Hey. My name is Courtney and I've been telling stories for as long as I can remember. I hope you like them.
Hey. My name is Courtney and I've been telling stories for as long as I can remember. I hope you like them.
Bad Luck - the informal title I use for all of my material about the characters Chance and Tobi - has been a project of mine in some form or another since my middle school days. These characters and their story have been an ever-evolving adventure for me, and I've never quite settled on a single definite plotline for them to follow; they're something more like a sandbox that I like to play in. They provide a lot of fun for me - I enjoy using them as practice for character development and general writing skills, and just writing about them for fun.
As I said, I have trouble establishing a single canon for them, but here's the general premise: Chance is a young woman trying to work out her life after university. As a graduation gift her well-off parents, now living internationally, gave her the money to take a year off and figure out where she wants to go next. At some point she met Tobi, a chaos demon - his job is to cause small-scale mayhem on earth. Not knowing his true nature, Chance accidentally set off a series of events (involving, in most iterations that I've written or thought out, a kiss) that wound up binding him to her for the next 50 years. Tobi must now stay within a certain distance of Chance at all times while he's on earth and obey all of her orders. But Chance has no interest in commanding a demon, and instead finds herself begrudgingly taking him on as a roommate.
Over time Chance and Tobi do become friends, and eventually more. Several variations of this eventuality exist independently in my writing, and some can be read below!
This story, depicting the progression of Chance and Tobi from unfriendly roommates to lovers, was originally written and posted on Tumblr in March of 2015 with the following thoughts: "lately I’ve been thinking about how much I miss writing these two and last night I just… did. For several hours. I have a lot of trouble ever deciding on a Definite Canon Way Things Happen for them but all things considered I’m pretty happy with this."
The way it started was strangely both organic and awkward. They grew closer very naturally over time, from begrudging roommates to friends to who knows what. Sometimes, though, there were stilted jumps forward followed by discomfort and denial and backtracking and whole days spent avoiding one another’s gaze. Even when things were definitively, undeniably Happening, it was ages before either of them let it be defined or put into words at all. Read More »
Chance and Tobi were my subjects for a 30-day themed writing challenge in fall of 2012. It's a series of short slice-of-life scenes, because I love seeing what my characters are up to in their day-to-day lives. Being slightly older writing, I don't think these scenes are all as strong as they could be now, but I'm still fond of them.
Prompts: beginning. accusation. restless. snowflake. haze. flame. formal. companion. move. silver. prepared. knowledge. denial. wind. order. thanks. look. summer. transformation. tremble. sunset. mad. thousand. outside. winter. diamond. letters. promise. simple. future. Read More »
Also from 2012, this is an extended version of one of the scenes from the writing challenge above. In it Chance and Tobi help run a charity event to raise funds for an archaeological dig being headed by Chance's older brother, Adrian.
Chance bit her lip, then looked Tobi in the eye. “Promise you’ll be well-behaved tonight,” she said to him, mustering all of her resolve.
He lifted his eyebrows. “I promise I’ll be well-behaved tonight,” he repeated. He watched her for a moment. “That’s the first time you’ve given me an order in quite some time.”
She sighed. “I know. I don’t like doing it, you know.” Read More »