LadySilver's Fanfic

Another Shortcuts is in the books! This marks my 12th year participating.

This year, I was assigned to pennywashburne, who took one of my long-standing prompts for a Psych crossover and went to town on it.

Tres Hombres Y Quatro Quesos Dos Fritos (5690 words) was the result.

Most Highlander crossovers seem to start with the crossover character(s) witnessing or discovering a Challenge. This one starts with a body disappearing from the morgue. Specifically, it's Richie who gets up and walks out, which leads to Shawn & Gus being hired to find out where the body went.

The story nails the character voices, gets everyone into and out of their mess in the most satisfyingly inconclusive way possible, and manages to sneak in a stealth crossover. Check it out. Based on the comments, knowledge of Psych isn't necessary.

---

Meanwhile, I was assigned hafital, who has so much to work with in her sign-ups that I knew exactly what I wanted to write.

I did not, however, write that.

There's been a lot going on here, which probably contributed to the theme of the story that did happen.

( Do you want background on the story? Because this is where you'll find it. )

Title: A Hill to (Not) Die Upon
Fandom: Highlander
Characters: Ceirdwyn
Word Count: 1491
Tags: Raccoons, Slice of Life, Mentions of Cory Raines
Summary: Ceirdwyn's quiet night at home is interrupted by an unwelcome visitor.

Link

This year for hlh_shortcuts I received a lovely story from merriman. It's one of those scenes that I've always envisioned, but could never see clearly enough to write for myself--which makes it even more delightful of a gift.

Every Night a Party - 2862 words - Richie's heading north for a while. He meets a less nihilistic Gregor Powers on his way. There's not a whole lot to do in the middle of nowhere, so why not crash a party?

And I wrote The Stars Look Very Different Today for killabeez - 2200 words - Anything can happen on the Winter Solstice, including the entire world changing.

( BTS story notes )

---

In other news:

The Richie Ryan Prompt Meme is OPEN!

Please come leave prompts. If you still have some fanfic-writing juice after the crush of Yuletide and Shortcuts, perhaps you can find a prompt to fill. All characters, pairings, ratings, lengths, and media permitted, as long as the final result features Richie.

Fests

I'm signed up for hlh_shortcuts. This is old news, though it still bears mentioning. My sign-up hasn't changed much from last year, though I find that every year, the list of things I'm curious to see gets bigger and more tilted toward rare characters and pairings. Next year, I might pull out the dartboard and see what happens.

Gotta figure out my sign-up for yuletide_admin by Monday. I know what I want to request (I have a pretty solid stable of Yuletide fandoms at this point), with no idea what to offer.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for the crossovering archive to open. It was supposed to go live today, only a last minute bail out by a pinch hitter has put a delay on it. Alas, I don't know the fandoms in the assignment well enough to help.

Prompts

Highlander/Tomorrow People (1973) - In the TP serial "The Blue and the Green," we're introduced to a species of alien of that farms its children out to be raised by other intelligent species, in much the same way that cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. When the cuckoo children reach adolescence, they must accumulate violent energy by way of inciting the host species around them to war so they can finish maturing and leave the planet. Imagine the HL Immortals as a type of this species. However, instead of inciting the host species to violence, they accumulate their violent energy from killing each other. Eventually, the "one" will have enough energy to finish maturing and leave, to begin the cycle all over again--which would work much better if only one parent at a time seeded a planet.

Highlander - Tessa survives the shooting, which puts her front-and-center on seeing Richie's training. It's one thing for her to know that Duncan sometimes has to go kill people; it's another for her to see Richie have to learn to do the same thing.

I signed up for two winter exchanges this year, and ended up writing three stories for them.

For Yuletide, I matched on The Tomorrow People (1973) and wrote:

Gaming the System for Marien - 2385 words - Sometimes a fad is an alien conspiracy to take over the world and sometimes it's just a fad. Telling the difference is the problem.

( Read more... )

For Shortcuts, I was assigned to idontlikegravy who started her list of preferred characters with Richie, which immediately sealed the question of whom I was going to be writing about. For her, I wrote:

Something Called Living" - 19,535 words - Of all the morgues in all the world, Richie Ryan just had to wake up in Henry Morgan's.

