Keeping up with Netflix: Dead Boy Detectives

I finished the show the day before and am planning to rewind and rewatch. Hell, it was fun. Absurd, icky, and flashes its campy creds like a badge of honor -- I love how it manages not take itself too seriously and yet delve into some pretty awful character trauma from start to finish. As far as that goes, we get them in piecemeal, i.e., there's usually a hint about the character's past (especially Edwin's and Charles's), which is either brushed off or angrily avoided but snowballs gradually until a flashback shows us what happened. 

There's also the trauma that's just hinted at and left there for the viewers to piece together themselves (see: Jenny). 

The episodic approach with the "monster of the week" theme adds to the fun, but each episode still manages to tie together a pretty complicated arc where Edwin, Charles, and Crystal either find themselves almost literally (Crystal), actively suppress the past and fight hard not to be a product of a horrible cycle (Charles), or learn a significant aspect of their identity and then determine how best to move forward with that revelation (Edwin). And then tie all that up with a colorful, messy, and stunning ribbon of found family, friendship, and a bond that straddles platonic and romantic yet goes far beyond either. 

I really can't say more without spoiling anything (though a touch of spoilers still finds its way into this post, so be warned), but that paragraph above pretty much skims the surface of what I love the most about the storytelling. There's so much more beyond that, of course, and that's the reason why I want to rewatch everything. Even the penultimate moment involving Charles and Edwin fleeing Hell can be parsed in so many ways (all good, btw) so that a handful of minutes in that one scene reveals way, way more about each character than what's obviously on the surface. 

The cast (main and secondary) chew up the scenery, and you can tell they were having so much fun filming the series. Even the main antagonists (save for David) are hard to hate without enjoying their moments on-screen (see: Esther). Minor antagonists? Even more so (see: the dandelion sprites). 

The characters are aged up, though, and it's extremely difficult thinking of any of them as teenagers, less so sixteen-year-olds. And I think this should've been tweaked somewhat in some of the dialogue, especially with the Night Nurse, who keeps referring to Edwin and Charles as children. It's jarring, mentally, to hear her say that -- no, they're not children, and at the minimum, I'd see them as eighteen-year-olds. Early twenties? Yes. Definitely. Sixteen-year-olds? Children? Nope.

The series ends in a way that can be picked up easily should a second season happen, and while some fans are tearing their hair out over the possibility of cancellation, I've run across references outside social media about the showrunners being in talks for a second season. I hope it happens. There's a major loose thread by way of Niko's arc, and there's also a fresh start for Edwin and Charles (with Crystal and Jenny plus the Night Nurse) that promises future adventures. 

As for a final spoiler, here goes...

Edwin tells the Cat King what they both have in common is loneliness. I felt for him at that moment, and I honestly hope he finds someone if Charles doesn't come into his own self-discovery. But that said, I do appreciate the bond both of them have as a pair: unbreakable / to (literal) Hell and back / no one else will do. What they have really does straddle platonic and romantic yet goes beyond, but I still can't help but feel that ache over Edwin feeling lonely. Now that he's come to terms with his identity as a gay man, I'd love to see him enjoy a connection with someone, Charles or otherwise, especially since he's a ghost, and he's borderline immortal (apparently ghosts can still be destroyed in this universe).

And Breathe...

I might be good at multi-tasking at the day job, but not so much when it comes to writing, so I decided to set my WiP aside for the time being while I chipped steadily away at the revisions for The Dubious Commode. That's done and sorted out now, and I can move on to the next stage, which is easier. That's how things go with me, anyway: writing (hardest) -- revising (less hard) -- editing (easiest). So I'll be back to working on Voices in the Briars next weekend, and I've got a three-day weekend planned after that, too, which means even more time spent writing. Yay!

Not much really needed to be done in the revisions -- mostly fleshing out a few passages per chapter and following the notes I have in my writing notebook (while discarding or ignoring others since they don't work). This book turned out to be a blessedly easy one to end the series with, and while I've done my time grieving, I'm now really, really thrilled to give Ghosts and Tea a good, happy sendoff. And I know I mentioned before that I'll forego a celebratory video (which was a tradition of mine whenever I finish a book's draft), but you know, FUCK IT. I'm celebrating and feeding off the energy of the soundtrack to my favorite superhero series (movie series, anyway).

Yeah! Can't wait for Beyond the Spider-Verse to come out, finally. Across the Spider-Verse is still on Netflix, and God knows how many times I've watched it (did the same when Into the Spider-Verse was there, too). Blown away by the animation, of course, and especially the storytelling. While Captain America: The Winter Soldier is still my top MCU flick, this one is my overall favorite of all Marvel-related movies, and I thought I was done with Spider-Man (didn't bother to watch any of the earlier live action adaptations). 

