To those with FK fansites and fanfic archives: please consider posting your new URL to your blog as well as to forkni-l whenever you relocate.  I want to know, and I bet many others do, too.  Please help us follow you around the Web!

Seriously and sincerely.  Thank you!

I am somewhat nervously awaiting the response from my last beta reader on the BtVS story for femme_fic.  I therefore feel obliged to keep my head in BtVS, with my desktop wallpaper and screen saver showing Sunnydale, and those DVDs conveniently out.  For all I know, deep revisions will be required, and only a thick cushion of canon will let me execute them in time.

Even so, the calendar has turned my thoughts home to FK.  May 18, 2009 will be the thirteenth anniversary of the first airing of "Last Knight" (give or take; local syndication varied, etc.) and I want to post something to fkfic-l on that day again this year.  The gesture has felt good in years past.  (Feel free to join in, by the way. Excellent day for posting.)  It doesn't have to be related to LK -- I've been in a mood to ignore LK for years now -- but it must be as much worth the reader's time as I can manage, and I don't have anything on the verge of ready.  ( Just musing... )

I've spent all my hobby time for the past several weeks on my femme_fic story.  One kind beta-reader has already looked at it and, because of the grace period, it will get another scrub.  Here's hoping it will be at least the sum of its parts.

It's not FK, which is why I haven't been posting.  (Well, that and life... you know the drill.)  I've written outside FK before, of course, but this is my first go at this particular fandom (BtVS), and it's also my longest story yet outside FK.  I noticed that given an FK prompt, I tend to rewatch one relevant episode many times, but given a non-FK prompt, I tend to try to review (literally, re-view) all remotely relevant canon.  I think perhaps I must adjust my scale the next time out, as much_madness often tells me. :-)

This second femme_fic event marks the first anniversary of my ficathon participation.  They're a lot like list challenges, but the exchange aspect and the deadline are key differences that really ramped up my production.  I just wish I had more hobby time to go around!

Sign-ups for the next oldschoolfic ficathon are due no later than this Sunday, October 26.  Assignments will be sent by the 28th, and the story queue will be released on New Year's Day.  See the rules and sign-ups post.  If you don't mind saying, has anyone signed up with an FK request?  I'm really wavering over whether to sign up.  The end of the calendar year is so very busy, both at work and personally.  If no one else were playing it for FK, I would let it go this time, I think.  (But if someone were playing FK, I wouldn't want to pass it up.)

Currently topping my hobby-time agenda for the weekend: replying to email, and then back to fussing about my last ficathon story, which didn't work out entirely, and so hasn't yet reached fkfic-l.  I would really like to post it to the list before the end of the month (or, at any rate, before November 4, US Election Day).  So I'll see whether I can do anything with it.

And then there's galpalficathon, the next ficathon for which FK is eligible, with no sign-ups, and stories due November 16.  I originally thought I would participate for sure, but with that last ficathon story still hanging, unposted to the list, I haven't touched it yet.  If I manage anything, it will be short.  I feel bad about that, because I posted many prompts.

Yuletide is beyond me, I think.  But you all should nominate and write FK there!  I'll read! :-)

At the end of July, I posted about the forsaken_fandom community, and their project to recognize and encourage fanfiction in fandoms (including FK) that no longer have multiple regular award projects of their own.  This week (through Friday 08/15) is the last week they're accepting nominations for this round.  Looking at their FK nominations list, I currently see 31 stories by 11 authors.  Several sub-categories (including slash, erotica and fluff) as yet show no nominations, but all genres are eligible in the overall categories.

Any story originally posted or substantially revised in the past five years is eligible (so: 2003-2008).  They will confirm approval for all nominations with the authors, and the stories must be available online.

If you're interested, see their community profile, nominating rules, award categories, and the nominations post itself (to nominate, you post a screened reply to that post).  Note that there's an eligibility password in the rules.

Please consider checking their nominations to see which contemporary FK authors are missing, and then nominating excellent stories by them.  Please encourage FK authors to write more FK fanfiction!  Nominating them for awards is one good way to show we would like to read more.

oldschoolfic is holding a back-to-school ficathon.  All out-of-production fandoms that run a little quiet these days, including FK, are invited.  Now, this game is different from their last one: this time, the minimum length is 500 words (instead of 1000), the system is prompt/claim (instead of prompt/assignment), and there is a unifying theme of school (instead of no theme).

