Chapter 8 of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Backstreet Boy is up! This is probably the last update I’ll post on that one for awhile because I’m finally caught up to myself, and in the meantime, I’ve been working on a new story!
My new novel is called Sick as My Secrets, and the prologue and first chapter are up. This is a sequel to a short story I wrote last summer called Unsuspecting Sunday. I wrote that story as a one-shot, but I also wrote it with this idea in mind. It was meant to be a challenge to myself, to see if I could write a slash story seriously, but also to explore the possibility of taking it farther and turning it into a novel. This is the start of said novel. The original short story is listed under the slash genre, but you’ll notice there is no slash label on the novel. That’s because this isn’t a slash. To me, a slash story is about a romantic and/or sexual relationship between two people of the same gender. This story is about the relationship between two friends and how a sexual encounter affects their friendship, but it’s also about so much more than that. I could tell you what it’s really about, but then I wouldn’t get the joy out of reading your reactions when you find out. All I’ll say is that it’s a story so angsty, it’s going to make Curtain Call read like a romantic comedy. No matter how you feel about slash, if you like drama, I hope you’ll give it a chance.
That said… I watch a lot of South Park, and one thing its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, often say on the DVD commentary of certain episodes is, “This is one where you’re either on the train, or you’re not, and if you’re not on the train, it’s a big bummer.” This is one of those stories. Like many of my best stories, it started as a joke in my head, the kind of over-the-top idea that made me go, “Haha, I can’t write that… but OMG, it would be awesome if I did.” Some of you are going to love it, and some of you are going to think it goes too far. There are certain lines that some writers won’t cross in fanfic: some writers won’t kill the Boys; others won’t write sex scenes, etc. As far as I can remember, I’ve really only ever had two “lines”: I don’t write slash, and I don’t hurt Backstreet kids. I’m just going to throw it out there now: before the end of Chapter 1, I do both. Clearly, I have no more lines. Nothing is off-limits now.
If you’re on board with that, then I hope you’ll enjoy this story. It’s going to be an angst-filled ride!