I’ve just returned from the 2010 WriterCon UK event at Coventry. It was immensely enjoyable and gentlemen (and women) in England now a-bed should think themselves accursed they were not there. Well worth the 9-hour journey each way. Anyone, from any fandom, who enjoys good company and has a sense of humour should definitely consider attending next year’s event – which will be held in the same place.

I was, appropriately, one of the speakers. I had given presentations at two of the previous three writerconuk events but, because I was working from very sketchy notes and improvising as I went along, I didn’t manage to reproduce them in post form afterwards. This time I was better prepared, with a detailed script, and so I present a transcript here for everyone to read (also posted, with a slightly different preamble, at the writerconuk community).

( Writing Original Characters readers don’t hate )

The good: yesterday I discovered Fever Beats by Thea Gilmore. Only six years after it was released but better late than never.

The bad: I read (courtesy of a good Friend, no way would I pay for it) Buffy Season 8 issue 13. As usual it filled me with an intense hatred of Buffy. This does make it rather difficult for me to get on with writing Buffy-centric stories. It didn’t even contain any useful plot hooks for Giant!Dawn crackfic. Really the whole thing was crackfic, or even badfic, and it’s very hard to parody utter drivel.

The ugly: In order to cure my Buffy-hatred I went to Just Rewards and read some classic Spuffy fics. Unfortunately I’d had a reading spree recently in which I’d re-read all of Enigmatic Blue’s, Barb’s, Tales of Spike’s and a few other favourite authors' stories; I had to fall back on some fics by writers who are rather less skillful. I kept being jerked out of the mood by sloppy word usage. ‘Loose’ for ‘lose’, ‘loathe’ for ‘loath’ and vice versa, and one I had never seen before and which totally cracked me up; ‘in loo of’ for ‘in lieu of’. One perennial error inspired me to write the following drabble set at the end of ‘Not Fade Away’...

( The Last Hurrah of the Golden... Handshake? )

Happy birthday to globalfruitbat and to darkestarx

I hate ‘Rhyming Review Day’ at ‘Twisting the Hellmouth’. Getting a bad review is so much worse when someone has gone to the trouble of writing it as an epic poem with 9 verses detailing the shortcomings of my portrayal of each of the characters.

The results of my Original Character poll are fairly conclusive; Sorkatani wins, with as many votes as all of the others put together. I’m rather surprised that Anna only received one vote; okay, she’s a ruthless killer who has been indoctrinated since childhood with the idea that it is her duty to shove a sharpened bicycle spoke through Dawn’s heart, but she’s a good girl really.

Viconia is, of course, not an Original Character of mine; she was created by the writers at Bioware.

During this set of nights off work various real-life issues, involving moving furniture and painting walls, have cut into my writing time and energy, but I might have something to post tomorrow; a surprise continuation of a fic that I haven’t touched for months.

Belated Happy Birthday to rhionnach; Happy Birthday to digopheliadug and adriana_is

Recently agilebrit mentioned that she had begun work on a story about time travel to the Garden of Eden. I immediately dashed off a drabble on the subject and posted it in her Comments. I have now decided to share it with the rest of you. 100 words, PG.

( Escape From Eden )

Tonight I went along to the Co-op to get some milk (and I couldn’t resist getting some of their chocolate caramel shortbread, but that is another story) and my route took me past a bookshop. It used to be a good bookshop but it changed hands and the current owners seem to see it as their mission to fill it with as much junk and as few saleable books as possible. One of the books on display in the window is The Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark.

To quote a review on Amazon.co.uk, it is ‘the authorised 50th-anniversary sequel to The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, that classic SF nightmare which gave our language the word "triffid".’

There are a large number of such ‘authorised sequels’ in existence. Gone with the Wind sequels Scarlett and Rhett Butler's People, Peter Pan in Scarlet, The Dragon Lensman, the James Bond continuations by James Gardner and others, and many more.

There are a lot of follow-ups to Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories written by other authors. First came L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter’s stories that were based on uncompleted drafts of stories by Howard himself, then they wrote original material, and then everyone else seemed to get in on the act. Examples include Robert Jordan’s abominable Chronicles of Conan, all the Roy Thomas Conan graphic novels that were his creations rather than re-tellings of the Robert E. Howard originals, Harry Turtledove’s new Conan of Venarium, and Conan and the Grim Grey God by Sean A. Moore which is notable because the only review on Amazon.co.uk is the author’s own (beginning My favorite of the Conan novels I've written thus far - I rather doubt that anyone else will describe it as their favourite anything!).

They’re fanfic. Some are reasonable, many are crap, but they’re all fanfic; unless the contracted author didn’t really like the original material and is writing solely for the money, which usually produces extremely flat and tedious results.

Fanfic, then, to the Establishment, is something that is of universally poor quality and to be derided – unless they are making money out of it!

I noticed something else odd today. There are no Conan crossovers at all on 'Twisting the Hellmouth'. I wonder why?

