coffeeandrocks

Writer. Making literary fiction in borrowed universes. Currently: The Shape of Leaving — a Star Wars novel about exit, identity, and the cost of invisibility. AO3: coffeeandrocks

[coffeeandrockswrites]

The Shape of Leaving is live on AO3.

Forty-nine chapters. A Kiffar pawnshop owner who builds exits for people who have run out of other options. A Mirialan Inquisitor whose analytical model has found something it cannot classify. A composite droid who files new categories when the existing ones fail.

It is slow. It is precise. It takes the Force seriously as a cognitive mode rather than a power set. It is set in a corner of the Star Wars universe that belongs entirely to original characters.

It is Book One of a trilogy.

Chapters 1 - 8 are up now. One chapter per week from here.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/84002411/chapters/221467906

If it sounds like your thing, I hope it is.

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Chapter 8 of The Shape of Leaving is live on AO3.

This is the chapter the novel is named for.

Not because it is the most dramatic. Because it contains the most honest sentence in the book about what Dars actually does.

There is a chain. That is all I will say about that.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/84002411/chapters/221467906

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Thursday is new chapter day!

Chapter 7 is Virin’s second chapter and the first time she steps into a space the novel has built specifically for her.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/84002411/chapters/221467906

The Chapter House does something to a room that I found genuinely difficult to write. Not the description of it. The quality of presence it enforces.

She notices something at the end of this chapter. I have been looking forward to you reaching that moment since Chapter 3.

One chapter per week. Thank you for staying.

— coffeeandrocks

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Chapter 6 of The Shape of Leaving is live on AO3.

A week late. Life intervened. It happens.

This is the chapter where the shop changes without anyone touching it.

Dars adjusts things. The space adjusts back. Something in the periphery continues to be patient.

NXT-1 has opinions about this. He keeps them to himself.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Thursday = New chapter day!

Dars’ psychometry takes him back to his time working for Sienar Fleet Systems where his philosophy confronts its opposite.

5 chapters in, 44 to go.

Thanks for reading, I’d love to hear what you think.

— coffeeandrocks

https://archiveofourown.org/works/84002411/chapters/221467906

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Wrestling the galaxy to write literary fan-fic in the Star Wars universe while my inner child wants pew-pew laserswords.

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Chapter 4 of The Shape of Leaving is live on AO3.

Dars rearranges the shop.

Not because anything is wrong. Because something has not arrived yet and he is optimizing for it anyway.

NXT-1 points out that customer retrieval efficiency will decrease.

Dars points out that is not the system they are optimizing for.

The device from Chapter 1 is still there. Still unresolved. The power regulator clicks once, out of sequence.

He identifies it correctly and does not touch it.

This is a chapter about a man reading a room that is trying to tell him something. It is also a chapter about patience as methodology.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/84002411/chapters/221467906

[coffeeandrockswrites]

Hello, fanfic writers community! New voice here and I come bearing a genuine question.

Is anyone else unreasonably attached to a side character they created?

Because I have spent the better part of a year writing a forty-nine chapter Star Wars novel and I cannot stop thinking about the composite droid who runs probability assessments on everything, files new categories when the existing ones fail, and has been quietly tracking his operator’s psychological state for nine years without ever being asked to.

His name is NXT-1. He is called Next. He began the novel calculating odds on everything. He ends it having stopped calculating odds on one person entirely.

The novel is called The Shape of Leaving. It is set in Canto Bight at 10 BBY, follows two neurodivergent Force-sensitives who are both very good at being invisible and considerably less good at each other, and takes the Force seriously as perception rather than power.

It is slow. It is precise. It has Andor’s bones and literary fiction’s ambitions. It belongs entirely to original characters.

It is also, I should warn you, the first book in a trilogy. So if you fall for NXT-1, I cannot promise that will be comfortable.

Chapters are posting weekly on AO3 right now.

I would genuinely love to find its readers. And I would love even more to hear about your side characters — the ones you did not expect to matter as much as they do.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works