Kenaz Fiction

My BFF T. She's moving to Tokyo in December; I'm gutted.

It's a big career move for her, and I'm thrilled for her, but she's pretty much the only friend I have out here... My other "T" went off to college this fall (yes, one of my best friends out here is young enough to be my biological child! He's an old soul, what can I say?), so I feel like all of my SoCal connections outside my job are evaporating... it makes me feel rootless. I guess I've felt rootless since I left NYC: it was time; I don't regret the move, and I don't think I'd want to go back-- as I've said before, the city I left wasn't the city I loved-- but it makes me wonder if I'll ever feel connected to a geographic place again.  Maybe not? Is it necessary to feel a connection to place, or is a peripatetic life ok at this stage? I don't know... I'd like to live in the Hudson Valley at some point, but it doesn't appeal to P.  I'd also like to spend some time in Chicago because I have both friends and family there, but all of this is moot because I'm not ready to leave this job yet... I've got too much left to learn, even though it is currently stressing me to a breaking point.

But back to the question: T was the last person to call me; she's leaving in December, so fuck it: vet bills be damned, she and I are going to Mexico City together for Thanksgiving, and we're tentatively planning to go riding in Mongolia in 2020.  If there's a bright side to Artie's incapacitation, it's that I've now accumulated enough points on my credit card to cover airfare to Mexico and Asia. So, Yay?

It was gloriously foggy on the drive in to work, and then I walked up the hill from the parking structure to the campus in spooky, glorious, wonderful fog! It's been miserably fucking hot this summer, and while it won't ever get truly cold here, I was absolutely giddy for a little bit of crispness.

 

Aglarien wrote The Magpie for Alexcat

Alexcat wrote Be Careful What You Wish For for Nuinzilien

Alikuu wrote Fëanorian Hospitality for Kalendeer

Amyfortuna wrote Mourning Into Joy for The_Wavesinger

AndiiErestor wrote Fools in Love for Amyfortuna

Burning_Nightingale wrote Oh, Revenge for Cirilla9

Cirilla9 wrote Tales of the thousand and one nights for DragonofMordor

DragonofMordor wrote One Moment in Forever for Tiltedshadow

Elladansgirl wrote Convincing Abilities for Mawgy

Erlkoenig wrote Nothing Gold Can Stay for Burning_Nightingale

Erlkonig wrote To Love None Better Than You for Aglarien

Erlkonig wrote Be Still, and Let the Dark Come for Kasura

Hennethgalad wrote To The Sea. for Erlkoenig

Ignoblebard wrote Forging a Bond for Mangacrack

Kalendeer wrote Do Not Ask for Permission for Hennethgalad

Kasura wrote The Chasing for Ingoldos

Lynndyre wrote Visit for Samtyr

Mangacrack wrote In a World Beyond Control for Gabriel

Marchwriter wrote Borderlands for Solanaceae

Mawgy wrote Remember Me for Ulan

Narya wrote Comfort and Joy for Marchwriter

Nuinzilien wrote The Door to Maybe for Lynndyre

phyncke wrote What's In a Name? for Ignoblebard

RaisingCaiin wrote Histories, Full of Stars for Narya

RaisingCaiin wrote In That Deepening Evening for AndiiErestor

Raiyana wrote The Soldier and the Spy for Phyncke

Samtyr wrote Splitting Heirs for Tabru

Solanaceae wrote Blossom of Hours Unleashed for Raiyana

Tabru wrote In the Third Year for Elladansgirl

Talullah wrote Bay of Terns for Alikuu

Tiltedshadow wrote And All the Devils Are Here for RaisingCaiin

The_Wavesinger wrote (Take Heed of the) Stormy Weather for Talullah

Mawgy also wrote Cutbacks as a special gift to the Sultry in September/My Slashy Valentine mods! Thank you, Samtyr!! :)

Many, MANY thanks to Erlkonig, who wrote THREE stories this round, and to RaisingCaiin, who also stepped in to pinch-hit.  Special thanks also to IgnobleBard, who set a record for number of stories beta’d this round. Most sincere gratitude to all three of you; we quite literally would not have been able to pull off this exchange without you!

