Logistics
Started May 19, 1998
Finished May 22, 1998 (took three days)
Genesis
Hmmm, how did I come up with this? I wanted to do a short, total plot story with Ezra and I wanted to use the romance novel/dream idea. When I first started this, it ended up being "Broken Wires". I left the idea alone for awhile, letting it sit til I got a little more focused on what I plan to do. That never came. So, instead of waiting, I just started the story and let it go where ever it wanted. So the story basically wrote itself. I had no plan on where it was going, except for certain points (the let's-laugh-at-Ezra ending). I made it up as I went along and it was strange in the things that popped up.
Lily was originally intended to be a good girl and Ezra's dream love interest. But my muse had other ideas and Lily turned into a soap-opera-esque melodramatic villainess. But in order to fit the title, there had to be at least *some* romance and so I added Jana. I gave Jana to Vin simply because I felt like it.
In a way, this story is distraction from "Trials of Friendship", but this also mocks it a little. I don't want to spoil "Trials..." for you, but Ezra does get manipulated a lot in it. "Touch of Romance" also mocks in the slightest way of the ignorance factor that men has for women in my stories. Of course, the way that Ezra's been ignorant in "Touch of Romance" did require a little willful suspension of belief (just how many times did Ezra have to hear the name "Torias" before it actually means anything to him!), but it was fun, wasn't it?
Dissection
Hmmm, in a sense there isn't really much of anything for me to dissect. There wasn't really a plot, no characterization at all. Everyone was acting a little out of character due to Ezra's dream state. What I really liked a lot wasn't the Ezra/Vin/Jana/Lily bits, but the Buck scene near the end of JD's supposed demise at the jail. That was rather sweet.
Some places were rushed, I admit. I was rapidly running out of steam and I had to move on or be stuck there for two weeks. Of course, Ezra's vocabulary seemed to have went kaput (fave word of the day ;) I actually don't have that big of a vocab, and I didn't utilize my thesaurus as much in this story as I did for others. So Ezra ended up with less than three syllable words to form sentences.
I liked it, it was very fun to write and it just went by like "swoosh!". Hope you liked it too.