wickedwords

And a Happy New Year too!  I always love New Year's as it's all about the looking forward, the anticipation of good things to come.  The actual year may completely suck, but for one brief shinning moment, it's a world of beauty, joy, and elegant possibilities.

Well, that and donuts. 

First off, I really want to thank vissy for the wonderful Jurassic Park story she wrote for me, Billy Brennan, Prince of Humbugs (She also just posted a commentary on writing the story that is really interesting, too.)

I wrote 2 stories and a drabble for yuletide this year. The drabble was Our Scars are Part of Us, set in the Anita Blake universe.  It's one of those "Oh,no!  There's nothing for in the archive!" emergency requests the night before the archive went live. elynross grabbed me on AIM, asked if I could do something for the Anita Blake series; I checked websites on the characters and ran upstairs to get one of the books to check for the feel of things and did what I could, so there would be something for her on Christmas morning.

I feel incredibly bad for nelladel, as I didn't see her regular story posted in archive when I checked this morning.  Now I really wish that I could have done more and written more for her, as it's just not fun and no fair when someone ditches yuletide at that last minute like that. I know I would feel horrible if it happened to me.

Next is Downside Up, for Jeanny (troll_la_la).  National Treasure was the only one of the set that I had offered to write, but I was tempted (tempted, I say) to go track down the Cupid episodes to see if I could write in that.  But she wanted pre-movie Riley Poole, and, well, I adored him in the movie, so when I watched it, I paid attention to what they said about how Ian, Riley, and Ben met (nothing, other than that Riley was working in a cubicle at the time, and it was 2 years before the movie began.)  The thing that really struck me was how frequently Riley brought up aliens, including where he gets teary-eyed at the end, looking at the odd-looking, green-skinned Egyptian statue. I just had to take all of those bits and run with them.  Getting into his mind was a wonderful -- and funny -- trip. sherrold and elynross were my betas on this story, so major thanks for that from me.

Finally,something for Carla (escritoireazul - Hi!), which is a story I ended up loving beyond all reasonableness: Old Bones and Memories, set in the Tortall Universe.  When I read her Dear Yuletide Santa letter (which is a lovely letter, clear about wants without being too directed.  Plus Carla writes the loveliest feedback, too!), I knew that I had to write her a Halloween story centered on Raoul of Goldenlake.  Okay, so I was giving out Halloween candy for Christmas, but details, details. ::handwave:: I wanted to write something that had the magical feel of the universe, that could fit in with the universe if we looked away from the heroines for a bit, and from that, an idea jumped out at me and wrestled me to the ground, demanding it be written.  I know it's a short story, but it does everything I wanted; I could not look away until I had that story done. (elynross did the beta on this one too, as I was getting down to the wire with it. Thanks!)

And Carla, I thought for sure that you'd realize it was me, what with us talking about The Will of The Empress, and the story structure, the characters, the food and all. I felt like all of my stories this year had huge neon signs on them saying "Rachael wrote this".  One of the reasons I left comments on some of my own stories this year was for that very reason, there was nothing else I could do to point attention someplace else.   *g*