ato-the-bean:

Hey Suede! I’m going to do these one at a time because I’m starting on my phone while waiting for my kids, but will probably want a real keyboard for the last one.

2. I pretty much wrote Bleary in order for the first two thirds, and then skipped around a bit as I was finishing it up. So the first scene I wrote was that 3 a.m. phone conversation in chapter 1… Which turned out to be the first of many 3 a.m. conversations, as well as the first of many times Chris says “Fuck” while stumbling around half asleep. Even now, if I need to get my head back into those characters, I start with that conversation.

Here’s the rest:

8.  Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Well, a LOT of Zach’s reactions are things I felt when I had my first daughter.  That sense of being completely overwhelmed, not knowing how you’re even going to manage to have a shower, that everyone’s going to starve because you’ll never get to the store…and I had a partner.  So a lot of those reactions and “things that happen to infants” come from experience.

But the reason I’m SO happy you asked this one is the OUT edition.  I’m sure that you recognized that several of the couples mentioned are real, but the apparent original characters of Dave and John on the cover are actual friends of my family, and I was honored to finally attend their wedding a few years ago (the summer after it became legal).  They attended mine 16 years ago.  They’d been together more than 30, and had battled cancer (and continue to do so).  So I put them on the cover, and put pinto deep inside the issue, because Dave and John are who they aspire to be in Bleary.  Minus the cancer, of course.

14.  Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

Well, I didn’t set out to do that, but I think one thing is the way a person changes when they become a parent… and a partner, for that matter.  How you end up not focusing on yourself or the ways people have wronged you and instead look at this helpless child and try not to wrong him.  There’s nothing that makes you so compassionate about your parents’ mistakes as getting a few of your own under your belt.  I’m not nearly as upset about the therapy I needed from my childhood as the therapy I hope my children don’t need because of my stupid mistakes.

Also, I guess that in partnerships, different people can have different traits, and ideally those complement each other.  It doesn’t make one better or stronger than the other.  When Nathan get’s sick, Chris is really good in that crisis, basically by not allowing himself to feel any of the potential negative outcomes.  It makes him look string (to readers, anyway), but it could also be argued that he was emotionally distant.  Zach let himself feel what he might lose, and savor every second of the trauma.  When the trauma is over, Zach can move on in relief almost immediately, but Chris falls apart now that it’s safe to do so.  Neither is stronger or weaker…they just react differently.  I’m a Chris, for the record.  I almost fainted when the doctor told me my baby did not have a head injury after falling onto tile from a chair and getting a hell of a shiner.  I had to be brought water before I could be trusted to walk out of the office.  I was so fucking relieved I had a physiological response.  Geek Boy Professor (hubby) had been more panicked during the crisis, but then bounced back as soon as she was deemed well.  We are better together than either of us would be alone, and I tried to make the same the same true of Chris and Zach.