Alexei
didn’t like snow.
He had.
Once. The crunch of it beneath his boots recalled rosy cheeks, and panted
breaths; shrieks of delight, and the high, bright laughter of his sisters. Mama’s
face watching from the window and Papa laughing lower, quieter on the steps,
reminding the girls every so often not to throw anything at him too hard. Careful
of your brother. Gentle, now. Not too hard. An impromptu snowball fight
against the glittering backdrop of the Winter Palace, and the balls small and
lobbed softly, the patches of ice pointed out, because a simple bruise could
send Alexei straight to bed for weeks. Grisha had returned to his hometown, and
there would be no tickle of beard, or murmured words to soothe the pain away
now, should he slip and fall.
But that
was all in the past: sledding – when he was allowed – and riding with Mama in
the sleigh, furs tucked snugly around him. Hot tea soothing cold-nipped noses…all
fond, comforting memories overlaid now by the memories of Siberia. Of the
too-small house where blackout shades had kept the neighbors from seeing them,
while men with rifles kept them from leaving. A prison – a Red prison. And
then, later, waking in the pit. Running barefoot through the snow with the
scent of blood in his lungs. Bolsheviks; enemies; dinner.
The teaser here is not from Golden Eagle, but from The Winter Palace, which I managed to add about twelve-hundred words to yesterday! Progress! Words on page! Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, and the necessary glut of research notes weighing on the entire process, there is something undeniably comforting about writing this series. It's the only series I write in which there's not a chorus of haunting little you know what they're gonna complain about? voices chiming unhelpfully in the back of my head while I write. I don't heed those voices, but they're obnoxious; I've gotten really good at predicting what sort of flak a particular novel will draw. But with Sons of Rome, not only do I ignore the doubt - it isn't there to begin with. It's always been an indulgent series to write; it feels like writing just for my own enjoyment, with zero expectation of an audience, and it's therefore a lovely surprise when I share it and have positive responses to it.
I've known from the get-go that Alexei had an important - a vital - role to play in the series overall, and thanks to a long-held fascination, it was never a hardship to research and incorporate tales of the royal family. But while writing Golden Eagle, I realized how much I was enjoying Alexei as a character. That I liked him. I love all of the characters in this series, and I especially love that so many of them have so much growing and coming into their own to do before the end. I think, when we finally get to the Campus Martius, I might even be proud of our little tsarevich.
Love him!
ReplyDelete