“Of course not. Making Gus end up like Alzner would undermine the kind of happy ending I would like him to have, which I feel is best if he plays consistently with this offer sheet” Caro retorts to Capitolium.
“Caro, sometimes you make me feel like readers are invested in off-relationship plots as much as they do the relationship!” Glitter yells at her after having spent an entire stream hearing about offer sheets.
“How they act outside the relationship is often part of who characters are! And, more often than not, life outside of it affect one’s relationship, and certainly for a NHLer with a cap hit of six point eight million! Relationships don’t happen in a vacuum!”
“I have an idea: on my professional website, I will blog about relationships in romance books I read!” Glitter then starts said blog, by adding the relevant pages to her professional website to accommodate one.
“To finish off NaNo, I plan on hosting a sub-a-thon all day on Saturday!” Caro proceeds to advertise said sub-a-thon on her social media and other methods at her disposal.
On Friday night, she feels renewed vigor as she finally sees the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Last night, I discussed offer sheets with my viewers. Now, I must make the clock tick in on Gus, as he is waiting for signs that Dallas will or won’t match the offer sheet. At the same time, the Gunners’ GM must also agonize about whether he feels it makes sense to match the offer sheet.
And yet, she was so caught up with using the romance book to show the transactional aspect of hockey that she didn’t stop to ask Capitolium about his motives, beyond being bitter about hockey romance.
“I really should have asked before, but first you gifted twenty-nine subs, and then you donated five hundred dollars to me. Why did you see fit to donate these sums?” a puzzled Caro keeps chugging along towards the daily par achievement.
“I’m an empty-nester retiree. I feel so out of touch when my grandkids talk about stuff has changed since I was their age, so I want to support some young people, like you” Capitolium answers her. “However, I hope you realize by now that learning to write on a stream and then relying on your viewers to beta read live might not have been the best method!”
And also read and write about people who will form the future of this world. That way, I might be able to recapture the magic of youth, full of hopes, and whatnot, vicariously is better than nothing, Capitolium is led to think about what he wants out of literature. Better that than live vicariously through my grandkids.
“Probably because I can’t take my viewers’ knowledge of literature, or tastes, for granted, and I could be given bad advice if I am unlucky” Capitolium tells her as she finishes the agony chapter before the happy ending proper begins.
And, of course, this means Gus returns to Montreal, sleeping at Vendôme’s place for a few more days. He then texts Emma about his return by sending her an article from the Hockey News about Dallas not matching the offer sheet from Montreal, she starts thinking about how to start the final chapter, while having an eye on the daily word count. She is about 100 words away from it, but the clock is ticking in on her.
On this final day of NaNo, she starts the sub-a-thon, knowing that she will not necessarily want to write the entire time. She still feels the need to talk about projects as written by other viewers. After eating breakfast, and playing a little bit of the game, the sub-a-thon begins.
“Let’s roll! Today, I will stream the last day of the National Novel Writing Month, for which I will aim to get the final two achievements to 100% it. If any of you take part in it, or its alternatives, you may DM me for permission to post links to your projects for the month!” Caro then posts the read-only link to her manuscript in her chat.
Viewers come in from all over the world, more than she is used to. They post their projects, one after another, and Capitolium as well. So it seems like one of them writes a murder mystery, another one writes a sci-fi espionage book, and another one still would write about an Elven couch potato watching and designing TVs.
Meanwhile, Glitter starts writing reviews of books she read in the past, and DMs Caro on Twitch to ask for permission to post the link to her blog in the chat once she finishes writing her first review.
Glitter: May I post the link to my blog on your chat?
Caroline: Yes
And then Caro’s viewers see the link to Glitter’s first review of romance books. A handful click on that review, and it seems like Glitter talks a lot about the effects and dangers of codependency in a romantic relationship while reviewing the book.
Going forward, I prioritize reviewing books for their portrayal of relationships’ failure points, while ensuring that I don’t review the same failure point twice in a row, Glitter then gets to work writing a second review, which is for the book she recced Caroline before she accepted the challenge issued by Capitolium. My review queue also contains a book with lack of intimacy as one of the main sources of internal conflict, which I recommended to Sampoong two weeks ago.
Speaking of Sampoong, he has Duri watch Caro with him, where she discusses books, as well as various Wrimos’ journey through writing their respective books. About how motivation sapped at some people, and how others, despite knowing they wouldn’t make it to the 50k words, kept writing their books.
After Capitolium gifted a few subs to newcomers, the hype train leaves the station and grabs more viewers at some stops:
New viewer 1: How did you managed to stay motivated for a month?
