Talk about a current fannish project (fic, art, vid, crochet, funko pop village) (that you are creating or enjoying)

How current is "current"? Given how little work I've done on the goal I mentioned in the Challenge #2 post, that one doesn't qualify as anything but wishful thinking! Yet, anyway.

Last year, though, I did get another installment done for the Depths of Cold series I started back in 2019. It's based on what backstory we have on the version of Captain Cold (Leonard Snart) that appeared in the Arrowverse, specifically in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Most fic about his childhood dwells hard on the abuse he suffered at his father's hands. However, it seemed to me that anyone who got half-starved and beat up as much as he does in fic would hardly grow up to look like Wentworth Miller, the actor who played him. I wanted to write something more nuanced.

There are at least a couple more installments to go; but I got Part 6 up last year. "Cold Storage" actually is about Len's meeting Mick Rory (Heat Wave) in Juvie; but, after all, that's part of the backstory too.

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

Well, as I come a bit late to the Snowflake Challenge this year, one goal is to do some more of them. (Not all, mind you; but more than just this one!)

But seriously folks....

One big goal I have this year is to work on expanding a story that I did for ficinabox back in 2022. "Trial by Jury" was never supposed to be 38K long! I did, on the other hand, intend from the start that it should end on a cliffhanger. By Christmas, though, the darn thing had made it clear to me that it had aspirations: it considered itself no more than the first part of something bigger. So my goal is to get some work done on its goal.

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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In some ways, this has been another frustrating year; but it ended well. From spring to summer, RL was hair-tearingly slow as various house repairs were pending ... pending ... pending. However, come October, the contractor got his act together and all have now been done. Fannishly speaking, some exchanges that I've done in the past were either ended, or ending, or had no prompts that interested me. On the other hand, I completed two more installments in the M*A*S*H series I've been writing about Hawkeye's first year home after the end of the Korean War; completed an unfinished Sime~Gen story that's been lingering for more than ten years (and the first part of another that's waited just as long); and wrote my first Original Work, which came in at a mere 38K.

Of course, I also got only partly through the story I'd been writing for FK Fic Fest, and had to quickly substitute something much shorter, and didn't get any more written on the Arrowverse series about Leonard Snart's childhood. Also, the Original Work decided, even before the anon period was up, that it wanted a sequel; and then, over Christmas, informed me that there had to be a third part as well. (It clearly has ambitions.) Some of this may augur well for 2023, of course.

This year, in some of the gift exchanges I did, I asked for Original Works with a variety of superhero related prompts; and, of the nine stories I got this year, no fewer than five fit that description! I may have my favourites; but I'm not saying. I can assure you, quite truthfully, that there were no duds.

Anyway, here's what I wrote in 2022. Since I've been spending Christmas with Flo, I haven't made any webpages for my Yulefic; so those links will have to come later, when I get home.

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I've been pretty remiss over the past few years in writing about the new pages on my website. However, I recently added the page for "Limner", the story I wrote for this year's fkficfest. We got nine stories, all of them good'uns. Check them out!

"Limner" is set in a monastery in the thirteenth century; and I wanted the design to reflect this.

For the main background, I decided to use a graphic of ceramic tiles somewhat resembling those one might find in a medieval building. I found that I had to tweak the original, since it didn't display properly: the edges mated up all right, but the shading on the red-brown areas hadn't been blended properly and left lines where the graphic repeated across and down the page. I fixed that by flipping it multiple times and joining the whole thing together: the result is four times the size of the original, but "tiles" properly.

Then, instead of my usual central panel with a fancy border, I decided to use a sort of triptych design with panels of coloured church-style windows on either side of the story. This meant that I had to be careful when specifying the size of all the sections (and I haven't tried it out on different browsers); but I hope it works okay.

