A personal fiction project. This archive includes characters, plot details, and notes on how I write it.
The story
Serafina Vale is a behavioural analyst. Her connection with Eleanor de Valentine develops alongside an investigation, so the case and the relationship cannot be separated into two independent plots.
Information discovered through the case changes how the women understand each other. What they come to understand about each other also changes how they interpret the information.
The people
When observation becomes personal
The attraction grows through attention: a remembered detail, a change in behaviour, a question that is no longer entirely professional. Interpretation and misinterpretation matter, but the relationship should not depend on a misunderstanding that either woman could easily resolve.
Professional distance gives Serafina a sense of control. Becoming involved with someone makes that distance harder to maintain. Noticing Eleanor and wanting her become increasingly difficult to separate.
- Serafina and Eleanor
- What they learn about one another changes how they read the case.
- The investigation
- New information changes the relationship in return.
- The Adrian archive
- The consequences of an earlier case continue to shape present interpretations.
The Adrian de La Roche case
From here, I stop protecting the plot.
- Case file
- Adrian de La Roche
- Status in the story
- Archive and investigation thread
- Narrative function
- Its consequences continue shaping present relationships and interpretations.
This thread brings psychological observation, investigation, and intimacy into the same story. The archive matters because of what the women make of it, as well as what it contains. This entry does not set out the evidence or resolution.
London and Bangkok
The established settings include London, with a Southwark context, and Bangkok. They give the story specific places to inhabit. I want any connection between place, memory, and emotional distance to come from the scenes themselves.
What observation cannot settle
- Observation and understanding
- Recognising a behaviour is not the same as understanding its emotional meaning.
- Control and vulnerability
- The distance that helps someone observe can make it harder to become close.
- Evidence and interpretation
- The same information can acquire a different meaning as a relationship changes.
- Knowing about someone
- Facts about a person do not necessarily tell you what it is like to know them.
From writing it
I do not want Serafina's professional ability to turn her into someone who always understands people correctly. Training can make her a better observer and still leave her overconfident about an interpretation. That difference matters to the story.
My working rules are to keep the romance gradual, the psychology consistent, and the investigation credible on its own terms. Neither plot should exist simply to move the other along. Behaviour can reveal something before either woman is ready to say it.