Writing Timeline

Spoilers: I'm massively gay. Married to a man and everything. I came out 15, right around the time Spirit Rider entered its earliest stages. There's often been a queer slant in basically everything I've written. 

Not to go too far off on a tangent but Sam - the main character in Spirit Rider - was initially envisioned as gay. It would have come out as single line of dialogue in the final book of the series, seeing as it had no bearing on the plot besides that. Then I chickened out of the very idea and he was straight for a long while. But that never felt right either. So eventually he wound up asexual - which, after much thought, finally seemed like a good match for his character.

But I digress. The point I'm making is - I've always wanted to write a gay story.

One of my earliest attempts was an untitled handful of chapters and ideas (now lost to time!) surrounding a pair of werewolves in an urban fantasy, buddy-cop-esque thing where they variously fought and / or protected other magical creatures. One of said werewolves was confidently gay.

I soon moved to focus on Spirit Rider, university, and a side-project or two. But the desire to write "the gay book" never went away. A few ideas or protagonists came and went. One that came closest was a rare semi-horror idea, which I may still come back to one day, in some form. Whilst I deemed that plot too thin to commit to, the bones of what would become Not Technically Ghosts began here. The character of Linas, with some small alterations, was transplanted wholesale from this discarded plot and indeed some of his scenes I'd planned in that story were able to be adapted within Not Technically Ghosts instead. These were still just rough ideas, but ones I'd been growing more and more confident about writing. 

As another sidenote (it's relevant, I promise!) I've never been much of a music-video person. That's to say, if I find a song I like, then I'll often build my own story / music-video in my head. At some point, some years back, I chanced across a pop-y love-song, which would truly be the foundation for Not Technically Ghosts. 

The story I made was this: a teen partying with friends in an abandoned ruin chances across a magic mirror. Said mirror acts as a visual link to the Victorian era, the reflection showing that of Victorian girl. Modern-boy and Victorian-girl realise they can (visually) communicate with one another via the mirror and so form a bond. They attempt to dance with eachother's reflection. As time passes, they both research the strange mirror in their times. Modern-boy scrolls on his phone - Victorian-girl studies in a library. Modern-boy finds a recording of a séance featuring Victorian-girl, which he watches via a projector. Victorian-girl attends the séance and sees a vision of Modern-boy. They attempt to dance again, but fumble the moves as they can't touch. Eventually they both return to their respective mirror in their time. Modern-boy has picked up media attention and cameras, Victorian-girl is trailed by stuffy academics and professors. Modern-boy and Victorian-girl both approach their mirrors and touch their fingers to the glass. Streaming magical lights erupt on either side. They reach impossibly for one another, then Modern-boy grabs Victorian-girl by the hand and pulls her out of the mirror in a shower of magical sparks, to the shock and awe of the spectators of both mirrors. Victorian-girl grabs Modern-boy's arm and they dance back into the mirror, emerging on her side. Back and forth they go, having made a bridge between their eras. The media folks from the modern era poke their heads into the past, meet relatives and share stories whilst the Victorian academics are perplexed but enjoying it all the same. Modern-boy and Victorian-girl dance through the night.

That cute little music-video / story sat in my head for a few years, gathered dust, only brought out when I heard its corresponding song.

In the spring of 2022, me and my husband caught, quite by chance, a cute gay series on Netflix. As we watched it, my husband commented early on: "This is too nice. One of them's going to die aren't they?" And I agreed with him. Because it had always felt to me, when it comes to queer media - that's the rules. Movies and TV had taught me gay stories can only ever be funny, sexual, or tragic. Yet as we watched, it soon became clear, this wasn't that kind of show. The message was one of positivity, of joy. It verged on sickly-sweet at times but even that was infinitely better than the alternative! It was a story that was just allowed to be.

I came away from watching Heartstopper determined. This was the kind of positive media I wanted, needed, to see more of the in the world. I'm supposed to be a writer. I'd always wanted to get around to "the gay book". 

It was time.