Chocolamousse

And then, once I’d got my breath back a bit, I wrote more:

I still can't read My Favourite Hobby without my eyes filling with tears. I'm so glad I didn't read it for the first time while I was at work, or I would have disgraced myself with all the noises and then the weeping, but I'm sitting here in the office now (thankfully alone, although the boss may wander in at any time) and I can only look at the story in small doses, otherwise I'll be blubbing again. It's so damned clever; and so what if it's a similar idea to The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of? Half of my stories are inspired by somebody else's, or a line from somebody else's, or even a line from (gasp) real life or other fiction. And you are, after all, talking to the woman who plagiarised her own fiction by doing two versions of Author, Author! Besides, Dreams was such a fabulous concept in the first place, so using it again in Hobby is not a problem at all. You could even make it into a series ... ooh, now there's an idea: Five Times Sherlock And John Didn't Realise They Had Different Views On The Same Scenario, And One Time When They Were Absolutely Singing From The Same Song Sheet. Hmm - the title may need some work ...

What's so particularly lovely about Hobby - which also holds true about Nightwatch - is the way the reader can go back afterwards and re-read it (and it absolutely screams out to be re-read) and suddenly so many lines have a different relevance, like John looking at Sherlock smiling during the start of the play and thinking he's enjoying the humour, then we realise on second reading that Sherlock is enjoying John enjoying the humour; and this goes on all the way through and, of course, absolutely culminates in the repeated "So, did you like what you saw?" / "I loved it." exchange. It's so bloody clever.

And Sherlock's pain over John getting upset (oh gods, the hand-holding ... *wibbles* ... and "My tender-hearted sociopath" is honestly one of the best lines I have ever read in a Sherlock fic; and what's lovely is that it still holds true when you know the real reason why Sherlock tightens his grip), and then his jealousy ... It is so Sherlock that it hurts. I can absolutely imagine him feeling that way, and you've really got inside his head and his heart. And I love that simple "pulse elevated" sentence. It's always hard to incorporate lines or phrases from BBC canon without them sometimes looking corny or crowbarred in, but you nailed that one.

And then we get to:

we'll go back home and John will pull me towards the bed and I'll see to it that for a good while he'll only look at me, with more intensity and passion than he ever looked at this stage, he'll look at me and he will be mine and I'll make his heart beat stronger and faster than it beat for these puppets.

And you say you don't write porn. That, baby, is porn. Pure, honest-to-goodness porn.

I still can't even talk about that last paragraph. I start to cry even thinking about it, and I'm at work. It is so damned beautiful that there should be a government health warning on it.


I’m so proud of you for publishing these. And you know what the next question is:

When are you going to write more?!