Amor · Omnibus · Idem

Having finished off something like a runaway train slamming into the station (I hope not with comparable mess) I need to rest hands and brain. So one thing I will do is read some more Treasury goodies.

But another was to organize some of my mess here. I was reshelving books and noticed once again slashy books from long ago. I don't mean the E.F. Benson covert slash, such as his two "David" books, but female written ones with boy-howdy sexual tension. I think the epitome of these is Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Lost Prince. It scarcely ever gets a mention, along with a lot of her other stuff. Most of her adult stuff, I'm told, has not aged well and is snobbish in the extreme. The children's lit seems to have curbed her tendencies in that direction, but no one ever talks about this one, and I wonder if the steamy homoerotic tone discomfits readers who feel that kidlit should be free of "all that" whatever the form. (A dying breed--the way sex is proliferating into kidlit is a whole nother topic.)

Back to male written ones, Stalky & Co.. I was rereading it last night, and a bit near the end of one of the stories ("The Impressionists") caught my eye. Kipling is usually so brilliant, it seemed rather odd that the flow of the story stumbled to a stop just so that Kipling could hammer home that Beetle was utterly unaware of homosexuality. The boys' total innocence was gently underscored here and there--though in a couple other places it's clear they know about it, as Stalky and M'Turk both refer to 'beastliness' and the others know what is meant--but this one was flagrant.

So I checked the biography, and sure enough, there's a reference to Stalky (Dunsterville) visiting Kipling later in India, and relating school gossip, among the items being Prout (Hefter) saying that Kipling had been put into a dorm by himself because he'd been accused of, or caught, at it. Kipling fired off a heated letter defending himself as though the incident were recent, causing some biographers to assume that where there was smoke there was fire. But I wondered if those lines were inspired by that incident.

Anyway, Kipling's own experience or non-experience aside, wow, that book is intensely slashy. "Secure in the knowledge of a well-fitting pair of tights" indeed!

I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to all who commented on my stories. I replied to all the e-mails I was sent, but I don't think I got all, and there were several that bounced. I thought they were addresses no longer in use so I deleted them before I discovered that the system was burping.

I would go back and try to match up letters to commenters, but I am on such a hard deadline, I don't know how far I'd get. Especially as I am extremely dyslexic and get hopelessly tangled with numbers and lists.

*diving back under*

I wrote three stories this year. The hardest was "Ingenium et Fides" for vaznetti, in the Vorkosiverse. She asked for Aral and Cordelia, early or late, and I just immediately twigged to a throwaway bit (if there is any throwaway in LMB's world) by Ivan, when he talked about the collapse of a cave, and how Miles always bossed everyone. The story coalesced in five minutes, it took me a week inbetween other chores to reread all the books to find the exact words, and refresh myself on Cordelia's and Aral's emotional history. The toughest thing for me was to make clear that Cordelia's decision made sense for Cordelia (and Aral) but wouldn't necessarily make sense for the future Miles. Specifically, Aral had made a lifetime of sacrifice, repeatedly turning his heart, his career, and very nearly himself into smoking ruins for the sake of honor and integrity. The honor Cordelia could shrug off, but sacrifice for integrity caught her square between the eyes--or she would never have fallen in love with him in the first place.

So little Miles has grown up seeing the cost they've paid, and he's determined he will live for the win/win. It probably would have been a better story if I could have gotten that across.

My beta was edo_no_hana who has an excellent critical eye.

Unfortunately, I didn't think I had time for the next two stories to beta, and of course they suffered thereby. My pinch hit was done in like a day and a half, while I was coming down with flu and in the midst of family crisis, but I went for it, letting the plot invent itself. I wanted to see if I could catch the Westlake tone; the tropes made the story incredibly easy to write. That was Christmas Cheer", for PeterM, in the Dormunder series. It turned out really long, but like I said, the distinctive Dortmunder form, with nods to Damon Runyan, made it far easier to write than the much shorter but more emotionally complex Vorkosigan one.

In his request, PeterM said "No slash, for the love of God." So of course I had to play around with all kinds of oblique slashy tropes, from Freud to mistletoe over the men's room door.

