What's good?  I'm running late on the recommendations project this month; my apologies.  Now that we're here, I am so pleased to get to highlight the energetic, enthusiastic, insightful, 1995 novel "Protect and Serve" by butterflykiki!  This unique angle on the Enforcers focuses on the human characters.

Natalie:	"Do you ever think that our lives would be a lot simpler if we just gave up on the secrecy and published the truth in the Enquirer, Nick?"
Nick:	"I don't need my life simplified that much."

What's new?  In October, fkfic-l saw one new story, a one-parter titled "Hallowe'en" by Walt D.  (Yea, Walt!)  November, by comparison, has gotten off to a sprinter's start, with three stories by three authors already!

I began the first draft of this story from Nick's perspective, and then started over again from Natalie's to find it worked better, though entirely differently.  The coda from Lacroix's perspective wasn't on my outline; it just appeared, as Lacroixian things sometimes do.

If this weren't a retrospective, I wouldn't have identified the voices like that, because my hope was for the reader to speculate, for the first few paragraphs, that it is Janette.  But of course the character list below shows that Janette isn't here.  I'm wary of detailed headers for that very reason (spoilers) and I'm glad fkfic-l still does not require them.  That preference seems to be my old-fashioned oddity, though, doubtless because there is ever so much more fanfiction than there used to be -- which is a good thing; don't get me wrong! -- and people in more active fandoms need more ways of sorting through it all.

	•	Title:	"Last Minutes"
	•	Length:	~3,100 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L October 24, 2007
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	At a wedding reception, Natalie ensures Nick's secret is kept.
	•	Setting:	c.2011
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Lacroix, Urs, Serena, Lily Toeffler, Catherine Barrington, Others
	•	Quotation:	"If most vampires persist in thinking of psychokinetic hypnotism as a magic spell, it's no wonder they don't use it to its full potential."

Next up in the retrospective is "Kindred Spirits," which falls into the "post tag scene" genre as a direct response to that twitching toe at the end of "Hearts of Darkness."  It received a nomination in the 2001 FK Fanfiction Awards, and I'm grateful to those who put it forward!  To this day, I believe it ranks among my best fanfiction stories.  I'm really rather proud of it; I hope that's not misplaced.

At the time, a few thoughtful readers explicitly praised the choice to not stray from canon into a Nick/Urs romance.  They were certainly correct, and a romance had not even occurred to me at the time!  But rereading the story today, I must admit that I wondered whether a sequel taking such a non-canonical turn might pre-empt "Ashes to Ashes" and "Last Knight" in a worthwhile way, for a happier, healthier ending all around.  Something to think about...

	•	Title:	"Kindred Spirits"
	•	Length:	~13,500 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in January 2001
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Jacqueline turns to Urs and Nick for help.
	•	Setting:	After "Hearts of Darkness"
	•	Characters:	Nick, Urs, Ellen/Monika/Jacqueline, Erica, Sofia, Natalie, Lacroix, Enforcers
	•	Quotation:	"Either one would help me, I guess.  Lucien for a price.  Javier, because he always does, eventually.  And there are others.  But unlike them, you'll help her, just because she needs help."

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."