I started this year with the intention of working on expanding "Trial by Jury", the oversized Original Work that I'd done for the ficinabox exchange in 2022. Well, it didn't work out that way. Even though I'd begun with ideas for various scenes dancing through my head like the sugar plums in "The Night Before Christmas", I delayed to write a ficlet for the new Candy Hearts Exchange (replacement for Chocolate Box) and then worked on a story for the Worldbuilding Exchange. At that point my website suddenly disappeared—and so did the next six months or so.

Investigating the loss of the site led me to the sad conclusion that Stephanie Kellerman must have died. Steph offered FK fandom webspace when GeoCities went down in 2009 and Nancy Taylor suggested saving as many of the old fan sites as possible, especially the archives, faction sites, hubs, and war sites. Steph had not only hosted my own particular site, but many others as well, in the Forever Knight Website Archive. Clearly, when she died, her family had no idea of contacting the mailing list—may, indeed, have been unaware of her fan activities.

I not only wanted to still have (and in time add to) my own site, but also felt a sense of responsibility to preserve the Archive for the sake of the fandom. So I decided to get a new webhost, which entailed registering a new URL, http://www.foreverknight.ca. In preparation, I updated my site. Some pages had been written long ago when I first learned how to write webpages; and I wanted to improve them. I also went through all the episodes of my virtual season, FK4. Back in the '90s, I wrote them in WordPerfect and had to zip them to save space. Unzipped and in Microsoft Word is certainly how people would expect to read them today. After that was all uploaded, I then did a lot of revision for the Forever Knight Website Archive. The job's not quite finished yet; but most of it has been done.

All this meant that—apart from doing FK Fic Fest (which I certainly wasn't going to miss!)—I did pretty well no fic writing until the fall. At that point, in rapid succession, I signed up for Trick or Treat, Fic in a Box, and Yuletide.


Gifts I Received:

Like last year, I received nine gifts in the various exchanges I did. Some of these were in fandoms I regularly request, others were Original Works based on a variety of superhero-related prompts.

In the Candy Hearts Exchange, myhaus_spaeter wrote me "On the side of human decency" based on Mary Renault's The Charioteer. It's futurefic set in the immediate postwar period, with Laurie just on his way home after a stint as a simultaneous interpreter at the Nuremberg trials. The job's been hard on him, as one might expect, and phone calls with Ralph have been a solace; but it is conversation with Sandy that proves most helpful in coping with the experience.

Much later in the year, thepersiancat gave me a story in the same fandom for Trick or Treat. "Sniffing Immortality" is a short cute story about Laurie's housemaster taking umbrage at an unauthorized Halloween celebration at the school.

In the Worldbuilding Exchange, I was given a "A New Normal", based on The Flash TV series. The point of view is unusual: that of David Singh, a senior police office in the Central City Police Departtment, who is contemplating the changes that have been brought to the job by the appearance of metahumans. A very interesting perspective, and a story that I'm very pleased to have received, for I have requested a story along these lines more than once before.

Then, in Yuletide, I got an unexpected New Tricks gift from greenet—unexpected, because this is a very rare fandom indeed. "Street lights" is a charming story, and very much "in character" with great banter around the office as the detectives mull over long-past cases that still bother them.

As for Original Works, I asked for them in three different exchanges, always with a variety of superhero related prompts; and, like last year, I got no fewer than five of them! They are: in Candy Hearts, slumber's "how to account for his rise to the top"; in Trick or Treat, elosiancandidate901's "Old Habits"; and in Fic in a Box, inarduisfidelis's Just a Cliche (But is That So Bad?)", dontstopmenow's How the Warlock Takes His Coffee", and mcbangle's Searching for the unknown crumb". A charming collection, and much appreciated. While I enjoy fanfic about canon superheroes, there are so many other possible scenarios and relationships to explore.


Stories I Wrote:

Here's what I wrote in 2023. Posting has been a bit delayed because my sister came to Toronto over Christmas and New Year; so it's only in the last week or so that I've had time to make the webpages for my Yulefic.

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