I love good guys

What's good?  I've wanted to spotlight Scottie's "Flowers in the Night" (1993) in the recommendations project for years, and this month I get to!  This short story vividly displays first-season Nick and Janette, when Lacroix is dead and possibilities cluster so thick and unimagined that they hardly know where to begin.

"The club was almost deserted, I was bored, and I thought perhaps two old friends could enjoy a talk and a bottle of wine."  He didn't respond.  She raised the glasses... "It's wine, Nicholah.  Just wine.  Nothing else -- nothing that could contaminate you."

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What's new?  In February, fkfic-l saw nine stories by three authors.  In the order posting completed:

• "Heartfelt" by Walt D. (1 post)
  
• "Rock-y Horrors" by Walt D. (1 post)
  
• "The Life and Times of a Macedonian Vampire" by dj_clawson (14 posts)
  
• "Illusions of Mortality" by abby82 (1 post) (adult)
  
• "Pshrink" by Walt D. (3 posts)
  
• "The Life of a Macedonian Vampire and His Son Alexander" by dj_clawson (16 posts)
  
• "Hurt" by Walt D. (2 posts)
  
• "Chess" by Walt D. (1 post) (adult)
  
• "Complaint" by Walt D. (1 post)
  

Busy month! :-)

[Back-posted]

This is the Highlander story I contributed to the December 2008 oldschoolfic ficathon.  My thanks to Dragonsinger for her prompt of "Richie never expected that his first Christmas with Duncan and Tessa would involve a swordfight," and to Batdina and Wiliqueen for beta-reading.

•	Title:	"So This is Home" (also on AO3)
•	Length:	~5,400 words
•	Date:	December 2008
•	Rating:	G (gen plot, m/f subplot)
•	Summary:	A first-season Christmas season, with a theft at the shelter where Angie works.
•	Setting:	December 1992 Seacouver
•	Characters:	Starring Richie.  Also with Duncan, Tessa, Angie, Randi, Powell and many more.

On Friday night, I emailed an author to ask permission for December's fanfiction recommendation.  New boxes keep opening on the calendar, as much as I want to pause it.  I think Abby (tv_elf) would not be pleased if I missed a month for the first time due to something she considered as predictable as her death.  (I didn't consider it predictable, but then I am too easily surprised, and she knows that.)

So the recommendations project will be late this month, but it's not on hiatus.  And I'm considering revising the rule that requires authorial permission for each recommendation: perhaps an exception for deceased fans.  Like Abby, just now.  Lynne Ackerman in April.  Mary Lou Manzie and Christy Stillman in 2006.  Fran Glass -- 2002?  And others...  But it might be a poor idea; after all, there are people who genuinely don't want their stories recommended, which is why the rule exists.  I'll think about it.

Abby beta-read a quarter of all my Forever Knight stories.  I counted this morning (beta credits wind up every endnote, if you're curious).  She made so many of them better, but I particularly remember how she examined my one FK/HL crossover on a New Year's Eve, and phoned me her advice, so I could post it on the holiday on which it was set.

When we got together for her birthday a month ago, she said she was writing a new FK story for my birthday this year.  It was to have been a surprise, so I don't know what it would have been about.  I do know it would have been different from anything ordinary, a precious new angle proving the FK universe is far from tapped out, something creative and quirky I could never imagine alone.  Because that's what it's like with Abby.

The quotation of the month on my site was going to be Tracy's line about family and holidays from "Strings" this time, but instead it is an enduring favorite: "I loved it. I mean, I know it was all about death, but I thought it was very life-affirming at the same time." -- Natalie, "Last Act."  Sums up FK.  Abby might prefer a Schanke-ism, but she'll know what I'm getting at.

I mentioned that the retrospective was over, so yes, indeed, this is a new one!  The idea crept up as I was getting ready for church on Good Friday; I wrote it that night.  This is the second-to-shortest FK piece I have ever posted, so perhaps much_madness will consider it another reply to her nudge for "ficlets."

	•	Title:	"Pro Terra Sancta"
	•	Length:	~1,200 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L March 23, 2008
	•	Rating:	G (gen)
	•	Summary:	On Good Friday, Schanke inadvertently reminds Nick of the Crusades, and Natalie notices.
	•	Setting:	1993 Toronto, Stonetree's Precinct
	•	Characters:	Nick, Natalie, Schanke
	•	Quotation:	"I pointed out that we indispensable public servants don't all get the four-day weekend that schoolgirls and saleswomen do, but did they listen to me?"

Very unusually, possibly bending all laws of time, space and reality, I posted to forkni-l twice on Sunday, both times in reply to a post from a digest only ten days old.  Omitting the quoted remarks that belong to someone else, here's my text for those of you who have wandered off into the wilderness of not being on list ;-) but may yet be interested.  (In this particular case, havocthecat and tv_elf, this means you; see post one below.)

( Upcoming New FK Fanfic -- Chat )
( Forever Net Before Christmas Zine -- Recommendations )