I've just finished updating the Fanlore article on FK Fic Fest. The article in the Forever Knight Wiki is also up to date.

In the latter, I've also updated the author pages for all participants and made wiki articles for each story.

The past month has been hectic for personal as well as fannish reasons. However, the relevant matter here has to be the two gift exchanges in which I participated, fkficfest and fic_corner. The former is specifically for Forever Knight and the latter for children's and YA fiction.


FK Fic Fest:

One of my FK prompts was for casefic; and vorpalblades has written me the delightful "On-the-Job Training". This is a first-season fic, where Nick and Schanke are only newly partnered by Capt. Stonetree. However, it is unusual in following Schanke, so that we get his perspective on the oddball mystery to which the two have been assigned. Most episodes have a scene or two at the morgue; but here it becomes the crime scene itself. A body has blown up. (“It’s a damn Jackson Pollock painting in here,” has to be one of the funniest lines I've ever read.) Who planted the bomb inside the corpse? And why?

The mere concept is darkly hilarious. The story is full of jokes, both in- and not. (There is a running joke about paperwork; and a point being made that you need to read between the lines to appreciate, since Schanke certainly won't get it.) Altogether a very funny story, but also a genuine casefic with real detection, not least from Schanke. Heartily recommended!


Exchange at Fic Corner:

Okay, it is true that I have twice been assigned to write for Flo in rarewomen; so it was not desperately strange to get her prompts in another exchange. However, it starts to get a bit silly when it turns out that she got assigned to me. (She guessed the truth; but she lied through her teeth so that I wouldn't know who'd got my prompts.) The one saving grace is that she wrote me a story based on Kipling's Stalky & Co. and I wrote her one based on his Puck of Pook's Hill. If I had also written her Stalky—and I might well have—then it would have been truly absurd.

Be that as it may, she actually wrote me two stories. The other was a charming little treat based on an utterly nostalgic request for "another" Milly-Molly-Mandy story. Joyce Lankester Brisley's series about a little girl in an English village in the '20s utterly enthralled me when I was ... oh, say, between five and eight years old. I practically had the stories memorized. Certainly not one of those things I go back to nowadays at all really; but deeply, unforgettably dear to my heart.

"Milly-Molly-Mandy Helps Out" is almost classic MMM. It starts with her family in their nice white cottage with the thatched roof, and takes her off to her friends in the village; and, typically, she helps out with various chores suitable to her age. In Flo's tale, she thus acquires quite a lot of pennies! There are perilously few Milly-Molly-Mandy stories in the world. Another added to that precious number is simply wonderful to read. (Even if I do have to peel off decades to appreciate it in the spirit in which I would have read it back in the day.)

My main gift was "How The Beetle Got His Name". This is written in Kipling's very style (and his style is very distinctive). It goes back to his earliest days at the Coll, long before Study Five got their study—indeed, even before the late-written story, "Stalky", in which Arthur Corkran got his famous nickname. Its focus is the school, but when Our Heroes were themselves mere fags; and, as such, it draws heavily on certain stories, such as "The Moral Reformers", that hint at a backstory in which Beetle, in particular, was the victim of bullying. It is such an incident (and a nasty one indeed) that leads to Corky Corkran taking him up, turning his life around, and bestowing upon him the nickname by which he is known through all of Kipling's own stories. Indeed, "How The Beetle Got His Name" is really very Kipling.

I suspect that the Milly-Molly-Mandy story is one to appeal only to someone who was a fan in the day (like me). Stalky, on the other hand, is a more lasting joy; and I can honestly recommend that gift to everyone.

Since I've taken part in FK Fic Fest each year, this is a standing Dear Author letter.

When I first joined the FORKNI-L mailing list, people used to ask me what faction I belonged to; and I always said that I didn't have one since, in order to write a virtual season, I had to be able to write all the characters without playing favourites. Not surprisingly, then, I've played as a Die-Hard in the last three FK Wars (if that means anything to you).

I like all the characters. Okay, some a bit more than others: inevitably not every character gets the same loving attention—neither from me, nor from other fans. In fact, there are some about whom there has been very little fanfic written at all. That includes the police captains, Schanke's wife and daughter, and Grace, as well as characters who only appeared once, such as Feliks Twist and Aristotle. Recently, it's also included Vachon and his friends. Sadly, I only have a limited number of prompts; so I can't ask for everyone. However, I am interested in seeing an expansion of the characterization of supporting characters, both mortal and vampire.

On the whole, I prefer gen. Not that I ask anyone to ignore canon, you understand. However, I'm not as much interested in romance as I am in plot; and I don't much care for "adult" (i.e. explicit) stories of any persuasion. This means that, for stories involving a pairing, I am more interested in character development than I am in bedroom scenes. I should perhaps add that I've no objection to slash; and there are certainly a number of FK characters whose preferences are not specified in canon, or were left sufficiently unexplored to allow fan writers a free hand. Indeed, although I personally don't think anything like that is happening with Nick and LaCroix (or Nick and Vachon) in the present, they are vampires and hence, of course, have a very, very long history.

I prefer stories that are canon-compliant, but do feel free to ignore "Last Knight" if you want. I'm always happy to ignore it!


General Guidelines:

What I Like:
* Plot and/or character (both being the ideal, of course!)
* A sense of humour and being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay, if the story calls for them. (Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.)
* Stories that are true to canon (though I've certainly enjoyed some flat-out AUs)

What I Dislike:
* Explicit sex, especially if long and detailed. No objection to hints, but I'm not into plumbing.

My Own Writing:
If you want to have a look at some of my own Forever Knight stories, you can find them on my website.

When I first joined the FORKNI-L mailing list, people used to ask me what faction I belonged to; and I always said that I didn't have one since, in order to write a virtual season, I had to be able to write all the characters without playing favourites. Not surprisingly, then, I've played as a Die-Hard in the last three FK Wars (if that means anything to you).

I like all the characters. Okay, some a bit more than others: inevitably not every character gets the same loving attention—neither from me, nor from other fans. In fact, there are some about whom there has been very little fanfic written at all. That includes the police captains, and Schanke's wife, and Feliks Twist. Recently, it's also included Vachon and his friends—and even Janette! Sadly, I only have three prompts (and one of them has to be a pairing); so I can't ask for everyone.

On the whole, I prefer gen. (This makes the requirement that one of my prompts be a pairing a bit of a nuisance.) Not that I ask anyone to ignore canon, you understand; but I'm not so interested in romance as the plot, and I don't much care for "adult" (i.e. explicit) stories of any persuasion. I've no objection if you want to slash Nick with Lacroix (or Vachon, for that matter). Though I personally don't think anything like that is happening in the present, they are vampires and hence, of course, have a very, very long history.

I prefer stories that are canon-compliant, but do feel free to ignore "Last Knight" if you want. I'm always happy to ignore it!


General Guidelines

What I Like:
* Plot and/or character (both being the ideal, of course!)
* A sense of humour and being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay, if the story calls for them. (Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.)
* Stories that are true to canon (though I've certainly enjoyed some flat-out AUs)

What I Dislike:
* Poor spelling, bad grammar and punctuation, and blatant Americanisms uttered by British characters (unless they're aware of what they're doing, which is another matter entirely)
* Explicit sex, especially if long and detailed. No objection to hints, but I'm not into plumbing.

My Own Writing:
If you want to have a look at some of my own Forever Knight stories, you can find them on my website.