Wow, summer's almost here! This month in the CSR we're discussing Thorn's Jacob & Marcus Tales. Here's some info on those, if you haven't read them yet. They're short, though, so why don't you give one a shot and then come back and talk with Thorn at 11 PM, GST +1 (3 PM, Pacific and 12 PM, Eastern)

Description: Marcus is the maladjusted, borderline sadistic and really quite brilliant editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, and Jacob wants him. The only problem is that Jacob is just about as maladjusted and out of touch as the object of his desire. Contains gratuitous swearing and a bit of a masochist kink.

Stories: Soft Hard Weak Strong Firsts *prequel* Then Things Happened Sex, Booze & Consequences What Meg Said

In the meantime, please enjoy this interview with Thorn! If you can't make the chat times, go ahead and leave your comments and questions about the story, or Thorn's writing in general in the comments now.

What's the first story you remember writing?
The first story I wrote was a picture book about a baby seal whose mother was eaten by polar bears, and who was adopted by a human girl who was on holiday in Svalbard with her parents. I drew all the pictures, and dictated the words to a grown-up who wrote them in for me. I must have been about four or maybe five. I knew all my letters, so the first page or so is written in my own hand (with the E's having way too many lines on them), but I couldn't spell. I still have the 'book', or I probably wouldn't remember any of this nearly so well.

Do you have a favorite aspect of writing that really speaks to you?
I love writing dialogue. I'll spend a lot of time choosing the right words for my characters, speaking them out loud so I can hear what they sound like (doing accents and voices to the best of my abilities), and perfecting their personalities through the way they speak. Sometimes I'll write a scene without any description at all the first time around, just the dialogue, and then I'll fill in the narrative with description, action and speech tags. In everything else, as well, it's the words. I have a real passion for language, so the words are really important to me.

When you write, do you have any rituals? Like specific time of day, you need such and such music playing, or you wear a pair of motivating socks?
Not really. I can write pretty much anywhere at any time, when I'm inspired to. The only thing is the medium. When I write fiction, I need my laptop. Nothing else will do. Thankfully, it's light and handy, so I can take it with me and write anywhere around the house, or outside, in a café, wherever I want. I like a change of scenery. When I really want to get to writing with no distractions, I walk to the Oslo University Library, where there's a small coffee shop, and I sit there in a window seat, watch people walking by, and write. Their wi-fi is for students only, so I don't have access.

Is there a specific author who really inspired you to want to write?
I've always wanted to write, so I don't really know. I've always told stories, to other people or just to myself. There are a lot of authors who inspire me now, but I don't think I can say that any of them made me want to write in the first place, because that's always been a part of my personality.

What brought you to GA?
A fan recommended it to me. I had been posting Nemesis on Archive Of Our Own, and one of my readers mentioned a story on GA in a comment. I clicked the link, had a look around, and signed up that same day.

Did you plan to write a series of short stories when you started writing The Jacob & Marcus Tales?
Not at all. I really only meant to write the one story, but then the characters took over my brain and things happened. Every time I thought I'd found an ending, another chapter of their lives started poking at me and I had to write that too.

Do you have a favorite story out of the eight you've written so far?
That's a really tough call... Out of all that I've ever written, these stories are what I uniformly like the most. But I guess Jacob's Firsts story might be my favourite. I loved going back and looking at his childhood, and it has some funny moments, too, at the same time as it's really quite cynical and sad in its own way. Other than that, What Meg Said is so different from the others, so that stands out as well. It was fun writing from a female character's point of view, as it's not something I've been doing a lot of late.

Are you going to continue with more Jacob & Marcus Tales in the future?
I think the answer to that is a very definite maybe. I've already given them their happy ending, or at least as happy an ending as they are likely to get, but there may still be some untold stories in between the scenes of What Meg Said. We'll see.

What's up next? Feel free to share with us any plans you have about any upcoming stories you're working on. Tease us, it's okay!
Well, first I'm going to finish Lavender & Gold and Nemesis: Soulmates Never Die. It's high time. After that I have few ideas, some of which I've started writing a little bit. One is a detective story set in Manchester, with a gay detective named Templeton who has to solve some scary murders. I've never written this kind of story before, so it's really exciting, but I also have a lot of research to do (as well as a trip to Manchester) before it'll be anywhere near publishable. It might be a project for next year's NaNoWriMo.

Another project I've started is a sort of pastiche of Pride & Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's point of view, with some really rather interesting dynamics between him and Mr. Bingley, among other things. This will probably post before the Templeton story. I've written a couple of chapters so far and it's a lot of fun trying to mimic the language of the period in the dialogue. Like the original, it'll be composed of a shedload of short chapters. I also have a third volume of Nemesis on the horizon, but once I've finished Soulmates I think I'm going to need a bit of a break from that world, so it might take a while. Other than that you never know when a short story is going to pop into my head.

Before any of this can happen, though, I need to learn to handle my depression. It's no secret that I've been ill for a while now. I'm on medication and due to start therapy soon, so hopefully I'll have the energy to get properly back in the game within too long.

Okay everyone! Don't forget to come back during the chat, if you can make it!