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Chapters: 3/?
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Hayden Pike
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Marriage, Secret Marriage, Wedding Planning, Blow Jobs, Tea, string, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, mothers, mothers and sons, Friendship, Good Friend Svetlana Vetrova, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Svetlana Vetrova Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, 69 (Sex Position)
Series: Part 2 of The Secret Marriage
Summary:
Shane Hollander marries Ilya Rozanov on a Friday at his cottage by the lake.
Shane and Ilya decide to get married during their time at the Cottage. It's a secret from nearly everyone, but even secret weddings still need some preparations.
Follows on from 'Out of the Closet'.
How are you doing?
I am okay
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I am not okay, but don't need help right now
9 (42.9%)
I could use some help.
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One other person
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More than one other person
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Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
— E. L. Doctorow
My Check-In:
Neverending Project! It was a soothing break from the adulting, at least. 8-/
Tally
( Days 1-8 )
Day 9:
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badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, dswdiane, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraLet me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!
Because when I read this, I had Further Questions.
London pub thief sold £2.2m Fabergé egg and watch set to buy drugs
I am going, hello?
Enzo Conticello, 29, took the Givenchy bag belonging to Rosie Dawson as she stood in the smoking area of the Dog and Duck pub in Soho, London, on 7 November 2024.
Inside the £1,600 bag was an emerald-encrusted Fabergé egg and watch set belonging to Dawson’s employers, the Craft Irish Whiskey Company.
So, she had these items in her HANDBAG (going full Flora Robson as Lady Bracknell) and
went to the Dog and Duck pub in Soho. She was outside the premises in the designated smoking area, she put her handbag on the ground in between her legs, and a few minutes later she noticed her handbag was no longer there.
We observe that this was a £1,600 Givenchy bag, and while I do not think London is quite the crime-ridden hellhole some social media depicts, I might hang on to this a bit more carefully in Soho even did it not contain my employer's Fabergé.
Dawson had the Fabergé items because she had taken them for display at a work event earlier that evening.
Surely there ought to have been some kind of security procedure involved, like, 'take a taxi and put them back in the safe'?
(Am trying to think of any circumstances in which, in former days, would have been taking precious unique archival and manuscript items out of the building in the first place. When we had them out on display for visiting groups, they got put away pronto.)
I probably read too much crime fiction, but this reads like 'set-up for heist/insurance scam that went pearshaped'.
It was so perfect, I just had to laugh.
Why no, I do not pay YouTube and yes, the advertising can break in at awkward times
But when I came home after chorus last night I happened upon a Richard Marx episode of Stories To Tell, on YouTube, from about five months ago. It's here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyiVEWcVcU
The guests are JC Chasez and Lance Bass, and it is lovely! Really interesting, from both of them, from different perspectives on the early days of Nsync to how Lance really felt about being unable to come out to JC's work on the Frankenstein musical (Playing With Fire), all kinds of stuff. And Richard Marx genuinely likes them both and they like him. It is just a delight to listen to. And it is almost an hour and a half long.
Marx mentioned Candide—okay, Candide? anybody? What did JC do with that?
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 25
How are you doing?
I am OK
11 (44.0%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now
14 (56.0%)
I could use some help
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single
8 (32.0%)
One other person
12 (48.0%)
More than one other person
5 (20.0%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
"No process is wrong that leads to a first draft of a book."
— Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. HarperCollins, 2025.
My Check-In:
Neverending Project is neverending. ;-)
Tally
( Days 1-7 )
Day 8:
annavere, badly_knitted, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, dswdiane, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadoraLet me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!
So dr rdrz will be aware of my recent problems with printer, so I finally bit the bullet and after consulting Which Best Buys and so forth, went for an Epson Eco-Tank from John Lewis.
Which arrived at lunchtime today.
And I had anticipated spending hours if not days whining and stressing and beating my head on the ground and wrestling like until Jacob with the Angel to get the thing talking to my system and actually printing/scanning/copying.
