Messalina’s Thousand (NaNo 2013)

2013 NaNoWriMo project.

Genre: f/m erotica. How did that happen?
Length: Looks like it will be about 60,000 words
Format: novella

Progress: About 7500 words, which means I fell far behind the NaNoWriMo goal, but I feel very good about the outline and feel strongly that the draft will become a finished story.

The Blurb: My original plan for NaNoWriMo 2013 was to work on Sherlock Rome. Two suggestions derailed that plan. One, from a friend, was that the sleuth in Sherlock Rome be a slave, with a different perspective on the crime than a free person would have. The second came from one of the NaNo forum threads.

In NaNoWriMo’s Erotic Fiction forum “This is my Future” thread, slemmerman wrote: “I don’t think that sex can be used as the sole plot. I’m also not sure how you can keep progressing your characters through sex scenes. Once or twice, or even three times, okay, I can see large things happening that can change them, but I don’t think that sex can be just plot or plot can be just sex.”

Then I wrote: “That could be an interesting writing challenge–a plot that is all scenes that would be classified as sex scenes, that still progresses a story and emotional, psychological, or relationship development, with no scenes involving any other sort of interaction.”

So–challenge accepted.

“Sex scenes” won’t mean tab A in slot B for 50,000 words. It might not even be particularly explicit. Even as I write it, this idea keeps surprising me with how it’s developing.