I wrote this story for pj1228 in the oldschoolfic winter 2011 event.  (This is the one with the Turkish bath, the blood supplier, and the teenage murder victim.)  Thanks to lastscorpion, skieswideopen and amilyn for beta-reading!  Thanks to celli and wiliqueen for brainstorming!

PJ is a Cousin, Dark Knightie and UFer who prefers "dark," so I found this assignment extremely challenging.  I aimed close to canon, hoping to achieve its openness to being read both ways; the crimes solved in this tale are more disturbing than my usual, and some may find them triggering, though all could have aired as written.

	•  Title:	"Cuts Deep" (also on AO3)
	•  Length:	~11,000 words
	•  Date:	Oldschoolfic 02/02/11, FKFic-L 05/02/11
	•  Rating:	PG-13
	•  Summary:	Nick and Schanke solve a vicious murder that reminds Nick of a miscarriage of justice in 1885 London.
	•  Characters:	Nick, Schanke, Natalie, Lacroix, Janette, Stonetree, Norma, Others
	•  Quotation:	"Schanke was right; Nick did know that feeling.  He took a deep breath of the clear spring night.  'We give the families closure, Schank.  And sometimes, with these high profile cases, the whole community needs that closure, too."

This was my match story for the May 2010 fkficfest ficathon.  My thanks to wiliqueen for her prompt, in which Nick "has seen artistic revolutions come and go, and has his own perspective on the group of young people calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood."  My thanks also to havocthecat and natmerc for beta-reading, swiftly and on-target.

The opportunity to sweep Nick and his concerns into this milieu was delightfully consuming.  The request to include real historical figures as supporting characters was a new challenge for me, and I learned a lot about balancing historical precision with storytelling momentum.  I have increased respect for those who do it well!

	•	Title:	"True to Life" (also on AO3)
	•	Length:	14,644 words
	•	Date:	Posted to fkficfest on May 16, 2010; not yet posted to FKFic-L
	•	Rating:	PG-13 (gen)
	•	Summary:	Janette visits Nick in his life on the edge of the Pre-Raphaelite circle; with her comes everything he is trying to escape.
	•	Setting:	1857 London
	•	Characters:	Nick, Janette, Others
	•	Quotation:	"How often had he truly rescued her, and how often had he unwittingly used her as bait -- or had she used herself?"

I began posting my oldschoolfic ficathon story to fkfic-l today.  I'm grateful to amilyn for the ficathon prompt, and her enthusiastic reception of the story!  And I'm obliged to my generous beta-readers (see the story's end note) as always.  This is the longest piece I've yet written solely from Natalie's perspective.

	•	Title:	"A Delicate Balance"
	•	Length:	~9,900 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L July 27-29, 2008
	•	Rating:	PG (gen)
	•	Summary:	Natalie takes a break from a murder investigation to attend an unusual memorial for her brother, while considering a new approach to Nick's condition.
	•	Setting:	After "1966."  Flashbacks to Natalie's childhood.
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Schanke, Richard, Sara, Nana, Janette, Grace, Stonetree, Tracy and others.
	•	Quotation:	"The mesmerism-enforced lie that had covered Richie's vampirism curdled on Natalie's tongue."

Addendum:  By the way, the fkfic-l "ACK" states that the posts are reaching 279 recipients.  (I presume that is "mail" and "digest," not "nomail," but I don't know for sure.)  Those of you who have FK fanfic you've posted on LJ but not the list, please do consider sharing with the biggest FK audience still assembled.  We miss you.

I'm going over my femme_fic ("We Love Female Characters") ficathon story draft one more time today, trying for as much polish as I can achieve before posting to the community this weekend.  As part of that, I've just transcribed the key dialogue from those episodes on which the story most draws, including every word ever spoken by my favorite neck-of-the-week, the most canonically pertinent guest character we ever received (such that I am joking by lumping her into that category, naturally).  The transcriptions below are exact; I did not omit even those lines that make me throw rolled-up socks at the screen, and you know these episodes have their share of those!  But I love them anyway, as shown by the 14,000-word draft continuing them that I'm scrubbing right now, and striving to make evoke these very lines.