At the top, I added a picture of partly ground pigment. I got it from Wikimedia Commons, and then wiped out the background in the photo. I think I got it pretty well, especially since it's been scaled down quite a bit. The protagonist is a monk illuminating a manuscript; and the process is sketched in as the story progresses. I was lucky enough to find a picture in which the heap of pigment is red (like the demon the monk is painting). Almost the entire pile is in the photo; so I only had to shift a few grains around to get it to look right.

The monk is never named in the story. In fact, brightknightie contacted me to check if this was an accidental omission. However, I assured her it was deliberate: I wanted readers to figure it out as they read. She was very careful not to let the secret out!   :)   Comments on AO3 suggest that the stratagem was effective.

If you like superheroes (and especially if you like hero/villain relationships) let me recommend the gift I got for this year's Chocolate Box Gift Exchange. "Villainous Tendencies", by MagicaDraconia16, is a delightful conversation between a retired hero and a reformed villain who, however attached they may be to one another, still cannot quite throw off the past. Short but very cute.

The story i wrote, "The Doctors Pierce", is a M*A*S*H story. My recipient, tjs_whatnot, is a big Hawkeye fan, and requested any of several gen pairings, including Hawkeye and his father.

I angled a bit to be assigned to them so that I could write a sequel to "Crabapple Cove", which I wrote for last year's retrotvexchange. However, the connection between the two stories is more a matter of head canon. "Crabapple Cove" covered the first days of Hawkeye's return; "The Doctors Pierce" takes place in the New Year, when Hawkeye has more or less settled in to working with his father in the family practice. It can certainly be read as a stand-alone.

Winter features largely in the story; so, for the webpage, I picked a main background of snowy branches, with only a touch of gilded green in the frame around the text.

Challenge #10:   In your own space, rec a fanwork (fic, art, vid, playlist, anything!) you did not create.

I decided to rec Forever Knight fic; and then had a tricky question to answer, since there are a few thousand of them now. Not on AO3; but, if you go back to the old archives, then there certainly are—plus, of course, the new ones. So I decided to limit it to LK stories. And then, having read through a few (and there are more than just a few!), it seemed best to stick to a single theme. So here a a couple of stories that follow the series finale, "Last Knight", but require a measure of detective work from a lone survivor.

Angst is one thing; and I don't deny there are some good examples out there. However, I do like me some plot with my fic.

Dorothy Elggren's "All The Rest Is Silence" is, of course, the classic of the type. Set immediately after "Last Knight", a grieving Captain Reese tries to puzzle out the mystery of what exactly did happen in Nick's loft that fateful day.

On the other hand, brightknightie's "Corners of the Mind" is predicated on Tracy's survival with amnesia about the year she worked with Nick, until a series of odd events bring on nightmares that point to a forgotten secret.

This has been another depressing year. COVID, of course; but I've also had health problems—nothing serious, but joints can be quite uncomfortable when they decide to be. It's also not been a very productive year, fannishly speaking. Of course, compared with the flurry of ficlets in 2020, this year's output would pretty well have to be fewer in number. However, though most of the stories have been a more typical length, I've definitely not written as many as usual.

On the whole, I'd have to say the highlight of the year has been the gifts I received. Four for Trick or Treat! All of them delightful. Two for Yuletide, including a New Tricks Brian/Esther fic that I've been requesting in various exchanges for quite a while: utterly in character, everyone's voice spot on. Seriously, people have been generous and talented; and I appreciated the lot.

Add in Flo's Christmas visit, and it's fair to say the year did end well. :)

Anyway, here's what I wrote in 2021:

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With this year's authors now revealed, I can say unreservedly that trickortreatex was fantastic this year. My bag was full. Not only did I got a delightful gift but three treats, all of which were very tasty morsels indeed.

From the date, my official gift must be "It's Not Easy Being a Superhero on Halloween" by Silex. It's an Original Work written to the character/prompt, "Superpowered Character on Halloween Annoyed at Passersby Insisting Their Costume is Inaccurate". As Crimson Charger discovers, trying to stake out a convention full of cosplayers presents unexpected difficulties.

