Okay, the final chapter of Twist of Faith is posted, so those of you who prefer to wait until things are finished to wade in, it's now safe to go into the water. As I mentioned, the idea managed to evolve into a series while I was writing it, so I'm working on the second story, "A Twist of the Knife", right now. It's about 20% finished and I give it a cautious ETA of the beginning of 2009. But as usual, don't hold me to that.

The Alias novel is finished! Amazingly enough, in line with my ultra-optimistic estimate for getting it done, when I was actually expecting it to take until the end of the year. It's 60,000 words almost exactly, and, um, was supposed to be a stand alone story but has sort of turned into the start of a trilogy. Oops?

It's a season one and two AU, featuring pretty much the whole ensemble, but centred around Jack, Sloane and Sydney.

Twist of Faith
When someone else makes a grab for Page 47 at the same time as Sydney, Sloane's actions in response change the course of Alias history.

This is part one of twenty. As per my usual pattern, new chapters will be uploaded daily, my crappy internet permitting.

Incidentally, because I keep forgetting to mention it here, I've also posted a few short Alias pieces over at alias500. (Me, writing fic to prompts. I know. Did I mention this fandom has eaten my brain?) I will hopefully get around to reposting them to my ff.net account at some point, probably when I've finished posting Twist, but for now, you can find them all here.

Right. Now to get started on part two...

Many moons ago, Don Sample (of Buffy/HP and Buffy/SG-1 crossover fame) contacted me for permission to write a companion piece to my Buffy/West Wing story "Donna the Vampire Slayer". And now here it is: Plausible Deniability, a 4000 word story covering the events of DtVS 1 from President Bartlet's point of view. Good stuff!

Because apparently I am compelled to make these for every fandom I get into. So, I give you - pixel Alias:



And pixel Iron Man (with special bonus animation):



Take them if you want them, but please leave a comment if you do, and credit would be, by me, appreciated.

So, I went to see Iron Man this afternoon. I had no intention of seeing it, but my flist made me do it.

It really was a very good film, actually. More - well, 'realistic' is a silly word to use in this context, but a bit more grounded and surface plausible than your average superhero movie. Quite gritty in the opening half, and cast with a load of great, subtle actors, even in the melodramatic bad guy roles. (And, for a pleasant change, none of them were in their early twenties.) So, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend. Except now I'm all impatient that Iron Man II isn't here already.

Hey, look! There is a middle ground between 1500 words and 'epic novel' - and I wrote something that falls in it! It's a novella, people. A short novella, even. In six parts, but I'm breaking with my usual habit of serialisation and posting them all in one lump because I think it flows better that way.

This is season six Jack, shortly after "Abyss". I wouldn't call it a dark fic, precisely, but it does revolve around very dark themes; so, um, definitely more mystery than angst-fest, but probably not the fic to read if you want to be in your happy place.

Fragments
Set several weeks post "Abyss". Jack wakes in the infirmary with no knowledge of how he got there. [18,000 words]

Also, I am absolutely not clearing this fic off my WIP pile so I can consider writing The Epic Alias AU That Ate My Brain. No. Pay no attention to the colour-coded plot outline behind the curtain.

You know what's sad? Making a little cranking motion in the air to try and will your computer into opening files faster than a geriatric snail.

You know what's sadder? Realising that it's silly to be making this motion next to the monitor and swapping hands to do it to the CPU instead.

...It's possible that I should be in bed.

Randomly: today, I happened to wander through the local branch of WHSmiths, and discovered they now sell 'Mrs & Mrs' and 'Mr & Mr' civil partnership cards. Right smack there in the middle of the wedding section. Is that not awesome?

Only slightly less randomly, a whole bunch of things I've been catching up on DVD-wise:

( Stargate SG-1: Season 10 )
( Stargate Atlantis: Season 3 )
( Supernatural: Season 1 and hints of 2 )
( Alias (Seasons 1 and 2) )


These days, I've begun a new policy of taking detailed canon notes whenever I start watching a new show on DVD. It just saves me the dismay of realising I should have done it when I become madly fannish about it three seasons later. (This is especially useful with Alias, which could also use a dead/missing/resurrected timeline and a 'who knew what when' chart of some kind.) From now on I'm just going to take notes on everything, and if the urge to fic hits, aha, they're there! I only wish I'd started it back when I first got into Stargate.

My brain has been bursting with ideas for HP fics lately. Unfortunately, nearly all of them would require committing to writing a million-word seven-book epic, which... no. But look! Finally, a one-shot:

Wouldn't Be the Same
The Dark Lord is defeated... but there are still NEWTs to pass.

Post-DH fic, obviously. Roughly 1600 words.

Another batch, another hour-long life and death struggle with Photobucket. Sigh. I seriously gotta get off dial-up. Anyway: 20 NCIS, 20 Stargate SG-1, 15 Stargate Atlantis.

( NCIS )
( Stargate SG-1 )
( Stargate Atlantis )

Standard rules: take anything you like, crediting is optional, but I'd appreciate it if you'd leave a comment. Cheers.