Behold me sat sitting here having achieved getting it connected to the Wifi (the Wizard, though, is crap because it assumes that your password is a word rather than numeric, fortunately there was an alternative route), appearing under printers/scanners in my desktop computer settings, and copying, scanning, and printing.
There was a little hassle with printing which turned out to be due to Advanced Printer Settings turning out to have weird Paper Size as default rather than A4, which given that A4 is supposed to be their standard size, was bizarre.
This is positively uncanny, do admit.
The sycamore tree is a glorious thing. It is a handsome tree, tall and straight and with majestic and elegant branches. Its leaves are lovely and, in autumn, spectacular.
And it is evil. It is out for world domination. A sycamore tree's one ambition is to fill the entire temperate zone with sycamore forest. Its seeds sprout everywhere and are relentless. Miss one, and you have a sapling three feet tall which takes enormous effort to extract, or a five foot high growth which must be KILLED WITH FIRE.
I plucked about fifty baby sycamores this morning when I had only gone into the garden to pick some kale. Grar.
At the beginning of March the entire household got sick. It was pretty tough and I didn’t really do anything besides sleep for days. It’s so weird when you finally start to recover from a sickness and you feel like you’ve completely lost track of time. It felt like forever until I felt fully recovered but I think I’m good now. Although I’ve been kind of lethargic.
As for the technical difficulties, first we didn’t have internet for a few days or maybe like a week. Then a few days ago the power went out. Thankfully things seem to be working now. Also I’m having trouble with the device that I am using. I’ve been using my sister’s old iPad for the last few months since my mom accidentally broke mine. I’m hoping I can get it replaced eventually because this one is pretty laggy and loses charge quickly. Sometimes it’ll completely shut down for a little while but so far it has turned back on eventually which is good. Plus there isn’t a lot of storage on this device. However I am glad that we still had this thing around and that I’m able to use it in the meantime. I’m slightly sad the new device will not have a home button. But perhaps I’ll end up not minding that too much.
Mitski’s new album “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me” released last month. I’m a big fan of her music so of course I was very excited to hear it. I think my favorites were In a Lake, If I Leave, I’ll Change for You, and That White Cat. I have only listened to the full album a few times but I do like it. I think Lush is still my favorite album by Mitski.
Okay, I don’t think I have anything else to talk about. I’m hoping to update this more regularly again. Perhaps I’ll make a separate entry about what I read for middle grade March since that’s what I talked about in my last one. Maybe I could also find some kind of discussion prompts for when I feel like writing but I don’t know what to write about.
I hope everyone has been doing well! Bye 👋
In eyeball, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow. Time-loop novel about a medieval historian and the lady knight he's obsessed with, in an alternate world that is not quite our England; one of you called it "sort of Arthuriana" and I guess it is, though that sort of is important. In a way it reminded me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August as much of the novel is the characters gradually figuring out that these same things are happening again, and then trying to take advantage of this knowledge to make the next loop better. Unfortunately, in this case the source of the time loop has very clear, firm aims, and does not want to be thwarted by the mere pawns acting out the story that is destined to be enshrined in the country's lore. I liked it a lot, especially as the layers unfolded, though actually I was most interested in the villain of the piece and would like to have had more of that story!
In audio, All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor, the third Bobiverse book. I'm really liking these, although they could use some closer editing to avoid repetition of things we already know. It's an interesting inversion of Adrian Tchaikovsky's "How can we see the other as a person?" in that the viewpoint characters, the Bobs, are cloned brain patterns from a now-dead engineer which run on computers installed in spaceships; though within the narrative they are unquestionably people, other humans don't necessarily see them that way. And yet as they are enabling and directing the expansion of humanity into space, they're the segment of humanity making first contact with the other sentient species of the galaxy, and they're the ones who have to handle the related decisions. The structure of these books, with the multiplicity of Bobs and their storylines, means that all the different cases can be handled: the Stone Age civilization, the early-industrial civilization, the possibly advanced civilization that no longer exists, the advanced civilization that presents a terrifying threat. And as some humans fight against the idea that the Bobs are human, some Bobs work to reclaim as much of their humanity as possible. There are some deep philosophical questions one can tease out of these books - but I don't think that's the author's intent, and they are enjoyable reads just as fun science fiction.