Until the last minute, I thought that this would be my only gift. However, when the collection opened, it turned out that I had three last-minute treats:

• "What's Possible" by wherewolf is another Original Work, written for the character/prompt "Protective Sidekick to Superhero Losing his Powers".
• "Acid Test" by entwashian is a story about the Arrowverse Leonard Snart cheering up his sister, Lisa, when no one recognizes her costume.
• "Trick or Treating" by ChokolatteJedi is a M*A*S*H Halloween story.

All are short and sweet, and I recommend them heartily!

As for my own assignment: I wrote "Zari on Zari" for cicerothecat, who had requested a story about Zari Tomaz & Zari Tarazi from Legends of Tomorrow. As these are two versions of the same character from different time lines, they can only appear alternately on board the Waverider, the other one being bound inside the jointly-owned air totem that gives them their powers. Rather than contrive a meeting in the totem!world, I decided to have each of them alternately spill opinions about the other. They are very different people—as one ought to expect, given their radically different life experiences.

The webpage for the story is now up on my site here. I went with the green background that I've been using for most of my Legends stories, and decided to snip out the air totem from a screencap to use as the divider between each character's comments. As it's red, I added some red tones to the frame around the story.

Meme taken from lightbird.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?
236

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?
463,012 words

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
45 or so

Main fandoms: Forever Knight (91), The Charioteer (40 + 42 ITOWverse stories), DC's Arrowverse (13)

Gift exchange regulars: Jean Robertson series (5), Swallows and Amazons series (5), M*A*S*H (5)

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I don't always do the everywoman exchange. In the last couple of years I've felt a lack of possible recipients to write for. This year, however, was different: I actually had multiple possible matches, and wound up writing two stories.

My gift, "For the Living", was written by brightknightie. Despite the usual anon period, I had no doubt of my author. Her footnoting style is very distinctive. (Not that I said anything, of course.) It's a marvellous slice-of-life fic about Natalie and Grace, set at work in the Coroner Building. Multiple cases are described, each different and demanding a different response. Although there isn't a lot of medical detail, Amy did a lot of research into the daily routine of a pathologist's duties and the way a lab like that is run. She also tied her story into canon, picking up on Natalie's comment in "Cherry Blossoms" about staff cuts and applying that to Eddie, the morgue attendant from "Only the Lonely", who also appears in the story.

If you haven't read it already, I strongly recommend it. As always, Amy's done a crackerjack job.

My own assigned recipient was my sister, fawatson. To put her off the trail, I told her I was writing for Amy. Which I was; but, of course, as a treat. I don't think Flo guessed the truth until the collection opened, at which point she discovered that there were two FK stories and only one gift for her. "A Day in the Life" is based on Mary Renault's The Charioteer. Among other things, she'd asked for a story about the hero's mother's housekeeper (a very minor off-scene character in the book) and her relationship with her employer (who is a very sweet, decidedly manipulative woman). As I put it in the story summary, "No man is a hero to his valet. Nor woman to her housekeeper." Mrs Timmings has few illusions. The background is World War II, of course; but it becomes clear that I've set the story during one particular period shortly before the main action of the book, making it backstory of a sort.

As for the treat for brightknightie (which was actually written first), "Sunny Days, Sunny Ways" is about Tracy—both her relationship with her (numerous!) family and her friendship with Vachon. Amy had said, "I think that the series started out trying to make her contrast with Nick, as Schanke did, but ended up paralleling them instead, and never fully grappled with what that change offered to the larger story." As the third season progressed, TPTB shifted from really using the full group of new characters to just sticking Tracy in the position of "Nick's new partner". I suppose her relationship with her father, her mother, and the apparently enormous Vetter clan substitutes for Schanke's family; but her friendship with Vachon was almost dropped for a while, and could have been profitably elaborated in contrast with Nick's work romance with Natalie. In the story, Tracy bitches to him about her mother's insistence she spend the Labour Day holiday with her instead of attending the usual big Vetter bash.

