I was thinking about the Illyxa & Gragya reverse-isekai sequel, and that writing with Illyxa as the PoV character would mean having to figure out way more about how the magic system works and how it would mesh with science than I have done yet. I don’t think I could manage to write 100+ pages of her doing magic-tech experimentation.
But, if I stick to Gragya as the main PoV, then I need to come up with something interesting for her to do. I mean, who wants to read a story with 100+ pages about a redhead jock lesbian stuck in one place bored out of her mind?
Well, ok, so there was a commercially successful book that did that, but… I still want to give Gragya some enrichment. 😛
Here, have a snippet of the fic I was trying to finish for you for Christmas and failed at spectacularly. (Also it's not very Christmas-y, so probably for the best, but.)
To the north loomed City Hall, a stately building of earthy-red brickwork and Victorian spires. A bell chimed in its clocktower, once, twice, five times. The sound came through as if through mud.
Bigby signaled for her to stop with an upraised hand. Molly obliged him, shoving her hands into her pockets to keep them warm. Discarded fast food wrappers spun across the square and bounced off their ankles. Bigby kicked them away before resuming sniffing the air, turning east, then west, then east again.
"So what does your wolf nose smell?"
His irate grumble comes out more like a huff and a puff. "I hate that Desmond made us watch those movies."
From a short fic I started writing, based on a discussion @whirly-wind and I had a while back about how Abraham Van Helsing is almost certainly a Fable:
“Ah!” He clapped his hands once as he said it, an exclamation in and of itself. “The new deputy, yes! I have heard much gossip about you, dear lady.”
Molly suppressed a groan and the sudden urge to bolt back out into the twilight, anonymous streets. “And here I thought nobody knew anybody else in New York.”
“New York?” Abraham mused, fingers steepling. “Perhaps. But Fabletown? On the contrary. Fabletown does not much change. The city grows around us and we remain the same, minus a death or a birth or two, from time to time.” He looked up at her, his dark eyes twinkling in the yellow light. “You are change, my dear lady. Something different. We will talk of nothing else, for a while.”
Great. “Can we talk about my shopping list instead?”