Warm welcomes to TiltedShadow, Kasura, DragonOfMordor and Andiierestor, who have all successfully completed their first Slashy Santa exchange!

PLEASE be sure to thank your writer after reading your stories!! It’s the right thing to do and it’s a requirement of the Slashy Santa exchanges.  

We hope to see you all again in December, when sign-ups for My Slashy Valentine will begin!!

100 Tales

December 2005: I claimed this table in FF100 with the intention of writing 100 drabbles or ficlets about Gondolin.

December 2012: SEVEN FRIGGING YEARS LATER years later, I've written...nine.

In an earnest attempt to develop a more regular writing habit, I am going to reinstate this table, but will be eliminating the Gondolin restriction. These prompts will hopefully cover a wide variety of fandoms, or may even include original writing outside of any fandoms.  Here's to hoping there will be more stories, however small, in 2013.
( 100 Tales )

 

Ardor in August 2017

From the Years of the Trees through the Fourth Age – it’s time once again to make your Tolkien FPS fanfic dreams come true…

Have you always wanted to read a certain pairing or scenario, but couldn’t write it yourself? Have it written for you – specifically and especially for your own sweet self! And share your own gift in exchange!

That’s right, it’s time for Ardor in August! The exchange focuses on the Elves, Men, Dwarves, Valar and Maiar of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium. Maybe it’s Gildor and Glorfindel you love, or perhaps Boromir-on-Theodred strikes your fancy... or maybe Lúthien and Thuringwethil is your OTP? From the Years of the Trees to the Fourth Age, from sultry tales of the Silmarillion to romances in the Ring Wars – spread the word, recruit your friends and fellow authors, and have some fun!

 

Critical dates:

• Sign-up period: June 11 - June 25
• Assignments to be distributed no later than July 9th
• Deadline for first-time participants: August 13th
• Deadline for returning participants: August 20th
• Archive opens: August 27th, 2017

( Read more... )~ * ~
Are you ready to sign up?
Click Here!

Off crutches as of yesterday, but foot has blown up like a little ham. Boo.
Work is killing me.
I'm in despair with the political climate here.
I'm not sure what to do re: the LJ TOS thing... I don't post much anymore, despite my best intentions. When I have fic, it's posted to AO3 and Faerie and linked here, so I will probably continue on in that vein. I don't intend to leave LJ unless there is some sort of significant crackdown. I'll crosspost from DW, but that might be as much effort as I'm prepared to take at this point-- I can barely stay abreast of one F-list; I know I can't stay on top of two.

I'm going to go buy some arch supports and count that as my adventure for today. Since I'll be laying around with my foot up for the duration, how about a meme?


Tell me about a story I haven't written, and I'll give you between one and three sentences from that story.

When I was a kid, Cracked magazine was considered kind of a mediocre knock-off of Mad magazine... juvenile humor and pop culture parodies. Yet somehow, in the 21st century, it has reinvented itself as a sort of hotbed of Millennial think pieces. This one was floating around my FB yesterday, so I decided to read it. And it really, really resonated with me, so I'm sharing it with y'all.

I was born and raised in the midwest and am only one generation removed from the farm. What I perceived as small minds and intolerance and the cruelty toward and mistrust of anything that could be construed as "Other" were what sent me screaming out of my hometown and into New York City as soon as I finished high school. The fact that I have only visited my home state 3 times in a quarter-century (one of those times being for a funeral) speaks volumes about how alienated I felt from the place I was born. But when I read this article, I saw in it SO MANY members of my family, of my neighbors, from the dead or dying coal and steel towns my friends and I were all running from. I admit that I have been guilty of occasionally looking down my nose at the "rubes" I had grown up with... and now I am paying the price. Those of us who live in big cities or well-manicured suburbs have ignored the fears of a whole lot of Americans-- some of those fears are simplistic, misguided, or even utterly reprehensible... but some of them are absolutely, positively REAL--and we have ignored them to our peril.

