Sword Sapphics
A snippet of the short story I finished recently, plus a photo of one of my cats.
Up here in central New York, we’ve had some quite changeable autumn weather: there will be a run of cold days so that you have to turn on the heat (which makes the cats happy, at least), and then it gets almost summery again, and then back to the chill. Soon enough, though, it will turn decidedly cold and not flip back …
This week, I’m going to be attending a nineteenth-century textiles symposium. If possible, I’m going to try to live-tweet, er, live-skeet it over on BlueSky. I’m friends with one of the organizers, and I have a whole group of other friends in the area that this will be a great chance to visit! I’m also absolutely certain to leave with at least three story ideas, because that’s what history does to me.
In my first letter, I promised I'd tell you more about the short story I finished recently, so here it is!
Last year, I found a group of indie f/f authors producing an annual self-published romantasy anthology. The theme then was the ocean: pirates, sailors, mermaids, and the like. I wrote a story more than a little influenced by hit show Our Flag Means Death, had it edited (by the wonderful Erin Maher), and sent it in. It was turned down.
When I saw the group’s posts about this year’s anthology on Facebook, I decided to give it another go. The new theme is “sword sapphics,” and while my initial spark of inspiration involved a knight/lady pairing, I consciously decided to go in a different direction. Having been turned down previously for a pirate/lady story, I thought it might be best to write a pairing with two more masc characters (though still very opposite personalities), and I’m pleased with the result.
So, a snippet from early in the story, to give you a sense of the point-of-view character:
Leo stood as straight and stiff as the pike in her hand beside the queen’s chair as the last of the day’s petitioners bowed his way out of the hall. It had been a long one, full of complicated cases of property rights and inheritance squabbles, and she thanked the gods she was nearly at the end of her shift — although even when she was off-shift, she still seemed to spend all of her time preparing for her next one. Cleaning her armor, sharpening her weapons. Still, it would feel good to sit down and relax the part of her brain that was looking for possible threats.
And there, right on cue, the next shift marched in. Bediver led the squad, the silver braid embellishing his coat shining as though he’d polished it just before his shift, which he probably had. If only everyone took their uniform as seriously! Once Leo made captain, nobody would ever see a speck of tarnish on hers. He gave her an approving nod that reinforced her belief that that time would be sooner rather than later, and then they all began the elaborate routine of guard-changing, which made sure that there were always at least three individuals standing to attention and surveying the room at all times. It was an accomplishment to do it all gracefully and in good time (Pol so often tripped herself up on her own feet, which was painful to witness), and the reward was a warm glow of satisfaction.
Meanwhile, the new shift of duelists sauntered in and greeted the two already there. There were jokes. There were winks. There was genial elbowing. As they took up their slouching positions in the corners of the room, one of the new pair caught Pol’s eye and grinned, and when Leo glanced again at Pol, the guard was blushing.
Leo’s guard shift and the duelists due to leave filed out, Leo at the end of a line walking in unison and the other pair, Vell and Dexamine, traipsing about in roughly the same direction. Dexamine’s hair was impractically long, and she tossed it from side to side; Vell’s was at least chin-length, but it was an eye-catching blonde that waved in a way Leo suspected was artificial. (Guard regulations mandated hair no longer than the jawline, and none of them styled it.) Feeling her eye caught, Leo blinked angrily.
Stories like this are hard to find the right outlet for. Too romantic for fantasy magazines, not edgy enough for queer publications, and too much worldbuilding and too aspec for romance (though in general romance does not seem to have the kind of short-story periodicals that other genres do). I’ve decided that if this one is turned down as well, I’ll self-publish the two of them together as a bundle, so they’ll at least get an airing. Or maybe I should write a third, totally original piece to go with them! We shall see.
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