Belatedly....

This was my first Yuletide—though not, I hope, my last. My sister has been doing it for several years now; her obvious enjoyment enticed me to take part this time; and I also found it to be a lot of fun. Of course, it didn't hurt that I was staying with her this Christmas. We showed each other our stories, got a bit of basic beta'ing from each other, and generally fed the mutual excitement. So here are a few comments I have about the things I wrote.


"A Dark and Stormy Night":

I was matched with twilight2000—obviously because we're both Forever Knight fans. She said she liked casefic and team fic, and enjoyed flashbacks. Almost immediately, a bunny that had been lurking in the plot warren for a while twitched its nose and looked hopeful.

Back when Hurricane Katrina was dominating the news, it had occurred to me that Toronto had also once been hit hard by a similar storm. It had not been quite as devastating, of course, but pretty bad. However, at that time, I had been thinking in terms of continuing with a virtual Season Five; and a hurricane story would have been tricky to turn into an episode. After all, Nick was canonically in the States around the time of Hurricane Hazel (being questioned by the Senate Committee in the flashback to "Spin Doctor"). I'd more or less decided, therefore, that any flashback to Hurricane Hazel would have to involve one of the other characters—most of whom aren't old enough to have memories of it!

Well, I contrived. I got Nick back to Toronto for the fall of 1954 and I worked out that Tracy's mother (who had appeared in "Avenging Angel") would probably have been old enough at the time of Hurricane Hazel to have vivid memories of it, especially if she had lived in one of the heavily affected areas. All I then needed was a main plot to wrap the memories in.

Okay, in the end I never did bother to solve the murder mystery. (Quite honestly, it wasn't the thing that really interested me.) Anyway, the whole present-day story took place in the course of a single evening. As a rule, judging by the stock shots of sunrise and sunset, episodes of Forever Knight usually cover two or three days.

Instead, I focused on the flashback scenes, which required a lot of online research into Hurricane Hazel. In addition, since I justified Nick's flashbacks by placing the modern-day murder in the vicinity of the worst of the flooding, I had to do yet more research, since I don't know the western part of Toronto at all. As a result, I had Google maps open a lot of the time. What is more, I even researched homeless shelters in Toronto!

This is the longest story I wrote for Yuletide; and, as it turns out, it isn't finished yet. It was critiqued by brightknightie in her blog entry, "FK Stories Reviewed"; and, having read what she wrote, I've decided to go back and add a scene early on with Barbara Vetter. (Also, it seems there are a few elusive typos that need finding.)


"The Cross":

Having uploaded "A Dark and Stormy Night" for twilight2000, I had a few more days before Christmas. So I looked through the other prompts to see if anything appealed. As a result, I wrote a second Forever Knight story, "The Cross", as a treat for kynical. Again, this was inspired by a plot bunny—one that must be ten years old or more.

When I wrote the FK4 episode, "Death Shall Be No More", I included a flashback to Urs's internal experience of being brought across, playing off Nick's visions in "Near Death". This got me interested in looking at other characters' near-death visions. As a result, I wrote the story of Divia and her master in the flashback to "Goblin Glims", an FK5 episode that hasn't been made public yet, since I never finished the fifth season. In addition, another vampire character's experience appeared in a later FK5 episode, "A Matter of Taste". However, I had one flashback that never got written because I lacked a main plot to link it with. (There is no point in starting without a main plot, since the murder mystery normally represents such a large proportion of every episode.)

Now that I'm writing short stories (and not so short stories) rather than full episodes, though, it becomes possible to write an historical story without a modern-day envelope. Thus the story of LaCroix and the hermit could finally see the light of day.


"The Hundredth":

With "The Cross" in the Yuletide archive, I knocked off a ficlet inspired by a request for a story based on Nena's song "99 Luftballons" (better known to Americans, perhaps, as "99 Red Balloons"). I'd had the idea ever since I'd seen the prompt; but, of course, the FK stories had to come first. The result, "The Hundredth", was so short that it had to wait until the Madness collection opened on Christmas Eve before I could upload it.


"Under the Radar":

My fourth (or fifth) story, "Under the Radar", decided to be tricky. You see, back when people were nominating fandoms for Yuletide, someone decided to pimp Shadow Unit—of which I had never heard, but which sounded intriguing. So I checked it out. For those who don't know it, it's basically derived from Criminal Minds, but with an SF spin, since the serial killers who are being profiled are all people who have been infected by an "anomaly" that gives them superpowers. The series was created by Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Will Shetterly, Leah Bobet & Holly Black as original fan fiction (if that makes sense). It takes the form of a prose on-line TV show, with eight or nine episodes per season.

I was so enthralled that I spent a couple of weeks reading my way through it all.

An idea for a Shadow Unit story came to me even before I'd finished "A Dark and Stormy Night". In fact, it kept me awake for quite a while one night. The problem, though, was that it didn't fit minnaleigh's prompt at all, since it involved an original character. However, when I checked out her Yuletide letter, she said that she was interested in the world of Shadow Unit and "the question of where the line is drawn between monster and hero". That did fit with my bunny, which looked at the downward progression of someone infected by the Anomaly. So, to make the story work as a gift, I split up the OC's story into chunks and sandwiched it between pieces of a little teamfic story.


"Dear Sister-the-Sister":

I found it remarkably hard to force out the team story for "Under the Radar", and at one point I just plain stuck. At that point it was Christmas morning, and I'd been up all night. As I was in England, there was a five hour time difference from eastern North America; and that gave me some leeway in terms of getting the story done before the Yuletide collection closed. Still, it was decidedly awkward having the deadline looming because there was one more prompt that had tickled my fancy. So...I took an hour or so off to write that story instead, uploaded it, and then went back to finish the Shadow Unit story. Which makes the M*A*S*H story either fourth or fifth, depending on how you're counting.

It's rather interesting, really, since someone else was also inspired to write a last minute story to the same M*A*S*H prompt, and furthermore took a very similar tack. The two stories therefore are directly comparable.

PrimrosePixie wanted a M*A*S*H story about Father Mulcahy; and she suggested that perhaps his first "day/week/month" at the 4077th would be a good way to "delve into his character". So I wrote "Dear Sister-the-Sister" as a letter written by Mulcahy to his sister, a nun back in the United States. Letters were used in several actual M*A*S*H episodes, of course. By contrast, in "Best Care Anywhere", Lexie wrote a straightforward story about the day Mulcahy arrived at the MASH unit as he went through a series of little encounters with the first-season characters.

In my opinion, because my story was all in his own words, you got more insight into Mulcahy. (At least, I think so.) However, my story has less show and more tell. Certainly, it has less dialogue. I have to say, Lexie's story is lovely, and funny, and well worth reading; and, as soon as I finished it, I was sure it was better than my own!

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Because I've yet to revise "A Dark and Stormy Night", it's not up on my website. However, I've put the others up: "The Cross", "The Hundredth", "Under the Radar", and "Dear Sister-the-Sister".