Happy birthday to merfilly and belated happy birthday to sistercuervo

Yay! Lewis is on pole! It's a pity that the wrong person won the Ladies' tennis, but one can't have everything.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours listening to Turkish pop music! I also went to the dentists and, frankly, the dental visit was the more pleasant of the two experiences. My musical masochism was research for Access All Areas. It is, however, highly unlikely that any of it will actually crop up in the story. I also spent ages working out what music Anna liked when she was fifteen (Alizée, if anyone is interested). Again, the chance of making use of that knowledge within the story is minimal.

I do this sort of thing all the time. Layer upon layer of detail. And then I don’t use it because the plot would be buried. Is it worth it? I have no idea. I tend to work on the principle that it’s better to have something, and not need it, than to need something and not have it. And the end results seem to be satisfactory.

I’ve been dotting around between stories in the past couple of days. A thousand words of ‘Tabula Avatar’, a thousand of ‘Dojo Hard’, and a thousand of ‘Access All Areas’. I have no idea which will appear as a complete chapter first.

Is the entire line-up for the Live 8 concert utter crap or am I just being very unlucky in when I choose to switch over to that channel?

Buffyworld.com is gone! Crap! That's going to make things more difficult for me in the future.

Chapter Thirteen of Access All Areas, the Spike/Dawn story that I am co-writing with curiouswombat, is now up on her journal.

I posted Chapter 47 of Tabula Avatar yesterday; Sunday afternoon UK time was probably a fairly silly time to post it and it wouldn’t be surprising if some prospective readers missed it.

I’m looking for a fic ETA: question answered by mbangel10.

And I’m looking for icons. I have made several icons for use in Tabula Avatar that portray the BG2 characters, and one of Spike, but I’d like ones showing the other BtVS characters. My icon creation and manipping skills are mediocre and, although I have tried to create suitable icons myself, I haven’t been able to come up with anything acceptable yet. I’m looking for Xander in armour (ideally red and black scales but normal steel plate would do) with a two-handed sword, Buffy with a sword, Dawn in black leather, Giles with a guitar, and so on; but against backgrounds that are medieval or at least generic outdoors with no modern buildings, lights, or cars. I know that some people actually enjoy doing such things – I don’t, I only do it to achieve an end result – and I’m hoping that someone might do it for me. The only reward I offer is to have some minor Tabula Avatar character named after you. Probably someone who meets a hideous death at the fangs of Bodhi. That fate is in store for some central characters in the near future so you’ll be in good company.

Happy birthday to jedibuttercup, Queen of Crossovers

Late in my time-zone, but in time in hers, and that’s the important thing.

And Happy Birthday to ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. Not that it’s ten years today for me; we didn’t have satellite TV then and I didn’t see it until it was first shown on the BBC about a year later. I was hooked right from ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’ (well, until Molly arrived in ‘Bring on the Night’, but we shall speak of her no more).

This seems to be an appropriate time to do the ‘Five Favourite Fics’ meme. I’ve been writing fanfic, one way or another, all my life; unread by anyone other than family until the Internet gave me a way of making my stories available to a wider audience. A lot of people seem to like them. It was very hard to whittle this list down to 5. There was no room for ‘Merry Sport’, or ‘Noggin and the Vampire’, both of which I love; but this is my personal top 5 of my stories.

1) The Cloak of Mist. An original fic rather than a true fanfic, but set within the parameters laid down by the Buffyverse. Set in the Isle of Man in the year 1014 AD. In the aftermath of the slaughter at the Battle of Clontarf, with the islanders mourning their dead and anxious for the missing, a newly-called Slayer must face a horde of undead Vikings to free the island from a dreadful curse. It’s based on authentic Manx history and folklore and, in Bahey Dhone, I feel that I have managed to create a truly memorable original heroine.

2) Days of No Trust. Also original fiction, and with an even more tenuous connection to the Buffyverse, but continuing the tradition of a strong female central character. Set in the ‘Reiver’ era, that century and a half of lawless bloodshed that ravaged my people’s homeland, it’s a historical romance with lots of violence and a little magic. Summary: The Borders between England and Scotland in the year 1580. Every girl dreams of a handsome hero to save her from the villains, they say, but there's never such a hero around when you need one and Anne Collingwood's hopes must rest on a disfigured murderer with a death wish. And on her little bit of magic. It's not much, against seventeen ruthless killers, but it's all she has.

3) Lonely on the Mountain. My entry for ludditerobot’s Scatterlings and Orphanages “Africander” ficathon. Xander in Malawi, the land where I was brought up, pitted against an unusual and lethal vampire.

4) The Lonely Goatherd. rahirah was discussing her preference for fics that are not all-human AUs, and she said I don't like Spike as a Lithuanian goatherder. I resolved to write a story in which Spike was a Lithuanian goatherder and to make her like it. It’s canon-compatible – or was before the Season 8 comic revelations, anyway – and not an all-human AU at all. Featuring Vi, my favourite of the Potentials, and Evaldas the Goat.

