Master Fic Post: Blue Skies From Rain

[lovesrain44]

Blue Skies From Rain




Word Count: 178,000
Genre: Wincest
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean, various OFCs
Fic Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Slash/wincest, dark, angst, amnesia, mental institution, unsubstantiated group and art therapy techniques, laundry, oatmeal, and true love with schmoop mixed in.
Summary: The morning after Sam rescues Dean from the djinn, Sam and Dean go back to the warehouse to take care of the bodies of both the victims and of the djinn. But instead of what should be a simple clean-up job, Sam and Dean are sucked into a nightmare world brought about by the djinn’s last dying act of revenge. (Takes place directly after What Is and What Should Never Be.) What do you do when you wake up in a mental institution and you think your brother is dead?
 
Art

The amazing ayan-desu selected my anonymous summary because she said it sounded interesting and that she was into amnesia stories. That's how I remember it, but from that simple beginning, I began to receive a cornucopia of ideas and creativity, of art and manips, and then a VID, and it was such a rush of joy and passion and sharing, it was seriously wonderful and amazing and I am just in awe of this lady's talent. I can't even begin to tell you how much it meant to me to see how she internalized my story and then expressed it through her art; it was like seeing my own brain through her eyes. And truly, the most zen thing I think I have ever gone through. You can download the art at her live journal.

Music

Ayan also created a front and back cover, delicious in tones of grey and black and white and charcoal that I feel completely expresses not only the fanmix, but the emotion of the story. You can download the fanmix and covers at her live journal, where she has kindly uploaded the entire thing.

If you're keen, I've created liner notes for the songs, which you can download here.

Downloads

My terribly kind friend amothea offered her services to create a collection of single files for the story:


Click here to read a single file to read online.

Click here do download a PDF version.

Click here to download the RTF version.

Click here to download an LRF version.

Click here to download a MOBI version.

Click here to download an EPUB version.

Part I

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3


Part II

Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9


Part III

Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 16


Part IV

Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19 - Chapter 20 - Chapter 21


Part V

Chapter 22 - Chapter 23 - Chapter 24 - Chapter 25


Part VI

Chapter 26 - Chapter 27 - Chapter 28 - Chapter 29


Simple Author’s Notes

The existence of this story is due to a number of things.

First, to the Big Bang Challenge, which made me want to write something long and complicated, to raise my own bar, and to work really, really hard at something for no other reason than because it was there.

Second, because I wanted to write a story that told how Sam and Dean really fell in love. If you go to my LJ you’ll see I’ve asked around, and really the only non-changing answer is that everyone has their own theory and all theories are equally valid. I wouldn’t say that this story represents my only theory, but it was the one I choose to go with.

Third, because I have an unhealthy obsession with mental institutions.

Fourth, because of a story I read that Took Over My Brain. It’s called Missing Persons and it's by Dira Sudis. It’s set in the Numb3rs fandom, and tells the story of Charlie getting kidnapped, and of Don finding him to rescue him. Only Charlie has amnesia and then sex happens, wonderful angsty and realistic sex that develops from a set of circumstances in such a steady and sustained way, that when it happens, it’s utterly absorbing and real and true. MP is one of those stories I fell in love with and wanted to marry. You know the feeling, you read it, you can’t stop thinking about it, it comes up in all those conversations in your head that you can’t possibly have with people at work, it absorbs your waking hours, and the only time you don’t think about it is when you’re looking for another story just like it. Damn that Dira. She’s ruined me forever.

Dedication

This story is dedicated to dsudis, because a fangirl likes to be ruined now and then, and to amothea , who is so good to me I can hardly stand it, even if, while I was writing this story, she was entirely positive that I wasn’t being mean enough to Sam and Dean and despaired of me forever.

Complicated Author's Notes

Now, if you're really keen, I've attempted to post all of my notes, starting with a long, detailed and possibly boring bit about why the hell I wrote this story, followed by, believe it or not, a chronology of word counts, notes, maybe even a draft or two, if I can figure out how to post that.

I'm in the midst of uploading all my notes and word counts and this is due to a wild hair to keep record of what I was doing and why. At the moment, there are notes about the basic premise of the story; later there will be calendars with word counts and scans of post-it notes that I had on my wall.

Complicated Author's Notes

Happy reading, and thanks for coming by.

Comments

[lovesrain44.livejournal.com]

I remember that letter, I just figured that I'd bugged you too much and yeah, I had. : D
Because, really, I was asking you to share your secrets with me, and the outline is a very crucial tool in writing something this long. If you're ever interested in sharing, I'm still interested in reading!

I sent you an e-mail off line as well...