What I've recently finished watching:
We enjoyed the Netflix "nature documentary" miniseries The Dinosaurs; quotes are because I think it's basically all CGI. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it's a dramatic tour of prehistory, from the first proto-dinos to the asteroid that ended it all. It does a good job of telling individual "stories" of the various dinosaurs looking for mates, protecting their young, and doing their best to eat and not be eaten.
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday April 08, to midnight on Thursday, April 09. (8pm Eastern Time).
How are you doing?
I am OK.
15 (53.6%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
13 (46.4%)
I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single.
12 (42.9%)
One other person.
11 (39.3%)
More than one other person.
5 (17.9%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Finished since the last reading post
At the weekend, I picked up where I'd left off some time ago with Pohjoinen tanssi, a novel that took its Athenian wrestler protagonist to Philip's Macedon, getting him involved in all the wars and intrigues, including apparently fathering Alexander. So it wasn't really a novel that I could take seriously, but at least I'm now finished. And it's really a novel about Philip's Macedon, not Alexander's, but the Finnish blurbs certainly mention the latter, not the former.
Currently reading
Still reading In a Dark Wood Wondering and enjoying it, although it's not always that easy to keep up. Still reading Run Away with Me. Still reading Red Closet. Also started reading The Sutton Hoo Story by Martin Carver (who's been leading some of the archaeological work there), which I bought at Sutton Hoo.
Reading next
No idea
Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
— Stephen King
My Check-In:
Alibi sentence. I've been doing some adulting, mostly because another member of the family isn't. Sigh
Tally
( Days 1-6 )
Day 7:
annavere, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, dswdiane, luzula, ofmonstrouswords, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, ysilmeLet me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!
What I read
Finished Never Had It So Good, and while I am less whelmed than I was on first reading it 50 years ago (aaarrgh), and consider that as panoramic social novel of provincial life, does not quite reach the level of South Riding, yet, that is the comparison one thinks of. I also mark up Mr Jones in contrast to The Angry Young Men who were his contemporaries over a whole range of issues.
Finished Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore, which was fascinating, and very readable, but has not somehow inspired me to rush off and do a re-read.
Then thought I should really read Adania Shibli, Minor Detail (2017), for forthcoming in-person book group.
In hopes of a change from that - it's grim - read Marion Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close (Walsh Family, #5) (2012), a recent Kobo deal, which was itself not entirely the most cheerful read.
On the go
Amazon helpfully alerted me to Kindle-only publication of Alexis Hall, Never After, currently in progress, also not really bringing the delicious froth - opium-addicted Victorian rent-boy rescued from homelessness on the streets by clergyman (unexpected and unwanted 3rd son in aristo family, put him into the church) with his own backstory baggage.
Up next
There's a new Literary Review.
Also I had a mad binge on Kobo the other day, mostly Dick Francises which had come down to promotional prices, but I also finally succumbed to the most recent Edward St Aubyn which has been tempting me. The previous one was so much less gruesome than the Melrose sequence that perhaps this will be the change of pace I'm looking for?
- books,
- histfic,
- homosexuality,
- litcrit,
- litfic,
- meme,
- reading,
- russ,
- sff,
- victorians
*
I walked four kilometres (plus a little bit) today, to the hairdresser and back. It is a delightfully sunny, warm Spring day, and I regretted even putting on a cardigan to go out. Stuffed it into a bag on the way home.
*
My plantses are growing. Three green courgettes and two yellow (I broke the third, sigh); three pumpkins, a dozen sweetcorn stalks. A sole cauliflower and about four feeble kales, which is disappointing as I got a lot of tasty crunchy cake last year and would like to do more this time. The mange tout I planted in the garden have done nothing at all, but I have put out framework for beans and will plant them this week.