Recently, in FK on my Friends List:

• Potential Fanfic!  On October 3, ithildyn considered the c.1849 flashbacks in FK's "The Code," and how to cross FK with Magnificent 7.  Does the idea of Chris/Janette strike your fancy?
  
  
• Upcoming Ficathon!  On October 3, the oldschoolfic moderator confirmed that she is planning an end-of-year prompt-a-thon and story exchange.  (This is the community for out-of-production shows like FK.)
  
  
• New Fanfiction Posted!  On September 30, the current "Back-to-School"-themed oldschoolfic ficathon was due, and there are two FK stories this time!  (Naturally, there are also nice stories for other fandoms.)  For FK, we have:
  • "Twenty-Five Minutes" (G) by abby82 for the prompt: "the girl in the photo on Captain Amanda Cohen's desk" (~800 words).
    
  • "Fearful Symmetry" (PG) by me, for the prompt: "In 'Spin Doctor,' Nick says he had some remarkable students; how did he say goodbye to them?" (~7K words).
• Ficathon! DVDs!  On September 22, abby82 mentioned the galpalficathon FK prompts (available now, ficathon due November 16), and that the The Border (with CD and NB) is coming soon to R1 DVD.
  
  
• Meme!  On September 17, ithildyn posted an FK quotation meme.

Also, voting over at the forsaken_fandom awards is open through Monday, October 13 (Rules, FK List, FK Ballot).

I began posting my oldschoolfic ficathon story to fkfic-l today.  I'm grateful to amilyn for the ficathon prompt, and her enthusiastic reception of the story!  And I'm obliged to my generous beta-readers (see the story's end note) as always.  This is the longest piece I've yet written solely from Natalie's perspective.

	•	Title:	"A Delicate Balance"
	•	Length:	~9,900 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L July 27-29, 2008
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Natalie takes a break from a murder investigation to attend an unusual memorial for her brother, while considering a new approach to Nick's condition.
	•	Setting:	After "1966."  Flashbacks to Natalie's childhood.
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Schanke, Richard, Sara, Nana, Janette, Grace, Stonetree, Tracy and others.
	•	Quotation:	"The mesmerism-enforced lie that had covered Richie's vampirism curdled on Natalie's tongue."

Addendum:  By the way, the fkfic-l "ACK" states that the posts are reaching 279 recipients.  (I presume that is "mail" and "digest," not "nomail," but I don't know for sure.)  Those of you who have FK fanfic you've posted on LJ but not the list, please do consider sharing with the biggest FK audience still assembled.  We miss you.

What's good?  For March, the FK recommendation-of-the-month project features Dorothy's novel "Evidence" (1998), set shortly after "Trophy Girl."  The Reese subplot (in and around a serial-killer cop plot, Renaissance flashbacks and some Natalie psychology) makes me think again that as Dorothy is most often publicly praised for her N&N romance content, her spot-on rendering of Reese is perhaps an underappreciated gift to the fandom.

What's new?  In February 2008, fkfic-l happily saw these two new stories posted.

• "What Would Happen" (an FK/Smallville crossover, adult) (1 Part) by abby82
  
• "Steamer Trunk Space" (a Janette vignette) (1 Part) by me

At least, I presume it was happily.  I was happy at the advent of new fiction, even though one of the stories was my own.  I would be happier if there were more, always.  Fandom does not live by discussion alone.

Someday, I may write a sequel to this novella, and it may be called "Under a Long Shadow."  Someday.  If I figure out the theme.  I know what happens next, you see, but I'm not sure it matters, because "In the Light of Day" fulfills its whole original purpose.  To write, I must have purpose.

"In the Light of Day" is a parallel-reality tale.  The break with canon comes after "Fever," and the story then progresses through "Dead of Night," "The Games Vampires Play" and "The Human Factor," reworking each episode given Nick's new mortality, until things are so different that the parallel snaps, and the alternate reality floats free.

One tidbit of which I'm fond here is Natalie's on-the-fly psychoanalysis of Lacroix, in which she concludes that no one will ever love another person as much as he has, over eight centuries, convinced himself he loved Fleur.  I also like the garden I built for Feliks Twist (but I really owe him a nice story of his own for his fate here).  And the flashbacks!  I did more research for them than any before or since (so far).  For this story, I became queen of a certain slice of Trivial Pursuit questions.  :-)

	•	Title:	"In the Light of Day"
	•	Length:	~53,000 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in October 2003
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Nick regains his humanity, but he's not the only one.  And no one is prepared for all the consequences.
	•	Setting:	After "Fever," with flashbacks 1226-1228
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Norma, Stonetree, Urs, Tracy, Reese, Vachon, Feliks Twist, Lacroix, Myra Schanke, Janette, Others
	•	Quotation:	"Nick strolled back to his loft in the crisp morning light, feeling everything was right with his world. Granted, his arm was in a sling, his shoulder throbbed like thunder, he remained on enforced medical leave, his partner might never again pass a police physical, and the Enforcers could well be coming to get him and the woman he loved..."