“Let’s say that my knowledge of the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement and hence of the transactional aspect of hockey carried the day, and my knowledge of on-ice gameplay has helped some, too” Caro answers a viewer’s question about what helped her stay motivated. “When I was struggling to achieve the daily par, especially after the trade deadline arc was finished, I simply added more hockey games: the regular season closer, then a game seven in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and finally the Hockey Worlds, with my MMC being Latvia’s number one D-man. And with the off-ice chapters between the games are about them staying in touch with each other. Yet a lot of American hockey romance writers tend to shy away from writing games”
Even if, as Capitolium said, streaming about the process of writing the book wasn’t the best way to learn to write, it was perhaps cost-effective in my context. Now, for the happy ending chapter, taking place after Dallas declines to match the offer sheet! Caro muses as Gus’ future in Montreal is assured. She then starts with spending his first weekend back in Montreal house hunting.
New viewer 2: It seems like you wrote the season closer and the playoff game specifically so that you can prevent Dallas from trading their pick away for 2025
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Come again? Teams trade away draft picks on conditions like: if the team trading the pick away is outside the top X, the pick will be traded away this season, otherwise it will defer to next season, all the time!”
Generally. X is a non-playoff team’s pick, if you talk about trading away a first-rounder conditionally, but, for lower rounds, it would be, like, round Z if they reach a certain playoff round, Z+1 if they don’t, Marie-France, who freshly arrives, starts thinking about what conditional draft picks mean. Especially when she re-reads the chapter where the possible returns are weighed. The problem is that we were never given a clue as to how good the prospect Montreal received for Gus was. We were supposed to think that Montreal traded Gus away to Dallas despite Buffalo having offered more, and, to boot, an unprotected first-rounder, likely to be better than #20! Gus certainly didn’t play like he wasn’t worth a first-rounder as of the deadline…
“I knew going into this that it wasn’t going to be perfect, but you see, most hockey romance books don’t even try to make the position of the draft pick a team receives a plot point. Here I picked the ending that Dallas didn’t match the offer sheet, feeling like, while he was worth locking up long-term, this was a little too expensive for them!” Caro unpacks more of her experience writing the last ~12k words or so.
“Keep in mind the issues Emma, as a Canadian, would face trying to find work in the Metroplex!” Glitter warns her. “Unless you want Emma to teach, like, French or something like that in the Metroplex! So maybe it was for the better that Dallas didn’t match!”
And then Caro writes about Emma and Gus spending a weekend visiting luxury homes near the not-Canadiens’ practice facility. He made Gus reflect on how McMansions differ in the Metroplex vs in Montreal. Especially given that Emma doesn’t want Gus to spend more than his old cap hit on his new home. So this means he can aim for about CA$3M at most, maybe a smidge above that.
She then goes online to look what would CA$3M have bought the couple, condos or McMansions, and their upkeep cost.
Sure, he would have preferred Dix30 for commuting reasons, since he commutes to the practice facility more than he would the downtown arena, but these McMansions around the practice facility feel gigantic to him.
On the other hand, Emma favored living in a downtown condo. Yet, the starry-eyed Gus now has a better idea of what he saved up for: for years, he lived at his teammates’ homes, and to finally have a home he calls his own is just… exhilarating. But he knows nothing about Québécois real estate practices, and so he would rather leave it to Emma to deal with the paperwork other than for signing the deed of sale and taking out the mortgage, since he is the one paying for the home and the mortgage.
And, of course, he follows that up with a luxury car. This offer sheet feels like a dream come true to him.
“Looks like the old owners took the core fixtures with them… on this, I will host a new sprint, the first of the day!”
However, she doesn’t take part in the sprint, preferring instead to read some passages from these writers who take part in the final day of NaNo. Including Legnica, who has finished writing about a vassal of the Prince of Abkhazia (who, to the Ottomans’ eyes, was Abkhazia’s beylerbey) who, having converted to Islam, holds a harem.
She reads a random chapter and finds out that this sanjak-bey had one of the ladies of the harem marry into House Bagration to secure a treaty with them.
“One question, Legnica: what exactly does House Bagration have to do with Abkhazia?” Caro asks her about Abkhazia, not remembering the nightmare she had about being trapped in Legnica’s harem.
Legnica: House Bagration held territory east of Abkhazia; however, their branches east of Abkhazia were Safavid vassals
I can tell that Caro skimmed over parts of the book, and House Bagration is an antagonist of the book, from a relationship standpoint, and politically as well, Legnica sighs, realizing that Renaissance in the Caucasus is not a popular choice of time and place in historical romance, harem or not.
