Good morning, Snippetteers! — no, I haven’t fallen off the planet (not that I haven’t tried a time or two, but achieving escape velocity turns out to be a little harder than I anticipated *winks*) I’m still on my writing hiatus, through the end of the month (though I just MIGHT have cheated a time or two *coughcough*), so here’s a snippet from earlier in the WIP. This one’s a little long — I know we’re supposed to keep them to six sentences, but this one has to be eight. (Maybe I need to work on writing in six-sentence clusters….) The two characters in this snippet are Lasair and Bryce, whose book was BLOWING SMOKE. Bryce was an interesting character to write; he turned up in books two through four, first as Terry’s jerk of a boyfriend who had stolen him from Josh, and then forced into a more truly villainous role by the Marfach. And halfway through book four, FIRESTORM, Bryce turned to me and said “Hey, guess who the next book is going to be about…” So I had to figure out how to redeem a character I’d enjoyed making thoroughly detestable and irredeemable. Turns out that until he met his Fae SoulShare, Bryce had never actually had a soul. And in this scene, Lasair and Bryce are sitting on a park bench, not far from the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C., taking a break from walking their puppy, the blind runt Fade-hound Setanta. And talking about what it’s like to be SoulShared.
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“Does our soul cause you pain, lover?” There was a line between Lasair’s brows that hadn’t been there a few seconds before. “Would you give it back to me, if you could?”
The question was like cold water flung over him; Bryce couldn’t breathe with the shock of it. He’d been stupid enough to try to reject Lasair’s gift, over and over again; he still wanted to curl up and die with the shame of it, when he remembered how one of his rejections had driven his Fae lover to try to flee back to the Realm. There was nothing inevitable about a SoulShare joining, and he’d damn near thrown the other half of his soul away.
“Please, m’anam-sciar. Please don’t cry.”
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A couple of links for you —
Rainbow Snippets, your home for all kinds of LGBTQIA+ goodies on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets/
My page at Riverdale Avenue Books, the home of the SoulShares, where you can purchase in .epub, .mobi or .pdf: http://riverdaleavebooks.com/Books?Filters.SelectedAuthorId=2086
Rory Ni Coileain 
What an adorable puppy. Also that is one intense, intriguing scene.
Setanta IS adorable. And it’s a good thing he’s a runt, because in the Realm, a full-grown Fade-hound is about the size of a stag, with six-inch fangs, and enthusiastically carnivorous. Especially when it comes to the flesh of magickal creatures. Like Fae.
I love a good redemption story! ❤
wow–
That sounds like a fun writing challenge.
Beautiful scene!
Awwwww… Wonderful emotion in this.
I was quietly horrified when I realised Bryce was going to have his own Fae…. but when I came to reading it, it made sense. Just as it makes sense for Lasair to ask that question.