• Rules Post
• Prompt Submission Post

Their timeline is:  08/08-08/15 Submit prompts for others to write.  08/16-08/22 Claim a prompt to write yourself.  08/23-09/29 Claim another prompt if you've finished your previous one and want to do another.  09/30 All stories must be posted to the community.  10/07 Post your work elsewhere as well, if you like.

I'm a little concerned that between Worldcon this weekend and Vividcon next weekend, this may not be the ideal period to gear up high participation.  We'll see!  But it would be marvelous to have some new FK fiction.  I've submitted a few prompts (list below), but I'm sure you guys can think of much more provocative references, combinations and scenarios that will irresistibly seduce people into writing new FK! :-) Give it a try!

( Prompts I've Submitted )

[I will be cross-posting this to forkni-l.  I'm posting it here first this time, though.]

First, a word of caution.  I do not know the people running this project, and neither do the friends I asked.  The moderators of this community are strangers.

That said, there is a project called "The Forsaken Fandom Awards" (forsaken_fandom).  Their goal is to encourage fiction in fandoms that have few or no active awards projects of their own.  This includes us: FK fandom.  This is their second round; stories from the past three years [Correction 08/09: five years] are eligible.  In their previous round, few FK authors were nominated, none of whom post to fkfic-l these days, if I'm interpreting correctly (Fenris, Nancy W., and a Mel M. whom I think is not our Mel M.), though a special WIP award went to Lisa S., who posted part of a story to the list.

I learned of the project last week, when someone kindly nominated my "Starwort" from earlier this year.  A moderator emailed me, asking whether I would give permission for them to list the story and link to it on my site; without my asking, they promised not to post my email address and not to repost my story.  I spent the week hoping to find someone who knew them; I failed, but emailed back and gave permission anyway.

As this active awards project includes FK, we can certainly participate.  And it's downright silly for "Starwort" to be the lone FK nomination, which it apparently is at the moment.  Nancy K., Ell, PJ, Jarvinia, Elena, Kristen, and many others have posted excellent new FK fiction in the designated period!

Again, I'm not acquainted with the moderators, and that makes me anxious.  (I'm a Knightie; I angst.)  But encouraging more FK fanfiction is a worthy goal.  So here's their posted schedule:

• Nominations: July 11, 2008 to August 15, 2008
• Voting & Judging: August 16, 2008 to September 20, 2008
• Winners Announced & Banners Posted: September 27, 2008

An overview with links to their rules is on their profile.  You do not have to have a LiveJournal account to participate in nominating or voting, but if you don't, they will verify your email address before counting your contribution.

That's all I know.  If someone else knows more, by all means...?

The oldschoolfic ficathon has been released from its moderated queue!  It looks as if my "A Delicate Balance," written for amilyn's Natalie prompt, is the only Forever Knight story in the batch, unfortunately.  But there's BtVS, ST:TNG, HL, B5, VM, Farscape, original Battlestar Galactica, and more out-of-production series.  (As usual, it will take me a while to read my way through.)

Next round, we really must muster more FK prompts and players!  (Yes, I'm looking at you!)  I did submit one, but butterflykiki wrote my HL Methos and Tessa prompt instead, and as her "Fly Away Home" turned out so marvelously, I can't even wish she'd chosen otherwise.  Both, sure.  Otherwise, no. ;-)

Someone who found my "Bright Knight" website this week emailed to ask if I could recall a story about Lacroix going to Natalie after being attacked by Nick, and developing appendicitis.  This didn't ring a bell for me.  Does it for you?  People often talk about how difficult it is to injure or sicken FK's vampire characters for stories -- hurt/comfort is hard to render with all that supernatural healing going on! -- so I'd suppose that accomplishing a convincing illness for Lacroix would be memorable.  Whatever the story is, I must have missed it the first time around.

Over in oldschoolfic ficathon news, my first draft is complete.  ~9,000 words.  FK's first season.  Now for polishing diligently until the deadline this coming weekend.