So I'm celebrating a Victorian epistolary book with a 21st century animated film soundtrack, and I'm milking this for all it's worth.* Next weekend will be a full return to Voices in the Briars, and with any luck, I'll run across more random stuff to be inspired by for future books (like Loom and Mirror).

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In other random news, I just started watching Dead Boy Detectives on Netflix, picking away at it one episode per sitting. I'm not posting any detailed reactions at the moment other than a more generalized "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" Once I get through the entire season, I'll share my thoughts on it, but so far it's a pretty fun show to follow. 

Love the aesthetics (of course) and the dry, snarky humor (with the occasional f-bomb dropped for spice). Truth be told, it's pulling me in way more than Lockwood & Co. did, which was a show I had to set aside after the first episode because I had a hard time getting into the story (not to mention empathizing with the characters). But since it's a Netflix production, it's on that platform forever, and I can always go back and start over with a clearer head.

For all I know, I just started watching it on a bad day, or my mind and mood were both pretty blah. I do find that to be the case when I restart a book I DNF'd or a show I abandoned after one or two episodes. I understand Dead Boy Detectives is actually part of the universe of The Sandman, and I read somewhere that there's a chance some crossing over might take place between the two series. I never read the graphic novel and haven't tried the series at all, so this would be an interesting direction to take Dead Boy Detectives down the line. We shall see. For the time being, I'm going to watch and enjoy as a total noob (we all gotta start somewhere, eh?).

* thought I'd mention this particular track does an incredible job actually presenting four different character plots / conflicts (the Prowler, Earth-42 Miles, the Spot, and Gwen with her newly formed "band" -- all in that order as the track progresses)

Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff

This is the last weekend of April, and I'm ending the month on a good (writing) note (because everything outside writing still leaves a lot to be desired). I'm now just short of 10K words for Voices in the Briars, and so far things are moving pretty smoothly. I do have to be a lot more aware of the pace since the book's got two alternating POVs, and each is allowed no more than 13 chapters if I want some room for extra text during the revisions. 

Starting next weekend, I'll be juggling writing this book and revising The Dubious Commode, which will be a lot slower as a result (not complaining, actually, since I've got plenty of time until the July release date). I've also updated the Book News page with the rest of this year's calendar, and Voices in the Briars now has a November 1 release date. 

In other news, I'm still a bit hung up on Young Royals and have been reading a handful of fanfics here and there. Again that's nostalgia at work considering how involved I was in some fandoms back in the day. Those were the earlier years of writing practice, for which I'm grateful. Had it not been for fanfiction and the supportive communities I was a part in, I wouldn't have developed my confidence in taking on original characters after cutting my teeth on derivative work. 

Not gonna lie, but the series really called to mind my early years writing and publishing gay YA books. I guess my current output has some of those elements in there since they now tend to skew New Adult, but those were the days. If I have the story for it, I'll dip back in to the YA pool, but I found my comfortable little corner now, writing about older characters (however slightly older they might be compared to my mid-teen characters before). And I'm enjoying this semi-limbo state of development between adolescence and adulthood, but who knows what the future holds? I might ease further into older adulthood in time, and I'm down with that.

I also finally watched the second season of Heartstopper, which I liked a little less than the first season, I'm afraid. The Paris trip felt like a filler, and I found the more interesting and significant events in those episodes where the kids were back home. I might be tarred and feathered for saying this, but I wish the Paris trip were excluded in this season in favor of exploring the more serious issues involving Charlie's eating disorder, Tara's family's bigotry, and Nick's family troubles. That said, if the season was just following the graphic novel, the cliffhanger-ish ending is okay since there's a third season in the works. 

I'm still greedily snapping up whatever e-books catch my attention, and my Kindle app is filling up faster than I can chip away at it. Going over my library to clean it up and hold on to those books I consider to be keepers is another deep dive into nostalgia and those writers whose books I used to eat up the moment they're published. 

So many talented authors who were active in the past, especially when the gay romance market exploded with so many small presses appearing to cover that niche, are nowhere to be seen anymore, and even their websites are gone. It's really depressing as a fan of their work, and I do hope they're at least doing well in their personal lives even if they've given up on writing and publishing. There are new writers coming out every day, so these favorite authors do get their works pushed to the back as a result, which is doing their talent a great disservice, but it is what it is. I do have copies of their books in my app, and at least I can reread them at my leisure, which is one way of honoring their hard work.

