https://archiveofourown.org/works/60075286/chapters/167811388
Which means I have officially written another novel! 🥳🥳🥳 What started as an intrusive thought about the Tenningtons picking up a girl in a night-club, quickly grew into a novella (finished in a 10 day writing frenzy). Then came the suggestion of touring Europe in the epilogue, which sparkad a whole new novel.
Exploring 1920's New York has been an absolute hoot! I've learned so much about the contemporary jazz, fashion, idioms and expressions (largely owing to Jeeves and Wooster, whom I discovered with the help of @belphegor1982), the Harlem Renaissance, Cabarets, the complete filmography of Cary Elwes (whom I've head-casted to play Bunny Tennington), the amazing and shocking life of Tallulah Bankhead (whom I've head-casted to play Hazel), not to mention all the wonderful art of Egon Schiele.
I've also discovered the amazing Instagram account egonschielewomen which unfortunately gets shadow banned constantly, due to the same reason that Schiele himself was imprisoned, and Sofie was effectively deported: the confusion between pornography and unapologetic art. I'm currently reading Sophie Haydock's novel the flames as research for the next, and final iteration, of what will become my trilogy. Vienna awaits! Then onwards to the Weimar Republic and further adventures in Europe!
I'm not going to say that writing this was the same unrelenting floodwave that constituted Tarzan and Jane. I still can't account for the obsession that had me writing 10-15 pages a week - Muse does whatever Muse wants, it seems. This project has rather been trudging along, with constant doubts and rewrites, and I've had to ask for help and beta-ing from a number of people. Thank you to everyone who contributed -no one mentioned, no one forgotten. I'm well pleased with the result.
And the last few weeks of this journey came with its own twisted surprise, with a real life Tennington lookalike showing up at work. Cary Elwes may have the right charisma to play him, but this guy is exactly the turn of the century English Lord I had imagined. I'm very grateful I won't be writing him in various compromising situations for a while, as I have to look him in the face on the daily. It also helped that the character Tennington has left me in complete emotional turmoil after the epilogue spoilers.
I can't wait for inspiration to strike again. For now I'll be resting and recovering, learning all about 1922's Vienna, Berlin, Paris and finally London. I have a vague outline planned, but what I'm discovering from writing these stories is that I have an uncanny knack of writing a long story chronologically, while throwing out forshadowing comments on the fly, only for me to pick them up and use them to tie the knot together at the end. If that isn't just something, especially considering my poor burned-out brain.
