Storyseeking Bliss

[Bliss]

I have a few ideas I'd like to dig into - perhaps you'd like to join me?

Bound To the Lighthouse

In which there is a lighthouse on a remote, rocky shore against which the waves ceaselessly beat, the relentless water grinding even huge swathes of stone slowly into the gravel that forms the beach visible around the foot of the staunch, fire-topped tower that warns ocean-bound vessels of the dangers that lurk beneath the waves ready to shred open their wooden bellies. There the Keeper lives, with routines, habits, tasks, and solitude, which includes venturing onto the beach during ebb tide to collect any curiosities that have tumbled up out of the ocean's deep pockets.

One day, unexpectedly, this collection includes a person. Tangled, waterlogged, asleep or unconscious upon the gravel. A mystery to be solved...if they will let themselves be known.

I am seeking someone to write either character opposite me. Possibilities for either slowburn or quick flashes of passion punctuating periods of wariness. Could be in a semi-contemporary real-world setting, fantasy, or historical fantasy.



Unwelcome Arrangement

She doesn't WANT to get married.

She wants to read her books, and ride the horses, and explore the land, and raise a ruckus... all of which has been very well and good under the watchful but largely indulgent eye of her father. But there has been a longtime arrangement set up between her family and another that, when she comes of age, she'll be wed to their son to honor the longtime friendship of their families, as well as to wed their not-inconsiderable fortunes into a new and greater estate.

She, however, hates the very idea of being married to anyone, let alone a man she has never met, and only her love and duty to her parents is enough to let her acquiesce, ever so reluctantly, to this occasion. Even so, she refuses to meet the man before their wedding day, figuring that he must be somehow loathsome to need to be arranged to marry her.


What she finds herself wed to is, in fact, a handsome man, as intelligent and cultured as herself, and equally as interested in pursuing his own adventures in the world, rather marriage to a girl that he presumes must be ugly and useless indeed to merit an arranged marriage on the weight of family name.

Imagine their surprise, to find themselves at the altar with someone attractive, well-spoken - even desirable. So begins their honeymoon: expectations at war with actuality, individuality and independence at war with their duties to family and to each other. Both angry, picking fights, and yet unable to deny the base attraction of their bodies... nor able to cast off the promises, extracted with great reluctance, to provide their parents grandchildren upon which to dote.

A honey-month wherin any sweetness found is laced with spice, every bit of commonality and acceptance hard-won in the face of being nearly strangers who want, at the outset, nothing to do with one another.

In a house too enormous for merely two people, all but entrapped there with the most inobtrusive, nearly invisible staff, they will both fall in love with their spouse by slow degrees, in fits and starts punctuated by the angriest of fightsex and the most delicate overtures of trust and acceptance.

Then the honey month is over, the time of seclusion alone together, and they are expected to begin participating in the social world around them - hosting and attending dinner parties, and even a masque. Or perhaps some investment of his erupts with success (or a problem that needs tending), calling him away.

Will they successfully navigate the intricacies of parlours and ballrooms without losing the gossamer bindings of affection between them? Will they yearn for one another across distances? And who, new, will come into the picture to potentially disrupt it all - a friend of his youth who has long had a candle burning in her heart, an enterprising man who is searching for a rich, exquisite lover, someone else entirely? Will she become a target for his enemies to spirit away to some hidden place?

Will you find out with me?




Untitled Tale

In a historical fiction or fantasy world, a romantica. In which a woman is formally introduced into society and, in the process or navigating drawing rooms and ballrooms, discovers the delights of social and physical entanglements. At one point, a masked ball and mistaken identity; at another, a headlong chase through a hedge maze. Illicit meetings and dramatic yearning across a crowded room, and ever so many lush dresses. This one is far more the flavor of desire than specific plot direction, ripe for discovery.