I don't agree with everything in this piece, and some of you might not agree at all, but I think it's worth a read and does give some perspective to the reality we are now stuck with.

How Half of America Lost it's Fucking Mind - Cracked Magazine

OMG, I miss writing.
And I miss all of *YOU*. And being an active participant in Fandom.

SA and Botswana were amazing. Probably the most amazing thing I've ever done. I swam with my horse in a lake with hippos. I napped in a hammock while a bushbuck grazed at my feat and a vervet monkey threw pieces of bark at my head. I mean, COME ON. I got to recite Morning Resh on the edge of the earth at sunrise, and drink gin and tonics in the company of zebras at sunset. I was awakened by baboons. BABOONS!
Plenty of pics on FB and Instagram, if you're interested.

Sultry in September is wrapping up! Looking forward to another rousing round of stories, but sad that I'm only participating in a mod capacity-- it's a bit of a downer to only be able to play administratively.

There aren't enough hours in a day. I'm scrambling to finish local documentation for the "new" (ok, I've been playing with it since the 1.0 release) archival software-- drafting tech specs is actually something I enjoy, and it's the closest thing to "Writing" I've been able to muster in nearly a year. 2.5 years in and I'm still not convinced that moving into management has improved my life. Well, it has improved my horse-life tenfold, but my fantasy life is a desiccated husk of its former self, and I didn't realize just how heavily I depended on it for my sanity.

The current plan is to finish up the outstanding commentfics I solicited a while back, and then maybe make myself some sort of trope bingo card. I can only bash things out in fits and starts, so Ionnath remains on hold, dammit. I'd like to try a couple of Bucky/Steve drabblets... we'll see. I can't believe Ionnath is just withering on the vine, though... I keep a file full of notes and inspirations, but don't have time to develop them.

The horses are good, except that Artie somehow ripped a big hole in his face and just got the staples out this week. I had to take the caveson off his bridle while it healed, and I bought him a beaded brow band in South Africa, so now we do our dressage while he looks like the little QH cow pony he really is. Zetti is in fighting form, 19 going on 9, spooking BIG at sprinklers and motorcycles... He had been getting some supplementary sweet feed over the summer because he lost some weight, but I think it's safe to say we can end that little regimen now. I nearly bailed on him over the weekend when his spooking and bucking reached epic proportions... I was finally able to channel it into the most gorgeous trot I think I've ever gotten from him-- truly exquisite!-- but then he snorted, passaged, and side-passed all the way back to his paddock and I had one of those humbling moments where I had to acknowledge that if he really wanted to get me off and bolt, there's not a damn thing I could do about it. It's a good thing he was only 85% committed to losing me! :D

Got an email from a rare books dealer today offering me a 1st ed. copy of the Silmarillion for $250. I declined. But my work life and fantasy life are officially intertwined!

TL;DR: I miss you guys, I miss writing, life is busy.

Doing all the matching for AinA has whet my appetite for writing... and yet, I am realistic as to what I can reasonable accomplish. With that in mind, I would like to attempt some commentfic.  Within the Tolkien realm (that's the only fandom in which my brain can possibly focus at the moment) please comment for any sort of mini-scenario (emphasis on the word MINI), a snippet of dialogue, a description, or some other BITE-SIZED thing you would like me to [briefly] elaborate on. Slash, Gen, Femmeslash, any time era.

PLEASE keep your expectations low... Work takes up 90% of my mental energy, and the horses (yes, that's plural now!) take up 90% of my physical energy. I really *want* to write, but life is pulling me in other directions right now... I PROMISE to write at least ONE SENTENCE for every comment.  Public accountability is helpful to me (even though I have failed in the past...).

I am going to attempt to knock these out as quickly as possible-- little to no proofreading/editing/fretting/second-guessing myself/perfectionism/strict adherance to my own personal headcanon. I'm trying to expand my mind!

Thanks, guys!