predatrix finally remembered to phone me back on Skype, after a week of failing to do this, and words happened on the current joint project -- a contemporary m/m set in Ipswich. 1200 words, including the following, which may have to be revised if someone on my flist doesn't wish to be namechecked. Because the real world leaks into the writing process...

He was reading something with a purple swirly cover, so probably fantasy. Some of the publishers nowadays practically colour-code their stuff: purple for fantasy, silver for SF or dark red for horror.

I was reading a [censored for spoiler reasons] fantasy series which I was hoping would turn out to be as homoerotic as some of the reviews on Amazon seemed to suggest. The first twenty pages certainly had hopeful signs that something might develop, but if it was there it wasn't being allowed to get in the way of the story.