Remix is coming up again this year and I’m looking forward to it – it’s fun and it’s different and I always seem to end up writing something I never have before/never thought I would.

You’re eligible if you have at least five 500 word stories or at least seven 100 word stories in one fandom on their long list (which they are currently discussing adding to).

Since I know that there are people who are nearly eligible, but not quite, or people that are nearly eligible in one fandom but not quite, how about a little drabbleathon? All those drabble comms I used to be in, years back, are now paying dividends because I’m eligible for four fandoms, one of which I’ve only ever written drabbles in.

So, anyone who wants to write a drabble – for whatever reason, even if it has nothing to do with remix – comment here with fandoms, and characters too if you like, other people can give you prompts, then you write some drabbles.

It’s probably a good idea to link to your comment, so your friends who aren’t reading this can give you prompts – or you can post another entry on your LJ/blog. But since this post is in three places, lets keep all the prompts etc in the LJ post.

This weekend I have:

• Tidied
• Cleaned
• Done my finances – and discovered the electricity bill I thought I’d paid on Christmas Eve I actually hadn’t
• Sorted out some paperwork – and found a two month old letter from the doctors inviting me for an asthma review
• Baked chocolate chip cookies, fairy cakes (with purple icing), chocolate chip biscuits, flapjacks and chocolate sponge puddings

And if that wasn’t enough, I have uploaded a load of stories to A03. These are some of the stories I have on Harry’s journal that are written for weekly prompt comms. It’s useful to have them in order, but these are essentially quick things that I dashed off. They’re not the greatest things I’ve written ever, but they’ve been useful for getting me writing – and sometimes it’s useful to just get something over and done with without spending weeks on it. Think of them as flashfic if you will.

I thought it’s entirely possible that some people might be vaguely interested in them, so they are:
Harry’s childhood
Harry’s present

The latter starts where the Sarah Jane Smith audios stop and run concurrently with New Who, Torchwood and SJA and I did work out what went where at one point, but I have since forgotten.

And now I am tired and fifteen minutes late with Being Human.

I asked a couple of posts ago if anyone wanted drabbles and lost_spook asked for:

anything to do with Press Gang, Kenny and wrong numbers

so I wrote:

Wrong number, right thing to do

“Lynda?” Kenny frowned upon hearing the voice on the other end of the phone. “I didn’t call you.”

“I know.” Her tone was smug. “I had the line re-routed.”

He sighed. “Lynda, you can’t stop me from going to Australia.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

He had to admit it was hard to stop Lynda doing anything she didn’t want to, but he hated to leave it like this. “Come and see me off at the airport.” When she said nothing he added, “Please?”

“I’ll think about it.” She slammed the phone down.

Kenny hoped she would forgive him for leaving.

And I didn’t write as much this year due to being ill, but I do this every year and it will be interesting to see how it all compares. And since WordPress tells you the number of words in a post, I can easily tell how many words each story has. Read more…

Now that the Yuletide authors have been revealed I can reveal that I wrote a 5000 word Press Gang story, Hoops and Bumps. I didn’t intend to write any full length treats because I knew I wouldn’t have time. But while I was writing this one I had some Spike and Lynda banter I couldn’t fit into the story, but wanted to use. So I made a story out of it and ended up with 1003 words for selenay936: Memories Are Not Made of This. I had wanted to write some short stuff on Christmas Eve, but I was just too tired and work had been too busy and I didn’t have the energy or time.

Although I didn’t mean to, I managed to read everything I wanted to in the archive on 30th December and therefore two days before the author reveal (as that was quite late yesterday). In the past couple of years I’ve done a recs list of everything I’ve read and enjoyed (and therefore commented on) but it was just never going to happen this year. But I have already reviewed nine (I think it was nine) stories for Sel’s site.

And on a completely different subject, I took some photos of the cat (the first three of these). He is very sweet and a complete idiot.

I think there were other things I’ve been meaning to blog about, but I’m buggered if I can remember what they might have been.

I thought this last week would be quite quiet, I’d get lots of things done… I don’t know why I thought that. It didn’t help that I kept waking up at 6am – except on Friday when I woke up at 5am. Monday it snowed during the day, and I was sick of waiting in the freezing cold for a freezing cold bus and getting home half an hour later than I would have if I’d driven, so I drove to work on Monday. I contemplated leaving my car at work, but decided to drive home. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done – not helped by two police cars and two ambulances going past me in the opposite direction with their blue lights flashing. They couldn’t go above 20mph the same as the rest of us, though, so the blue flashing lights didn’t exactly do them much good.

