Category: Writing

New Patreon tiers and an ~extra~

Hope ZaneGeneral

I got my brain back from the war! Kind of! I’m working on un-neglecting my Patreon page, and I renamed all of my support tiers some incredibly goofy shit.

Heh. I like it, though.

(Why is the first tier so expensive? Because Patreon eats things in fees, but you can actually pledge any amount you want.)

I started writing a kind of alternative high school AU about Nice, basically because I started wondering what would have happened if Nice had met someone more like himself in high school. Would he have been any better off? Worse?

I’m only planning to write a short story. I posted the first part on Patreon today. I think I might sync it here as well (still as a patron-only post) just because I don’t like the idea of all my stuff being only on a website that I don’t control.

Here’s a little snippet of the AU for fun. I like Willow so far.

“Good?” Willow asks. “You look good like that.”

“Mm,” Nice says. Maybe it’s an answer to one thing or the other. “Take a picture, then.”

Willow takes his phone out of his pocket and snaps a picture of his new friend. He leans over and steals a taste of Nice’s candy, fastening his mouth to it and sucking some of the lemon-flavored sweetness from the gooey part of its softening surface.

Before Nice can complain that Willow took some of his candy, Willow preemptively reaches into his bag and stuffs a couple of gumdrops into his mouth. In the time it takes him to chew them and swallow, Willow has already pulled back.

He licks his lips while Nice coughs at the sugar crystals he’d accidentally inhaled.

Library score! Exciting!

Hope ZaneResearch

So I went out for a soda and came back with an enormous stack of books; what else is new? BUT I’M VERY EXCITED. Check it out:

A stack of 6 library books about Song dynasty China, ancient Japan-China relations, and sex work

I’m excited for literally all of them, but I’m especially interested in Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals, which covers China-Japan relations during the Han-Tang period, which is a little before my blorbos but nevertheless seems like excellent background! Shigeru, who also appears in Winter Sun, is from Japan, which would be going through the Kamakura period during that time. Which would probably mean that if he was in Lin’an, it would be as an ambassador.

Also very excited for Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats, which seems to be about infrastructure and city planning in the Tang and Song dynasties— finally, an answer to my question JUST HOW BIG WAS LIN’AN IN ITS HEYDAY ANYWAY? Weirdly hard to figure out? Because modern-day Lin’an is Hangzhou, which is a prefectural-level city and so is… not exactly a city in the way San Francisco is a city. It is Lorge. Like 6,495 square miles large.

You have no idea how much time I spent down the rabbit hole scouring the internet for this information. I looked up maps. I did math. Ultimately, I settled on the answer “roughly the size of Manhattan”, but I’m extremely excited to find out if I was right.

The other books are just generally useful for this project or background reading for other things I have percolating. Do I actually need to know about the sex trade in Kamakura Japan? Not really, but I’m curious, and all background is helpful background, right?

Chicken is a little relevant for a different project revolving around a sex worker that I have shelved right now, but that’s… a whole other thing.

WIP Wednesday: A Ship to Lin’an

Hope ZaneWIP Wednesday

I already (sometimes, when I can get the courage) do WIP Wednesdays elsewhere, mostly on Discord and occasionally on Twitter. Since I’m trying to make a place for myself here, maybe I will start doing it here, too.

Here’s a bit I’m currently working on from a still-untitled book. It takes place in 1200 Lin’an, China (today Hangzhou) during the Song dynasty. In the timeline of my books, it’s set around the time of The Witchblood Heir, when the black and white fey courts in the West have been established.

The main character of this book, Laurel, shows up for the first time in Winter Sun, the 3rd book about Nice—which means he lives to be very old indeed. I liked him so much that I wanted to write about him even more, which of course meant learning about where he came from. I’ve been enjoying this project very much, although the heavy research has been stretching me in interesting and challenging new ways. So far I’m about 43k into this project.

Anyway! Without further ado, the snippet for today:

“Sleep,” Li Qiuyue says then, as though she’s just remembered that Laurel is still a child and needs rest. Her severe expression softens but only to become a little bewildered, as though she’s confused by this. “We’ll get to the capital soon. You should rest if you’re tired.”

“But I’ve already slept so much.”

“Are you tired?”

He feels the deep exhaustion in the heart of him, the weight in his bones. It’s true that he’s more tired than he has been in years, and he nods slowly.

“Then sleep.”

Laurel has forgotten some of this conversation as the years have passed, and he will forget many more. These words, however, have imprinted themselves, indelible upon his mind—Li Qiuyue’s picture of a fair world.

Maybe it was the way that she said them. There was a weight to her voice, as though she was condemning the world. There was a heavy, burning look in her eyes, as though she was seeing and judging all that she could see.