Finally, just two hours before I was due at the inlaws' for Christmas Eve, I thought what the hey. The writer kept bobbing near the top of the Treat list, both requests were heyer. I could remember pretty much all the details of the Devil's Cub/These Old Shades world (last year I did a slash story about Justin and Hugh, for which I did a phenomenal amount of research just for fun) so I could write it without resorting to the sources. The other story request, for something three-way with Masqueraders characters, I couldn't get a short enough idea, though that sounds like so much fun I might just do one anyway. Since that was done two hours before I had to leave, and I knew I wouldn't be back before the reveal, I didn't get a beta, subsequently it, too, has stupid errors. That story is "Arabesque".

Other observations: just, how phenomenal the stories have been. I am going to have to catch up with all the writers I know, to read their stories, and of course to finish up reading in my favorite fandoms. Due to a very pressing deadline, I can only read in tiny spurts.

Next, though, I really want to look at crossovers.

I'm not going to do a recommendation list so much as an appreciation of kinds of stories. This is due to the fact that RL has handed me about 34,675 days' worth of stuff to get done over this holiday season. That and a hard deadline have made my reading time far more constrained than I'd wished. The upside of that is that I haven't read very far in the Treasury, and each foray has been interrupted by the "You have to do this NOW!" gremlins.

First, there are my stories. I cherish the very idea that two people thought about what I would like in a story, and wrote the stories. Added to that, they gave me just what I wanted to read. I think I've revisited these stories at least half a dozen times over the past few days. They are: Restoration, which comes right after one of my favorite episodes of MI5-Spooks. The subtle interactions, the just-right details, made me mutter "Oh yes, oh yes," over and over, because of course it would have happened just that way. Then there's Persuasion, which is a light but delightfully right-on look at the rascally Rupert of Hentzau, from Prisoner of Zenda. The writer manages to set up the eponymous second book with this tight little story, which is really nifty.

And these were both for me! How cool is that?

Beyond those, I hesitate to make a rec list, implying that the following stories are all that I found good. So very not true! Instead, I picked them as types of the kind of stories I've been noticing and appreciating this year.

There are the stories that resonate so deeply with canon that they click seamlessly into my sense of that storyverse. This year's Swordspoint stories are all just phenomenal. The Young Duke: Judicium Dei was just so brilliant on all levels I felt that one lock into place as 'real'.

Then there are the crossovers. The terrific "The Ivory Horn" (it's linked everywhere and I should be working right now, so I'm not going to hunt up the link) is one of these: it's all the more brilliant for the way it handles Pullman's claustrophobic world building, connecting it to another storyverse that Pullman intended to be inimcal. This story taught me what is possible in crossover...I tend to see canon as a tight boundary in my efforts to get all the details "right". This story flings wide the boundaries to exhilarating effect.

Then there are the stories that don't convince one of canon, but are so much fun that one believes in the story while reading it. A Question of Authority isn't going to fit into my sense of Bertie and Jeeves canon. But Jeeves as a dread pirate? Who can resist? This story caught Wodehouse's Bertie voice so exquisitely that it brings the reader along into a world otherwise seemingly impossible, for a very funny, sexy story that I really wish was book-length.

What a great year! I so look forward to more story discoveries.

rachelmanija you were right.

My second story is awfully long, and apparently it's a super obscure fandom (though the books are best sellers, but maybe they don't lend themselves much to fic, which is a very interesting topic for discussion). anyway, I'm glad that a couple of people have discovered it, and the recipient did indeed find it as well. Hurray!

But really, I wonder why some mega-popular reads don't develop a fic following, though they have plenty of fans. And more obscure works do gain a strong fic presence. This particular one has a very distinctive narrative voice, with little emotion, and that done fairly wryly. Would that be a reason it doesn't inspire fic?

Writing that 8k story in one day was easy because of that narrative voice and structure, it's kind of developed its own formula, and all I had to do was follow that, inventing the storyline within it. Though my first story was less than half its length, I worked on it off and on for two weeks, and then after my beta went over it, gave it a couple days of hard polish. It was far harder to write because there were so many intensely complex emotional issues going on. Is that the key? But not all fics are just about the emo, that's evident here in the rich variety of Yuletide stories.