Both stories are now uploaded to my website. "Sunny Days, Sunny Ways" has a yellow-themed design, with a turbulent background reflecting Tracy's annoyance with her family, and a gold & white gradient carefully positioned to give a "sun" within the border round the story itself. "A Day in the Life" has a sort of old-fashioned wallpaper design (from Ambographics Art) in lavender and tan, with a rather demure border round the story. As the story takes place on the home front during the Dunkirk evacuation, I included a picture of one of the actual "little ships" involved, taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Prompt 7: Zephyrus

The child of Dawn (Eos) and the Titan Astraeus, Zephyrus represents the West wind. Zephyrus was considered to be the gentlest of the Anemoi (wind gods representing the cardinal points of the compass), and the beneficial bringer of Spring. The gentle springtime winds of the West indicated an end to Winter and the new growth of plants and flowers.

Spring in summer?

I'm going to rec two stories I wrote a while back; or, if you don't want to bother with the actual fic, then just have a peek at the webpage design. *g*

"Fairies of the Orchard" is a little Flower Fairies treat that I wrote for Yuletide one year. The fairy in question is the Apple-blossom Fairy—or is it? There's a touch of John Barleycorn to this tale, as blossoms turn to fruit and the fairy undergoes a metamorphosis. (On AO3.)

Applefic started as a series of ficlets based on Mary Renault's The Charioteer. The name has its own history: basically, that I couldn't come up with a title, kept referring to it as "my applefic", and got so in the habit that I finally just made that the title. It has a sort of dual time to it: each chapter is set consecutively round the calendar and each describes an incident in the hero's life from early childhood (when he first moves to the village), through older childhood and his teen years, until he finally moves out of the cottage for good after World War II, i.e. after the timeframe of the book. On my website, each chapter has its own apple-themed design, season by season; and, since it begins and ends in spring, the first and last both have the same apple-blossom background. (On AO3.)

Both stories have this in common: spring leads to summer, thence to fall and winter, and so round the calendar. And then comes the following year.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

And so we come, albeit belatedly, to the end of the meme. Its "25 Days" have spread over more than a month. But all good things....

Fun? Given the "pulling teeth" (occasionally hen's teeth!) aspect of writing, I'd have to say that the most fun is going back afterwards and reading what I've written.

I don't mean editing, which is really part of the writing process. Nor do I mean the repetitious rereading required for polishing, which is a compulsive process that continues for several days—if not weeks—after a story is posted. Call that the necessity of self-beta'ing: time is needed to gain perspective. I can go back weeks later and spot not only typos but places where the story could be tightened up. Even plot holes. If it won't be too obvious, I'll tweak. Posting on line does have advantages over print.

No, I'm talking about going back much later. Years, like as not. And then you look at what you wrote with wonder that the words actually came from your own brain. So coherent! So pertinent! So insightful! So true to character!

Well, sometimes. ;)

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24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

I like to think my writing has improved! Seriously, though, the obvious change is that a major part of my early writing was in the form of scripts (or a modification thereof) whereas now I write prose.

I think one consequence of the way I modified the script format so that I effectively transcribed what one would see on screen (i.e. with all the camera angles and edits) is that I had to learn how to visualize action. It wasn't easy, either! I could hear the voices quite easily. All I had to do was put the characters together, give them a bit of a nudge, and write down what they said. After that, of course, I had to go back and clean it up by removing ums and ahs and digressions; but that's pretty straighforward. However, I had great difficulty seeing things in my head.

Nevertheless, this was necessary, not only so that I could write out the larger things, such as car chases and fight scenes (which were relatively rare) but how people moved around the sets (which they do all the time). I also had to add in the small stuff you see on screen that is added by the actors in performance—the so-called "actor's business", in which they bring the part to life with such petty details as picking something up, scratching their nose, or shifting in their seat. As a result, I'm a bit better now at adding such things into prose fiction as well. Usually I do it as I revise the story. It helps me fatten up the bare dialogue.

