any fanfic author who uses 'hoard' to describe a large throng of people, or 'horde' to describe a store of money or treasure, would be sentenced to be pursued across the Mongolian steppe by thirty thousand Mongol warriors armed with composite bows.

( Read more... )

I'm not sure whether to be pleased or to be annoyed about the current spate of discussions of the Mary Sue issue on LJ ( Read more... )

The good: yesterday I discovered Fever Beats by Thea Gilmore. Only six years after it was released but better late than never ( Read more... )

Happy Birthday to rustybitch

Belated Happy Birthdays to spiralleds, killerweasel (without whom I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the comics about Buffy-C in the World With Scottish Wolves), spikeslovebite, and to dragon_princeDuring my last nights off work I was working simultaneously on the conclusion of ‘Life, Resumed’, the next chapter of ‘Came the Thunder’, and the next chapter of ‘Tabula Avatar’. ( Read more... )

Happy birthday to globalfruitbat and to darkestarx

I hate ‘Rhyming Review Day’ at ‘Twisting the Hellmouth’. Getting a bad review is so much worse when someone has gone to the trouble of writing it as an epic poem with 9 verses detailing the shortcomings of my portrayal of each of the characters.

Happy birthday to melancthe

Belated happy birthday to higlearn

I have been vaguely thinking about doing a poll asking what people thought was the all-time best Buffyverse fanfic. Perhaps ‘The Last Tin Soldier’ by liz_marcs? shadowscast’s ‘Fragments’ series, or her ‘Sock Puppet’? rahirah’s ‘Necessary Evils’? The short story ‘I, Bot’ that used to be hosted on Valerie X’s site (but which, ( Read more... )

The results of my Original Character poll are fairly conclusive; Sorkatani wins, with as many votes as all of the others put together. I’m rather surprised that Anna only received one vote; okay, she’s a ruthless killer who has been indoctrinated since childhood with the idea that it is her duty to shove a sharpened bicycle spoke through Dawn’s ( Read more... )

Belated happy birthdays to empresspatti, daibhid_c, constance_b and audela.

I hate, loathe, and despise 'Masterchef' with a deep and abiding passion. Just saying.

Here is a poll, just for my own amusement, about the female original characters who I have featured in my stories.

Poll Original Character

Tonight I went along to the Co-op to get some milk (and I couldn’t resist getting some of their chocolate caramel shortbread, but that is another story) and my route took me past a bookshop. It used to be a good bookshop but it changed hands and the current owners seem to see it as their mission to fill it with as much junk and as few saleable ( Read more... )