#ange.writing

[rebeccadumaurier]

extremely frustrating how my characters have conversations with each other in my head all day and yet when it is time to write anything at all down. POOF

[rebeccadumaurier]

ashbriar?

In 1873, Lady Katherine Ashley is found dead at her family's estate, Ashbriar, and the gardener, Sebastian Evans, is executed for her murder. In 2023, Katherine's descendant, Eli, begins to uncontrollably switch back and forth into Sebastian's body days before his execution. The two of them must work together to escape Sebastian's execution and find out who really killed Katherine.

or: it's about two boys who have been set up to hate each other falling into mutual respect and love, and also revenge and british colonialism

As Eli Ashley was busy investigating the murder of his ancestor, Sebastian was discovering sriracha for the first time. The food at Lady Katherine Hall was as abundant as it had been in 1873, although as a servant, Sebastian hadn't gotten to taste much of the finer offerings. Food in 2023, however, was an entirely different story. So many textures and flavors and colors, he marveled. Though he wouldn’t have minded living out the remainder of his life adding sriracha to various types of noodles and generally emptying out Lady Katherine Hall’s kitchen cabinets, he knew he must have been sent here for a reason. Besides, there remained the question of what would happen once he’d been executed. Even if Eli happened to be in his body at the time, who knew what effect it would have on Sebastian.

wip asks

[rebeccadumaurier]

Tell me about The Akhmatova School for Magical Art!

in her sophomore year of college, ari's older brother morgan helps her transfer to a reclusive art school on the coast, where the students have the magic ability to bring their art to life. although the students are welcoming, they're haunted by the fact their most brilliant peer, sasha, murdered three seniors the year before. ari begins to investigate why sasha killed those students, why morgan really wanted her to transfer here, and the secrets at the heart of the school.

this one is very close to my heart because it features a bunch of eccentric art students at a poorly-run LAC with dysfunctional admin, love triangle solved via polyamory, an antagonist who is Kind Of Right, and our collective responsibility to build ethical tools :-)

"Does it ever just not work for anyone?" Ari asked hopelessly. She was a lost cause. Magic had decided to make an outcast of her, just like everyone else had.

Sage hesitated, which she took to mean a yes. Great. She'd imbibed that horrible tea for nothing. Who even knew what havoc it had wreaked on her digestive system? "Look, Ari, I know when someone’s not going to make it, and you aren’t one of those people. You know what makes a great crafter?"

"The ability to draw hands that don't look like weird alien fingers?" she said miserably. She hated Jacob most when he forced her to draw hands. It was that and noses. She was never going to get noses right.

"No, don't be ridiculous. We all suck at those." Sage tapped their pencil against the apple. It was a gorgeous apple, its shadows smeared with daring hints of electric blue, its redness as tempting and luscious as the one in Eden. "It's not even about artistic ability, although that certainly helps. It's about unseeing reality. You have to believe with your mind and heart that this apple is real. You have to believe that if you bit into this piece of paper right now, you'd get a juicy crunch in response. This isn't a drawing of an apple. It's an apple." 

wip asks

[rebeccadumaurier]

just realized dearest beloved doesn't pass the reverse bechdel test lmfao

[rebeccadumaurier]

I missed the ask game earlier too, but I would love to know anything about Kassandra's Home!

a somewhat delayed response due to the chaos of travel but yes!! [link to original post for reference]

Kassandra's Home (meant to be read as "Kassandra has arrived home" and also "Kassandra's home," possessive, a home belonging to Kassandra and also "Kassandra is home," Kassandra is itself home) is narrated by an AI named Kassandra, born(/launched into existence) by Rain the same day as Rain's daughter Margaret while the world is slowly falling to pieces around them during the climate apocalypse. This, of course, does not concern Kassandra, who runs a house inside a very affluent gated neighborhood and has minimal concept of the outside world.

Over the generations, Kassandra forms unique relationships with each inhabitant of the house as they grow up, while the world decays and then heals. AKA you can have so many flavors of codependency with your house.

I was born on the same day as Margaret Kim-Zhuang, so in a way, my first experience with twins came early. After my creator got home with the newly born Margaret, I was called forth into the world. Margaret's parent named me in the first sentence they spoke to me: "Welcome to the world, Kassandra."

I was created in a house of grief. Rain's wife Elena had just died giving birth to Margaret. It had been twelve harrowing hours of labor, and Rain had come home at the end of it all a single parent. So I did not point out to them that Kassandra seemed like an imprudent name for an AI. I did not believe in karma or superstition, but it seemed rather suggestive.

