There will be coal in my stocking . . .

I don't know why this pose made me think of Paris & Seraphina

So, Christmas Challenge ?  I know I will be playing around with doing my Christmas Novella (It will not take 3 years . . . I kind of promise). I thought I had something and I just couldn't get it down. . . so I'm back to the drawing board.

Are we really just on Chapter 6 and Beyond
I'm on a roll here because I have the next 5 chapters all plotted and written out. They just need to be cleaned up. I'm pushing for Bellum III  (I know it just keeps going) to be just 10 chapters. Which is odd because I'm in no rush to stare at a blank screen wondering where my next idea will come from.

Bellum Recap
Helios Thantos and his band of Angel mercenaries (yeah I said it) have arrived in New York City and Helios is planning something. After a year of isolation Helio's summon the newly appointed leader  of the Demons Paris Prince.

Helios makes it very clear he wants Paris and his people gone, but they aren't backing down without a fight. . . until Helios begins killing Demons,  terrorizing their livelihood and threatening Paris' every move.

Fed up with Paris' pacifism fellow Brotherhood member Callum gathers followers to start a Resistance, by making weapons out of the only material that can hurt them . . . white gold.

Just when Paris has lost everything including the woman he has just proposed to an unlikely ally walks (back) into his life,

Seraphina Grigoi has been loyal to Helios since she became his first female recruit; quickly becoming his bodyguard and lover. Her faith in Helios begins to waiver and there is talk of an uprising in the SGI. She reaches her tipping point when Helio's kills Hippolyta the woman she loved from a distance.

Added to that the reason for Hippolya's deah is Ariel, Sera's youngest and closest sister. The bond between them is broken and far from repair

Paris decides to pretend to agree to Helio's exit strategy for the Demons, while secretly trying to take him down, now that he has Sera as an informant.

The Brother's don't fully trust her but she's remained loyal, helping them destroy Helios' cars and weapons.  However it doesn't help that she and Paris are having an affair . . . or is it something more ?

Chapter 5 Recap

After Helios takes a large amount of The broherhoods profits in retaliation for them blowing up his cars, Sera and Paris track Heliosto Long Island. Helios is up to something and he is not working alone. What's in Long Island ? Why does Helios need the money ?

After leaving a voice mail on Isobel Charter's phone,  Paris is off to Boston (finally, I know) to get legal closure on inheriting Father's assets and maybe some personal closure . . .

This Section from Bellum 1 Chapter 6 comes up

 I survey our surroundings one more time and stop midstep to face her. Before she can say anything else I kiss her and can't believe I've gone all day without doing it. She relaxes and brings her arms around my neck, balancing on the tips of her toes.

"Isobel, this may not be the best time, but I want you to go to Boston with me next month. I need to sign some legal papers to transfer the company to my name. It'd be for the weekend. . . "

"Are you sure. I' mean with all that's going on."

"It needs to be done. Might as well get a respite out of it."

"Oh, A weekend in Boston. Can we take selfies where the Boston Tea Party happened. Maybe visit Paul Revere's house ?"

"I suppose. Although you know how I feel about history."

"How ?"

"You know. . . been there lived that."

Also this section from Bellum 1 Chapter 8 comes back.

She finally takes her eyes from me and walks slowly around the room, lowering her heart rate.

“The ring ?”, she asks

“Oh, no that’s not until Boston--”

“My ring”, she says with a confused look.

“Oh, damn. right. Sorry. I thought you meant. . . um. ..”

I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring I had taken when I ‘d tried to kill her. It’s made of old very tough gold. I figure it probably belonged to a relative from home. Angels then had thinner hands.

“What’s in Boston”, she asks. But she seems unsure if she should. Like she's trying to make conversation.

“Oh, um. . .It’s where I am proposing to Isobel. I needed to go up there for legal reasons and the timing just seems  . . . right.”

“Is Boston special ?”, she asks.

“You remember”, I said, “All that Colonial American shit went on.  Isobel took this course in The American Revolution last year and talked about it for weeks. I think it may inform her decision about our  .. . conflict. Anyway, it’s a rather historical city and I thought I might…”

I made sort of a vague gesture. Then I started to ramble.