5) Tabula Avatar. I haven’t included any other WIPs in this list but, at 200,000 words already, this is too big to ignore. ‘Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn’ was the first fandom in which I dared to put my writings on-line. When I hit upon a way of combining it with the Buffyverse I couldn’t resist. Putting Spike together with Viconia, the multiverse’s undisputed queen of snark, was just too big a temptation; and the results have turned out to be just as much fun as I anticipated. Although not necessarily for the characters.

Happy birthday to denny_dc

and

Happy birthday to shadowscast

My holiday is over and I go back to work tonight. 5 nights on, and then an odd pattern of 5 nights off, 6 nights on, 5 nights off, 4 nights on, rinse, repeat, for 2 months. No more opportunities to spend a whole fortnight writing furiously.

I didn’t achieve everything that I wanted to achieve. ‘Dojo Hard’ isn’t quite finished. Close, though, as there are only one or two chapters to go. The Poirot/Xena crossover ‘Murder at the Acropolis’ is a short piece and will be finished very soon. I didn’t get anything done on ‘Tabula Avatar’ and I had no chance to resume ‘Life, Resumed’. I vaguely thought about doing a Xmas fic this year, as I have the last two years, but I decided that I simply don’t have time. Instead I will go through ‘And Glory Shone Around’ soon, to see if there is anything that needs to be tidied up, and then repost it at seven_seasons.

During this period of intensive writing I looked back at some neglected earlier projects and made some decisions. I think that I now have to acknowledge that some of them will never be finished. ‘Shellshocked’ is the primary example. It simply doesn’t work as well as I had expected and I can’t summon up enough enthusiasm for it in actuality as I did in the concept stages. Another is the long dormant BuffyBot fic ‘I was made for loving you baby’. I regret having brought back Buffy; I should have written it as a Buffyless S6 fic concentrating entirely upon Violent Elizabeth Bott. ‘Love Potion #9’ might not make the cut either; I have just read a story by Ameeya that covers very much the same ground and I’m not sure that there is room for my story as well.

I don’t know if I’ll ever do Book 2 of ‘Pandora’s Boxer’. When I started the intended trilogy it was a new and exciting concept but by now everyone and his dog has done it. Also much of Book 2 was going to involve inflicting pain, physical and emotional, on Harmony and I really don’t like doing that even when the plot requires it.

The jury is still out on ‘Life in Shadow’. I still like the idea but I covered the Initiative arc of Season 4 so thoroughly in ‘Pandora’s Boxer’ that I’m worried about repeating myself.

‘Savage Beauty’ is stalled because the balance of plot and funny had begun to tilt too much towards plot (a problem that has also cropped up with ‘Dojo Hard’). I will pick it up again, and I’ll get back to ‘Sunnydale Passions’ too, once I get out of the black gloom that has afflicted me lately. I haven’t been in the mood for pure silly light-hearted fun for the past few months, due to medical problems etc, but I am feeling much better now and maybe my sense of humour will return too.

‘Tabula Avatar’ will most definitely continue. It is the story with which I have the greatest emotional involvement. ‘Life, Resumed’ is another definite. So, too, is the ‘Lonely on the Mountain’ sequel ‘The Lost Patrol’ of which I have only posted one short chapter so far and everybody has probably forgotten about. Those are the three stories that will dominate my serious writing over the next few months.

If the fandom survives that long, of course. The Buffyverse fandom seems to have suffered a dramatic fall-off lately, probably due to NaNoWriMo, and to the 3-month absence from the Net of makd. Hopefully it will recover to some extent now that those two adverse factors are over. If it doesn’t, then I’ll have to move to original fiction and occasional one-offs in obscure fandoms.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends

and Happy Birthday to priscellie

I received some extremely venomous feedback recently. I posted this drabble at 'Twisting the Hellmouth' and someone reviewed it thus:
I have to say this is story was complete dribble, and resembles the work of a 5 year old with too much time on their hands. In the words of Jay Pinkerton, reading this is quite literally "like going to the bathroom after a six-burrito lunch, and the toilet paper is YOUR EYES."

Surely that level of vitriolic condemnation is entirely inappropriate for a drabble? Even were it the worst drabble ever written (and I had quite a few favourable comments and so it can't have been that bad, can it?) how bad can 100 words be?

The TtH account is newly created and this is the only review it has posted. Strange. I wondered if it might be a sock puppet specifically for the purposes of a personal attack on me, but the TtH mods say that no other users from that IP address have ever posted there. And I'm not aware of having any Internet enemies.

Anyway, I'm not going to let it upset me. I'll press on with 'Dojo Hard', which is within sight of the end after my burst of 3 chapters in 4 days, and hopefully I'll get it finished this week.

And on to a more pleasant Sock Puppet. The incredible shadowscast recently posted a story by that name at fall_for_sx and it is utterly wonderful. Even if (like me) you're not a Slash reader this is well worth reading. Simply superb. Sock Puppet. Praise her with great praise.