL days you will see a lot of whiny posts about me talking about writer's block. These are some of my least favorite posts...and I'm about to make a similar one.

Because I've hit a wall like never before....I've run out of things I want to write about. This time last year I was finishing UL3 and had outlines for all the novellas I shared this year. But as of right now I don't have any serials planned and as much as I wanted to make FZA a thing...the words aren't coming. No new words have come for me most of this summer and I think maybe this serial experiment is done for me ?

So, *deep breath* I have this chapter of Sweet Prince and then one more chapter and then I'm out for a while.

 Like I said, not clickbait...well, okay, kind of not clickbait.
 So, fine. I'm not completely out of words.

I am actually working on this thing about Jean and his brothel that's currently  ~7,000 words and will likely be 7,000 more.I also have this idea for a Maxwell short story (and I mean short) but it doesn't work without the Jean story first.

And, yes,  I've also have this OLT sequel about a Grown!Rhett and Grown!Julianna but it has literally no ending.

But the reason I don't count these as anything is because I've been experimenting with free writing, where I'm just throwing words on the page. It's new for me; UL/Veritas were my pantser serials and Vice/UL3 were my plotter serials.

So, I honestly don't know when (if?) these things will be reader ready. As Lile said...when is NaNoWriMo ?

Anyway today I just want to post something. I don't see taking a break  as a sad thing. Because  when I'm ready I'll come back with lots more stuff, hopefully something new.

Sweet Prince 4
I'm glad I paused when I did because these next two chapters of Sweet Prince are kind of like a separate Vol. 2 story that doesn't really connect to the other chapters. Instead of a full recap I'm going to give a quick lexicon and hit the character marks of characters who are going to show up.

MBC - Mojave Blade Company, the legitimate company the Shy Cartel runs as a cover
Federation - The new government formed after the RLA surrendered and the Eastern State took over
United Auxilary Forces - The Federation's military
Justice Officers - Police officers, basically

Twyla  Banner, 16-years-old, the daughter of Sara Grace and deceased assassin Lachlan Banner. She met a girl at a movie theatre who turned out to be Colette Santoro, the daughter of the leader of the Santoro Family, a mafia like cartel, but they remained friends anyway.

Colette Santoro - 18-years-old, mafia princess and the only female Cavolcatti Rider - a group of motorcycle assassins. As a female she doesn't have much power in her father's cartel, but she hopes if she ever does get it she will change things for the better.

Zacharias Washington - 17-years-old, just became the de facto leader of the Shy Cartel and the face of it's cover company Mojave Blade Company (MBC) after his father died from a long term illness. He wants to make the cartel more legitimate one day but is still very much under his mother's guidance.

Minnow Dory, -  33-year-old former joygirl turned assistant to Rayne Washington for 16 years. When Rayne became ill she helped train Zacharias and continues to do so with Sara Grace

Luce Grace -  31-year-old cartel hitman who is known for being quiet and cruel. He almost died as a child but received a life saving cybernetic surgery that let his mother in debt to the cartel. Currently his only friend is Alex Haley and they occasionally spend the night together.

Alex Haley -  29-year-old former RLA prisoner who works at Jean Dory's brothel. He came to the cartel's door covered in RLA tattoos and looking to kill Kenneth Maxwell, the now attorney general.

Twyla, Colette and Rias sneak out to see a music show and visit Colette's grandmother at The Castle--a boat in international waters where the police have no jurisdiction and Rias and Colette both promise if they ever get  real power they will change the way cartels relate.

Now, it's Federation Day--the day to celebrate the collapse of  the corrupt RLA and the rise of the Federation. It's early in the morning and Rias and Twyla have just snuck back into their penthouse apartment when:

“Where’s your car ?,” Rias asks Luce.

“In the garage, dummy,” Luce says.

“I was just out there,” Rias tells him. “It’s not out there.”

“Is this a joke ? You two need to grow up,” Luce shoots back, but he brings up the live footage of the security camera outside and when he sees the image of an empty garage he frowns.

“Motherfucker,” Luce says under his breath.

“Someone stole it ?,” I ask. That shouldn’t even be possible, no one can ever get to our floor unless they were bulletproof.

“Lex,” Luce growls, and  charges back upstairs, his bare feet slapping against the hardwood.

Rias and I exchange a  look and follow after Luce. Luce's bedroom is empty and he opens the sliding drawer where he keeps his personal armory. All of the guns are kept neatly displayed in the drawer. 

Which makes it noticeable that two are missing. Luce sends a message using the communication system in his cybernetic software and after a minute curses again.

“Shit, I  thought he just went to work early because of Federation Day traffic," Luce says. "But I called the club and he never showed up."

"Where do you--," I start but the next words just fall  from Luce’s  mouth, he doesn’t even care that I’m hearing them.

“Fuck. He’s going to the Federation Day parade. He’s going to kill the Attorney General.”

Sweet Prince 4
Playlist

1. Lunacy  by Rue Royal
2. Breathe Me by Sia
3. Weathervane by PigPen Theater Co. (skip to 3:55...)