[rebeccadumaurier]

hey! i was catching up on your blog a bit and i noticed a recent ask game you reblogged. firstly, all of your wip ideas sound really interesting!

and secondly, i hope it's not too late to ask, but i was wondering if you could talk more about 'the pictures of yuxi hao' and 'the second brightest radiance,' since no one has mentioned them yet? thank you

absolutely, i'm very flattered by this! :) [link to original post for reference]

in the pictures of yuxi hao, recent college grad meiting lives with her best friend kit in NYC and believes she's moved on from the suicide of her college girlfriend, yuxi—at least until yuxi's disembodied hand appears in her apartment one night. yuxi was not only her girlfriend but also her muse, and now meiting finds the dozens of drawings she's made of yuxi coming to life and trying to kill her.

this one is not developed enough yet for me to really have an excerpt i want to share. hopefully someday!

in the world of the second brightest radiance, people train to become radiances—soldiers with the power to manipulate light—to battle back the plague of decay that's consuming the island, the only home mir has ever known. kore has always been the pride & joy of the island, the hero prophesized to defeat the decay forever, but when kore vanishes, it's up to mir, her long-time rival and closest thing to a friend, to find her and bring her back—even if kore might no longer be on their side.

“No, I won’t,” Mir gasped, batting away Chi’s hand as she fell to her knees. “I’ll never get into a good school. I’m just going to marry Lord Liu’s stupid smirking son and have developed these toned legs for nothing except carrying his sandals over to him when he gets home. Decay is going to destroy Liyuan and the most important thing I’ll be doing while rampaging bears descend on our town is dress shopping with my maids. I’m going to pop out so many babies that I’ll never be able to walk anywhere on my own, and all I’ll worry about is convincing Lee to name our children after my brothers instead of his. I’ll have to go back to taking violin lessons with that dreadful hag who lives with the carpenter. Do you know how stupid it is that people keep making violins when we barely have any trees anymore that aren’t poisonous? Do you fucking understand how inane it is when we could be using wood for anything else? Do you know how much we waste every year on violins and velvet and that vile shit our aunt puts in her perfume?” She only stopped because she could no longer draw breath. Chi did not laugh at her like Xiu would have, or told her that if that buffoon Xiu could get into Yixua, so could she, like Min would have. He patted her on the back until she could breathe again and said, “Let’s go on a run.”

[rebeccadumaurier]

Subaltern PLEASE that premise sounds so hilarious and workplace sitcom vibes

Alys is many things to the supervillain Sana: lifelong best friend, right-hand woman, and hopelessly in unrequited love with her. Now it's time for Alys to step away from her job—but not before she finds a replacement worthy of being Sana's second-in-command. Unfortunately, villains these days really aren't up to her standards.

featuring: a shapeshifter protagonist who is the world's most unreasonable hiring manager; be gay do crime taken very seriously; the world would suck so badly if people had superpowers

here's the opening:

I’d had high hopes for this applicant after she passed the first screen with flying colors. She knew this space well. She had a good resume and promising experience. She’d mentioned she was going to Heytea after the interview, which was not important, but it was a good sign that she would be willing to wait thirty minutes in line to get Sana’s mango grapefruit sago if she’d already waited in that line before. Actually, maybe that was important. I made a mental note to add it to the “good-to-haves” in the job description. But now my hopes were being crushed into a fine little powder. The kind of powder I could only assume T. S. Eliot had meant when he said I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

wip asks

[rebeccadumaurier]

tagged by @tchaikovskyed - thank you! :)

RULES: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how nondescriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it.

note: these are working/placeholder titles; i often don't come up with finalized titles until pretty far down the line. these are all novel WIPs

Dearest Beloved (i tag so many posts on my blog for this WIP i will just let people imagine what it's about)

Subaltern (a supervillainess's second-in-command tries to hire a replacement for herself so she can return to grad school)

The Akhmatova School for Magical Art (girl transfers to magical art school where 3 students were murdered the previous year)

The Pictures of Yuxi Hao (girl is haunted by drawings she made of her dead girlfriend that are now coming to life and attacking her)

The Professional Friend (girl freelances as people's friends for her living)

The Second Brightest Radiance (girl is sent to hunt down her rival, who is the Chosen One but has defected to the dark side she was meant to defeat)

Ashbriar (girl—just kidding. it's about two boys living in 150-year-apart timelines at the same british manor who swap bodies)

Kassandra's Home (multigenerational family saga during the climate apocalypse, narrated by the AI-powered house they live in)

tagging @carys-the-ninth & @monstrousgourmandizingcats :-)