But now I know what it’s like, I won’t be driving in the snow again. But I’d only ever seen it snow and settle during the day once before, so I assumed it was a freak event and it would just go back to snowing in the night again. But I also live further North than I grew up, and there it snows every year, which I find utterly ridiculous weather, but moving back South would mean I was living far from anywhere, so I supposed I’m stuck with it. If the Gulf Stream ever goes away, we’re seriously buggered.

On the plus side, I have a week off work and it is now Boxing Day, which is miles better than Christmas Day. Except that for some strange reason all the good TV is on on New Years Day.

And I have a Yuletide fic! The site’s really slow, so it’s best visited in the mornings before the Americans get up, but it’s a Quantum Leap fic: Returning Home and Meeting Memories for the First Time. Reading through the rest of the archive is taking time, not just because of the slowness, but also because I find the contrast between the text and the background gives me a headache. But fortunately, the other week I came across a site called Readability, where you can decide what you want the page to look like, then create a bookmarklet. So all I have to do, once the fic is loaded, is press on the bookmark, then hey, presto, I can read it! And to think that when I found it I never thought it would be useful…

Which I’ve been meaning to write for the past week…
Read more…

I am so busy at the moment, it’s crazy. Yesterday at work was terrible – I worked straight through lunch and didn’t leave till late. Today I didn’t think it would be quite so busy. I did get a lunch break, but didn’t quite manage to start on today’s work until 4pm and then left late. Tomorrow I have so much to do I can’t see how I’m going to start on tomorrow’s work. Then I’m off on Friday and Monday and going to the Balance Clinic on Tuesday afternoon. Which means the only way I can get tomorrow’s work done in time is going to be to do it at the weekend, I think. Everyone else is busy at work too. The only good thing is that at least there are only two weeks left after this one.

I’m still catching up with stuff I need to do at home after spending my week off ill. I got really anxious about Yuletide and wrote the first draft while I had a really bad cold and felt awful. Which is something I’ve learnt to do from being ill for so long, it’s just something I’d rather not do until I have to. And then I had to work hard to get it into something vaguely readable. Tonight I managed v3 – of 5500 words! I should just have to read it through a couple more times, then it can go to beta. Which is good because I need to get it out of the way so I can do betaing, treats and my TR secret santa. And maybe catch up on my viewing.

I keep meaning to update more often but I’m just so unmotivated by everything at the moment. I think all that time reading and watching videos and not doing a lot else and I’ve got used to it. But there isn’t nothing on tonight (I’m most upset that The Bill’s off for Celebrity nonsense), so I am determined to do something constructive with my evening.

In Yuletide news I am currently reviewing the source material in the hopes that I might manage a plot at the end of it. I’m quite excited about what I’m writing and it helps that my recipient likes a lot of the same things that I do. I’m hoping that writing that will help remind me about the whole doing something constructive thing.

It’s Children in Need tomorrow, so it’s guaranteed to rain, since it’s not that cold. Normally I’d be running around in the road with a bucket before work, but I’m not well enough to do that, so I am counting money after work instead. I don’t think I can quite cope with the idea of not doing something for Children in Need any more.

I’m having a week off work next week, which I will mostly be spending listening to the tennis, since the BBC aren’t showing much. I was very excited by a twitter post of Andy Murray’s today because he revealed that he’s playing Sunday afternoon and that’s when I’m going. We’re further back than we were for the gymnastics, so expect pictures of ant-sized people.

I am most distressed my today’s paper when they announced they are discontinuing the Technology section in the Guardian. I liked it best when it was the Online section with the Science section inside, but it’s still been worth buying the paper once a week for it. Without it there’ll be no reason to buy the paper any more – and I don’t like reading the paper online, it’s not the same. These days I tend to get my news from Radio 5 on the way home from work.

Dear Yuletide Writer

First of all, feel free to ignore anything I’ve said in the prompts. If you can write any of those then that’ll be great, but they’re mostly just what I’d most prefer to get. At the end of the day I’d far rather get something you’re proud of than something you’re less happy with but fits in with what I’ve put down. Feel free to add in any other characters you like to these prompts – as long as the one(s) I’ve requested are in there, you can bring in to the story whoever else you like. There aren’t any characters in these fandoms that I dislike.

Generally speaking, I love stories that have an emotional punch in some way. Whether it makes me laugh, cry, be happy, be all gooey inside, be shocked etc. What particularly fascinates me, as you might have gathered from my prompts, are relationships between characters, whether they’re romantic or not. I don’t mind whether you write something shippy or gen for any of the prompts, so long as you stick to canonical ships. I’d just rather not have any sex above a PG-13 rating.

