(no subject)

All evidence to the contrary, I haven't fled to Alaska to become a gold miner. Not that it's not an appealing idea, mind you.

I think Dreamwidth may have done some kind of code push where things that don't end in .html are no longer recognised as links, but instead become some kind of mutant anchor title thing. I have weird code popping up all over my masterlist -- stuff like a link to a fanfic with the close-link tag visible, and when I delete the close-link tag, which should turn the ENTIRE POST into a link, it's...still visible...on the masterlist, and the link stays where it is. It's like there's a gremlin. It only seems to happen when I'm linking to tags rather than to posts, hence my .html suspicion. Incidentally, The .HTML Suspicion would make a great title for a techno thriller from the early nineties.

Anyway, I'm perplexed and confused. I'm not very good at code -- I can barely limp along in basic HTML -- so I'm not even sure how to file a report on this to the folks who run the site, because I can't shake the idea that a) there's something wrong with my code that I did and b) it would sound like I'm an ignorant asshole wanting tech support. I'm just going to stare at it for a while and hope it fixes itself somehow. This has not traditionally worked on computers in the past, but I live in hope.

It's been a strange week. This is the first weekend I've been home in three weekends, so I'm settling in and discovering just how little food I have in the house. And on Wednesday I learned someone I knew had died; I didn't know him well, just to talk to, but he worked at a place I get lunch a lot and I keep looking for him so that we can joke about how I always get the same thing and my standing request that they start serving churros (which is this random injoke we had, I'm not even that fond of churros) and then remembering oh right, that's not going to happen so much anymore. It's not even sadness, it's just this weird gap in my habits. I feel strange about feeling that way, because the guy died and yet it's All About Me, but there you have it.

This post would be more coherent if I weren't on serious high-grade decongestants, but I figure a laptop isn't heavy machinery so I'm probably okay to operate it.

(no subject)

Oh screw it, I've been dithering about this for like a month and a half, I'm just going to post it.

About three months ago I wrote this story called Never Leave A Trace, which was a view of White Collar canon through the lens of magical realism. It garnered a reaction I didn't expect: people told me it should be a novel. Not like someone said "oh, this would make a good book" -- multiple people, some of whom weren't talking to me or known to me, said, "this should be a book. I'd read it."

I decided to adapt it to original fiction, over the month of November, figuring that even if I never showed it to anyone it was still a good exercise. I worried about adapting fanfic into something original; I wondered how well I could achieve that, and what fandom would think of it. I think I've done a decent job -- this isn't a find-and-replace number, I've expanded the story from 16k to 40k with sigificant additions including new characters and plotlines.

As for what people think of it, well, I've done some reading and taken some soundings in the last few months and come to the conclusion that, as always, fandom is not a monolith. Lots of people have lots of opinions, and they're usually subjective to the actual story in question, and anyway someone out there is always going to think I'm a hack.

The upshot is: here is a novel I wrote from a fanfic I wrote from a canon someone else wrote. I eventually intend to publish it, but it needs a lot of work first, which is of course where all of you come in. There are nine chapters, going up daily; for now I've titled it Trace, though since Trace has really nothing to do with the story anymore I'm questing for a new title as we speak.

For those of you new to the journal, this is a philosophy of mine, indeed the driving philosophy of my creative life: that the readers can help guide the story, that the writer can learn how to satisfy and entertain by listening to what they have to say. We do this together, and the end result is a book I'm proud of and one that people can point to and say, "I had a part in this." Every time I do this I learn new skills, and sometimes the curve is steep, but it's worth it. This being the case, commentary and criticism are not only welcomed but encouraged.

At the index post you'll be able to read a summary, warnings (not something I usually do, but with this one I thought it was wise), and a little discussion of things I'm particularly looking to get feedback on. Or you can go straight to the prologue.

Enjoy :)

Trace - Index Post
Trace - Prologue
Trace - Chapter One