Yuletide
Happy Christmas to everyone who celebrates it.
I've not had much opportunity to browse the Yuletide archive, but I have managed to read my own gifts. And I have two, in two different fandoms, so many thanks to my mystery authors!
The Duty of a Bard is from Patricia McKillip's Song of the Basilisk -- after the end of the book, the music School, Tourmalyne house and people's lives are all being rebuilt. There is a mix of politics, music and the personal dimension, a real sense of hope and new beginnings, of things being unearthed and of the building of a new future on different principles to the old regime and with Luna's goodwill
Five Loves in Jaxon Halsing's Life is from Sharon Shinn's Summers at Castle Auburn and traces Jaxon's life from his first glimpse of an Aliora to what happens to him after the end of the book.
Both stories are lyrical, in slightly different ways and they each capture something of the feel of the original.
I'm particularly impressed with the mystery authors as my original writer had defaulted and they had been a mixup with the pinch hits. Thankfully, I was offline throughout Christmas Eve, so although I knew I was on the original "Yuletide treat -- no story in the archive" list, I didn't see the last-minute e-mails looking for authors going out 24 hours before the archive went live. So it's a real tributes to my writers' skills and dedication to Yuletide that these stories were shiny and ready for me in the archive when it went live.
Both of these fandoms are so tiny as to qualify as fandoms of one, so if you know the books, do drop by and read the fan fiction -- there's not a lot of it around. (And if you don't know the books, go and find them!)