Author Archives: Sam

Under My Skin (Chapter One)

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woodelf68:

still-searching47:

Synopsis: When aspiring novelist Belle French rents a laborers apartment, at a peaceful picturesque Californian farm, she thinks she’s found the perfect writing retreat. She hopes for a few months free of distractions. However, what she didn’t count on was her neighbor – Lachlan MacAldonich.

Note: Written for @a-monthly-rumbelling in December. The prompt was “Misunderstanding, candlelight, cats, coffee cups.” Ok so this was a thing that happened. I said I wasn’t doing Monthly Rumbelling this month because with RSS I didn’t have time, or if I was I had a plan for the smut prompt. So how did I wind up writing Lachbelle? Erm, I wasn’t feeling my WIP’s basically and I just started typing – oops.

Double oops because this wasn’t supposed to be a WIP. However, my desire to not break my Tuesday posting streak was greater than my terror at another WIP. I had plans to either have finished this, or have written something else but I’ve had migraines for about four days straight and haven’t written a word. So it was post this or nothing. Anyway, I haven’t written Lachlan before, but always wanted to try so I hope it’s alright. Enjoy!

AO3 Link

Belle French
liked to think of herself as being patient and kind, willing to give people the
benefit of the doubt, and just generally being a nice person. That wasn’t her
bragging, it’s just sometimes she thought that being a reasonably nice person
was all that she had going for her. She hadn’t seen much success in any other
area of her life, and nothing seemed set to change in the near future, in fact
if anything her circumstances were set to get much worse.

Growing up she
had dreamed of adventure and travel, but she had put those dreams on ice to do
what she was supposed to do. She had got good marks in high school, so she’d
been put on the college track. That had been a big mistake from start to
finish. She hadn’t known what she had wanted to study, so she had gone along
with what her father had thought best. It was no wonder that she’d wound up
dropping out halfway through.

Currently she
was renting a small farm laborers apartment in the Californian countryside. It
was supposed to be a peaceful retreat, so she could make a real attempt at
writing for a living. She had scraped up enough funds to stop working for a few
months so she would have the time, but nothing was going according to plan. Her
books weren’t selling, the only reviews were negative, and she was seriously
doubting whether she could write at all. She mostly thought her ideas weren’t
half-bad, but it seemed likely her execution was lacking.

Keep reading

A really good start; they’re both interesting and are already gelling quite nicely.

Thanks! I really like Lachlan but there’s not that much fic around. What I have read mostly seemed to have Belle being Beau’s friend, or taking Beau’s role and I wanted to do something different. Have Lachlan and Belle just meet, and be separate from everything to do with Beau. Hopefully it will work out ok! Anyway, I’m really glad you liked it 🙂

Love at the Marina Gold: You and Belle were thrown together as you investigated Billy’s murder. Before that, did you have any encounters with Belle? What did you think of her?

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Up until the poor unfortunate death of Mr Gusman, Belle I never crossed paths – to talk anyway. I would see Belle every time she docked in town, spreading her warm smiles everywhere she went. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I altered my routine slightly, changing when I went to Granny’s on mornings I knew she would be there.

In retrospect in slightly more unfavorable terms, it could be considered stalking. Fortunately Belle looks kindly on the months I ‘pined’ for her – her words, not mine. What did I think of her? She was a bright light in an otherwise grey world. She even occasionally had a smile for the town monster, despite what I’m sure young Miss Lucas told her about me.

TMI Tuesday

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Ask me anything about my fics, ask my characters anything. You can send me a word and if it’s in my WIP doc then I’ll post a teaser snippet. I accept prompts for any of my existing verses.

This week I posted:
– Chapter Five of I Love the Way
– Chapter Two of Counting Stars
– Enter Sandman (flash fic, sort of prompt fill, I don’t know what this was)

Ask Box

Masterlist

You could also ask me a question off any of these lists.