New viewer 3: Why is it that I kept seeing the term reverse harem? Isn’t a harem romance just the main character with loads of love interests?
Legnica: Regular harem has all-female love interests, while reverse harem has all-male love interests
I could easily imagine some fantasy or sci-fi harem romance to have mixed-gender harems provided the main character is bi or pansexual, but the love interests’ sexual orientations may vary, Caro starts thinking of how could someone go around writing a mixed-gender harem romance book. I’m sure these exist, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to write one convincingly since I know nothing about what it’s like to be bi or pansexual.
Meanwhile, Duri reads the two book reviews Glitter wrote, while Sampoong starts reading the romance book about lack of intimacy. I think Glitter’s blog, The Romantic Couples Therapist, is worth bookmarking, albeit her focus is on the portrayal of relationship dynamics, Duri muses, while Sampoong finds the resemblance to their own situation a little uncanny.
“I have a better idea of how to solve the lack of intimacy problem” Duri is reminded of the last 20% of the book Sampoong now reads.
“Yeobo, we should stick through the remaining therapy sessions I paid for. A book is no substitute for couples therapy” Sampoong tells her in a Korean accent.
A few hours into the stream, sharing into the writing experiences of the chat, along with her own, makes her less willing to write at the same intensity as she had in the previous 29 days. Her writing has seemingly slowed to a crawl, as she feels increasingly depressed by some viewers falling well short of the 50k words.
“If you managed to complete whatever project you began NaNo with, it’s still a win!” Glitter tries to encourage Caro, while she furiously writes her third review, scheduled for release tomorrow.
So, as much as she feels like she has earned these new followers and subs, Caro realizes, as the stream goes well into the evening, that the stream has caused her to and hence fall behind the pace to keep the daily par alive.
By 10 PM, Charlesbourg time, and much of her viewers having watched her on and off, she looks at the number of words necessary to achieve the daily par. Why did I see fit to use the last day of NaNo as a sub-a-thon? I spent all day on air, with only sparse moments for writing, I still have 600 words left to go, there’s no time to waste! She ruminates as she announces another sprint.
“This is going to be the first sprint I will officially take part in tonight!” Caro announces to her viewers.
With the likes of Capitolium about to finish their own books, she gets ready to write faster than she did earlier today. However, the accumulation of fatigue starts to show in her writing as she seems unable to keep writing at the same pace as she did before.
Time to write the epilogue about my MMC spending one more season in the juniors, free of any academic worries. And then on to the AHL, where he’s going to be called up for a few games at a time, but playing only 9 NHL games in his first season as a professional because Washington deemed him as not worth burning a contract year, Capitolium calls it a day, and then updates his daily word count.
“Finally, I got the daily par for the year!” Capitolium exclaims as he readies the payment of the third installment of the reward. In fact, he already paid part of the third installment earlier in the sub-a-thon by gifting subs to her new followers.
Shoot! This is the moment where Emma and Gus must kiss each other after being handed the keys to their new McMansion near Dix30! Caro starts sweating before she finalizes that part of the happy ending, weeks after the offer sheet is signed, but before the start of the Constellations’ training camp.
By 11:40 PM, Caro watches closely her word count, giving her all for the dying minutes of NaNo to write the final words she so desperately needs to complete the 100%.
About his future play after he reunites with Emma in Montreal, where he is going to play well enough for All-Star consideration in the final year of the offer sheet. About Dallas’ first being, in 2026, better than Montreal’s, and better than picking at #20. One more word, stay on target! she feels her wrists getting more pain as she writes faster by the second.
With only seconds to spare, as she writes the last of the epilogue, her daily word count reaches the required 1667 words. And she then hastily updates her word count. After that is done, the final 2 achievements are unlocked, much to the delight of the viewers.
“Woohoo! I did it! I 100%ed NaNo for the year!” Caro shouts for joy, seeing the last two achievements on her dashboard.
“Very good! I’m now ready to donate the third installment!” Capitolium tallies the sums he paid Caro, in CAD. “I will match, dollar for dollar, all donations I made to you during the month. Also, while you still have some room for improvement, you seem to have a good feel for what it takes to write a novel that long. If I may, leave the manuscript alone for a bit”
“Why?” Caro asks him, not knowing why.
“By this point of the writing process, you will be too emotionally invested in the manuscript to keep your perspective straight!”