Library of Chulak

amperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.

Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:

“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”

Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.

Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:

“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”

Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.

I finished something I started a while back!

Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.

I figured that I'd group these together as they're by the same author. I wanted to talk about this anyway, because this is one of the more gratifying experiences I've had with leaving comments on older fic. Basically, I commented on a long WIP that hadn't been updated in several years, and the author not only wrote the rest of it but ALSO, to my delighted amazement, posted another long fic in the same universe, and started posting some new fanart too. It was wonderful. ♥ Never be afraid to comment even years later; sometimes you not only make someone's day but get lovely fanworks in return.

( 3 Londo/G'Kar Babylon 5 recs (by the same creator) cut for spoilers )

Continuing with the latest batch; also see previous post in case you missed anything.

9. Biggles/EvS forced to maintain close proximity by mad science

Responding to the prompt call with a Biggles prompt- Biggles and EvS are cursed or exposed to a mysterious mad-science substance that makes them have to maintain physical contact or very close proximity or else suffer increasingly debilitating pain &/ illness the farther they are apart- and now must work together in these constraints to fix this situation

Originally posted on Tumblr

( 900 wds under the cut )

10. Scotland Yard ladies gossiping about EvS

Biggles prompt! The Scotland Yard ladies chatter about that tall, dark & handsome foreign gentleman Mr. Boelke who comes round to Raymond's office once a month. Biggles is Extremely Normal about this.

Originally posted on Tumblr

( 500 wds under the cut )

11. Tied to a bed

Biggles prompt! There was only one (piece of furniture sturdy enough to tie a prisoner to and it was a) bed

Originally posted here

( 100 wds under the cut )

Jagged Little Slayer by periru3 and Tafadhali.
(Link goes to series page; see individual vids for content notes.)

This is an ambitious project to vid Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the entirety of Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" album, one vid per song. A wide variety of pairings and characters are represented, and a lot of moods - dysfunctional and sad, uplifting and warm. I definitely have some favorites among these and some that weren't quite my thing (much like the songs on the album itself) but overall, it's an incredibly ambitious project, very nicely done, and there's probably something in here for almost every fan of the show. I didn't even realize I still had this much nostalgia for BtVS - it was one of those shows that I watched and enjoyed, but never really got into the fandom for - but wow, apparently I do, and this is a great tribute to all its ups and downs.

A G'Kar vid! This well edited vid does a marvelous job of hitting the grace notes of G'Kar's arc without exactly recapping it. (Does definitely contain spoilers.)

Vid by sandalwoodbox - I think it was Tumblr where I originally saw this, but it's posted on AO3 here.

I genuinely can't believe I finished this BUT I DID.



The cover is .... there. It may need work.

Anyway - another Fated Mountain Lodge novella arrives for the holidays to answer the question everyone is asking: will the lodge's reservation system work any better this time than it has in the previous four books?

Download from Bookfunnel if you'd like a copy! It comes out on Dec. 7, so the link will stop working then.

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/lzcdk6pga8

Under the cut: a brief history of how this book came to be written.

( Click for details )