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emospritelet:

pinchtheprincess:

neferipitou:

adds “we just caught our alternate universe selves making out and now everything is super awkward” to list of shipping tropes that need to be implemented everywhere

This seems like it’s close to having been written, but not quite? @emospritelet, can you shed some light on this? Seems to me a problem the twin Rushes might encounter … maybe if there were twin Belles, too? 

I did write twin Rushes encountering this problem, but they quickly found a solution (threesome). There was only one Belle however 🙂

I’m sure @thatravenclawbitch wrote a foursome, though.

Haha I’ve not read this in fic, well aside from your Twin Rushes one 🙂 Closest thing I think we got on the show was Emma telling Rumple he “fell for the help”. However, there’s so many variations on this, for a master class see Jack and Sam on Stargate SG1.

– Have a friend go to an alternate reality and learn that your OTP is married
– Have one half of your OTP come to your reality, and make out with the other half, while their alternate self watches (bonus if they aren’t involved at the time)
– Have one half of your OTP get stuck in a time loop, where they can do “whatever they want” which involves kissing
– Have one half of your OTP from an alternate reality come visit, and be very surprised that their alternate self isn’t married to the other half of OTP (or alternatively, have a friend visit from an alternate reality and fall over because “you aren’t married yet?”)
– your OTP discovers that alternate versions of themselves traveled in time, got stuck there and so had kids (bonus if they wind up meeting their own descendants)
– have one half of your OTP hallucinate a makeout session, and then wake up and forget that it was a hallucination for a second – cue awkwardness

*thinks* ok that’s all I can remember off the top of my head. I’m sure there was more, it became something of a running joke. It was the “universe forcing them together” – oooh idea, idea somebody should Swanfire this immediately! Talk about an anvil to the head that Neal was Emma’s true love. Of course SwanQueen is another option, or perhaps even Rumbelle. Seeing so many other versions of themselves happily married, might help kickstart their reconciliation.

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endangeredslug:

still-searching47:

endangeredslug:

Okay so like nearly every radio station is playing Metallica and after the fourth time of hearing Enter Sandman I want someone to rumbelle / swanfire / papafire the hell out of it please and thank you.

They think they are safe.

“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

Dark One’s might not need to sleep, but Rumplestiltskin always slept curled around his wife. It made him more human and he was very much a family man these days. Everything was peaceful in the master bedroom, not even Belle’s slight snores disturbed the air. Down the hall, in the largest guest room, Neal and Emma slept soundly. It was their first Christmas since their reconciliation, and Neal’s return to the land of the living.

As with families across the world, they were splitting their time between parental units. The 25th with The Gold’s, the 26th with The Charming’s. Henry was also there. For this Christmas all the Gold family were under the one roof, if just for one night. He too was sleeping soundly, in the small guest room that was always ready for him, whenever he wished to stay.

Which left only little Gideon. His mum and dad had tucked him in, and he curled up on his side, clutching his pillow tightly. His beloved stuffed dragon had fallen to the floor. Over in the corner, his window rattled, but he didn’t stir, the toddler slept on unaware of the wraith at the window. The window opened, the protection spell flared and then fell silent in defeat as the dark of the night, seemed to pour in the child-sized gap.

It materialized into a human shape – a shadow, and Gideon awoke with a start.

Take my hand … off to never-never land

In the master bedroom Rumplestiltskin woke in a cold sweat – something was wrong. He jumped out of bed, suddenly desperate to check on his son. Dreams of battles fought and won, playing in his minds eye, battles that could so easily have been lost. The sinking feeling in his gut got worse, when he saw the light seeping from under Gideon’s door.

He pushed open the door and saw twisted sheets, an empty bed and an open window. His agonized scream woke the house as in the sky a star twinkled. Peter Pan always wins.

Well dammit you’ll just have to fix it.

Rumplestiltskin woke in a cold sweat with his heart pounding. His eyes snapped open, certain he would see his son’s empty bed, that he had collapsed to the floor at the agony of losing his child – again. Instead he was looking into the eyes of the very son, he thought he’d lost.

“Wake up papa! It’s Christmas!” Gideon exclaimed happily and Rumplestiltskin felt the bands around his heart ease.