If I've written the story well, no one will need to rewatch any episodes in order to understand it.  But reviewing FK canon is always a delight, right? ;-)  I will get these quotations properly sorted into my FK Concordance after the ficathon story is on its way.  (Gracious, but transcribing is so much easier with the DVDs than it was with tapes!)

Transcribed excerpts, in reverse chronological order:

( Crazy Love ) ( Fallen Idol ) ( Be My Valentine ) ( Near Death )

What's good?  For March, the FK recommendation-of-the-month project features Dorothy's novel "Evidence" (1998), set shortly after "Trophy Girl."  The Reese subplot (in and around a serial-killer cop plot, Renaissance flashbacks and some Natalie psychology) makes me think again that as Dorothy is most often publicly praised for her N&N romance content, her spot-on rendering of Reese is perhaps an underappreciated gift to the fandom.

What's new?  In February 2008, fkfic-l happily saw these two new stories posted.

• "What Would Happen" (an FK/Smallville crossover, adult) (1 Part) by abby82
  
• "Steamer Trunk Space" (a Janette vignette) (1 Part) by me

At least, I presume it was happily.  I was happy at the advent of new fiction, even though one of the stories was my own.  I would be happier if there were more, always.  Fandom does not live by discussion alone.

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..."

In "I Will Repay," Janette tells Nick she never converted anyone to vampirism.  But what about the Baroness in "If Looks Could Kill"?  Some very kind people nominated "Not the Mothering Type" for a 2001 FK Fanfiction Award for its attempt to reconcile those loose canon ends.

Rereading this story tonight, I thought about how it models what I hope to contribute to that "Women are Awesome" femme_fic ficathon.  Told from Janette's view, "Not the Mothering Type" stars Janette and Sofia, their challenges and solutions -- and while Lacroix's villainy is not completely overcome in the past, this is first season, where Janette, Sofia and Nick have all outlived him.  They are the survivors... of all he put them through, all the deep-seated damage he wrought.  They win.

Rereading, I also wondered, in passing: "Golly, could I really tell no story in those days without a Fleur reference?" ;-)

	•	Title:	"Not the Mothering Type"
	•	Length:	~4,500 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L October 6, 2001
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Prompted by Nick, Janette recalls what really happened when Sofia became a vampire.
	•	Setting:	c.1885 Bavaria (ILCK), framed 1992 (IWR)
	•	Characters:	Nick, Janette, Sofia, Lacroix, Others
	•	Quotation:	"Newly returned to this world, Sofia needed -- and would want -- only vibrant, living, human blood, not the sluggish undead mire that was all Janette had to share."

Putting this fanfiction retrospective back on chronological track, the next story up is "England's Rose."  It seems peculiar now, over a decade later, on this side of 9/11 and war and all the rest, the volume of grief lavished on Princess Diana's loss.  But at that time, much of a generation saw a mirror crack, and felt their reflection shatter.  Natalie is part of that generation.

FK's timeline warps to accommodate this story.  "Nobody dies, nobody ever dies," so that the entire cast can register reactions.

	•	Title:	"England's Rose"
	•	Length:	~5,572 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in September 1997
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Princess Diana's death distresses Natalie and reminds Nick of Queen Caroline.
	•	Setting:	August 31 and September 6, 1997; Flashbacks 1981 and 1783
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Sara, Grace, Schanke, Nick, Janette, Lacroix, Urs, Vachon, Screed, Tracy, Cohen
	•	Quotation:	"Natalie had turned nineteen the summer of the royal wedding, and there had been something inescapably exciting about watching this girl, her own age, walk onto the world stage."

 

"Longer Than the Medicis," my first fan poem, was nominated for FK fanfiction poem of the year for 1999.  My thanks to those who nominated it!  (The poem received only three feedback comments at the time, so without the generous nomination, I wouldn't have known anyone else read it, and I might not have tried writing fan poetry again.)

	•	Title:	"Longer than the Medicis"
	•	Length:	~1,200 words Nine pentameter 18-line stanzas, unrhymed
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L on August 30, 1999
	•	Summary:	In Renaissance Italy, Janette and Nick host a party.
	•	Characters:	Janette, Nick
	•	Quotation:	"But through candlelit hours of music / and talk, she could feel Nicolas waiting, / waiting, waiting for her, his molten voice / singing a long, slow kiss through the chamber."