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Sunday, November 15, 2015
Nov. 15th, 2015 10:52 am Fanfiction
RS Games are now over with the author reveals so I can now talk about the stories I wrote and post them elsewhere - and share them here. And yes, "stories", plural because I ended up doing a pitch hit in the middle of October. I realized only a few days that both stories end up letting Remus escape his lycanthropy - huh, I guess I had a theme.
The first story, Moon Dog , was inspired by the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. I played it while writing the story and one of the commenters said the rhythm of the words reflected it, which was quite accidental on my part. In the story, Sirius the Star hears music and comes to Earth to meet the beautiful musician (Remus).
My pitch hit ended up being a Space AU. It is called Sailing Far Beyond the Air . It is very short, less than 2000 words, because I only had a few days to put it together but I might end up exploring the idea later. Sirius grew up on the colonies of Mars where most pureblood families live (I basically adopted canon to sci-fi) He finds Earth very confining - so the story explores Sirius' ideas of freedom and imprisonment (which fit the prompt I used). It is character study really, with Remus playing a small role in the end.
My favorite story of the Games was a Muggle AU called No Longer Easy On the Eyes by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nerak_rose. It has Teddy and Harry and a wonderful slow burn of a relationship between Remus and Sirius. It is long 26K but I couldn't stop reading and it didn't really feel that long at all. I just got caught up by the wonderful storytelling.
And now I need to write my story for RS Small Gifts - I'm feeling some self imposed pressure, since my last two stories for that fest are by far my most popular ones (judging by AO3). I also want the recipient to be happy with it. But I think my idea is good enough. I'm going to incorporate Russian New Year holiday traditions in it so that should be fun.
Book
A few days ago I finished the 4th book (out of 7) in the Accursed Kings series by Maurice Druon The Royal Succession . It a historical fiction that is about the succession to Regency and then the Crown of Philippe V of France who ruled from 1316 to 1322. I really love this series. The prose flows so easily and the historical details feels researched and accurate enough (although dramatized accordingly). He often included details like types of dresses the royalty wore or what was pillaged in a castle based on actual 14th century accounts.
Sometimes, I can't read historical fiction if the characters are too far from how I imagined them from studying the history (I'm a medieval historian by training, specializing in 14th century England). But this series works so well for me. In this book, there is a plot involving the poisoning of a baby - and that was very hard to read - too graphic. Now that I'm a mother it is certainly hard to read about terrible things happening to kids (and Yahoo keeps putting gruesome things involving children when I go on it, despite many times I click on the button to remove those kinds of stories.)
So the series continues to be great and next up is Isabella, wife of Edward II. I'm really glad this series is finally getting a good English paperback treatment with Books 6 and 7 coming out soon.
TV: Grimm
( Grimm S5E3 )
Cross stitching
My friend Janna is having a baby girl at the end of February so I decided to make a small birth record counted cross stitch for the baby. I picked a 5X7 design of a toy train with animals - it is nice and colorful and a project small enough to be manageable. I haven't cross stitched for 15 months - last thing I did was Tanya's birth record, so it was so nice just to do a little bit today. And I love projects with bright colors.
Today, I just wrapped the fabric in masking tape and found the center. Then I did two strands in orange for the giraffe. I made a mistake, which I thankfully caught before I finished the first strand; the fabric needed to be in landscape but I started doing portrait automatically. Good thing I realized it and was able to pull the stitches and start over again on the proper side.
Catching a mistake in time.
RS Games are now over with the author reveals so I can now talk about the stories I wrote and post them elsewhere - and share them here. And yes, "stories", plural because I ended up doing a pitch hit in the middle of October. I realized only a few days that both stories end up letting Remus escape his lycanthropy - huh, I guess I had a theme.
The first story, Moon Dog , was inspired by the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. I played it while writing the story and one of the commenters said the rhythm of the words reflected it, which was quite accidental on my part. In the story, Sirius the Star hears music and comes to Earth to meet the beautiful musician (Remus).
My pitch hit ended up being a Space AU. It is called Sailing Far Beyond the Air . It is very short, less than 2000 words, because I only had a few days to put it together but I might end up exploring the idea later. Sirius grew up on the colonies of Mars where most pureblood families live (I basically adopted canon to sci-fi) He finds Earth very confining - so the story explores Sirius' ideas of freedom and imprisonment (which fit the prompt I used). It is character study really, with Remus playing a small role in the end.
My favorite story of the Games was a Muggle AU called No Longer Easy On the Eyes by
nerak_rose. It has Teddy and Harry and a wonderful slow burn of a relationship between Remus and Sirius. It is long 26K but I couldn't stop reading and it didn't really feel that long at all. I just got caught up by the wonderful storytelling.And now I need to write my story for RS Small Gifts - I'm feeling some self imposed pressure, since my last two stories for that fest are by far my most popular ones (judging by AO3). I also want the recipient to be happy with it. But I think my idea is good enough. I'm going to incorporate Russian New Year holiday traditions in it so that should be fun.
Book
A few days ago I finished the 4th book (out of 7) in the Accursed Kings series by Maurice Druon The Royal Succession . It a historical fiction that is about the succession to Regency and then the Crown of Philippe V of France who ruled from 1316 to 1322. I really love this series. The prose flows so easily and the historical details feels researched and accurate enough (although dramatized accordingly). He often included details like types of dresses the royalty wore or what was pillaged in a castle based on actual 14th century accounts.
Sometimes, I can't read historical fiction if the characters are too far from how I imagined them from studying the history (I'm a medieval historian by training, specializing in 14th century England). But this series works so well for me. In this book, there is a plot involving the poisoning of a baby - and that was very hard to read - too graphic. Now that I'm a mother it is certainly hard to read about terrible things happening to kids (and Yahoo keeps putting gruesome things involving children when I go on it, despite many times I click on the button to remove those kinds of stories.)
So the series continues to be great and next up is Isabella, wife of Edward II. I'm really glad this series is finally getting a good English paperback treatment with Books 6 and 7 coming out soon.
TV: Grimm
( Grimm S5E3 )
Cross stitching
My friend Janna is having a baby girl at the end of February so I decided to make a small birth record counted cross stitch for the baby. I picked a 5X7 design of a toy train with animals - it is nice and colorful and a project small enough to be manageable. I haven't cross stitched for 15 months - last thing I did was Tanya's birth record, so it was so nice just to do a little bit today. And I love projects with bright colors.
Today, I just wrapped the fabric in masking tape and found the center. Then I did two strands in orange for the giraffe. I made a mistake, which I thankfully caught before I finished the first strand; the fabric needed to be in landscape but I started doing portrait automatically. Good thing I realized it and was able to pull the stitches and start over again on the proper side.
Catching a mistake in time.