( Read more... )

For the first time, I got my Shortcuts story turned in on time. Before time, even. So, when the call went out for a last minute pinch-hit, I grabbed it, because not writing a story after deadline just didn't feel right.

For mackiedockie, I wrote:

Ace in the Hole - 3195 words - A stormy night stuck in the bar with Methos gives Joe the chance to find out something he’s wanted to know for a long time.

( Read more... )

All the stories are posted. There were 19, not 18 as announced. I've now read most of them. I need to go back through and leave comments.

The guessing post is up. For the first time since I started participating in Shortcuts, I've thrown a whole slate of guesses out there. Now comes the part where I watch the returns to see if anyone guesses mine. (And I'd love to hear why guesses went the way they did. I'm always curious about what readers see in a story that pings as belonging to a specific author.)

Only five more days before author reveals. Staying silent is so hard.

NaNoWriMo

To my complete and utter shock, I managed to win NaNoWriMo again. I wasn't going to participate at all, but then a story bit me. Then another one. I idly kept track of my word count, but didn't stress over whether the daily minimum happened or not. Come Nov. 30th, I was about 5000 words behind--close enough that it seemed shameful not to at least try to win, yet far enough to make it unlikely. The most I've ever written in a day was 3K, and I think that only happened once in the 10 years I've done NaNo. Somehow I managed it. Granted, 4K of that is utter throw-away garbage of characters talking about useless things, but words are words.

Shortcuts

My story is finished. It was finished weeks ago. This will be the first year I've done Shortcuts and not blown through the deadlines. Beta reading is in progress and so far is proof of why getting an exchange story beta read is a good idea, because holy cow did I have some stupid errors (big ones, of the 'the character wouldn't do that' and 'the story doesn't make sense if...' type). Plus the plethora of nit-picky errors. There were a couple words in the story that were so utterly wrong that I'm clueless as to what word I was trying to come up with. Once all that is fixed, I really hope my recip likes the result because I am amazingly enthralled with this story and I really want to be able to gush about it.

I thought I had the title locked down, but the more I edit, the more I think a different one would be better.

Yuletide

No such luck here. Blank assignment = no fire.

Fandom Stocking

I'm pulling together my stocking sign up now. Mostly it's C&P from last year's with the additions of Supergirl, Psych, and Wolfblood. I keep debating whether to drop one or two of my inactive fandoms from last year's list in the interest of being more concise, then I think that not including them really will mean no chance to getting something in them. What to do?

Life

I'd like to be glad that this year is almost over, but that only matters if next year is better. So far, that doesn't appear to be in the cards.

Prompts

Methos as a 1970s punk rocker. I'm oddly obsessed with this image right now and I wish I had the skills to draw it myself. I can't decide if he'd play bass or if he'd be, like, #1 groupie.

Misc

Took the kid to a Doctor Who convention for her birthday as part of our bi-annual tradition when we're in that town over Thanksgiving. She had a great time! I broke down and bought a new copy of the Big Finish Highlander season 2 audios, which I forced the family to listen to on the drive home. (Only I would go to a Doctor Who convention in order to get Highlander media). Very enjoyable audios and well-done fan works. It's a shame that there won't be more.

I also talked briefly with the head of BF and he confirmed that they would like to get the TP rights back.

On the topic of TP, I also took the kid and the nieces to play laser tag on Black Friday. The arena used to have a blue team and a red team. In between my last visit and this one, they replaced all the red gear with green gear. That meant that every game on this outing was the Blue vs. the Green. I may have made a few jokes about that that went right over the girls' heads.

Title: Troll the Ancient
Rating: PG
Characters: Cory Raines, Ceirdwyn, Matthew McCormick
Word Count: 3150
Summary: To celebrate Christmas, Cory has planned a specific heist for which he's going to need some very old help.
Notes: Written for eliyes on the occasion of hlh_shortcuts, based on a prompt for a Cory Raines centric-story.

Link to AO3