Long ago, when I was young and nerdy and had lots of free time, I put together my own Harry Potter continuity guide, the HP Source. My main motivations for this were A, the fact that existing online guides drove me batshit by burying every single item of info on its own individual page, and B, did I mention the nerdy?

Fast forward five years: I am now slightly less young, with slightly less free time, but certainly no less nerdy, and I have finally updated it with the information from Deathly Hallows. It started out as all on one single HTML page and has now spread to four (character guide, general encyclopaedia, timeline, quick reference guide to Hogwarts students) but the basic intent is still there: all the canon facts from all the Harry Potter books in one place so you can use the Ctrl+F find tool instead of digging through eleventy billion individual pages.

Alas, I can't put it online since I still haven't done anything towards getting new web hosting, but if you'd like me to email you the HTML files, drop me a line at:

nomadic_writer[you know what goes here]yahoo[and here]co[and here]uk

It's about 150k as a zip, 600 unpacked.

The Giant Fanfic Commentary of Doom, concluded. Follows on from part 1 and part 2.

( Pegasus Connection Commentary Part III )

Well, that was fun, yet... exhausting. Much like writing the fic itself.

The Giant Fanfic Commentary of Doom, continued from part 1.

( Pegasus Connection Commentary Part II )

Concluded in part 3.

It's done! The Giant Fanfic Commentary of Doom, or: Umpteen Pages of Rambling Meta on Random Aspects of the Stargate Universe (interspersed with the offering up of occasional crack-ish plot bunnies and much Goa'uld language geekery). Apparently, I had a lot to say.

I tried mightily to bring this in short enough to fit in less than three LJ posts, but I did not succeed. So settle yourself in for the long haul, this is practically a quarter as long as the actual fic. (Which, by the way, is here, should you want to waste even more hours of your life reading along.) Non-Stargate people, apologies for the flist spam.

On to the commentary:

( Pegasus Connection Commentary Part I )

Continued in part 2 and part 3.

Oh, what the hey. Jumping on the meme train:

Comment here and ask me ANYTHING about any fandom I'm involved in/have been involved in. Controversial or innocent, silly or serious, ask and you'll get my honest opinion on the subject [to the best of my knowledge/ability]. General fandom questions are also allowed, but nothing about actual people IN fandom, please.

(Fandoms I am or have been 'in' to some degree: Buffy, Harry Potter, House, Life on Mars, NCIS, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, The West Wing. Things I am fannish about but have, for various reasons, kind of missed out on the fan-community angle: Babylon 5, Discworld, Due South, Heroes, Star Wars, The X-Files. Feel free to ask me general opinions on other fandoms too, particularly if they've popped up in my recs journal, but I may not have that much knowledge of the source.)

Yes, I am still insane. More Stargate SG-1 PixelArt:

( Contains One Tiny Little Pixellated Season 10 Spoiler )

Ladies and gentlemen: comment editing has landed.

It's only available on comments that haven't been replied to - which I think is a damn good idea - but it's retroactive, so you can go and fix typos you made back in 2004 if that floats your boat. You can even change the userpic, which puts it one up on the preview function.

Paid users only thus far, but still: awesome.

As promised, commentary for my SG-1 fic Decade. This is either my most well-received short story ever, or the Stargate fandom is very one-shot friendly. Little of column A, little of column B, I suspect.

( On to the Commentary )

Work on the Pegasus Connection commentary continues. (But will not finish any time soon. I've already hit nearly 100k of text and I'm only just past the halfway mark. It's an epic fic in the first place, and I have a lot to say.)

This morning a phone call woke me up early (well, twenty past seven - shush, that's early with my sleep patterns) so I went back to bed for two hours. Whereupon I proceeded to dream four different starts to the day in succession. Each time I would dream getting up and going about aspects of my normal daily routine before realising that something was off about the scenario and 'waking up'... into another dream. (Tragically, not off in a funky sci-fi, "and then the aliens ripped their masks off," way, more in a, "huh, why are all these people in our front garden?" way.) I did not know that actually happened in dreams of the non-fictional variety.

And before that I dreamed an episode of Stargate Atlantis. It actually looked like a good one but sadly in the dream I'd seen it before and was fast-forwarding to the ending. Something to do with an alternate Rodney having folded himself into a pocket dimension where he was the only living being, which he couldn't leave without destroying the universe. And then John accidentally ended up there and Rodney was trying to send him back, but during his escape he figured out how to duplicate what had happened to Rodney so they ended up with John getting home safely and an alternate John stuck in the pocket dimension with Rodney. I wish I'd 'seen' more of the episode.

Clearly, the moral of this story is that I should have my sleep interrupted more often. I don't normally remember any dreams, and apparently I'm missing some cool special effects.

Another batch of Stargate icons: 20 SG-1 and 20 Atlantis. I struggled mightily to get my craptastic dial-up to upload these to Photobucket (seriously, it's taken over an hour) so let me know if any of them load wonky.

( Stargate SG-1 )

( Stargate Atlantis )

My usual rules: take anything you like, please leave a comment if you do, but I don't care whether you credit or not.