“I thought maybe  I’d do it at midnight. . . right in the middle of Quincy Market. You remember when they built that don’t you ? Just before midnight in case bells ring or something. Yes. . . that way when she says yes the bells will ring and I’ll pick her up and people will clap. . . maybe ? Girls like that ? Right ?”

 Chapter 6
Bellum II PlayList 

+1+Stay With me - 30 Seconds From Mars
+2+Sweater Weather - Alexi Blue
+3+ Am I Wrong - Nico & Vinz
+4+ Cavalier - James Vincent Morrow (New LiLe SVH poster boy)

Chapter 6

The Bitchest Playlist

Challenge Accepted
 

Doing a holiday contest may have been a joke, but I full call a CHALLENGE. Okay, I will cheat with this one but SHV I challenge you to a Holiday Short Fic contest. I will admit I have a Post-JNRR Christmas vault item I wrote last year. It was the first thing I worked on during LiLe 2.0. It has a song an everything. . . except like an ending or like a direction
Let's do it !

Warning : I WANT ZERO COMMENT ABOUT A SEQUEL TO JNRR. Thinking about it makes my soul and head hurt.


Chapter 5
So I just had a lot of fun with the music here. It was like hype music for me. Points if you can guess the  Sundays reference.
Playlist
Chapter 5

+1+ Work Bitch - Britney Spears
+2+ - Howling For You - Black Keys
+3+ - Birthday Cake Rhianna & S & M  - Rhianna (two songs)
+4+ - You Should Know Where I'm Coming From (I know not where this song came from but it is PERFECT Thank you spotify radio gods !)

P.S I'm joking you can ask about JNRR and/or SA sequels but the answer will always be that I could do no justice.

Chapter 4 : Dramtic Ironry

This is the SGI logo, it comes up in this chapter

Chapter 3
 
I've been holding on to this chapter for so long. When Zendaya's Replay was on the top 40 I heard it and was like this is perfect. The last part of this chapter with Sera and Paris was written early on, because I needed to practice writing scenes with them alone together. Also Sera's outfit is based on something Miranda Kerr wore on Spanish Elle

Transfer

So I've been transferring all of my drafts back to a word based program. I'd been experimented on different platforms and now I'm back to Word. It's going to be strange because I do a lot of fragment writing and I'll change contexts or add in different plot points on a whim and not have to hit that official almighty "Save" button. I just hope I keep organized..

I've Got The Music In Me

I'm proud of myself because I'm starting to organize my music and taking notes of what songs will go with what portions. This is something I haven't done since LL. I'm a little scared of what little outlining I've done.  Anywho, The music gods have answered my called  I'm excited for future chapters.

Chapter 4
Sera is out to prove her loyalty to the Brotherhood, meanwhile Ariel is trying to hold it together after causing the death of Hippolyta and losing Sera as a friend.

I think I may have picked up some Sunday-spiration in this chapter. Just a little.


Playlist
Chapter 4

+1+ If I Had  A Boat - James Vincemt Marrow (Was this in Vice or do all JVM songs sound the same ?).
+2+ The Diary Of  Jane  - Breaking Benjamin

Self-preservation is funny like that.

The Return
This chapter marks the return of The Angel & Demon storyline. The two titular characters  meet while the etheral Angel is on the run from a terrifying creature. She finds herself in the company of a Demon (who is royalty) who agrees to help her kill the creature before it can attack his people in his Citadel.

During their journey they stumble across an Angel Village and see the creature has eaten everything in sight. And when they finally glimpse the beast, it's not what they expected.

You can find their full story here.


From the other side of town a spherical cloud of smoke and clouds barrels towards us. It was a swift gray  cloud with sparks of thunder and electricity sparking inside it. It made a horrible gargling noise, like the screams of an entire village. The Angel opened her mouth and pulled the arrow back, her hands shook.

The arrow sailed right into the creature, but did not make its way out.

We had found the thing we were looking for.