It had just been a horrible dream courtesy of the sandman.

———————————

There fixed it 🙂

Naturally that isn’t how I would like to fix it because my brain hates me like that. My brain is asking questions like “how did Neal come back to life?” “what happened to Hook?” “how did Gideon get rescued from the Black Fairy/deaged to a baby?” “how did Emma and Neal get back together?” “how is Peter Pan not very extremely dead?” essentially “how do I get from the end of 6A to this?”

It makes me ponder all sorts of things, and imagine a Neverland 3A adventure that is a lot darker and a lot deadlier. I liked Peter Pan as a villain and with his history with Neal and Rumple, I feel like there was more to explore. Now with the revelation about the Black Fairy … the shadow and the magic of Neverland raises more questions with me.

From 6×10 transcript:
“There are realms of dark magic beyond even my reach, where my mother would lurk in the shadow.”
“Where has she taken him?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a place of immense dark power. Time runs differently there.”

Where did the shadow of Neverland come from originally? Where did it get it’s dark power, the power to ‘stop the clock’? Inquiring minds want to know.

Fanfic Resolutions 2017

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I’ve been avoiding writing one of these posts because I live in fear of publicly setting goals and then failing them. I mean I’m also scared of privately setting goals and then failing them, but at least then nobody else knows about it. However, something @worryinglyinnocent said in their post made me think, they said “It’ll be interesting coming back to this next January and seeing how well I did/didn’t do…”

Accountability is something that I believe in. The only reason why I manage to do anything is because I set deadlines, and schedules and endless to do lists. If I don’t set a target, then I can’t hit it and I just procrastinate for forever. Every month I’ve been saying what I did last month, and then saying my plans for the next month. Sometimes I’ve met the targets, sometimes I haven’t. Well, if I can do that, then I can do a tentative outline for the year. So here goes:

Under the cut because I ramble and nobody needs that on their dash 🙂

Continue reading →

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This song sometimes makes me sad when I think about how much I’ve failed at stuff, but it’s a really good song. I love this group, and it’s a new year song so appropriate for January 1st, just thought I’d share.

January Status Update

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A summary post of what happened last month fic-wise, and my plans for the forthcoming month, because I can’t hit a target, if I can’t see it.

Previous Status: July, August, September, October, November, December

Works posted in December:

– Painting Layers of Love (AU romance, WIP)
    – Chapter Seven

– Fall All Over Again (Season Two canon-divergence, WIP, nsfw)
    – Chapter Three
– Conspiracy Afloat (Rumbelle Secret Santa fic)
    – Chapter One
    – Chapter Two
    – Chapter Three
    – Chapter Four
    – Chapter Five
    – Chapter Six
    – Chapter Seven
– Trouble Sleeping (Rumbelle Secret Santa oneshot, nsfw)
– Unending Conspiracy (Rumbelle Secret Santa, prompt and ficlet collection)
– Under My Skin (Lachbelle, WIP)
    – Chapter One

– I Love the Way (AU family fluff, WIP)
    – Chapter Five

Coming up definitely in January:
– More Painting Layers of Love
– Update WIP’s until they are finished
– At least one Monthly Rumbelling fic (I’ve already written it)

What I hope January might bring:
– The second idea I have for the Monthly Rumbelling smut prompt

December was dominated by RSS. That fic came to just over a combined 31k words and because I had to post it all at once, it’s my only fic not on tumblr. Due to writing so much other stuff in November, my WIPs suffered this month, which I feel kinda bad about. I’m sorry, it was all the fix-it fic the show made me write in November, it stole all the words 🙂 Anyway, from now on the WIP’s have my priority until they are finished.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to take part in Monthly Rumbelling in December. However, I had a very frustrated writing day which somehow spawned another WIP (I know, what was I thinking?). That wasn’t even the Monthly Rumbelling fic I had planned. Anyway, I still intend at some point to finish and post the GoldenLace Bonnie and Clyde fic I had planned for the smut prompt, it’ll just be late like Fall All Over Again was for November. In actual fact I still haven’t posted the chapter of that which included the Monthly Rumbelling prompt.

