Espresso Recommendations

Literary RPF

'But then as if the Empress's words were power, her own returned. Wan-er knew what she must do. If the flood was so bad that groveling would not save her, and it wouldn't, she'd go out riding bravely. / She straightened up. "One might, but one would be wrong." / The Empress's eyes narrowed. "Would one," she said dryly.' A spare, tightly structured piece set in Tang dynasty China, centered on the evolving relationship of two strong women, a poet & an empress, with sprinklings of Chinese poetry & lashings of palace intrigue

[Added 25/12/2017; Character Piece; 2500-6000; Literary RPF]

For Him I Sing by Disenchanted

'Owen, for his part, was editing a hospital literary magazine comprised largely of interminable serialised stories and advertisments for Hardy Bros. fishing rods (in one issue there was a poem which rhymed ‘laugh’ with ‘quaff’). Siegfried observed that the work seemed fascinating to Owen, whose experience with the literary world had up until now consisted solely of a friendship with a flatulent country cousin who wrote in the manner of Tennyson.' A moving joint portrait of Sassoon & Owen at Craiglockhart, anchored in sharp details. Disenchanted does a good job of portraying the two very different men as both poets & soldiers, and Sassoon's perspective on the young Owen is particularly interesting

[Added 30/10/2017; Character Piece; 2500-6000; Literary RPF]

Like fruit, my soul by Breathedout

'For once it is easy. One could make any space needed, one feels; anything needed; with one's fingers gliding fireglow-warm over the smooth glass. So simple, it appears now, to be generous. Why is one not always generous? Why does one keep oneself back so, from one's fellows, twenty-nine days out of the month?' Thoughtful & suitably erudite stream of consciousness from a tipsy Virginia Woolf, while she's revising Mrs Dalloway & contemplating Vita Sackville-West. Reads like a censored extract from her letters

[Added 25/12/2017; Character Piece; 1000-2500; Literary RPF]

Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit by Rexluscus

'At the sight of her new husband's handiwork, the sweet-faced boy playing Zenocrate wore a bloodthirsty smile of frank erotic promise far beyond what a child of his age ought to have been able to imagine, let alone perform. It left Will feeling lightheaded.' This take on Marlowe through Shakespeare's eyes runs with the William Hughes theory for the sonnets' dedicatee. Gleefully anachronistic & enormous fun

[Added 04/10/2013; Drama; 6000-20,000; Literary RPF]

Saving Mrs. Fleming by Selena

'Truth to tell, Mary had struggled with her ending. She always did. She had also struggled with what the secret would be. Her first idea had been for Julian's father to have been a man loving other men, a Greek hero lost in the wrong era, who'd tried to live the horrible married life and failed.' Intriguing take on what might have happened had Hitchcock tried to make a film out of Renault's Return to Night. Selena knows her Hollywood & the creative differences that inevitably follow are a hoot, but the meat of the piece is Hitchcock's unexpected empathy for Renault's situation

[Added 12/08/2015; Drama; 6000-20,000; Literary RPF]

Still Climbing After Knowledge Infinite by Aquila

'The rhythm of each line drives the play forward as much as Alleyn's performance does, serves as a heartbeat underneath the action. Will's veins throb to its time; indeed, his very bones seem to pulse with it.' It's hard to capture Shakespeare the writer, but Aquila pulls it off here at the beginning of his career. But it's the snappy dialogue that really makes this piece, balancing modern & archaic, realistic & performed

[Added 29/05/2012; Romance/Erotica; 6000-20,000; Literary RPF]