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 The outside world has changed and the RLA has been replaced by a new government run by the East and West called The Federation.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...)
 

I can do anything in 6 Years / Sweet Prince 3

These are my aesthetics for Jean, Minnow and Alan. I've actually thought Paul Walker should be older Alan for a long time. Minnow's is Charlotte Casiraghi, a princess of Monaco. Jean's is still Jared Leto, but I imagine him with a little more Jay Baruchel.
 



Mimic Mimic
Someone asked me in the comment section how I thought Sweet Prince related to Mimic and I've thought about it...Sweet Prince is like Mimic except with a third wave feminist group hug. Mimic is probably much more true to the, male-centric, cold, weirdness of actual cyberpunk short stories while Sweet Prince is....something else I don't have a name for. They also exist in contrast; Mimic is what happens if Rayne's only son ran away from the family business and Sweet Prince is what happens when Rayne's only son embraces it.

Also, I think Mimic might be a little abelist with the way I wrote Luce being autistic and Minnie being in a wheelchair and doing nothing. Also, Alan calls Minnie mon cher and I have no idea why and it makes me cringe so I'm just going to bury Mimic in the same place I buried Sundays.

 SH-CPShawna Paradox Line
I wrote Mimic 7 years ago and honestly haven't read it in atleast 5. I definitely haven't looked at it recently so, I was beyond shocked when I realize there is a SH-CPShawna Paradox Line !

This is how Kris describes Minnie and Alan in Mimic. Remember that in this version Minnie died at the Life Summit and is a Sage-like character:

He put his arms around her waist to adjusted her properly back in her wheelchair and kissed her again, locking his lips over hers.

I rolled my eyes but, for as long as I had known them they had been like that, more in love than any teenagers I knew. Which was surprising seeing as Alan regularly slept with prostitutes and Aunt Minnie kept a strict schedule of doing everything and nothing at the same time.

This is how Twyla describes them in Sweet Prince:

Alan was a cartel loyalist and he and Aunt Minnie had been together longer than any couple I knew. He practically worshiped at her feet and even after a decade together they acted like the newlyweds I saw in movies.

(The line was originally like teenagers but it was a last second change)

This is Luce in Mimic:

He took Twyla’s hand and lead her to the door,”Come, Kristopher.”

I could have killed him for talking to me like a child but, I followed him out the door, pass the restaurant and to the parking garage.

And this is Luce in Sweet Prince:

“And that’s our cue to go,” Luce says walking out. He motions to me with his hand like I was a dog. “Come, Twyla.”

And in both novellas the Kris/Rias character gets dressed down. In Mimic it's by Alan because he missed Rayne's funeral.

“I was busy--,”

“No one fucking believes that, you better come up with a better fucking excuse.” Alan shot at me

“Alan, sweetheart, you can’t talk to him like that.”

“He can’t be babied. Kristopher isn’t a child anymore, he is a man” Alan said

“Don’t go there,” Aunt Minnie said, “Everybody saying shit like that is why he left--,”

“No it’s not.” I said,” It’s not.”

 And of course in Sweet Prince

“Disarm me,” Luce barks down at Rias. “Don’t you dare fucking cry. Are you being a damn baby because you had to kill your daddy last week ? Is everything too hard, sweet little prince ? Are you so lazy ? Are you a little bitch ?,”

Rias rolls himself out from under Luce’s foot and walks away.

Luce grabs him by his collar and pushes him into a wall.

“Stop being weak, baby brother.” Luce growls.

“Luce.” Mother says. “Give it a fucking rest.”

Give Me Six Years

 Also, I came across this blog post from January 6, 2011..in 6 years I can do anything:

Sweet Prince 3
Recap:Twyla Banner is friends with Colette Santoro, a motorcycle assassian for the Santoro Family known as the Covalcatti. With Sara drunk at Ivy's Twyla's about sneak out to meet Colette when she decided to invite Rias and give him a night of fun. She tries to warn Colette she's bringing him but it might be too late.
"I catch Rias’s body language change. He presses his foot down on the pneumatic device of his ankle holster and his silver and black revolver flies up and into his waiting hand.
 

He starts firing at the blue Covalcatti motorcycle coming towards us.

Shit..."

 

Sweet Prince 3
Playlist
-1- Bad Girls by M.I.A.
-2- Five Hours by Deorrio
-3-All I Want by Daniella Mason

-4- What Kind of Man by Florence and The Machine

Sweet Prince 2 Aesthetics

So, it's impossible for me to really put into words how these serials came together. Basically, I started Sweet Prince last year right after Compulsion because I knew I wanted to write about an older Rias, 

It was mostly going to be the funeral scene bur I needed another pallbearer and I kind of just added Haley's name for kicks. Then I decided to make the funeral from Twyla's POV and then I wrote the Luce getting a tattoo scene and Haley showed up in the apartment and he had tattoos for some reason too.I think I was going to keep Haley's past kind of fuzzy , but then I decided to write Bright Lines and as I wrote Bright Lines (and Arkham Academy) I just kind of layered back information and added things I was going to bring back.

 I've been wanting to write Haley and Luce in the same serial since I did a TDOSH where they breifly "met". In fact, Luce was originally going to be in the end of Compulsion but I couldn't quite fit him in.

Also, I'm currently playing with this side story about Jean's brothel but it's kind of...dark, When I was writing the sexy times scenes in UL3 I used this Tumblr list to help me and I kind of want to break it out again.

Okay, who's ready for some aesthetics (I think that's what the kids call picspiations these days)

Grace/Washington/Banner Family

So, the inspirations for Zacharias and Twyla are random photos I found  but Luce's is Sam Hueghan from Outlander with dark hair. It's crazy how much his hair color changes the way he looks. I also imagine Twyla with this coloring:

 

 Colette Santoro Aesthetic

In my head she rides a sports bike, but it's surprisingly hard to find images of women riding those kinds of bikes. I just imagine her with strong Mediterranean features and like Cara Delevigne eyebrows.

Haley Aesthetic

Keep Ruby Rose

My new picspiration for Haley is model Erika Linder. I am kind of obsessed with her look because she just kind of presents as either gender depending on how the light hits her, it's not so much about how she's dressed or her hair. length. Like to me, in this gif she looks feminine from the side and masculine when she turns her face.

Also,  her thing when she first came on the scene is that she kind of looks like a young Leonardo DiCarpio when she frowns. It's actually kind of fascinating to look at how much body language influences our perceptions of gender.

Also, yes, yes she did a photoshoot for some fashion magazine with Andrej Pejic... I think this is the future liberals want.

Sweet Prince 2 

Recap: Twyla Banner, the sister of Zacharias Washington, the next leader of the cartel is secretly friends with Colette Santoro, the daughter of a rival cartel leader and a motorcycle assassin.  They try and keep family out of their friendship and Colette invites Twyla to a concert. Twyla decides to tag along with Luce to deliver some medicine to her brother so she can gain some "good sister/daughter points." before sneaking out to the concert... 

Sweet Prince 2
Playlist

-1- A Flat by Black Violin 

-2- Candles by John Hopkins

-3- Litost by X Ambassadors