Tag: she whom I love

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I am busy reworking my 2/3rds done first draft of She Whom I Love, because I actually isolated what had gone wrong from the beginning. And now I’m in love with this story again. 

I also added another smut scene. Part of it is below the cut, because… because, that’s why! F/F, regency, no content warnings except smut. (For those who have read chapters of Rite of Summer, ‘Sarah’ is also ‘Sophie.’ It will all make sense later, I promise.) Unedited. 

Meg tugged at
the lacing of her short stays and let them fall open. The pink silk brushed
away beneath Sarah’s questing hand, then the white linen beneath, exposing
Meg’s breasts. They were perfection, small, round and firm, her pink nipples
riding high and tight.

Sarah cupped one
in her palm, rolled her hand across the fullness, and Meg gasped when Sarah’s
palm smoothed over the hard pink of her nipple. Sarah bent her head and tasted
it, gently, with the tip of her tongue, circling and flicking, laving and
growing bolder with every whimper and gasp Meg made. Her skin was sweet, a
faint trace of powder lingering against the warmth of musk.

Her nipples
begged to be bitten, Meg’s hips starting to rise and fall with the press and
pull of Sarah’s mouth. She ran her hands up Meg’s thighs, still braced on
either side of Sarah’s knees, and tugged at the fabric enveloping her
legs.  

Sarah’s own body
burned, her breath coming in short pants, her heart pulsing loud in her ears. Her
cunt ached, empty and untouched. If Meg slid her thigh between Sarah’s, then
she could find the pressure she needed so desperately.

“Come here.”
Sarah cupped Meg’s bottom in her hands, rising up on her own knees to maneuver
them into a better position. Meg didn’t seem to understand, until she did,
pressing one leg between Sarah’s and riding high on Sarah’s own thigh. Meg’s
pantalets were a ridiculous affectation, just one more place for her to pin
lace. But they were split at the top, and the contrast between the rough edges
of the linen and the silken heat of Meg’s skin, the divot of her inner thigh,
the damp curls of hair, oh! Sarah could understand now why Meg wore them.

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Good news: I just figured out everything that’s wrong with book 2. 

Bad news: I have to finish editing book 1 before I can go back to the beginning of book 2 and start ripping it to pieces. 

/types rapidly into notes program so as not to forget a thing… 

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medievalpoc:

Wlliam Hogarth

Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn

England (1738)

Etching/Engaving, 16 3/4 x 21 1/4 in.

By the middle of the 18th century there were between 10-15,000 black people living in London. The development of the slave trade from the mid 17th century brought many more African people to the UK. However not all black people at this time were slaves.

Hogarth’s prints of life in London feature black performers in pageants as well as black actresses and dressers. The picture ‘Strolling Actresses in a Barn’ shows a group of touring actresses in various states of undress as they prepare for that evening’s performance of ‘The Devil to Pay’ at the George Inn in South London.

Men at this time could pay to peek at the actresses changing. The figure in the centre of the image looking out at the viewer appears to be performing for us, and casts us as one of these Peeping Toms.

The print also shows the presence of black people in
London at the time: to the right a black woman is darning the stockings of an actress; and on the left, a black actress dressed as Aurora (the goddess of dawn) picks lice off the collar of a kneeling colleague whose costume has a mermaid’s tail.

The engraving shows a seedy, disordered side to a play filled with magic and goddesses, but also illustrates the normality of a black presence in English working class communities.

-Black Performance in Britain Before 1800 (V&A Museum)

[source] [source]

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‘I’d love to be in a period drama – that’s my obsession. But being a mixed-race actress, there aren’t so many roles you’re right for. There are lots of period stories to be told with ethnic people in them, but the stories that are being told are not those ones. And that’s frustrating. No, it’s not an easy industry, but so far I have been lucky, so I will keep going.’ – Antonia Thomas

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Trying to describe the current scene I’m working on for She Whom I Love, to someone who hasn’t read the rest of the manuscript.

“Remember that scene in Sense and Sensibility where Edward comes to visit Elinor Dashwood, but Lucy Steele’s already there?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Like that, but Lucy’s not an idiot, and the girls are gay for each other.”

She Whom I Love: Progress Report

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It goes and it goes. 

Word Count: 20,323 / ~98,000? I’m getting verbose and some of that will have to get cut down or moved around. 

Listening to: snoring cats and falling rain

Reading: The Theatre of Shelley, by Jacqueline Mulhallen

Reason for Stopping: Chapter break, moving to some fic writing for a brain break. 

Things Researched: Annual salaries for Georgian staymakers, seating arrangements in small theaters, popular perfume scents in 1811.

Mean Things: Nothing major… yet 

Favorite Bit:

“Let us say,” James began, “that a friend of mine-“ Sheridan snorted with laughter, and James stopped talking. Sheridan waved him off with a swing of his hand.

“No, no, pray, continue.”

“A friend of mine is caught in a bind,” James said pointedly, but the men shared a grin. “Between a fine, lovely woman fit to be a good helpmeet and wife, and a glorious angel who haunts his dreams.”

Sheridan dropped his chin and chortled, shaking his head with the easy way of a man who has seen too much. “First things first, that friend of yours better hope that even one of ‘em will want him in the first place,” he advised. “Assuming he’s no fool.”

“Oh, he’s a fool, alright,” James said ruefully.

“So let him be foolish,” Sheridan said unexpectedly. “Marry the one and keep the other, in whatever manner he can afford.”