If you’re writing for one of the British TV show prompts and you’re not British, then please get your fic Brit-picked. There’s nothing likely to annoy me more than characters being out of character because they’re speaking American English when they should be speaking British English.

If you want to do more research then my fic recs can be found at this site. There are recs from a few people on there, mine are the ones that say they are recced by Paranoidangel.

Just a few notes about the prompts: Read more…

I am off to see the World All Round Gymnastics Finals tomorrow, in the Millennium Dome, so I have tomorrow and this afternoon off. Which is probably just as well because I’m quite dizzy and a bit snotty. I suspect the two things are related. On the plus side, when I’m recovering on Saturday there is at least plenty to watch, despite there being no Merlin (the TV series).

Everyone who signed up for the Sarah & Harry ficathon got a story in, which I am glad about. I wrote Not Just a Pretty Face. There was quite a bit of time between me putting everything into the posting box and actually coming up with a title…

I got all excited looking at fandoms for Yuletide. How I’m going to narrow it down to four, I don’t know.

This week hasn’t been too bad a week. It helped that it was only four days long and working from home Thursday afternoon. Although I spent the whole week confused so I forgot that it was the day I buy the newspaper until Thursday evening. It is all on the website, it’s just such a pain to read that way, I’d far rather have the paper.

This weekend I even felt well enough to clean the flat and go out to Sainsburys, so that’s an achievement. I’d quite like to go out for a walk at some point, as I currently get no exercise. I couldn’t fit that round cleaning, though, but maybe next weekend I’ll do that instead.

I’m onto the head moving exercises, which are really hard. But I knew they were going to be because I already don’t nod or shake my head, and try not to turn round at work when I hear something interesting from behind me.

I am working on watching all the stuff on my PVR so I actually have some space to tape everything that starts this autumn. After having had the prompt for a week I managed to come up with the whole plot for my Sarah & Harry ficathon story. I even started writing it. I seem to be on about 300 words at a time at the moment, which is about half my usual, but will get there in the end as long as I keep up with it.

For some inexplicable reason half the week’s TV is on tonight (Last Chance to See, Miss Marple (who I don’t like as much as Poirot) and Joanna Lumley doing something with cats. And the US Open is on the radio from tomorrow, so hopefully there’ll be lots of exciting tennis to listen to and they’ll get it done quickly because I really can’t stay up late these days.

And now I need to have a lie down so I won’t be too dizzy to cook dinner.

The (Doctor Who) Sarah & Harry ficathon sign-ups close tomorrow! (Well, they’ll be closed once I get up on Saturday).

All it involves is writing a story of min 750 words featuring Sarah and Harry by mid-October. How hard can it be?

Currently I only have four sign-ups. I can, and will, run it with only four people but I am greedy and want more stories to read than that.

So if you write Sarah and Harry, why have you not signed up? And don’t think I won’t be asking people on my friends list for a good excuse if they haven’t signed up by tomorrow evening.

At the moment, with being ill, doing a normal five day week is really hard going, and that’s 37.5 hours. This week I’ve done about 40. I managed to be able to go home an hour early on Thursday, and it was really good to be able to have a lie down before cooking dinner at a reasonable time without having to resort to eating a pot potato. Then Friday was ok, and if it had stayed like that I might have been ok. Except that I was stupidly busy from 3.30 to 6.30.

I was so tired Friday night. I wasn’t too bad this morning, but I’ve mostly felt terrible since then. But tomorrow I am determined to be well enough to go to our community project because it will take my mind off it and maybe some fresh air will help a bit. Plus there is going to be a barbecue in the cul-de-sac tomorrow afternoon (they put a note through my door after I’d gone to bed last night!), so if I was in I’d have to close the windows against the smell, and I have no intention of going to a barbecue with people I don’t know where I’d have to explain why I can’t eat anything and why I can’t stand up without holding onto something. I really don’t have the energy for that.

But today I have watched two more episodes of Teachers (I have five to go until the point where I definitely started watching it) and I’ve been reading Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story, which is big and heavy, but really interesting.

And my new mp3 player arrived, which is better and brighter pink than the old one. I just have to use Windows Explorer to transfer files, and I loathe Explorer in Vista, it’s designed so you can never find anything. On my netbook I have to use Amarok, which took me ages to work out how to get it to recognise my mp3 player and transfer files to it, but that was mostly because I was looking in the wrong place.

Also, sign-ups have started for the second Sarah & Harry ficathon. There clearly needs to be a Harry ficathon too, but not till next year because this one won’t finish till October and then Yuletide will be starting up. And I’ll have a working internet connection for it this time!

I am behind, but in my defence I went home this weekend and because it was a nice day my two hour journey on Friday took three hours. Also I still have a cold and sore throat, although it is starting to improve.

