Life! (not immortality)

What's Good?  I am very happy to get to spotlight Dorothy E.'s "Trust" (1998, PG, ~9K words) in the recommendation-of-the-month project this November.  Home on administrative leave after the "Close Call" shooting, this Schanke grapples with issues of truth, interdependence and reliability, and, in the end, takes control of keeping the secret Nick can't confide.

       Nick didn't like to kill. People. So he drank bottled blood and worked in homicide. He saved lives where he could. He teased his partner, and loved the coroner, and tried to live a life that was as human as possible. Despite having to hide from the sun, despite that Creepy-Crawler, who Schanke suddenly was sure was a thorn in Nick's side. Despite Janette... But, hey, he had just been looking.

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What's New on FKFic-L?  Largely because of FKFic-L War XIII, no "non-war" stories posted in October.  However, there has been one new story so far in November!

Someday, I may write a sequel to this novella, and it may be called "Under a Long Shadow."  Someday.  If I figure out the theme.  I know what happens next, you see, but I'm not sure it matters, because "In the Light of Day" fulfills its whole original purpose.  To write, I must have purpose.

"In the Light of Day" is a parallel-reality tale.  The break with canon comes after "Fever," and the story then progresses through "Dead of Night," "The Games Vampires Play" and "The Human Factor," reworking each episode given Nick's new mortality, until things are so different that the parallel snaps, and the alternate reality floats free.

One tidbit of which I'm fond here is Natalie's on-the-fly psychoanalysis of Lacroix, in which she concludes that no one will ever love another person as much as he has, over eight centuries, convinced himself he loved Fleur.  I also like the garden I built for Feliks Twist (but I really owe him a nice story of his own for his fate here).  And the flashbacks!  I did more research for them than any before or since (so far).  For this story, I became queen of a certain slice of Trivial Pursuit questions.  :-)

	•	Title:	"In the Light of Day"
	•	Length:	~53,000 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in October 2003
	•	Rating:	PG-13 (m/f)
	•	Summary:	Nick regains his humanity, but he's not the only one.  And no one is prepared for all the consequences.
	•	Setting:	After "Fever," with flashbacks 1226-1228
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Norma, Stonetree, Urs, Tracy, Reese, Vachon, Feliks Twist, Lacroix, Myra Schanke, Janette, Others
	•	Quotation:	"Nick strolled back to his loft in the crisp morning light, feeling everything was right with his world. Granted, his arm was in a sling, his shoulder throbbed like thunder, he remained on enforced medical leave, his partner might never again pass a police physical, and the Enforcers could well be coming to get him and the woman he loved..."