Tag Archives: Romance

New Fiction: The Trouble with Sergeants

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Here is a little something to start off the new week with a smile (I hope).  God knows with the news as it is, we could do with a spot of romance to take the edge off.

I’ve been working on this story for months, kicking it about, writing and rewriting it.  Partly its because its a delicate subject, the idea of relationships between colleagues of different ranks, and the power issues involved – I’ve been stung by AO3 commenters about this before, so I’m somewhat tentative about putting this one out there.  And partly because it means venturing into a new fandom, which is always a gamble.

On the other hand, in the middle of wrestling with new and orginal work, I could do with an injection of confidence from remembering that I can actually finish something.

So here it is, two senior policemen wrestling with the ethical dilemma of realising their junior officers are nursing romantic feelings for them:

   “Barnaby watches the two of them together, Lewis and Hathaway, the way they interact, the subtle conversation they conduct with their eyes, all that goes unspoken.  Surely Lewis must be able to see how Hathaway feels about him?  It is brave of Hathaway to sit there knowing all that he is hiding.  Because you can’t hide a microbe in a room full of coppers.

            There are no secrets in here, Barnaby thinks, looking around at the solid, unremarkable faces, ordinary men and women whose ordinary features mask the extraordinary – suspicious souls and inquisitive minds.  No, no secrets could survive in this concentration of coppers.

I wonder if they’ve worked out mine?”

You can read The Trouble with Sergeants here at AO3.

Happy Creating,

EF

Friday Quickfic: Juggling Knives

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Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox promo shot for ITV's 'Lewis' series.

Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox promo shot for ITV’s ‘Lewis’ series.

Last week, I gave you ‘Cooking Breakfast’, a little insight into the intimacy between Robbie Lewis and James Hathaway. This week, I have finished the companion piece to that – told from James’ point of view:

“I’m chopping mushrooms, dancing between hob and chopping board, cha-cha-cha. Paper white flesh of fungus. He says mushrooms have no place in a fry-up, but I haven’t noticed him complaining much these days when I put his plate in front of him. Just looks up at me with those twinkling eyes, and I melt. Bastard knows it, too. He can do anything, and then look at me like that, and I’m putty in his hands.

I’m not complaining.”

You can read it here at AO3.

Happy Creating, And a Happy Valentine’s Day to you all,

love,

EF

Friday Quickfic: Cooking Breakfast

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Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox in ITV's 'Lewis'

Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox in ITV’s ‘Lewis’

Its been a long time since I conjured up a quickfic for you.  I wrote this little morsel while I was on my writers retreat last weekend.  My fellow writers liked it, and I hope you will too.  Just a little bit of Lewis romance to start your weekend off with a smile.  Here’s a taste:

  ” He is in the kitchen, dancing his Sunday morning sarabande amongst the pans.

            You stand in the shadows of the hall, take a moment, watch him lit up by the morning sun, count your blessings. Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. You weren’t supposed to get this lucky twice in one lifetime. If you believed in God, you’d thank Him. (Never mind, leave all the thanking God to James.)”

You can read it here at AO3, or if you prefer, here at FF.net.

If you like it, you’ll be glad to know that I am working on a companion piece, told from James’ POV.  Watch this space!

Happy Creating,

EF

Do you have a Creative Vision?

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This man has a vision (click on the link below and watch the film clip):

Portraits of St Davids residents

He knows what his project is.  He knows what he is after.  He is going for it.  The breadth of his vision, as well as the beauty of it, and of his work, is dazzling.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Vision over recent days.  Wondering what I am really after, what I am trying to achieve.  I can’t just be driven by fear anymore.

My fear is that I will die without getting all these pictures out of my head and into the world so that other people can enjoy them as much as I do.  I find the inside of my imagination highly entertaining, and I want to share it.  Does that sound vain?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I feel compelled to transmit the pictures in my head.

I watched the film, ‘The Reader’ the other night, based on the magnificent book by Bernhard Schlink.  It was wonderful.  It stirred up so many complicated and conflicting feelings inside me.  It is a true tragedy in the Greek style, a man forced to face the truth about the love of his life, and her part in unspeakable acts.  So much love.  So much horror.  This story is designed to spur debate about the morality of our actions, about good and evil, about the excuses people give, about love and literature and illiteracy and shame.  You could call it a romance, but thats only a tiny part of the story.  Schlink’s genius is to use romance as the vehicle to consider more difficult moral problems.

After the film had ended, I was getting ready for bed, cleaning my teeth and staring into the mirror, as I mulled over the storm of feelings going on under my ribs.  And I realised something.

This is exactly what I want my readers to feel when they finish reading one of my stories.

Complicated emotions.  The vast, unquenchable yearning of love.  The conflict of being caught in morally complex situations.  The struggle for answers.  And that iresistable siren call of need that drives us towards one another, even when we understand that pain can be the only result.

Is this too big a vision for someone of my talents?  I’m not saying I want to be Dickens, after all.  I guess I am aiming higher than that, in a way.  These issues seem to me to be at the core of our existence as emotional beings.  We struggle with them, just as we struggle with the philosopical questions of why we are here, and whether there is a God.  This is what I want to examine with my writing.

So its more than just getting the pictures out of my head and onto the page.  It is observing the emotions that make us love, too.  Call me a hopeless romantic, but that is what I am interested in, and I think I always have been.  I just never really thought consciously about it before.

I know what I’m trying to achieve now.  The thought has given me purpose.  All I have to do is go out and do it.

Do you have a vision for your creative work?  Maybe its worth thinking about.

Happy Creating,

EF