Good morning, Rainbow Snippetteers! — today’s Snippet is from a short story I’m working on as my Camp NaNoWriMo project this month. I’m taking part in an anthology of m/m stories based on Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets; each author has picked a favorite play, and the stories all incorporate the plays in some way. I chose The Tempest, and in my story, “Deeper Than Did Ever Plummet Sound,” we meet Clarence Limont, a renowned Shakespearean actor from London who is beginning to think it’s time to pack it all in, but he’s agreed to play Prospero in an off-off-Broadway production of The Tempest as a favor to the director, an old school chum. And he just might be about to recapture some of the magic of the theater….

In this snippet, Clarence has just arrived for the first “table read” of the play with Jeremy’s company, an all-male Shakespearean company. (I’ve had to go a few sentences over my six, I fear — I hope you’ll forgive me the indulgence…)

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Interrupted conversations and awestruck stares seemed to hang in the air as Clarence wrestled out of his too-heavy wool coat, and he stifled a sigh. Sometimes he wondered how far from the London stage he would have to get before he could be just Clarence Limont, and not the Clarence Limont.

The Battle of the Burberry over at last, he dropped into his folding chair, a good deal more slowly than he would have liked. No doubt the younger men around the table thought him decrepit… well, he’d earned a certain amount of decrepitude, he supposed.

Jeremy rubbed his hands together briskly, beaming. “Now that we’re all here, I’ll say it again, gentlemen – good morning. And, obvious though it is, welcome to the first table read for our production of The Tempest.”

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And now for a couple of links —

Rainbow Snippets on Facebook, for more LGBTQIA goodies: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets/

And HARD AS STONE, the first book in my SoulShares (m/m urban fantasy erotic romance) series: http://ow.ly/10tKrr

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