In recommendations project news, I've procrastinated requesting permission to feature the desired story to the last minute again.  Why do I do this almost every month?  Procrastination isn't even a standard Knightie personality flaw! ;-)

I've signed up for the oldschoolfic ficathon for out-of-production fandoms (including FK).  Of course I hope the assignment I will receive includes an FK option, and my request post most certainly offers one.  But such happy matches will depend on participation.  If you're considering playing, sign-ups close this Tuesday (05/20/08), so you'll want to get that in!  (Note: the sign-up post is the rules post.)

I have just joined the new oldschoolfic community, which is dedicated to out-of-production fandoms, including FK.  Sign-ups for their first ficathon close on 05/20/08, assignments by 05/25/08, defaults by 06/20/08, and posting by 07/06/08.  As the fairly generous writing timeline includes some holidays, I am very seriously considering playing, but I need to ask the moderator just a couple of questions first (the instructions say that the prompts are "pairings," so I'm not clear on whether gen is wanted).

The fandoms mentioned so far are listed, but there are no restrictions on out-of-production fandoms -- except that they may not include presently uber-dominant fandoms that need no help to keep going strong (like LotR and HP) -- so if you don't see it yet, ask for it, and see if you spark someone's memory.

But mostly just ask for and offer FK, right? ;-)

Inserted 05/18/08: Gen is welcome on the ficathon, and my questions are answered here.

I posted two contributions to medie's week-long "Because We're Awesome"/"About the Girls" comment-fic fete today:

• "La Ville-lumière," a graphic for the prompt "Janette : Paris"
• "Clearing the Air," a traditional drabble (100 words) for the prompt "Natalie and Tracy : Talk"

I spent all my spare moments this week chewing over the MBIAV drabble; by contrast, the Paris graphic came smoothly and quickly on Friday night.  I'm not sure whether I should send the drabble to fkfic-l, or compile a cycle of drabbles or something else to make it worth the list's time.

There are two hours yet to midnight Saturday (the end of the event) here in the Pacific time zone, and more yet in Alaska, and Hawaii, and west to the dateline.  So more FK contributions may appear.  At the moment, however, it seems that abby82's "Cutthroat Business" (for the prompt "Janette : Business") is the only other FK posting.

medie has posted her official "Because We're Awesome" ("About the Girls") drabble-a-thon venue here.  The game is: write and post theme-appropriate comment fiction (drabbles, vignettes and ficlets) inspired by the prompts through Saturday 05/03.  There is a huge volume of prompts in a wide variety of fandoms.  In the interest of encouraging Forever Knight inspiration, I'm pulling out the FK prompts for quick reference here.

( The FK and FK/Crossover Prompts )

wiliqueen revived the "DVD Commentary" meme, sharing her thoughts on her 2008 BT fanfiction "Five Times Coreen..." (story / with commentary) and her 1993 FK fanfiction "To Drive the Cold Winter Away" (story / with commentary).  She asked for mine on my 2006 FK story "A Little Salsa Picante."

I put my commentary on my site this morning (story / with commentary).  Thank you, Wiliqueen, for reading the story, and for being curious for more!

Via havocthecat, I learned that medie is holding a week-long "About the Girls" comment fic festival -- like the femme_fic ficathon on a different scale -- beginning Saturday.  (In fact, she's calling it a "drabble-a-thon," which charmingly conveys the scale, but I'm old-school enough to define drabbles specifically as 100-word stories -- the haikus of fanfiction! -- so I thought you might get the idea better if I called it as I saw it.)

Two of you that I saw had already posted FK prompts there -- go abby82 and falcon_horus! -- and, encouraged by Havoc, I just joined you here.  Anyone else want to play?  I doubt I'm going to manage to participate -- timing, life, stuff -- but FK does have such magnificent characters to show off...

Medie is screening to hold her place as she compiles, so I thought I would also save mine here, for myself for reference.  ( Drabble-Sized Prompts )

Inserted 04/27/08: The official drabble-a-thon post is here.

