Fan Fiction

It’s a WRAP. Cut….

…fade into black (a starry night)….

Happy New Year!

2009. –Time really does go faster when you are having fun! And yet, some things seem a lifetime ago!

Over all, the year was a good one for me. I hope it was for you, too!

I actually accomplished some of my—well, I wouldn’t call them exactly resolutions—but some of the goals I had set for myself.

I have started to become a bit more serious about the photography; got my website up and running. (www.rteest42.smugmug.com)

I actually started, finished and entered a quilt into a challenge! (didn’t make it, but I entered!!)

I finished writing my fan fiction story, started in 2007; 178,000-ish words later, The Big Chill got its Happily Ever After.

We traveled, and I met new cousins and caught up with old friends…

(You will note the eat less chocolate/exercise more types of ‘resolutions’ are not featured here, nor will they be in the future, lol!!)

This new year, I would like to get back to writing, I would like to FINISH some of the over 35 quilt projects I have started, I would like to concentrate more on genealogy, and cataloging/scanning family photos. As well as take more photos, sell more photos, and organize the house, the studio specifically, and probably do some more cooking, and spend more time with friends and family and and and and….

None are really resolutions, because they only seem to put undue pressure on you, and untold, unnecessary guilt, when you are unable to hold to it…

And that seems a pretty negative way to start a new decade!

Balance. My word of the year…..

I hope that 2010 brings you only the best of everything!!!

(and I am headed to bed…work awaits at 7:30 am….)

Meet Twitchy…

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a work in progress of mine. This is Twitchy.

Twitchy _face2

Twitchy is a doll that I have been working on on and off for the past two years.

She was named after my muse. My muse is a fickle wench, and she drags me hither and yon. I rarely can stay focused on one project (be it quilting, writing, photography, genealogy, gardening, housework…you get the idea, right??) long enough to complete it.

In the summer of 2007, I was deeply in the middle of writing a fan fiction story, when this line of prose came from my characters mouth. “Why so twitchy, Babe?”

Twitchy lying2

It didn’t suit the character in that particular environment; it wasn’t working in the greater scheme of things, so I abandoned it.

The sentence continued to haunt me for a week, so I wrote a little one shot, using the same characters but a different reality. Then that took on a life of its own, and that became a 15,000 word piece!

The story, Why So Twitchy Babe, is finished. As is the story that started it, Big Chill, after a long hiatus caused by Twitchy herself.

Twitchy, however, is still unfinished. She is only the second fabric doll I have ever made (the first being Eli, about 28 years ago, for my babiest brother)

Twitchy resting

I have made a lot of mistakes with her, (her head is on crooked, and she has the hands of a half-back for example) but I have been enjoying myself!

Twitchy believes that she should be somewhere on a sandy beach (cabana boys bringing her mojitos) looking for inspiration, not stuck sitting on a shelf in my studio…

The Fat Lady Has Sung

The Fat Lady has sung!

Just over two years have been given over to my latest project—a fictional piece I wrote….

If you’ve been a faithful reader of my blog (you HAVEN’T?? for SHAME!!!) then you know I enjoy writing something called Fan Fiction. A few years back I started writing a story because I was frustrated at having to wait almost a year to find out what Janet Evanovich was going to do with her characters in the Stephanie Plum series. Turns out it was a wise move on my part; I’m not at all fond of the direction she’s gone.

In any event, I enjoyed the experience. The working out a plot, developing characters over and above the ones she provided, and even giving more history to her characters themselves.

It also has provided me the opportunity to write fiction, with the small crutch of a map, if you will. Starting from scratch, staring at the blank page (screen) is scary enough even when you know the names and histories of some of the characters. I found that having that road map gave me the ability to meander, wander if you will, look for alternate paths. I discovered new characters waiting to join the story; I discovered that the characters I thought I knew had far more layers than we had been permitted to see.

After the first story, Geometry Lessons, I was crowned Queen of Angst by the readers of the various sites I post on. I don’t write like Janet Evanovich. I got deep into the nitty-gritty, and my characters had flaws. They had real-life adult experiences; and they had potty mouths.

I hadn’t planned on continuing. But, another story developed in my head, with nary the smallest permission from me. It was a CD I listened to, The Big Chill soundtrack. I kept hearing in the lyrics the three main characters of the Plum books.

I decided to go with it. I would write a short story for each song that worked. Ignore the songs that didn’t work. It would be a lark. They didn’t have to become one story- it would be more of an anthology. That idea lasted for a short time. The songs wove themselves together, and the story The Big Chill is long, complex, and FINISHED now. (It was interrupted midway through by a throwaway line I heard one of the characters mutter. It didn’t fit in the story I was writing, but it pestered me till I gave it its own story, Why So Twitchy, Babe?)

I would love it if you read some of my work. If you do, remember two things….One, I don’t mince words, thoughts or actions. Two, REVIEW!!! Let me know what you think!

The next step I suppose, is to start out fresh, with only my imagination as a guide, and create an entirely new world.

Yikes. Maybe Janet Evanovich will provide more fodder for me in June!