the deep moans round with many voices

My Yuletide story for this year has been doing pretty well for itself! In fact, it's been doing better than a lot of my non-Yuletide stories do. I find this is often the case; unless you're writing for a really obscure canon, there is often a fair bit of pent-up demand for fic that results in intense appreciation for once-a-year stirrings of life in mostly nonexistent fandoms.

(This has been working in favor of one of my gifts -- Threads from the Confused Distaff of Memory, a wonderful Darkangel Trilogy fic about Eryka in Pirs after her husband's death -- but not so much for the other, which makes me sad. Listen, That First Blush of Love (roses always wilt) is a story wherein Karla from the Black Jewels series gets a happy romantic/sexual relationship in her teens, before the drama of Queen of the Darkness goes down. It is excellent femslash! With people working to communicate openly and effectively! And Karla unapologetically being in charge of her country! Seriously, people, what are you waiting for???)

Anyway, my still-anonymous assignment is the only Yuletide fic I wrote this year. I did mean to write a treat, but stuff got in the way, as it often does. With a pinch of luck I will manage to repurpose the idea as a New Year's Resolution fic in January. *crosses fingers*

The main reason I didn't write any treats is, of course, my Daredevil Secret Santa fic, which got a bit out of hand. *wry* That one was much more of a stretch for me as a writer -- to the point where only Vicky's timely advice saved me from my perpetual failtasticness on a certain front, which probably disguises my authorship a bit.

(I love my sister dearly. She is, was, and always will be my best editor, and she's gotten even better since she started writing ebook romances as a secondary career.)

Anyway, if you guess either of my fics, I will write you a ficlet of at least 500 words in a fandom of your choice. The Yuletide one is for a canon that I have neither written in before nor talked about on this journal, though I feel it's fairly obviously in my voice and deals with several of my pet writerly preoccupations. The Daredevil one also deals with several of my writerly preoccupations, though slightly different ones from the Yuletide fic, and, as I said above, it's a bit less nakedly in my own voice.

...

You know, I don't think anybody has ever even tried guessing my holiday exchange fics. I might get more nibbles if I made a similar offer for NFE -- smaller pool of participants, for a start -- but eh, whatever.

Quick update!

I got two (!!!) Yuletide fics and a really long Daredevil Secret Santa fic. They are all lovely. I have kudos'ed them all.

I am also veyr tired and kind of tipsy on champagne cocktails, so I am not leaving comment tonight (because comments should be coherent and I am kind of really really not right now, also spelling is hard) but I will do that tomorrow morning.

In themeantime, I leave you links!

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That First Blush of Love (roses always wilt): Karla takes back control from her uncle, and with Morton, she starts establishing herself as Territory Queen.

You'd think that she'd be too busy for anything else. And it wasn't as if she expected anything else. After all, she never once felt attraction the way anyone else said they felt it.

Until, of course, she meets someone. And suddenly, she realizes she's not broken, or different - or even too busy. She's having the time of her life. (Black Jewels, 5,074 words, f/f, mature)

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Threads from the Confused Distaff of Memory: Women born of Isternes are slaves to no man. Eryka may be locked in a tower, but she will not wait helplessly for someone else to save her. (Darkangel Trilogy, 3,414 words, gen, not rated)

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The Very First Case of Page & Murdock: Karen meets Matt in her first semester at law school. Foggy is their first suspect. (Daredevil (MCU), 10,400 words, gen w/ background relationships, teen+)

Victory! Yuletide fic is done and posted.

There was an analogy that occurred to me around 6pm as being wonderfully apropos, but trying to fit it in wound up derailing the emotional through-line horribly, so I cut that attempt back out again. I kinda-sorta finagled it into a different location in a different form, but this version is not nearly as direct (or imagery-rich) as before, which is a little sad, but hey, that situation is exactly what the phrase 'kill your darlings' is meant for. *wry*

...

I should probably get the story beta read. The problem is, what I really need is a canon and characterization check, and this canon is... not obscure obscure -- I would be willing to bet that several people in my circle have consumed it at some point -- but not something I think a lot of people have detailed knowledge of right at their fingertips, and obviously asking would be a dead giveaway.

Presumably this is when I learn to use the Yuletide chat thingywhatsit and try to find a hippo? Ugh. That kind of technology never wants to work for me.

Tomorrow, I suppose.

(I mean, if anyone is willing to offer sight unseen, I will tell you the canon in private and you can decide from there whether it's something you are familiar enough with to offer informed commentary, but that's not a very reliable method of finding editors.)

1. Went to New Jersey for the weekend. This involved catching a bus to the Ridgewood park-and-ride, whereupon Dad picked me up and we drove to my parents' house. While in New Jersey, I:

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16. Set up my drying rack as a humidifier, by which I mean I soaked two towels (oddly-sized misfits, kept for this specific purpose) until they were sopping wet, and then hung them over the rack and let evaporation make my apartment slightly less bone-dry. This process is not completely effective and needs to be repeated every three to eight hours for the duration of winter, but it's effective enough, and a lot cheaper than buying and running an electric humidifier to boot.

And on that note, I will go soak the towels again and then go to bed, because I have work in the morning.

Obviously I fed and walked Dottie every day; take that as read. :) Beyond that, though...

1. Confirmed the two days I am swapping with my coworker. (Hmm. Miss Cactus, maybe? Not for any personality reasons; she just grows a lot of succulents as a hobby.) Also wrote down my vacation day schedule for November and December, and passed it on to Mom for use in family holiday planning.

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I also got through several chapters of rereading for my Yuletide assignment, and am noticing all kinds of layers to the work in question that I missed on my first two times through. (The first time, it's because the cover art and back cover text gave me slightly misaimed expectations of what type of story I was in for, and I was hurrying ahead to reach elements that never really appeared the way I thought they were going to. The second time I think it's just that I was relatively young and therefore lacking in a certain sense of perspective, and also that I wasn't reading with a specific eye out for details because I was not intending to use it as source material for fanfic.)