Excerpt
The patience she’s using and the time she’s taking are killing me. I’m a bundle of nerves and heat and molten puddles, and I’m pretty sure I will have to take a cold shower after this.
She’s really going to kiss me. She leans closer to my face, but then she pulls back, looking down at me with a genuinely curious smile and whispers, “You’re beautiful.”
I can’t take my eyes off of her pink lips, wondering when they will reach mine. Impatience bubbles closer to the surface, and before I know it, the need to kiss this beautiful woman overtakes every rational thought, and I grab a fistful of her pajama top and yank her face to mine.
Our lips connect, and that tingling sensation her every touch has caused since I got here explodes throughout my body, making me want to feel every inch of her smooth skin against mine.
Her lips move slowly with mine, in tandem with my uncertainty, but that insecurity flies farther out the window as the seconds tick by, and her lips press harder against mine. I want more—more of her, of our lips together, of her breathes mingling with mine—and a frenzied urgency fills me as I crash harder into her, nipping her bottom lip open in a gasp.
She rips my hands off of her thighs and yanks them above my head, pinning me beneath her.
Her lips steel everything from me—my breath, my rationality, my worry over whether this is a good idea—and I meet her with equal fervor. Her hips shift against mine, and I can’t help but respond. I wiggle my fingers free from her grip, return them to her thighs, and inch my fingers closer to the edge of her shorts, feeling her skin cool against the heat of my touch.
She groans against my mouth and breaks away, gasping for breath, and whispers, “Fuck. I’ve wanted to do that since our moment in your closet.”
How would you describe you style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
Conversational. I like to write books that flow. Books that feel as though you’re not actually reading and are instead watching a movie playing out in your head. I believe that is easiest to achieve when you’re not dumping massive paragraphs of information on the reader in overly verbose language with little to no point. Some people might enjoy that, but I prefer reading and writing things where the story is the main feature. So I stick to minimal punctuation (just the bare bones needed to be accurate), with the exception of em dashes—which I might be obsessed with—and really varied sentences in terms of structure and length that read like how you speak in your own head. I also tend to write in first person, which is great for achieving this conversational style without veering too far off the rule book’s pages.
Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
Both. When I’m writing a book, it’s whatever comes naturally to me. But writing is a learning process. It’s a skill, after all. So I do write scenes, short stories, and other pieces of writing to practice new styles, new tenses, and new quirky character mind babbles. The more I practice these things, the more ingrained they become in my natural writing. But when I’m writing a new book, I like to keep things a little more natural and enjoy the unfolding story—I produce better work that way.
What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)?
I don’t do this. And the reason I don’t is that I write all the time, everywhere, whenever. If I can fit in some words between my morning workload and lunch, I will. So I don’t tend to wait for inspiration, or set up an environment that gets the creative juices flowing, or anything else that means I need something other my mind to write. This way, I can write wherever I am, regardless of the situation. Though, I do find that I need peace and quiet to write, or I can plug in my headphones and listen to instrumental music to block out my surroundings if I am somewhere noisy. (Lyrics confuse my writing process, and I end up writing something of a cross between a story and song).
Do you have a character that you have been working on that you can't wait to put to paper?
OMG, yes! She doesn’t have a name yet, but she’s a crazy, candy- and sex-obsessed assassin who is given a contract to kill the seven princes of sin. But when she tries, she can’t. They’re too intriguing and crazy, just like her. So she observes them for a bit and ends up accidentally falling in love. Oops. But the character herself is kind of awesome in my mind. She lives off sugar, slays her victims while singing nursery rhymes, never holds back for anyone, and takes in wandering and lost children and animals. She’s a compassionate, crazy assassin. I’ve written a few thousand words, and so far, it’s been really fun. I’m hoping I can return to her and her craziness soon.
Can you share your next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details?
I’m working on a lesbian, steampunk Cinderella retelling that will be a standalone adventure between Cinderella, an orphaned steambot mechanic barely making ends meat, and Princess Meela, a princess, next in line for the city’s throne, who is due to die in 31 days. In this world, everyone is born with a lifeclock in their wrist, which tells them exactly how many days they have left to live. And Cinderella and Meela whisk off of an adventure to attempt the impossible: to trick fate. But will they manage to save her life? And will they do so without falling into an already-doomed love story?
No comments:
Post a Comment