Love, Eventually
The witch is still in the attic. I’m still writing.
That’s the short version. Here’s the slightly longer one.
Since the last post, I’ve stopped circling the map and actually started walking it. Obviously is in draft. Real chapters, real prose, nine of them plus two shorter chapters from a different point of view, which belongs to the witch in the attic, who has opinions and a very precise handwriting and has been documenting the entire romance from above the floorboards in what I can only describe as real-time field notes.
The archivist is Colette. She reads objects by touching them, which means she spends her days at a government desk processing other people’s confiscated magical history, and her evenings increasingly in a storage room full of things past residents left behind, working a side job she technically didn’t have to take. She runs hot as a side effect of her power. This becomes relevant.
The vampire is Margot. She runs the safe haven out of a house that has been loved long enough to have opinions about who comes through its door, and she shows up to most scenes with paint on her hands because she copes by fixing things, which is extremely her. She has been alive long enough to have stopped wanting things for herself, which is a problem that the book is in the process of solving whether she consents to it or not.
The house has already decided. Everyone else is catching up.
The thing about the two of them is that they are both extremely observant people who have somehow failed to observe the most obvious thing in the room, which is that they are falling for each other in real time, in front of six witnesses, one of whom is keeping records. The house figured it out by week two. Callum figured it out by the time he made the second cup of tea. Nadia is timing it. The witch in the attic has a whole section.
Colette and Margot are the last to know. This is, if you’ll forgive me, very on-brand for both of them.
What I can tell you is that the warm-funny-ensemble-cast shape I described last time is holding. Better than holding, actually. The characters are showing up more fully than I expected once I started writing them in sequence rather than just describing them to myself in outline form. Callum in particular. Callum is quietly one of my favorite people I’ve ever put in a book and he says almost nothing and I’m choosing not to examine why that is.
The other thing I can tell you is that I’ve been less present here than usual because I’ve had my hands full elsewhere. Some of you may already know what I mean by that, and if so, no comment, no confirmation, none of your business, moving on. What I will say is that the other project has kept me busy in a way that is good for the work even when it’s bad for my sleep schedule, and I’m not sorry about it, and I’ll be back here more regularly now that a certain draft is done and out of my hair.
Obviously is where I live right now. Twenty-one chapters, every beat already mapped, the actual writing is the part where I find out which beats I was wrong about. So far I’ve been wrong about one thing and right about everything else, which is a better ratio than I usually manage.
The witch in the attic wants me to be more specific about my progress. I’ve told her she doesn’t get editorial input until she comes downstairs. She remains unmoved by this.
More soon. Actually soon this time.
Harlo
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