Hmmm. Well, my brain is utterly dead due to a solid day's work against this tough deadline, so I think I shall toddle off and mull this over.

Okay, I totally scored. I got a superb story in the MI-5 aka Spooks fandom, called "Restoration." It picks up just after a certain extremely intense episode, and the characterizations and the tight, vivid writing is just brilliant. I've read it twice, and enjoyed it exponentially more on the second reading. I will be revisiting that story, especially when I get to view Spooks again.

But I didn't get just one, I got two stories! The second one, "Persuasion," is a tongue-in-cheek (and deftly implied tongue much elsewhere) snippet from The Prisoner of Zenda. Rupert just can't resist machinations, and his cousin just can't resist . . . Rupert. Ooops! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I then broke my rule and egoscanned the three stories I wrote--and no comments on any of them. Dummy! There goes madness! If they are not very good, the thing to do is learn to get better at it. So I will not do that again.

All right, unfortunately it's time for the load of chores awaiting me, but I'll be back this evening to start reading stories in my favorite fandoms.

So I got an idea, a tiny one--well, actually, I got two ideas, for the same recipient. Wow, I wish I could have had say three days, one day to do the research. Unfortunately, my sources mostly date from the early 1800s, before Indexes were invented, so it would take hours to nail down the exact details for a deliciously wicked story.

So I had to write the short one, since I only had an hour. Now I have to jump into the shower and in fifteen minutes changes from crazy fangirl to middle-aged mom going to inlaws.

Heigh ho, just a few hours to go. Woo!

Well, the research for one of my two ideas turned out to be easier than the other, because it only involves one set of books. I'd still like to do the other story; if the first one is safely uploaded by the due date, that gives me longer to do the reading for the second

So I started the story last Sunday, got a chunk Monday night.

I spent all this week chasing a remembered paragraph. Found it Thursday, ah!

So today I finished a first draft. Now to let it rest while I tackle other work, and then revisit it to see if it actally works, or it's dreck. Good feeling, though.

Oh my. There was one delicious story request in the first assignment, so I'm keeping that on hand in case time and events permit me to do a short piece for that, just for fun.

But I just got my True Assignment, and there are TWO incredibly tasty, alluring, altogether tempting requests in storyworlds I LOVE. Must ponder, though I am being whacked by a falling piano-type deadline, but oh, it's time to do some research . . .

And I hope that someone out there is thinking the same about my requests, I hope I hope.

Being a dork, I forgot to get links to the two stories I wrote last year. They are longish, so you might not even want to read them, so I'll just say that "The Conscience of the Queen" was my pinch hit, a Dorothy Sayers story in which the recipient asked for Peter and Harriet, preferably g-rated. So I gave Harriet a mystery of her own, and some friends from other Sayers stories.

My other was called "Adeste Fidelis Satanas" and was set in Georgette Heyer's version of the 1740s, with a requested slashy, R-rated story involving Justin Alastair. Because I love that period, I set it at Oxford, with some fun hints at Sebastian and Charles from Brideshead, and also Horry Walpole (who I knew had been thrown out of Oxford that Christmas) and George Selwyn, etc.

All this blather to show that my reading tastes range wide--whatever you want to write, I'm sure to like. I'm fondest of wit, UST, stylized violence rather than grit and grue, but I like romance. Court a la ci-pays-ci is kewl...I'm not fond of tragedy, pomo meaninglessness, or horror: I'm far more of an Oscar Wilde or Liselotte von der Pfalz sort than a Kate Chopin or Virginia Woolf, much as I admire them in the abstract.

The dust in here *kaff kaff* has accreted...it's been nine months, and unfortunately for my fanac, utterly busy ones. But I'd just been thinking about Yuletide--looking forward to jumping into this year's season--and then along comes notice that I have a Story!

I think that Yuletide glitched only in that I am unfamiliar with George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones--I read the first one but just didn't get into it--however, if this story is any indication of the rest of the series, I think I'm going to have to reconsider. Do read this delightful story--even if, like me, you don't know the characters, the writer of this story is deft enough to give you a sense of who they are and what their importance is in the larger scheme, so that one can fit comfortably into the world.

my thanks to Gwendolyn Grace!