WIP Progress - March

A ramble about my developments

WARNING: This is not a cute little word count update. This is me sharing the development process from character design to random research. Might be boring, idk. There are mild spoilers, but it’s more like background information. It won’t affect your reading of the book, in my opinion.

Another post is coming about Verfallen Asylum/Cute but Vicious. This is purely about my grave robber romance.

CURRENT WIP: GRAVE ROBBER ROMANCE

I’m currently working on a grave-robbing dark rom-com to publish under my Lux Oleander name. Considering I’m reusing a lot of material from an unpublished book I wrote many years ago, I’ve got a head start on the development and word count.

Most of my time this month has been spent on development. Research, for instance. Fun things like the felonies and misdemeanors a grave robber can be charged with in Virginia, soil types and dig times, how much do human remains sell for online, and if the embalming practices from the Civil War would leave enough arsenic on the skeleton to poison someone handling it. There’s still a lot more to know, and I’m unsure I’ll use all the information I gather, but I don’t want to be limited by what I don’t know. Research is a fairly new addition to my writing process. NGL, lol. My MFA coursework and publishing experience have made me realize that research can really help the writing process.

Character Work

When it’s time to dig (hur hur) into a new book, I start with characters.

I had to reinvent the characters from their previous life. Although they still have the same roles as the original book (professor & student), I’ve changed their names, ages, backgrounds, personalities, and depth. The first book was really clumsy. I was still trying to learn genre fiction, and to be real with you: rereading this book, I didn’t like the characters.

FMC

Riley was an airhead with ADHD. She still is because there is nothing wrong with that. However, she was selfish. She made choices based on whims, without any regard for the consequences they had for other people. Also, she was immature. Too young, too aimless, and no life experience. Add on top of that, I’m just not into serious age gaps anymore.

So the FMC, Riley, changed. I decided that a combination of ADHD and drinking caused her to take a break from school for several years, and now she’s back. However, she’s back without the financial backing of her parents this time around, is on academic probation, and is desperately clinging to the idea that failing classes means failing life and possibly falling back on drinking.

MMC

“Karl Brahms” from the first book was my attempt at an “alphahole” and bleh, no thanks. Rereading it, I didn’t like him at ALL. So now he’s Felix, still a hot af professor, but instead of a rich asshole from a good family, he’s crumbling under the weight of massive debt and moonlighting as a grave robber to make ends meet. (Can y’all tell I’m salty about school loans yet?). He’s not an asshole because he’s got a personality defect. He’s grumpy because the man is TIRED (and also very fit … he digs up GRAVES by hand, y’alllllll).

However, I let him keep his interest in fashion, except instead of name-brand, it’s thrift-store upcycling (and probably partially motivated by his desire not to look poor, despite being poor T_T).

Now they both have real stakes, some depth of character, and a little macabre illegal activity in the plot that makes it more me.

Setting

The original setting was practically nonexistent. I didn’t give it much thought and described as little of it as possible. This time, I want to plant this somewhere that feels real. In general, I like to stick with places I’m familiar with, but make them fictional so I have more creative freedom. The setting is based on Virginia Tech, where I went. But it’s called Blue Ridge State University, and the mascot is the Not Deer (an Appalachian cryptid, ofc).

[it’s like a deer that doesn’t feel like a deer. glowing green eyes, multiple sets of legs and antlers.]

Outlining

After I had a good basis for the characters and the setting, I re-read the original book again, this time pulling out every chapter I could reuse in the new book (with edits). After that, I outlined the entire first act, chapter by chapter, sliding in new ones around the old ones I kept. I often reference Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes or Save the Cat! Writes a Novel when I need any direction for chapter focus.

Next, I went into each chapter and added one or more paragraphs describing what happens. This is where a lot of development was still happening because I’m finally getting into details. I finished some more character details, wrote down lists of what I might need to research, and realized problems I needed to invent clever solutions for.

One such issue, I have an MMC who spends a lot of time alone at night. This is a darkly comedic book; aka he NEEDS to talk, and I’m not having him talk to the dead (I JUST wrote a book/series all about a guy who talks to corpses). Immediately, my mind went to a pet. Pets are trendy—especially in dark rom com. However, it felt like low-hanging fruit—almost derivative instead of truly my inspiration. I do have other dark romance books (published and future projects) with pets as characters, but in this case, it felt like I was just picking something for the trend rather than being inspired by it. That’s an important difference for me.

Then I remembered a meme that’s been going around for years about a guy answering the phone for a job interview while fucking his girlfriend. And I’m like … there it is. Felix has the bad habit of ALWAYS picking up his phone, no matter what he’s doing. This is a great character flaw because it could lead to multiple scenarios.

But also, he’s a professor, so I think when not on the phone, he could be recording lectures or a potential nonfiction book he’s writing. And that was my full solution for having a guy who needs to talk alone at night, rigorously working his body into something thickly muscled (sorry, sorry, I guess I like a man who digs) while committing macabre felonies.

And with all that finished, I’ve finally moved into writing new chapters and editing the ones from the old book this week.

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Let me know if you enjoy this sort of insight! It’s just, in the age of AI, I feel like the process of creating a book is a very human thing© (👁️👄👁️) that I can offer.