FKFicFest 2024 recommendations

This year's fkficfest had a huge haul of 16 total stories! And many folks were absolutely lovely in reading and commenting, appreciating all the widely diverse tastes and approaches! So I feel it's okay for me to go ahead and recommend just a very few of the total stories that happened to speak most to me, personally, as a reader and fan. Obviously, my own subjective preferences may well not be yours, so you should check out the full collection to find just the right stories for your own tastes. :-D

(These recommendations do contain spoilers.)

"To Say Goodbye" (G, gen, ~1K words; Grace & Natalie) by Sharpest_Asp
This deliciously layered post-LK interlude is simultaneously a slice of life, with Grace relaxing after a long, hard shift; an elegy, with Natalie's good advice, good example, and good friendship remembered and missed; and a supernatural mystery that Grace, in the end, chooses not to pursue, for very good reasons built on costly lessons learned. There's relief and hope as well as grief; the reader has more information than Grace in interpreting Natalie's visit. I felt satisfied.

"Day 17" (G, gen, ~3K words; Tracy) by Calliope24
Surprisingly suspenseful for what's fundamentally a character study, this story exhibits Tracy's motivations, fears, and sense of self through a single shift of escalating incidents attended by raw rookie Tracy and her training officer, from a routine traffic stop, to a domestic violence intervention, to crowd control at a murder scene. Almost every tidbit of Tracy's background winds in somewhere, deployed for maximum resonance. I felt riveted.

"Homecoming" (T, gen, ~5K words; Janette, Nick & Lacroix) by SwitchbladeEyes
This is Janette's vivid story of what happened in 1925 after the "Father's Day" flashbacks. It's rich with Janette being fully Janette, navigating between a spot-on Nick and Lacroix not remotely at their best, beautifully carving out her own full, conflicted life under their radar. It's wholly in tune with canon themes, and cleverly stitches together some key missing developments from between canon flashbacks. I felt nostalgic.

"Noblesse Oblige" (G, gen, ~10K words; Nick, Janette, Natalie, Schanke & Alma) by Calliope24
Set in late first-season, this charming story poses a new reason for the Raven redecoration. In some ways, this tale unfolds like an episode, with a dramatic historical flashback, entwined human and vampire interests, and deeper insights, but it's oriented toward a crisis for Toronto's vampire community, not a police procedural, and has a notably light touch, mining humor wherever it can. Throughout, it offers the positive thematic orientation and openheartedness that I cherish in first-season. I felt delighted.


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The story that I wrote for the fest myself is "Found in the Fog" (T, gen, ~5K words; Nick & Lacroix). It's Nick-centric, pro-Nick, and anti-vampirism, as you'd expect from me. I set it in 1890s California, where Nick, working as a lighthouse keeper, has gone to process the "Love You to Death" flashbacks before moving on to "Dark Knight"'s Altun Kinal dig. (It's based on real historical incidents, so of course has endnotes.)

Thank you, everyone, for your wonderful participation in this year's ficfest!