Outside, It's America

Christmas Day brought me more than Santa's presents this year. One of the my biggest presents was the final chapter of a novel-length fic I've been following for over a year. This story is unique in a few ways. It brings a brilliant gift to a tiny fandom – remember the 2004 movie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow? The chemistry between them, I thought, was nil, and her character made me want to smack the writers and take away their drugs. This fic takes what I thought was a well-intentioned movie to a terrific place, mostly by relegating the annoying Paltrow character to its proper place - irritating wannabe girlfriend. And the author replaces it with a wonderfully tender relationship between the two male leads, Joe and Dex, and wraps it into an exciting adventure story.

Written by legionseagle, (ETA - who is more commonly known as ajhalluk) I'd highly recommend it even if you haven't seen the movie. The setting is what could be called AU WWII.

Fog on the Clyde begins here, and continues for 57 installments (some short).

Thank you, mystery author! It was gorgeous.

Happy birthday, painless_j! You are a real gift to fandom, and more than that, to me. Hope your day is/was terrific.

And belated happy birthdays to a bunch of you - cursive, icarusancalion, naadi, and novembersnow.

I managed to get my merry_smutmas fic done on time; "done" being a relative term meaning "I stopped fussing with it." I can only do a bit of generic whining here or else I'll reveal myself unwittingly. Let me just say that I have awesome betas/editors (who have nothing to do with my predilection to internalize my own failings). I was madly rewriting during the final week and squeaked in under the wire, although I could have done a good bit more revising. And the topic of #$^*&%*@ was one I swore I'd never write, but painless_j convinced me to try it (and for that act, I made her beta it too). And it was so *&$%#@!*& and complicated and of course I ended up ^%$*&@#$ it. But that explains why I've been so quiet.

Thursday night was my new book club meeting, and they flattered me by choosing Good Omens on my rec. They all loved it too.

Last night I went to a solo piano concert by a good friend of mine, which was wonderful but launched a huge raft of Life Issues about growing old and moving on. I was teary-eyed nearly the whole time and went to bed emotionally drained.

On a similar note, how did it happen that my son is going through teendom while his mother is going through menopause? I definitely didn't think that one through. Battle of the hormones, now playing nightly!

So I haven't seen It yet. I'm waiting for a good spot in my space/time continuum. But I'm reading all the spoilers and enjoying your thoughts.

Actual fandom content! Here's a new author alert: lydiabennet has posted a lovely H/D one-shot on her LJ, World Enough and Time. Go be all welcoming, 'k?