Progress update: hit 2,000 words on this story today. It’s around the turning point now - I mentioned a while back that this was a story in three acts, and that frees me up in a few ways. There are some dramatic tonal shifts in this story, and having an explicit cut-off point for each saves me a lot of trouble in creating a segue. There’s a story in my last book that I’m quite proud of called The Life and Times of Paul Lincoln, and it works (I think) because it’s free to throw in alternative perspectives, to take its time, and to allow enough space in between sections to let the reader fill in the world.
This starts out from the perspectives of the two lovers, Greg (the manager and so-called head chef of a revival diner on the outskirts of the city), and Sarah (the considerably more pro-active supervisor and sous-chef) as they navigate their relationship. The second part is exclusively from one perspective, and is a lot more fluid and stream-of-consciousness - the number of fever-dream descents into madness are innumerable in literature, but they rarely involve DNA theft and robotic sexual domination. And the third part… I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to think that it’s going to be a police interview transcript. Don’t worry. Nothing worthy of a trigger warning - we’re talking about an unlicensed VI, not a violent crime. But it does get pretty creepy by the end.