Okay, I admit it: I fucked the wrong guy. Do you hear me up there? I’m sorry I fucked your Hero, okay? Can I have my life back now?
I mean, it was my job to fuck Wrong Guys, wagging my amazing tail at them across years or decades of their lives until I turned them into Right Guys. I was designed to be a Grade-A Free-Range All-Natural Organic Fuck Bunny, and I had centuries of practice at turning boys into men and wrapping them around my little finger.
But when I came home from a tough job expecting praise and instead found replacements, I lost my shit and ran away to a hidden place I thought nobody else knew about.
Finding a good-looking naked guy playing Sleeping Beauty in my secret refuge felt like a birthday party, Christmas morning, and Easter Sunday all rolled up together. I knew a Hero when I saw one, and this one didn’t even need much breaking in. If I was going on the run to avoid finding out what happens when the Powers ditch you for a younger model, a Hero was exactly what I needed. So, yeah, I fucked him.
Unless you’re Anne Rice, you probably think Sleeping Beauties should be woken with a kiss. Not a chance. Stasis spells are a bitch, and this one was freshly cast by or at least for a major Power. I needed to wrap him around a lot more than my finger before I could wrap him around my finger.
I’ve made a slight change to the epilogue of the previous story, to better anchor the scene. I didn’t want to add too much, but the criticisms were valid; it’s an abrupt transition. I was trying to cut to the end, and I didn’t link it well.
Back in the days when Tor was still a respectable SF publisher, or at least the rot was still hidden, I recall a comment from PNH on Usenet about working with an author whose books had long since fallen out of print. He’d gone over her N-year-old first novel in the manner one would expect from one’s editor, and described her response as “the worst case of edit-shock I’ve ever seen”.
My reluctance to change a scene doesn’t reach that level, but I can understand it. I don’t want to revise the old stuff; I’ve already written nearly twice as much of the new story, and a change here leads to a change there, and soon you’re trying to outrun the avalanche. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.
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