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23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Back around 2006, I got an idea for a long Alias Smith and Jones story that would tell the early history of the characters. By the time I'd written Chapter Two (at which point they were still kids), I'd already decided to scratch off the serial numbers. I'd come to the conclusion that I didn't want to be bound by the hints in canon, but preferred to create my own story. So I renamed the two protagonists, did a fair amount of library research into the early American West, and figured it would finish up a full length novel if I put into it all I envisioned.

Well, what can I say? I got as far as Chapter Eight, plus doing the final chapter. Then the AS&J message boards where I'd been lurking suddenly closed; and shortly thereafter I discovered maryrenaultfics, which, at that time, was a very active community just about to start a major meta discussion. Between that and FORKNI-L, which was also active back then, I somehow lost the impetus to forge on.

So The History of Hadrian Deane wound up abandoned.

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22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

Not the very oldest, which are in a box somewhere. And it's been a while since I've dipped into my virtual season or my war!fic. However, I do go back and reread my old stories—not all of them, but at least some. How do I feel about them? It's hard to believe sometimes that I actually wrote them: that I managed somehow to pry out the words and phrases and get them reasonably right. I look on my handiwork and see it is good—and it's downright astonishing.

In case you are curious, these are ones I probably reread the most. Most of these are longer works, which is not to say that I don't now and then browse through the ficlets. I also check my more recent stories; but that's partly a matter of belated polishing. Not that I don't find typos, even sometimes after years!

For FK:
• “Simcoe Day”
• “The Sun of Cairo”
• “Phases of the Moon”
• “Couched Work”
• “Out of the Night that Covers Me”
• “En Vacances”
• “Festival of Festivals”
• “The Father, the Son, and the Unholy Ghost”
• “The Siege of Hastings”
• “Gone Where the Goblins Go”

For Mary Renault's The Charioteer:
• “A Dog’s Life”
• “The Road to Rio” (X with Swallows & Amazons)
• “Applefic”
• “Exit Stage Left, A Wounded Warrior: The Lost Chapters of The Charioteer”
• “A Fork in the Road to London” and its sequels

For the Arrowverse:
• “Stopped Cold”
• “Rogue Kiss”
• “Silver is Gold”
• “Double, Double, Time and Trouble”

For other fandoms:
• “Afterword” (Alan Garner's Alderley Edge books)
• “Hot Buttered Crumpets” (Narnia X Alice in Wonderland)
• “Hobbiton Farm” (The Lord of the Rings X Victorian Farm series)
• “Season 7, Episode 4: Day Two” (Time Team X Diana Wynne Jones's Dalemark series)
• “Minstrelsy and Apple-Pie” (Elizabeth Goudge's A City of Bells)
• “Fairies of the Orchard” (Cicely Barker's Flower Fairies)
• “Fenlanding” (Dick Francis's Flying Finish)
• “Jean at the Witching Hour” (Janet Sandison's Jean Robertson series)
• “A Winchester Always” (M*A*S*H)
• “A Different Shade of Gold” (S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders)
• “The Rape of the Book” (Georgette Heyer's Venetia)

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21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Well, some of my fic probably wouldn't translate all that well. I mean, what do you do with a drabble? And, as far as my virtual season is concerned, it was written as a different medium. (This question has assumptions!) For FK4, the shift would have to work the other way, i.e. from script to prose. However, there's no doubt in my mind that some of my Arrowverse stories would work as television episodes. In theory, anyway. In practice, fan writers have the advantage over the pros: we don't have to hire the actors. The logistics of that are often insurmountable.

