the deep moans round with many voices

And yet more internet housekeeping. This was my 2023 Yuletide fic, written for Orichalcum.

A Proposed Exploration of the Karst Topography of the Magarran River Gorge (2778 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Hope Stornaway, Jemis Greenwing, Red Myrta (Nine Worlds Series)
Additional Tags: Slice of Life, Geology, Worldbuilding<

Summary: Wherein Hope Stornaway secures Red Myrta's aid in exploring a peculiarity of the limestone around the Magarran Strid, by the judicious use of pastries and an appeal to their mutual curiosity.

---------------

The title and the summary are pretty self-explanatory, you know? But anyway, this is set shortly after the events in The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul, and At the Feet of the Sun, which are all about six months later in the timeline than Plum Duff (the most recent Greenwing & Dart novel) -- in other words, it's late summer and I have made some vague assumptions about how things in Alinor might have been progressing.

Also I would like to say in light of the recently published Balancing Stone, I was 100% RIGHT about Hope wanting to do geological studies of south Fiellan, ha! :D

Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)

---------------

( General Information )

Okay. On to specific fandoms!

---------------

( The Darkangel Trilogy )

( Nine Worlds Series – Victoria Goddard )

( Saga of the Skolian Empire )

( Goblin Emperor Series )

And that is that. Thank you again, and happy writing!

More internet housekeeping, this time in the form of a belated Yuletide reveal post!

I wrote a story for twistedchick:

What's To Come Is Still Unsure (2363 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Tam Lin - Pamela Dean
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Armin/Molly DuBois, Janet Carter & Christina & Molly DuBois
Characters: Molly DuBois, Janet Carter (Tam Lin - Dean), Christina (Tam Lin), Robert Armin
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Slice of Life, Pregnancy, Complicated Relationships, Awkward Conversations

Summary: After the excitement of Halloween, Molly was happy to settle back into the familiar rhythms of college life: the daily grind of lectures, readings, and labs; odd meals at odder hours; rambling discussions that began in marine neurobiology and ended in the history of riots at musical and theatrical premieres.

---------------
---------------

As I said in various places (though possibly not this journal?), I found my assignment hilarious because I had already written an immediately-post-canon fic for this book back in 2016: The Morn Is Hallowday, in which I tied up a canonical loose end by showing how Molly explained the events of Halloween night to Tina, who hadn't been present.

So I decided to explore some of twistedchick's other requests to see if I could write something in a new-to-me fandom. In the event, some of the canons in question seemed too long for a quick Yuletide review, and the one I did get halfway through reading just wasn't sparking for me in a fannish way, so I figured I'd write what is, effectively, a sequel to my previous Tam Lin fic... because a few people had commented on wondering what might happen to Molly and Robin and I wanted to find out myself!

There's also a bunch of Janet and Thomas in the background, as well as Molly's friendship with both Janet and Tina, but really Molly is the star of the show, and the various ways she does and doesn't want to face up to what the reality of magic and fairy bargains with Hell mean for her relationship with Robin.

Some stuff, in no particular order:

1. I got roped into working in the Collegetown office last Friday, since Mom Boss was out of town for an event that had been scheduled long before the apartment fire***. Anyway, I think me being there reminded Aunt Boss that I exist on days other than Monday, and she has dumped some tasks on me on Wednesday and Thursday which are meant to be downtown-only days. Eh, it happens.

Also I need to create a spreadsheet for apartment inspections by Monday morning, which will be clear, concise, legible, and large enough to mark off with a pencil while fitting neatly on a clipboard. So that's a fun assignment.

2. In re: Yuletide, all I have to say is BEARS!!!

3. I got a nice end-of-year bonus check, and promptly dumped a chunk of that into making estimated tax payments to the IRS and the NY state tax department, because even though I won't have ACA advance premium tax credits to reconcile, bonuses are still money without a withholding mechanism and I would prefer to get a refund than get socked with a tax bill when I file my taxes in... probably early February, going by when assorted documents have reached me in the past.

4. On Tuesday morning my dentist's office called to say, "We see you have an appointment schedule for Tuesday the 20th, but we have an opening today -- would you like to come in this afternoon instead?" And since I do have to work on the 20th and would prefer NOT to get up at 7am in order to make an 8am appointment prior to an 8-hour workday, I said yes.

I got my X-rays updated and my teeth scraped and polished, and the upshot is that I still have deeply iffy enamel and slightly iffy gums, but there's no significant change over the past 6 months and none of my fillings are going weird, which is all I really care about.

5. So Chuck Tingle now has a Tumblr account, and sometimes people I follow reblog his posts, one of which involved a question about plus-sized cover models. He included examples of some of his works in his reply, and I honestly hadn't realized he wrote lesbian erotica as well as gay erotica? Anyway, I bought the three lesbian works he linked to, and they are amazingly sweet, which is not quite what I was expecting. They're also interestingly meta in places, and very big on emotional openness, healthy communication, and generally enjoying life. There are some typos, and I admit to getting repeatedly distracted in the one about the sentient planet Mercury by the way Tingle seems to have confused Mercury with Jupiter, but overall these are genuinely good reads. Also Tingle includes a bonus story in each "book," which is nice because the stories themselves are only about 4000-5000 words long.

I may need to check out some of Tingle's full-length books.

6. Ithaca is currently experiencing the big winter storm that has been sweeping across the country. So far it's been mostly sleet and freezing rain, but apparently that may change to snow overnight? And snow on top of ice is, shall we say, less than desirable for MANY reasons.

I dug out my shovel and am setting my alarm an hour early tomorrow, just to be on the safe side.

-----

***I will make a separate post about the fire at some point. For now, all you need to know is that it happened on Monday the 5th at about 6:15am, NOBODY DIED or was even seriously injured, and 80 tenants were displaced though we have been whittling that number steadily downward.

Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)

---------------

( General Information )

Okay. On to specific fandoms!

---------------

( The Darkangel Trilogy )

( Nine Worlds Series – Victoria Goddard )

( Saga of the Skolian Empire )

And that is that. Thank you again, and happy writing!