I've begun posting "Starwort" to fkfic-l, which means it's really, truly done.  The list is still Broadway. ;-)  This incarnation of Fleur has made me think about those versions of the character that I've written so far, and those I have yet to try.  Of course references to Nick's sister pop up in most of my fanfiction, but in these pieces, she's present in her own voice:

2008	"Starwort"	Human Fleur
2001	"Grievances"	Meta Fleur
1998	"Fireweed"	Vampire Fleur
1998	"Whence the Truce"	Ghost Fleur
1996	"Billets Doux"	Epistolary Fleur

So what's next?  Not that my next story will necessarily feature Fleur, but I think I will not go seven years between again, either.  I have a small idea for a story with Ghost Fleur and Alyssa.  And I have ideas bursting out my ears for a parallel Vampire Fleur universe (not the same as in "Fireweed"), one of which I had the first glimpse in '96, but which never went anywhere past the first few chapters, because I thought of it as a novel I could never get all the way around (the murder mystery scenario is the hang-up).  I've recently come to think of it as a universe instead, and it has exploded like a seed pod.  I still need a solid cop-plot for the central present-day structure of the original story, though.

[04/20/08 6:04 PM: Edited to add links, by request.]

Just found a typo in the opening sentence of "Starwort" as posted to the ficathon.  Edited it immediately.  Covered in embarrassment.  No wonder only two people read it.  Aaaargh.

Inserted 04/23/08 11:23 PM:  Three more typos now rooted out.  After posting to fkfic-l.  Sigh.

Inserted 05/12/08 04:51 PM:  And another one.  C'mon typos!  Come out and face me!  ;-)

wiliqueen revived the "DVD Commentary" meme, and shared commentaries on her classic Forever Knight fanfiction "Color of the Night" (pure story / commented-upon) (second-ever entry in the recommendations project, by the way), and on a stirring portion of her recent Blood Ties fanfiction "Five Times Coreen Fennel Did Not Kiss Henry Fitzroy..." (pure story / commented-upon), and has generously promised me comments on one more FK scene to be named later, to boot.

Honoring the meme exchange, I hereby make a similar offer: pick any of my fanfiction (list), and I'll repost it with a "DVD commentary."  (However, I must add a caveat; if you choose a larger story -- especially one so big that I divided it into chapters or sections -- please choose just a scene, not the whole thing.  This is a little meme, not a giant project to consume the next several months, right? ~g~)

In other news, my last beta reader kindly came in on "Starwort," and I will make her adjustments -- she recommends a specific small new scene in the middle of the long conversation scene, among a few other tweaks -- and then start preparing the story for fkfic-l posting (that is, dividing it into <500-line ASCII posts wrapped at <60 characters-per-line and counting them; I love the list dearly and devotedly, but optimal list posting is both an art and a chore).

Icons.  My FK activity this week was creating a small flock of NatPack icons for wiliqueen.  I hope at least one strikes her fancy; any that do not catch her eye, I will recycle for general "up for grabs" consumption for any other icon-deprived NatPackers.  (I'll mark them so, when the time comes.)  I hope I'm building my icon-making skills as I go; it's a new craft, and I have a lot to learn!  In and around the new icons for wiliqueen, I also created just a few more for myself, including this (Gratuitous Icon Post!) one with Natalie, Nick and the Caddie from "The Fix."

Fanfiction.  Writing "Starwort" (that long Fleur story) for the ficathon was a bit of a "high," and I'm experiencing a low in its wake.  A friend who did not have time to beta before the ficathon is taking a look at the story now, and will let me know what I can fix in her areas of expertise before taking the story home to fkfic-l.  Trying to figure out where to begin a completely different new story, and not succumb to the morass of not writing for fun (only work), I'm playing with hearts_blood's request for a NCIS/FK crossover for her birthday; we'll see.

Analysis.  The last forkni-l digest I read came on March 22.  That's not far behind, by my standards these days, but there was this one post that week to which I would really like to respond -- at length, citing a whole alphabet soup of episodes, in the good old way -- but I can't well do so until I catch up on all the digests since, to see if someone has beaten me to the punch.  Ah, well.  Key thought?  The thing the poster assumed is true, well, it appears only in Lacroix's dialogue, and only after first season.  This leaves the very strong interpretive possibility that, as Nick and Janette's dialogue in the first season explicitly contradicts Lacroix on this point, Lacroix is either mistaken or lying, and either way, most probably trying to manipulate Nick!  Ah, well. :-)

I'm pleased to announce that when the femme_fic "We Love Female Characters" ficathon queue released late Friday night, the line-up boasted two FK stories!  (I admit that I was simultaneously grateful at that many and disappointed at that few, but I knew perfectly well that it was a wildcard in this game.  I can be angstily ambivalent -- I am, after all, a Knightie. ~g~)

The two FK contributions are:

• "Starwort" by me.  Features Fleur, Lacroix and a small crew of supporting original characters, plus references to Nick, Janette and more.  Written to a prompt by falcon_horus.  Will go to fkfic-l and on my website later this month.
  