Is Dorothy not the most outstanding, as well as most prolific, writer of Captain Joe Reese?  Is there anyone who does Reese better?  I've been rereading Dorothy's 1998 FK novel "Evidence" (which I've requested permission to officially recommend on Bright Knight for February, but of course have not yet heard back because I asked only yesterday) and while there are many aspects on which to comment, including a nice recognition of Natalie's accumulated traumas, I am once again bowled over by her spot-on rendering of Captain Reese.

My meta-parody "Grievances" is one of those few pieces that have never yet made it to fkfic-l.  I archived it on Bright Knight in 2001, but as far as I knew, no one read it until tv_elf recommended it on her LJ two years ago, when several people kindly commented on it.

It was my first attempt at comedy (well, since my contributions to the My Parental Units Invaded Earth and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt FK/DS/XF humor zine, anyway).

	•	Title:	"Grievances"
	•	Length:	~2,900 words
	•	Date:	Summer 2001
	•	Rating:	G
	•	Summary:	Canonical characters organize to protest the working conditions in fanfiction.
	•	Setting:	Where characters await stories
	•	Characters:	Vachon, Fleur, Janette, Lacroix, Schanke, Cohen, Stonetree, Nick, Natalie, Others
	•	Quotation:	"Bad day on the fic list?  Let me guess -- you spent an entire shift making love to Tracy Vetter for no emotionally established reason in no logically explained manner, and you need an aspirin and a shower?"

 

Putting this fanfiction retrospective back on chronological track, the next story up is "England's Rose."  It seems peculiar now, over a decade later, on this side of 9/11 and war and all the rest, the volume of grief lavished on Princess Diana's loss.  But at that time, much of a generation saw a mirror crack, and felt their reflection shatter.  Natalie is part of that generation.

FK's timeline warps to accommodate this story.  "Nobody dies, nobody ever dies," so that the entire cast can register reactions.

	•	Title:	"England's Rose"
	•	Length:	~5,572 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in September 1997
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Princess Diana's death distresses Natalie and reminds Nick of Queen Caroline.
	•	Setting:	August 31 and September 6, 1997; Flashbacks 1981 and 1783
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Sara, Grace, Schanke, Nick, Janette, Lacroix, Urs, Vachon, Screed, Tracy, Cohen
	•	Quotation:	"Natalie had turned nineteen the summer of the royal wedding, and there had been something inescapably exciting about watching this girl, her own age, walk onto the world stage."

 

This was my first lengthy fanfiction.  I'm still pleased with it.  It shows traits of its age (among other things, I appear to have owned stock in semi-colons), but it musters an actual mystery, and builds a future and a past for the characters.  When writing it, I didn't make an outline, and I'm not sure I even knew how it would end when I began -- imperatives when writing today -- but it came like an onrushing wave, covering all the ground, and then there it was.

Tracy's guy, Paul, is my best original character yet.  Her coworkers and the people from whom she gets clues aren't just stick figures, either.  I seem to have felt much more free to invent guest stars in those days, for some reason.  You can't let them overshadow the canonical characters, of course, but the presence of guest stars is certainly canonical; rereading this story has made me wonder where that's gone for me.

	•	Title:	"Corners of the Mind"
	•	Length:	~32,200 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in June 1997
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Resurging memories plunge Tracy into the unsolved mysteries of Natalie's murder and Nick and Vachon's disappearances.
	•	Setting:	Three years after "Last Knight"
	•	Characters:	Tracy, Reese, Lacroix, Janette, Vachon, Screed, Bourbon, Jenny Schanke, Others
	•	Quotation:	"She told him everything she had learned about that wrinkle in their reality -- everything, except that her own blood spoke of apricots and calla lilies. For now, she kept that to herself."

Fluff.  Utter, unremitting fluff.  My first fiction response to "Last Knight" was apparently thoroughgoing denial wrapped in sappiness and sprinkled with humor.  Eeep!  A few years on, this would have been satire, but at the time, I meant it just as it is.

	•	Title:	"Happiness Is"
	•	Length:	~1,700 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in June 1996
	•	Rating:	G
	•	Summary:	Natalie and Nick chat about friends and family, happily ever after.
	•	Setting:	"Nobody Dies; Nobody Ever Dies"
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, references to everyone else (that's right: everyone!)
	•	Quotation:	"How about you, Natalie Lambert Knight, love of my eight hundred and four years?  Are you happy?"

"At Issue" tied for FK fanfiction poem of the year for 2000, the last year for which those awards were held.  I am grateful to those who voted for it!  That kind recognition has meant a lot to me.

	•	Title:	"At Issue"
	•	Length:	~290 words Ten pentameter quatrains, rhymed
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L on July 15, 2000
	•	Summary:	While interrogating the suspect in "Dead Issue," Nick identifies his struggle with hers.
	•	Characters:	Nick, Linda Fiori
	•	Quotation:	"bound hand and heart to civilized evil"