Anyway, on Friday the names went up for who_remix, so I can reveal that I wrote Scenes from a Government Project (The Italian Restaurant Remix) of hhertzof’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Which, incidentally, she wrote for last year’s Sarah & Harry ficathon – sign ups for this years will be up soon.

In a strange and bizarre twist of events we both remixed each other’s fic, while selenay936 cackled evilly while she betaed. Or something along those lines.

The good thing about remixing someone for whom I’ve read their fic is that I didn’t have to read any of it. The one I picked I know I would have written different if I’d written it. Although the remix isn’t the way I’ve written it because I feel like I’ve written Sarah & Harry at dinner a thousand times.

It wasn’t quite as fun as remix though, so next year I’ll just be sticking to remix and not bothering with who remix.

Usually, when Remix happens, I try and read everything in the fandoms I know and get a recs list about before the reveal. But since that clearly wasn’t going to happen anyway, never mind that I only had four days to do it in, I’m still working my way through it. But some recs will find their way to Sel’s site.

I wrote my first ever Harry Potter fic: Sirius Black, Specialising in Sexual Education (The Master Becomes the Apprentice Remix). I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t one of the fandoms I put down that I’d write, but I couldn’t get it out of my head as I read the others.

The one that was remixed of mine was Suddenly a Small Fish (The Great Big Pond Remix) and as what happened with the TARDIS Big Bang, people seem unable to understand that the name I write under is not the same as my LJ name, but in this case it’s in a tag, so I can’t get them to change it.

I’ve got lots of things done this weekend, which was good. And then this afternoon the washing machine smoked… And this is where I’m very glad I rent because the landlord has come round and looked at it and it’s his problem, not mine.

I do mean to update this more often, but I’m so behind on everything in my life it’s just not funny. The last week of Wimbledon was so hot – around 30C, and humid – that it was just too hot to do anything. Well, I watched Wimbledon (and am now sad it’s all over – no more tennis till the US Open and that’s only on the radio), but my TV puts out a lot of heat. I could only use my laptop or netbook if I sat back from them and used the wireless keyboard, so my hands didn’t get too hot. And I even got hot sitting under the light. But I did a lot of reading.

Then it got cooler again and I planned to do lots, but I had a busy couple of days at work and that nearly wrote off last week. The crowning glory was being really sick that I thought was a stomach bug, but might actually be an intolerance reaction to something. I don’t know what, but I can’t find out until all my symptoms go away, once my system’s cleared of whatever it is.

So my dizziness hasn’t really improved much over the past couple of weeks therefore… But I saw an ENT yesterday who said it can take 5-6 months and it’s only been four and a half so far. But every doctor and ENT I see say something different, so who knows. But it says something that I’ve become resigned to it now. Well, I am today, when I’m having a bad day I’m not so much. But I am typing this on my netbook while lying down having a break from packing because I got too dizzy to do any more.

In other news, Wallingford Rotaract won Club of the Year within the district, which was great and unexpected. I’m still quite thrilled about it and we found out at the handover on 4th July. I finished my remix fic, although it’s annoying the archive goes live this weekend because I’m away till Tuesday on the annual windmill trip, which should be nice and relaxing. Then when I come back I really need to write my who remix fic, since that’s due in on the 3rd…

With useful headers and everything. Read more…

This weekend I’ve watched lots of tennis. Which was good, but I wish they’d just stick to showing us the court in such a way that they don’t have to move the camera, and not show us a picture from behind one of the players where you can’t see anything and the camera moves too much. I also could do with them not showing us an aerial view of the court and then spiralling round and in. But at least we get six days of French Open viewing (at the weekends) whereas for Wimbledon we only get three.

I saw Sports Island 2 for the Wii and I want it – it looks good. Not that I can play on the Wii at the moment, mind you. Or cross stitch, which is really quite frustrating.

All of a sudden remix is happening, so I’m going to be writing two at the same time.

I need to do a reading my weight in books update – it might be in a while when there’s no tennis.

My hayfever’s gone from practically nothing to me spending the afternoon blowing my nose, last night with itchy eyes and sudden asthma when it got dark Friday and today. At least it’s quite late, so hopefully it’ll only be a month and half – which I calculated should only cost me about £30 in drugs.

I was going to write something exciting, but I got bogged down in Conference stuff and lost the will to live a little bit. So instead I’m going to finish off my packet of smarties (they’re pretend smarties, so they come in packets, not tubes) and watch some more stuff off my PVR.

But I wanted to say that I got a fantastic fic in the TARDIS Gen ficathon: The Inestimable Value of a Good Pair of Shoes which stars Harry.