• "Could They Choose Between" by havocthecat.  Features Janette, Natalie and Nick, with references to Grace and Schanke.  Written to a prompt by amilyn.  I hope Havoc will choose to share this one with fkfic-l in the future, too.

Of course there's a lot of very nice non-FK fanfiction, but this is my FK blog, so I'll leave that for you to discover (try the by-fandom index).

I'm going over my femme_fic ("We Love Female Characters") ficathon story draft one more time today, trying for as much polish as I can achieve before posting to the community this weekend.  As part of that, I've just transcribed the key dialogue from those episodes on which the story most draws, including every word ever spoken by my favorite neck-of-the-week, the most canonically pertinent guest character we ever received (such that I am joking by lumping her into that category, naturally).  The transcriptions below are exact; I did not omit even those lines that make me throw rolled-up socks at the screen, and you know these episodes have their share of those!  But I love them anyway, as shown by the 14,000-word draft continuing them that I'm scrubbing right now, and striving to make evoke these very lines.

If I've written the story well, no one will need to rewatch any episodes in order to understand it.  But reviewing FK canon is always a delight, right? ;-)  I will get these quotations properly sorted into my FK Concordance after the ficathon story is on its way.  (Gracious, but transcribing is so much easier with the DVDs than it was with tapes!)

Transcribed excerpts, in reverse chronological order:

( Crazy Love ) ( Fallen Idol ) ( Be My Valentine ) ( Near Death )

I'm two weeks behind on reading forkni-l digests.  This is ordinary, and nothing at all compared to how far behind I am on fkfic-l.  The thing is, I've finally learned that I don't need to reply on forkni-l; I can lurk.  (No, really, I can! This isn't fkspoilr days. ~g~)  But on fkfic-l, I feel very responsible to offer some sort of minimum feedback on every piece I read, no matter what, so I put off reading until I know I can make time for feedback as well.  It's a vicious circle, spiraling nastily from an attempt to create a virtuous circle.  Letters-of-comment can be infinitely frustrating to write in ways acceptable to fandom, but they're also the indispensable fuel for the fire of more stories in an out-of-production fandom.  If you don't tell someone you're reading her stories, she may not know anyone is reading her stories, and she may therefore not write any more stories.

And we must have more stories.

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.

For the record, I did sign up for Havoc's multi-fandom "Woman are Awesome" femme_fic ficathon, and she has said that multiple people -- that is, not just me :-) -- have listed FK, either as their wildcard request or as a fandom they are willing to write.

I hope y'all will consider playing, too ... and listing FK as your wildcard request!

[7:18 PM: Now crossposted to forkni-l.]

Natpacker havocthecat is one of the moderators running the new femme_fic LiveJournal community, which they are inaugurating with a multi-fandom "women are awesome" ficathon -- that is, centering on the female characters in a positive manner, whether the story be gen or romance or whatever.  (A "ficathon," by the way, is a lot like a fiction list challenge, except 1) there is a hard deadline, 2) there is no kick-off/sample story by the challenger, and 3) you submit multiple prompts of your own, and you receive multiple prompts submitted by your fellow writers, so you pick one to write from those you're given, and someone else picks one to write from those you give, so you "get a story in return" for the one you write.)

Unfortunately, FK is not one of the official fandoms for the ficathon (they held a vote; we didn't win).  So although there is a "wildcard" slot for unlisted fandoms like FK, there's no telling whether you'll really get the opportunity to write FK.  Of course, the more who sign up with FK as their wildcard, the better the FK odds ... which is why I'm posting here, of course!  :-)  If anyone wants to play in this ficathon, please consider bestowing your wildcard slot on FK?  ( Read more... )