My story "Double, Double, Time and Trouble" is so like an episode that, as I wrote it, I kept thinking things like, "This would be a good place for a commercial break." Like an actual episode of Legends of Tomorrow, it's an ensemble piece; and it has much the same sort of plot. Of course, it's backstory of a sort: set between two actual seasons, with a plot that depends on one of last year's shows. However, that's in part because I'd already decided to do a story in which the crew had to return Shakespeare to his own time; and they jossed it just before the story reveals (for it was giftfic). There followed a mad rewrite.

When I wrote "Stopped Cold" a few years ago (also in a gift exchange), I had much the same experience of seeing scenes as if in an episode—indeed, I exchanged comments with sandrine about the differences between that story as fan fiction and the way it would need reorganization if it were part of an actual season of The Flash. Among a lot else, I wrote:

[I]f "Stopped Cold" were part of a Season of Rogues, it would need to be done over two episodes: one for the heist, and one for the fire. (In fact, the very first scene in the story would best be put as the tag for the previous ep; the heist would need to be shown in much more detail; and the last two scenes would probably be worked into the next episode.)

In other words, prose fic and scripts are different. I've known that for a long time since, after all, I wrote FK4 in what is basically a script format. Episodes of an actual TV series have a strict format: teaser, a specific number of acts, tag; and a rigid time limit. To fit in plot and character scenes is tricky, especially since (like most fans) I definitely don't want to curtail the latter. It is actually easier to do this over an entire season, since scenes that have to be clipped from one episode can often be fitted into another.

Basically, a lot of the Arrowverse fic I write is first seen in my head as if the actors were playing out a series of scenes. The same was true of FK4, of course: that's the reason why I wrote that as a virtual season. The organization of an episode (or a season) is different from the organization of prose fiction; but, in stories of this sort, the similarities outweigh the differences.

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20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

When I wrote FK4, each episode had a title page with a link to the zipped story file. However, there was a second link: to a page of notes. This might include canon information related to the plot or characters, background information on the historical period in the flashback, my inspiration for the plot/flashback/characterization, and some chat about my writing the episode.

I don't do that now. It's not part of the culture on LJ, DW, or AO3; so, unless someone actually asks about it, no one gets to know. On the whole, I think that's a pity.

Here's an idea: if you read this and want to ask a question about a specific story of mine, ask away!

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19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe 'too often', trope you can’t get enough of?)

Christmas! Especially Christmas trees. I've written several Christmas stories down the years; and, if a tree is relevant, it definitely gets into the story. In fact, the seasonal episode of FK4 actually describes no fewer than three different trees.

My mother's family always managed a tree, even at the worst of the Depression; and Christmas was very important to her family. My Dad (whose mother died when he was just shy of fourteen) considered the holiday to be mainly for children; but no one else agreed with him. It's a family holiday for us: the tree, the turkey, and presents.

We had our first family tree when I was four. Or so I've been told. It was a tiny live tree (which my Dad planted in the garden afterwards, and dug up the following Christmas) with decorations that my grandmother had sent from Canada. According to my mother, I was astounded; and, the last night before it was taken down, I sat for ages just staring at it. The following year, I saw The Nutcracker for the first time. I do remember that: when the Christmas tree grew at the end of the first act, it was utter magic. Christmas trees have been special ever since.

Although my father always insisted on a "real" tree, I have one that is artificial: this is best for the glass ornaments, since there won't be any droop from drying out. It's only a six-footer; but that means I can reach the top without having to stand on anything. I've had it since 1986. As for the ornaments, I bought my first ones in the late seventies, and still pick up a few each year. Nowadays, I store them in carefully organized boxes in a cupboard off the living room.

This is my tree from 2020:



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18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

No, not really. When I was writing FK4, since it was designed as a virtual season, each "transcription" had to be the same length as an actual episode would be (if it had been filmed, that is, which obviously they weren't). Often this meant that I had to cut scenes to fit the time; and, as the plot had to remain intact, it was character bits that got snipped. However, I always saved them as separate files; and most of them got worked into episodes that I wrote later. So one could hardly say they were "abandoned".

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