Anyway, I’ll have to see what I can manage for January. I really want to write my Enchanted Forest Rumbelle/Swanfire AU but WIP’s have to come first. I now have five WIP’s and I will finish them/most of them before I start posting anything new I promise. Thank merlin hiatus is until March 🙂

Status Post – Year in Review

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I know it’s the 31st and this is very cliche but I didn’t blog around NaNo so I’m overdue one of these posts. In a post after Camp NaNo I said what I was intending for November, and it really didn’t work out that way and I was loathe to make a post, just to say how disappointed I was.

In 2016 I wrote 500k, or 500,180 words to be precise. Well, actually it’s not necessarily that accurate as I only started tracking properly in June but I’m reasonably certain I did half a million. That’s huge for me as it’s not that long ago that I only wrote in November and struggled to write much of anything the rest of the year. Since July I’ve done at least 50k a month, usually doing 60k+. The only slight fly in the ointment, is that it’s not been all original novels. A lot of it was fanfic, but again a lot of that fanfic can be turned original so it’s hardly wasted effort.

It’s also kept me going, kept me productive which is the biggest battle I usually face. I quite often get in spirals where I don’t do anything, I feel bad about that, and then I do even less. It’s given me a lot of ideas and so yeah generally in writing terms 2016 has been a damn good start. I’ve published two books, and a free short story/prequel. The couple of reviews I’ve had, aren’t great (well they are bad) but I’m still getting sales/borrows and I’ve had 3 people sign up to my mailing list. It’s a start and I always knew that this was going to be a long journey.

In 2017 I want to continue to average 60k+ a month. If I do that then 750k should be easily doable. In terms of projects I need to write Book Three of my Military Science Fantasy series. Before I do I need to decide whether I want to continue with Book Four straight away, or take a break and write something else, probably the related sci-fi series. I need to decide this before March as that’s when I have my next cover booked. I’m hoping to release Book Three by April at the latest. Ideally I would like to bring out something every 3-4 months but we’ll have to see how I get on.

I also want to work on my pen-name. I have the covers for three books, and I’ve half-written Book Two. I need to write all of them and decide on a strategy and what I’m doing with it marketing wise. I already know I’m going to have all three books finished and ready to go before I press publish on Book One, so I will have flexible options on what I do in terms of frequency. I might even wait and write more books, as it’s a pen-name and nobody is waiting for it, I can try and make a splash.

There’s fanfic, that isn’t a priority of course but I do have WIP’s that I want to finish, and then more stories that I want to write. I just love writing generally and I want to do a lot of it in 2017 and hopefully publish several books and maybe, just maybe, it’ll start to turn into something I might make money with. Money is after all what makes the world go round, and I could kinda do with some. That’s a bit mercenary I know but it would seriously improve my life and isn’t that a New Years goal everyone makes? For next year to be better.

Apart from writing, I want to get back to going to the gym regularly (even if lazy me disagrees) and hopefully that will mean I lose a bit of weight. Ultimately I just want to be fitter but being less fat would also be nice. I want to procrastinate less, so I can generally do more and not just productive stuff. If I actually got on with things, then I could spend my evenings watching TV or playing video games without guilt. I haven’t really played many video games this year and as backwards as it is, playing more is a goal for 2017. I enjoy it, so I should make time for it.

This is usually the point where I say that I would like to read more, but you know what, I totally give up on that one. I know that as an author that is totally backwards but I am so damn picky about what I read, plus books cost money (even more backwards seeing as I want people to buy mine) but I just can’t make it a priority right now.

So yeah that’s what happened that’s worthy of note (that isn’t really personal, as I don’t talk about that here) and a tentative plan for 2017. This year sucked for a lot of reasons but for me in terms of writing at least, it was a good start. Now I just need to build on it and try and do better, be better. Here’s to 2017!

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Oh yeah! Half a million words in 2016 – goal met 🙂 Thank you to everyone for all the kind words and lovely encouragement. You are all amazing and I appreciate all of you *hugs*

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