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

Thanks for letting me know about the email--it had wound up in my spam folder, I just found it now. :)

I'm afraid I don't outline in a way that is useful to look at after the fact. My outline for chapter one looks like this:

01 - C - Kidnapped [218]
02 - D - Fourteen hours [700]
03 - D - He called Terry [498]
04 - T - Don went down [787]
05 - C - Strange sensation [258]
06 - D - Command post in the dining room [220]
07 - L - Zero Kelvin [295]
08 - D - Things to do [142]
09 - D - In the garage [475]
10 - D - Thirty-six hours [161]
11 - C - Little finger [118]
12 - D - Forty-eight hours [169] {4041}

So as you can see, I was updating and editing it after the fact; when I had things outlined in advance it was roughly the same just a very short reminder of what scene I wanted, with an idea of how I was going to distribute POVs. The actual work of developing the story and the plotting and so on was done mainly in IM - with what wound up being about eight or ten people, by the end - over the course of three years. I would tell out the story, hitting the high points that I knew and going into detail where I had imagined out a whole specific scene, and they would ask questions or point out problems, letting me know what needed work, and so on. Once I started writing, I was trading paragraphs and scenes with my beta (alpha, I guess) readers, and continuing to think out loud to them about where I was going next - making notes sometimes to remind myself, but I was so immersed in the story that I did wind up just holding a lot of it in my head a lot of the time, especially early on when I was writing very fast. I have been given to understand that my process is Not Like Other People's Processes. :)

[lovesrain44.livejournal.com]

Okay...now you've opened the DOOR, you see.....

This is totally wild to hear all this, seriously.

What....does....do....so. Um. The first number is the chapter. The second is the pov (the main pov). The third thing is the main concept. The last number is???

I cannot believe that you TALKED your story into being. That's definately a new one on me. : D

PS (Could not resist...) "It's like a BUNCH of numbers!!!" (Seriously...75% of your information is numerical, I love it!!!)

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

Scene - POV - description - [word count] {chapter total wordcount}

I also numbered the sex scenes and tracked the dates, where relevant, so for example chapter 12 looked like this:

12
97 - C - Unlocked [1887] Dec.1
98 - D - Game on [1063]
99 - C - Good enough [4877] THREE
100 - D - The punch in the face [983] Dec.2
101 - C - Chess [644]
102 - D - Target practice [1950] Dec.4 {11597}

And oh, man, yeah, I am a great one for talking out my stories. If I get drunk, or just otherwise become convinced that someone will listen, I do it in person--telling out stories I want to or will never write. Those are tricky, though, because I don't have a convenient transcript for future reference afterward. :)

[lovesrain44.livejournal.com]

Of course the dates were relevant! When I studied the story, the synthesis of Christmas and Hanukkah was brilliant. Seven days, seven candles, heartbreaking.

I could see that the dates were crucial, because the sex scenes were limited. I counted on one hand, really, the ones you described, and all of them were impactful. And it surprised me, as well, because there's so much love there, the sex was secondary to that, an expression of it.

In 250,000 plus words and you have two, maybe three scenes of real, actual violence - the rest is described and is more creepy because you just know there's stuff Charlie's not even remembering. On purpose. That taught me a lot about what you leave out is as important as what you put in.

I learned SO much picking apart your story, you have NO idea.

What does THREE mean??

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

THREE = third actual sex scene between Don and Charlie. (I think the one where Charlie jerks off wound up being labeled as ZERO and Don actually accounted for a MINUS ONE and MINUS TWO earlier on. *g*)

I honest to God hate writing porn, so I only put it in when it was demonstrating some important point in their relationship - it's just that a lot of the important points in their relationship were demonstrated through sex! And, yeah, I definitely found it more effective to let the creepy violent bad guys be mostly creepy and violent offscreen.

I wound up going a little bit crazy about the dates - some things just actually were that way, when I looked them up, like Christmas and Hanukkah coinciding in that year. I also, because I am a crazy person, wound up looking up the local weather for the night they escaped. (I had to arbitrarily choose some weather to describe, and I figured I might as well go ahead and use what had actually been happening - likewise I looked up the freeway routes and locations of rest stops. *g*)

[lovesrain44.livejournal.com]

You do realize that I could talk to you about this forever if you let me...

But yeah, I don't like writing porn either, it's terribly hard because I don't have that kind of sex, that fantastic, out of this world, spine melting, guy-on-guy sex! Even if I were a guy and thusly inclined, I don't know anyone who has sex this good. So I really loved how your sex scenes felt as emotional as they did sexy as well as being relevant to the plot. I tried to do the same.

I thought your dates were great, I figured out early on that they were signifigant, and I enjoyed "Mac" telling "c" what the date and time was as a way of building "c's" trust and confidence.