Theatrical Entrances

I’m quite far into book ten as I write this – tentatively titled Requiem. It will be my fifth Vasily Korsokovach book, designed to reveal some of the rich backstory I’ve developed for Vasily. (Bewitched does something similar for Sean Colbeth.)

One interesting angle I wanted to delve into was that watershed moment when Vasily gets outed to his family before he’s truly ready to face the world; that, of course, ultimately leads him to the University of Eastern Maine and his lifelong friendship with Sean. In a prior novel, I’d already established that his boyfriend at the time had a hand in what transpired, but aside from the residual pain Vasily had from enduring the experience, left the details appropriately vague.

Not wanting to do a flashback-type of story led me to develop a plot where Vasily encounters his former boyfriend nearly twenty years later while investigating the case at the heart of Requiem. I wanted those initial scenes between the two to have some dramatic punch to them, but also a bit of theatrical flair; I had to believe that seeing the person who had once captured his heart would be both difficult and yet subtly revealing.

It’s been one of the harder chapters to write, for the raw emotion that bubbled up as I got deeper into it reminded me that humans can be complicated critters. I wasn’t sure what Vasily would truly feel until I started to write the scene where he watches his former boyfriend get out of his car during their first meeting; that’s when I knew that time, it seems, doesn’t always heal old wounds. What it can do is dull the pain — at least, until something causes it to flair back up again.

I’ll probably have to circle back to this chapter during the editing process and smooth it out a bit, but overall, I’m happy with how it turned out. What’s less clear to me is how it’s shifted the storyline I’d originally envisioned, for Vasily didn’t exactly react the way I’d anticipated. I often say that these characters feel like living, breathing people, and because of that, they tend to act far more independently than I expect.

Speaking of — back to the grind — for I don’t want to leave Vasily hanging…