'The Dubious Commode': Done!

All I need to do is point at the post subject and squeal. And grieve. This marks the end of the journey for Prue, Freddy, Brody, Jonathan, Felicity, Linford, and everyone else involved in the wild workings of this special universe that's been part of my writerly world for a few years. 

Writing epistolary fiction was a great exercise -- mentally and creatively -- and now that the genie's out of the bottle, you bet I'm going to take advantage of this narrative form again in future books. And epistolary fiction is my favorite method of storytelling because of the way letters and journal entries force readers to make mental connections given the limitations of the form. 

I tried as much as I could to avoid falling into the same trap as I've seen in classic works like Dracula (which was my primary inspiration source for this series), where letters end up reading like standard narratives complete with impossibly exhaustive dialogues. No one writes letters like that in the real world, but for the sake of the story, some dialogue needs to find its way in the text. So I tried to limit it as much as I could, using the journal entries more like standard narratives in this case -- though still with strict limits. 

But, yeah -- I've always wanted to try my hand at writing epistolary fiction, particularly novel-length fiction, and I managed it somehow. And proved to myself I can also do it in long novella form, too, which opens the floodgates for future books -- as long as the narrative form fits the story, obvs. I'm not keen on shoehorning an epistolary in every book I work on. 

Anyway, the book's done, and now it's a matter of revisions and edits and all the good stuff. I'll write an afterword, naturally. Be assured Prue and Freddy's ghostly adventures will carry on well beyond the final journal entry. I'll be taking a break from this book for the rest of the month so I can clear my head in readiness for the revisions and polishing up, which I plan to do in May. 

And for the time being, I can get started on Voices in the Briars. I'd post a celebratory disco video, but I'm going to lose myself in videos and some reading instead. But yay! Another book under my belt!

And Here We Go!

Down to the last two chapters for The Dubious Commode, and I have a last-minute time off arrangement for this coming Friday (a desperately needed one, btw, since I'm getting way too close to burning out at the day job). That'll add to my writing time, which will also mean my first dive into Voices in the Briars. So excited! And with that said, I finally have something a little more substantial to share about the next book.

SETTING: As a nod to the grotesque legend surrounding Elizabeth Báthory, I decided to set the story in Hungary. Obviously an AU version of the country since there's vampirism and dark magic at work, but I'm also (as usual) dipping into my Catholic background and will be working a lot of Catholic imagery, iconography, and tradition to the story. And as always, we're looking at somewhere in the early to mid-19th century for the timeline though it won't be clear / specified. That's always been my preferred period when it comes to writing historical fiction though I've dipped into earlier eras before. 

GENRES: While obviously a gothic horror, it's got an equal serving of gay romance since the POVs will switch from one character to another. So -- a gothic gay romance, then. My books are always HEA or HFN in that rare occasion (The Glass Minstrel) since I prefer to offer readers an escape and a more hopeful take on the future in spite of my own cynicism (which is a character flaw of mine, frankly). There's also that mix of fairy tale / folklore since the book's a retelling of "Bluebeard", so I hope to run wild with that. 

EXTRAS: Even though I can't find the actual text for the Estonian variant of the fairy tale, I'm using it, anyway, as inspiration for the resolution because compared to Perrault's version, I prefer it. That is, in the Estonian variant, it's the bride's childhood friend who's poorer / humbler than the bride's family in the French variant who ultimately rescues her. There won't be any rescuing in my book; rather, it's more of a joint effort at escaping and destroying. 

Oh, and here's a doozy. Two songs I've added to my playlist for this book (which I aim to listen to while I write) can't be any weirder when taken as a combo. But they make a hell of a lot of sense in my world. So firstly, childhood innocence:

I've seen different interpretations of the song online, but I've always thought of it as a song of almost painful hope. That's coming from a place of experience, though, and an unhealthy amount of bitterness aimed at humanity in general. But I still remember how it was like being a child, and I love the imagery in the song. It might be sentimental, but it's key to establishing the relationship between Lóránt Kárpáthy and Alexander Dávid Bodnár. 

Of course, to really, REALLY counteract that, we've got:

There are no devils or demons in the book unless one considers vampires as such. That said, this specific composition sets the mood perfectly and highlights a ton of stuff about Gyula Boros. I'm not spoiling much by talking superficially about my characters and the book's general story idea -- there's nothing much to spoil, seeing as how it's a retelling of "Bluebeard", but everything else going on in the background is my secret to keep until the time comes to unveil them. Many of them, anyway. 

Did I say I'm excited? I'm excited. Totally stoked.