It was still here

And it was still hungry.

Chapter 3
 

Chapter 3 Playlist

Chapter 3


+1+ Eyes Kaskades - Lorde

+2+ Run Boy Run Instrumental - Woodkid (all his songs sound the same after a while)

+3+ Replay - Zendaya ( love this song)

A Little Setting Up

Bellum Chapter

 I've already said a lot about that section, things are interesting between Sera and Paris, not just on a physical level. Sera was always supposed to be a main character but I was trying to hide that in Lux. Speaking of it's funny to have two main characters whose names don't get caught in spell check when I invert letters to Sear and Pairs.

 I'm once again at the point where I have very little to blog about. So. .

Chapter 2

This chapter never had any music associated with it and I probably should have posted this with Chapter 1, but I wanted it to stand on it's own. For some reason the music-spiration hasn't been with me but I'm searching . . .

Playlist
The Violet Hour - The Civil Wars (This song inspired me to start Lux. It set the tone I wanted)
Chapter 2

It's Here . . . Bellum, Part 2 aka Cookies and Wine

Bellum II

I call this part of  Bellum, Bellum II. It seem like it's more than one story, when in fact it's just the second story arc. It's just an odd misnomer, I see this more as like the blue, violet and black sections of United Light

Yes, I'm posting this a little bit earlier than I wanted.. I wanted to have all the chapters in the "dusting off" stage, but  I think getting feedback and seeing how the first few chapters pan out will help me clean up the other ones. See what works what doesn't work.  I feel good about the first 9 chapters and I wrote the end of Bellum II first-ish, because I like knowing what I'm writing up to. So things will be interesting.

 I'll admit some of the chapters are short for pacing !

Recap

 For nearly a Millinea Angels and Demons exiled from their home have lived among us trying to

survive in the human world. Paris Prince rises as the leader of Brotherhood of Demons. . just in time for Helios and his army of Angel mercernaries (yeah, I just typed that) make a reappearance, giving the Angels a hope for the future.

Helios want Paris and his kind gone. When they refuse. . . things get explosive.  Helios is always one step ahead.  However some of his men (and lady) might not be as loyal as Helios thinks.

Tired of Paris eternal pacifism, Callum begins a resistance and starts a weapons operation in Helio's backyard. If Paris can't get rid of Helios the peaceful way Callum will do it the hard way.

Meanwhile Paris loses Isobel Charter the girl he had been told he is destined to love, but instead finds himself falling for his enemie's closest compatriot and lieutenant. .  .Little does he know she is the woman he is really destined to love. She will certainly never tell.

Together Seraphina and Paris with a few select Brothers (Lysander, Ashe, Jonah, Callum, Damien and Dante but he doesn't show up that much) plot to deceive Helios from the inside. Helios has now taken control of the Brotherhood until they are to leave in 6 months time.

While they plot against him Helio's starts to weaken the Brotherhood from the outside tensions begin to run high. How long can they hold on ? Who can you really trust ? Why does Helios want them gone ? What is he planning ?


JNRR-TDOLL!LILE : Okay. .. Now I'm afraid I'm getting to complicated again. I've learned my lesson. I swear.

@SHV - I'm sorry for being a hype machine.


Bellum II Chapter 1

Bellum II playlist

+1+ - Bang Bang Bang - Nicki Minaj, Arianna Grande, Jessie J
+2+ Do What U Want- Lady Gaga
+3+ Sensual 

In The Trenches

We are wrapping up T-DOLL here. Its so funny when I finished this I had this giant sweeping gesture of "this is the end" of Linda Leigh . However I'm so far from that. I'm actually pretty optimisitc that another idea (maybe in 6 months. . . maybe ?) will come to me.  I just don't know what it is ?

So I was going to 86 T-DOLL JNRR but there is a scene involving a peppermint that I never got to write because I couldn't figure out how. I explain in chapter 11.

Obligatory Bellum Update .GIF

I need to find some inspiration. . .

T-DOLL JNRR 11

T-DOLL JNRR 12

Back to the trenches. . . *tries not to be distracted*