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Reeling
from their broken hearts, Alex has an affair with a polyamorous co-star and
Paul has an ill-advised reunion with an old flame. Meanwhile, the meddling of
their colleagues, friends -- and even the paparazzi! -- quickly make Alex and
Paul’s real life romance troubles the soap opera of the television
season.
But
while the entertainment value may be high, no one knows better than Alex and
Paul that there are no guarantees when it comes to love in Los Angeles.
Excerpt:
They talk so much that dinner takes forever. Paul's delighted because it means he's not crazy for feeling invested, even if he's self-aware enough to know he probably would be even if dinner had been merely a brief stop on the way to sex.
Eventually,
though, they manage to push back from the table.
"Am
I taking you to the couch or the bedroom?" he asks casually as he takes
their plates to the sink.
"Bed,"
Alex says distractedly.
When Paul
turns around Alex is crouched on the floor, petting Todd. It gets him in that
weird biological place that seems reserved for attractive people interacting
with small animals or babies.
After a
moment, Alex looks up. "Sorry."
Paul
shakes his head. "It's fine. Glad you're making friends. Let's bring the
wine upstairs, too, okay?"
***
They're
quiet on the stairs and it's awkward for a moment in Paul's bedroom. Alex finds
himself thinking about the nights Paul spends alone. It's the mystery of adult
and normal life in general that fascinates him as much as what Paul is like
when his only company is himself.
He's not
sure how much the room itself gives away; pale yellow walls, dark blue
comforter, white trim around the windows and doors. The airiness of it is all
California, but it lacks the blunt excess of his costars' massive and ugly
houses. Even so, the contrast to his own apartment remains immense, and fills
Alex with a certain degree of shame over his choices.
After
Paul sets down the wine and glasses on the little table next to the armchair
that resides in the corner of the bedroom, the silence stretches and snaps only
when he finally takes a step toward Alex.
It's
nothing then for Alex to close the rest of the gap and kiss him hard, pressing
against him. Paul slips his hands into the back pockets of Alex's jeans and
kneads at his ass.
"Clothes,"
Alex mutters as he starts frantically trying to pull Paul out of his.
They
break apart only for the logistics of it all.
Alex
winds up pushing Paul into the armchair. It's by the windows facing the bed,
and it gives Alex a million ideas that range from sitting there getting a show
to simply relaxing with his tablet while watching Paul sleep.
Right
now, though, they're both naked, and Alex has remembered what it is to be
brave.
To get
the most pressing issue out of the way, co-writing sex is not particularly
sexy. It’s actually usually absurd, with Levels of Ridiculous ranging from
“Well that was awkward and amusing” to “Oh my god I can’t believe I just wrote
that email about rimming and what character X’s history with rimming is and
whether it’s remotely germaine to anything except our own understanding of the
character help.”
But
really, we write sex scenes the way we write any other scene: When we get to
the scene, whoever has the time next goes for it, although sometimes there are
expertise considerations. Racheline and I have very different personal
histories, which allow us to bring a broad range of experiences to what we
write -- in and out of our characters’ bedrooms.
And while
Racheline and I do have moments of writing as a sort of creepy hive-mind (no,
we have no idea how we both knew Paul’s cat in Starling was white with tabby splotches), when it comes to editing,
we tend to play to our strengths and focus on different things. I’m in charge
of continuity. Racheline, who is also a playwright and has a great ear for
rhythm, hunts down repeated words and makes the prose generally as tight as
possible.
Speaking
of tight, in editing Starling, that became one of our rather
surreal words of concern.
We were
in the first or second round of Starling
edits back from our publisher when I got what is possibly the most hilarious
note on the manuscript from Racheline ever. To paraphrase, because the original
has, to the relief of both of us, long since been resolved:
Character 1’s balls are tight. Because he’s about to come.
Except I think we just said his ass was tight when Character 2 was fucking him.
We need different words because I think that anatomically confusing. I CAN’T
BELIEVE I JUST LEFT YOU THIS NOTE AND AM FULL OF SHAME BUT CAN YOU CHECK.
In other
words, #EroticaWriterProblems.
So I
cracked up laughing. And then I banged my head on my desk. And then I hit
ctrl-f and ran a search for tight on
the chapter in question. And then I banged my head on my desk again that that
was a thing I had not only done, but a thing I needed to do, to polish our
manuscript to its utmost. And then I emailed Racheline back with the good news
for the book and the bad news for her:
Just ran a search. “Tight” only used once. So you imagined
that. But we’re good.
Starling is a novel we’re very proud of for many reasons. One of
which just happens to be that we never did wear out the word tight in any of the book’s sex scenes.
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