Kevin Snell

I'm new here and have too much time... let me know if I took this whole comment thing way too seriously, lol. Nos is good company. He knows the smart play is to shut up and he never once does it. The ring line gets him knocked off his chair and he goes straight back in with the mother joke. Real trait, real cost, and it tells me more about him than a paragraph of description would. Two things you might play with, both fixable in about ten minutes. The mirror explanation. Right now the physics of it walks across the emotional beat, which is him sitting there hating that he's got Andrea's eyes. That's the gut-punch of the whole chapter and the 'how it works' steps on it. I'd let him sit in it, ugly and unresolved, and move the reflection mechanics somewhere with less at stake. Or lose them entirely, honestly. Nobody's going to stop reading because they don't know why vampires don't show up in mirrors. The other's a habit rather than a fault. There's a decent amount of Nos realized, Nos figured, Nos knew, Nos remembered so that it is noticable. Those put a pane of glass between the reader and the thing. Most of them can just go and let the thing be the thing. Instead of "Nos realized he could see the little wrinkles on Luc's face, even without his glasses," give us the wrinkles, right there, suddenly sharp, and let the reader do the realizing. You already know how to do this, which is why I'm bothering to mention it. The lavender arriving twice before anyone explains what it means is exactly the right instinct. That one might just be my writing, but I operate on noticed what? knew what? remembered what? How did it make him feel, what did he see, smell, hear, think... Also, tiny one, there's a butler's hand at his temple that I'm fairly sure is meant to be Luc. Sven's the chef and no butler turns up anywhere else (this might just be me reading it wrong). Solid opening. Warm where it counts, mean where it needs to be, and the mark showing up already is a good place to leave a reader. And credit to everyone while I'm here. @kbois and @CassieQ on edits, @Thirdly, @Jason Rimbaud and @chris191070 betaing, with @LJCC, @drown, @Jack Poignet and @Headstall pitching in. The chapter reads clean and moves well, and that's almost never one person's doing. Thanks for the work, all of you, it shows! Looking forward to the next one, @BendtedWreath.

In my head... he just walked away. Not that he won't go back later—it's just what he needed to do in the moment. The weight of things becoming too much, so you stop, make a decision, and just... do.

Thank you!

Thank you!

My first chapter is up if anyone is looking for Sunday distraction. Hope everyone is having a great weekend! How We Became Ourselves ❤️ - KS

The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which Oliver would later consider appropriate. Not because Tuesdays held any significance in the taxonomy of the week, but because they were the day most likely to pass without being remembered. Thursdays carried the gravitational pull of Friday. But Tuesdays were administrative—the day the council collected recycling, the day his dentist sent appointment reminders, the day, apparently, that a marriage could be confirmed as finished and the confirmation could fee

Oliver's marriage ends and his job disappears on the same Tuesday. So he flies to France, straps on a pack, and starts walking. Somewhere in the French Alps he meets Julien, a man carrying his own weight, and the two of them figure out—slowly, carefully—whether they've got room for each other. Two grown men, a lot of hills, and the slow business of letting someone in.

I don't trust men who fall into bed by accident. In fiction or here in Medellín…especially here in Medellín. Accidents are cheap—a look held too long, a hand that lingers, the narrative equivalent of tripping into intimacy so nobody has to be responsible for wanting it. There is a scene that I wrote for years. It let my characters stay innocent, and it let me stay hidden. Here's the problem—readers can smell drift. When two men just sort of end up tangled together, nothing was risked, and nothing was won. But when one of them sets down the coffee, crosses the room, and says the true thing out loud—that costs. Especially for men who spent decades turning desire into something survivable. Intention is the whole plot. Not the kiss, the decision before the kiss. So write the man who meant it. Then make the bastard mean it.

Thank you everyone! Working on getting my first book up as we speak!

I'm Kevin. I'm usually better at joining a conversation halfway through than starting one. I write books, move around more than is probably reasonable, take too many photographs, and live in Colombia with a golden retriever who's already decided he runs the place. I'm here to meet interesting people, share my writing, read what everyone else is working on, and occasionally say something useful.