30 Weeks of Fanfic - Week 30
Week 30: What is your current project or projects?
The SGINA-verse is my current project and will keep me occupied for several years. It involves four fandoms at present and is infinitely expandable.
There are three main forks in the SGINA-verse timeline that separate it from our world.
1. The first is in the 1890s, when Captain James Ellison, late of the US Army, is referred to specialists in Vienna to see if they can find any cause for his troubling symptoms. Naturally he encounters Doktor Sandburg who is familiar with Burton's book on sentinels published twenty years previously. Sandburg's own monograph is published in 1902 and sentinels and guides are widely known by the 1920s.
2. The second fork takes place during the 1970s, when terrorism was at an all-time high (seriously, younglings, it was much, much worse than the last fifteen years have been, but we muddled through) and the oil crisis was making life miserable all over Europe and North America. In the SGINA-verse both terrorism and oil woes were more severe, triggering mass unemployment and riots, which in turn triggered some fairly draconian legislation in Western countries to control assembly, travel, benefits and (because of test tube babies) reproduction. [Edit -- I removed that bit as it was causing more problems than I could write around.]
3. The third fork is that Mikhail Gorbachev was assassinated by hard-line Party members in January 1986, just before he could articulate his plans for political reform at the 27th Party Conference. Consequently there was no Perestroika or Glasnost and the Soviet Union endured for an additional twenty years.
What I really like about the way it's fallen out is that each story in the SGINA-verse has a different variation on sentinel and guide bonding, dictated by the personalities and histories of the characters rather than any deliberate intent on my part. This variation allows me to to explore the sentinel-guide relationship from a different point of view each time while remaining within the same loose framework. I like to think of it as the IDIC principle in operation (infinite diversity in infinite combinations).
When I started drafting this meme, early in 2014, I expected that I would be able to post links to several stories in the SGINA-verse. Unfortunately, there is only one completed work so far: Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit (H50, Steve/Danny).
- I posted Therewith Instantly (SPN, Sam/Gabriel), the first in the Paths Unconformable series, to DW last year but I was very unhappy with the last chapter so it's under revision at the moment.
- Despite Reason (SPN, Dean/Castiel), the second PU story, is progressing very slowly but with a little luck I'll have it done by the end of the year.
- Go West is the ice hockey fic (Sid/Geno) and that is second on the priority list-I've completed a few short timestamps in the same series but there isn't any point in posting them before the main fic.
- A Modern Sentinel, the Jim/Blair story, is only an outline and a few fragments at present, and I have a feeling it will be a collection of excerpts in the style of Speranza's Written By The Victors rather than a novel.
- I have rough ideas for novels in the Professionals and Due South fandoms (RayK and Fraser actually have a small cameo in Go West already) but I am resisting the temptation to work on them until I have the WIPs finished.
- In Blood The Debts Were Paid, the third novel in the Paths Unconformable series, is the last by internal chronology and will wrap up a few loose ends from earlier stories.
______________________________________
So, that's the end of this meme. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my ideas, my fics and my writing process. I have to say that it's been a learning experience for me as much as my audience, and I now know a lot more about the way I work than I did at the start.
The SGINA-verse is my current project and will keep me occupied for several years. It involves four fandoms at present and is infinitely expandable.
There are three main forks in the SGINA-verse timeline that separate it from our world.
1. The first is in the 1890s, when Captain James Ellison, late of the US Army, is referred to specialists in Vienna to see if they can find any cause for his troubling symptoms. Naturally he encounters Doktor Sandburg who is familiar with Burton's book on sentinels published twenty years previously. Sandburg's own monograph is published in 1902 and sentinels and guides are widely known by the 1920s.
2. The second fork takes place during the 1970s, when terrorism was at an all-time high (seriously, younglings, it was much, much worse than the last fifteen years have been, but we muddled through) and the oil crisis was making life miserable all over Europe and North America. In the SGINA-verse both terrorism and oil woes were more severe, triggering mass unemployment and riots, which in turn triggered some fairly draconian legislation in Western countries to control assembly, travel, benefits and (because of test tube babies) reproduction. [Edit -- I removed that bit as it was causing more problems than I could write around.]
3. The third fork is that Mikhail Gorbachev was assassinated by hard-line Party members in January 1986, just before he could articulate his plans for political reform at the 27th Party Conference. Consequently there was no Perestroika or Glasnost and the Soviet Union endured for an additional twenty years.
What I really like about the way it's fallen out is that each story in the SGINA-verse has a different variation on sentinel and guide bonding, dictated by the personalities and histories of the characters rather than any deliberate intent on my part. This variation allows me to to explore the sentinel-guide relationship from a different point of view each time while remaining within the same loose framework. I like to think of it as the IDIC principle in operation (infinite diversity in infinite combinations).
When I started drafting this meme, early in 2014, I expected that I would be able to post links to several stories in the SGINA-verse. Unfortunately, there is only one completed work so far: Pineapples Are Not The Only Fruit (H50, Steve/Danny).
- I posted Therewith Instantly (SPN, Sam/Gabriel), the first in the Paths Unconformable series, to DW last year but I was very unhappy with the last chapter so it's under revision at the moment.
- Despite Reason (SPN, Dean/Castiel), the second PU story, is progressing very slowly but with a little luck I'll have it done by the end of the year.
- Go West is the ice hockey fic (Sid/Geno) and that is second on the priority list-I've completed a few short timestamps in the same series but there isn't any point in posting them before the main fic.
- A Modern Sentinel, the Jim/Blair story, is only an outline and a few fragments at present, and I have a feeling it will be a collection of excerpts in the style of Speranza's Written By The Victors rather than a novel.
- I have rough ideas for novels in the Professionals and Due South fandoms (RayK and Fraser actually have a small cameo in Go West already) but I am resisting the temptation to work on them until I have the WIPs finished.
- In Blood The Debts Were Paid, the third novel in the Paths Unconformable series, is the last by internal chronology and will wrap up a few loose ends from earlier stories.
______________________________________
So, that's the end of this meme. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my ideas, my fics and my writing process. I have to say that it's been a learning experience for me as much as my audience, and I now know a lot more about the way I work than I did at the start.