What's good?  For February, the recommendation-of-the-month project features tv_elf's inventive, amusing "Things Unsaid" (2007), set circa 2011, in a reality unlike any other I've ever seen trying to cope with the aftermath of third season.

(For those playing along at home, this is not the story I originally requested for February, with no slight to either author, as I would be happy to recommend either story in any month.  I was simply unable to reach the other author, and by the project rules in force since 1999, recommendations are by permission only.  Thus, late recommending this month.  Apologies all around!)

What's new?  In January 2008, fkfic-l unfortunately did not see any stories posted.

I did not participate in any story exchanges this year, but tv_elf generously wrote me a gift story anyway.  Brand new, not yet even posted to fkfic-l, her "Things Unsaid" is that shining brilliant thing twelve years past cancellation called a new scenario.  Its characters include Nick, Natalie, Jenny Schanke and more I cannot name without spoiling things.  Please give it a try, and let her know you did so.

tv_elf, thank you!

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?"