I love good guys

In honor of tv_elf today, here are six brand-new Don Schanke userpic icons up for grabs.  (If you'd like one for your very own, tell me and I'll delete it so no one else can pick it up.)  Enjoy!

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Happy birthday, tv_elf.  I miss you.

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.

[Cross-posted from ForKni-L.  And if you're on a Horsechick's f-list, you've doubtless seen the news there.]

Good friend and FK Fan tv_elf, whom you'll remember as a Merc and a FoD from the old days, and whom you may have met at Bridging the Knight or any Vividcon, or perhaps from her most recent FK fanfiction, has been in the hospital since Friday night.

We are not yet ready to lose her, not by a long shot.  If you're inclined to pray, please include her now.  Please.

Thank you very much.  I've never before gone the prayer-request route on forkni-l, but needs must.

I did not participate in any story exchanges this year, but tv_elf generously wrote me a gift story anyway.  Brand new, not yet even posted to fkfic-l, her "Things Unsaid" is that shining brilliant thing twelve years past cancellation called a new scenario.  Its characters include Nick, Natalie, Jenny Schanke and more I cannot name without spoiling things.  Please give it a try, and let her know you did so.

tv_elf, thank you!