Category: Writing

Big Fish, Little Fish: or, getting scared after posting

Hope ZaneWriting

Man, I got scared after posting that last post. Like, for real kind of nauseous scared. Which is so funny, because it’s such an innocuous little post. It’s something I really wanted to share—something I’m always trying to share, the feeling of being inside my stories, loving them, discovering things.

I thought, “I should have posted that to Patreon after all.” Not because I really wanted to monetize it, but because there’s no one there, and so it feels safer. Private, maybe? A little $5 wall to keep the whole internet out. As if there are really that many people who read my little blog!

But I think, after stepping back for a moment, that fear is critical voice saying a version of, “Who do you think you are?” Barbara Sher talks about that, about the nasty voice in the back of our heads, parroting the times people have said that to us, in those words and other words, starting from when we were children.

Who do you think you are?

Be humble.

Why do you think anyone cares?

And that’s maybe the fear, isn’t it? It’s not really that no one cares. It’s that maybe other people will judge me for caring. It says things in tones of, Oh, so you think your work is good? You think it’s serious? You think it deserves to be thought about this carefully, to be spoken about lovingly? You think you’re that serious?

And… I don’t know. Maybe?

But it’s the wrong questions going in the wrong direction, mostly made up of trauma and fear. The right direction is, I think, I love these things. I love my stories; I think they’re good. I hope other people think they’re good, too, but that’s… something else. Outside of this.

I want to be allowed to love things. If I don’t love the things I make, then who will? I want to be able to love them out loud, unapologetically. I want to talk about them in the ways I want to talk about them, and I want that to be okay.

I am reminded of something I wrote a very long time ago now.

I want to love my lover, trust my neighbor, and leave my door unlocked some nights

Director’s Commentary from Koreatown

Hope ZaneExtras

This is for a book that isn’t out yet, so it’s basically breadcrumbs for time travelers. Hello, you, from the future.

Mea culpa, I write out of order, so good luck to you. My best guess, this happens in what is currently Chapter 13, but I don’t know where it will land in the final book. It’s the scene where

(Click for spoilers)

Jisoo and Harin finally talk about the night they slept together, and Harin cries.


More spoilers below the cut:

Continue reading “Director’s Commentary from Koreatown” →

Chaesoo WIP

Hope ZaneWIP Wednesday

This is making me scream today, so now it can make you scream too~

So this is, like, a thing they’re doing now. Fucking around on Minjae, behind his back.

Chaeyong never asks Jisoo if it’s ok, if he feels okay about it. He thinks about it, but frankly he just… doesn’t have the nerve, and it’s not because he’s afraid of Minjae. Chaeyong’s actually never been afraid of him, or at least… not like that.

He knows who Minjae’s family is, and unlike the others, he’s actually seen some of Minjae’s violence. He knows what Minjae’s capable of.

It’s more like… not wanting to disturb something that’s so precariously balanced, like a snowglobe on a shelf, a dewdrop that’s not quite falling.

It would be easier if it was just sex, but it’s not.

“Hey, you wanna go see a movie later?”

All the others are out at work, and Harin took Lambchop to the groomer.

Jisoo snorts. “A movie? What are you, eighty?” But he flicks the cover of his magazine shut, so he’s clearly interested.

Chaeyong rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m an old man. You wanna humor gramps and go see something?”

Jisoo crosses his arms. “What movie?”

“Reaper Haunting.”

Jisoo perks up at that. The trailers for that movie all looked massively bloody, and Jisoo is a gross little gore porn hound at heart. He loves scary movies, the more twisted and bloody, the better.

“Don’t tell Minjae?” Jisoo says, already getting up to get his jacket, and Chaeyong gets a lump in his throat.

“Yeah, I won’t tell him.”


Chaeyong is surprised, actually, that Jisoo feels ok going outside again. He doesn’t seem skittish or twitchy while they walk the half a mile to the theater, although Chaeyong had offered to spring for a cab.

“If you all keep me inside all the time, I’m going to get fat like veal.”

Jisoo has put on weight, but it looks good on him. Healthy, like it’s making him less brittle. Although he’d still felt light when he was climbing atop Chaeyong, putting his weight on him and pinning him down as he’d slid his pussy down on Chaeyong’s cock.

Chaeyong turns red and stops talking for long enough that Jisoo gives him a weird look. Shit, he doesn’t know what Jisoo was saying. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face, what he was just thinking about.

The movie theater itself is just another kind of torture. Chaeyong really had wanted to see the movie with Jisoo. He hadn’t just been fucking around, but he’s now intimately aware of how close Jisoo is to him. Jisoo’s long, slender arm is slung over the arm rest, close enough to brush Chaeyong’s when he leans over to get more popcorn out of the bucket on Chaeyong’s lap.

Writing about aftermath

Hope ZaneWriting

I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a real blog post for a while now, but the blog post I thought I would write yesterday is probably different than the one I’ll actually end up writing today, food poisoning and all (ick).

I’m always fighting between the impulse to keep work to myself, where it’s safe and only mine, and the very real, sometimes achingly urgent desire to share it with others.

I’ve been working on a couple of new stories. The one that feels most exciting to me is about running away from home, or maybe just about running.

I was thinking the other day that I often write about the aftermath. The Thing happened, and now you live, to quote Coleman Barks, “in the wake of a new life.” You are stumbling through the wreckage, trying to assemble pieces of yourself.

(And here, a friend reminded me that what is grief but the aftermath of loss?)

Part of the interesting part of writing, to me, is figuring out what that Thing even was. What was the hit that caused the pain? Can you reconstruct the blast by the shape of its crater?

Jisoo feels like that kind of wreckage. Soft and fragile and sharp. Cringing and traumatized, loved and hurting and willing to hurt others.

Or else maybe the hurt is accidental.

I am still looking for the incident that made a hole of this size.