By Slanted Light

Copied from dimity_blue, because it made me wonder and it looked like fun. And because it's been ages since I posted to my lj...

1) How many works do you have on AO3?
103, apparently. I really must get on with posting the others!

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?
562,983 words.

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
Three fandoms with separate fics in their own right, but seven counting cross-overs.
Although I've just realised that A03 has divided my Pros fics into two - one group with the name of our fandom as it was, and the other with the name that Istia updated it to. How does that work? I assumed that if someone updated the name it would automatically update everyone's fics... if not, gargh, what a pain... And anyone doing a search by fandom would miss loads...

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
One Not Far Distant Day - Charm of Magpies fandom
Altogether Your World - Dark is Rising fandom
The High-Up Singing and Alive Fruit - Pros fandom!
Never the Words They Say - Pros fandom
Just Enough Rope - Pros fandom

Interesting the way it works - I've been writing Pros since 2005 (wow, sixteen years this year!), but my theoretically most popular stories were both written in the last two years for Yuletide for completely different fandoms! Which of course isn't that odd, because most of my Pros fic is re-posted from somewhere else, and is also available in our Pros-dedicated archives as well as in the original lj posts where people commented on them, whereas the other two were straight-to-A03 stories. Or of course just no one really likes my Pros fic... *g*

( 5) Do you... )

I haven't done a meme for ages, and this one is all around right now, so I'm going to have a go. Plus it's cold out there, and I'm building myself up to go for a walk, and this is a nice delaying building-up strategy. *g*

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 authors.
No tags, because there's barely that many of us on lj any more anyway, and lots of people have already done it... *g*

1. They came together that night because neither of them had any other place to go.

2. “My Will, the watchman,” Merriman had called him, and for years Will had watched in the imperfect world, growing up in it, been Old One and boy in the calm after the storm.

3. They watched Cowley stride away, ignoring the milling police, gesturing to Kate Ross, who nodded back, clearly began finishing her conversation with one of the ambulance drivers.

4. Doyle extracted himself with difficulty from Marge’s tender ministrations, catching the amused eye of Herb – or was it Alf? – in the wing mirror as he clambered out.

5. Doyle stalked straight past Bodie, standing waiting for him in the early evening light.

6. Bodie'd said it a hundred times - more, over the years, and so many more in his head.

7. London was shrouded in mist as Doyle tooled slowly through the traffic up the Fulham Road, heading for Bodie’s, riding on automatic, even as he weaved in and out between the cars to get ahead.

8. By the time Sunday came around, still raining heavily, Doyle’s flat was shining, he’d written to his mother, uncle and two of his sisters, had a go at baking bread, and was so bored he was contemplating a run even if he’d have to wear a swimsuit to do it.

9. “Northumberland.”

10. It was one of those May mornings where the sun shone, the birds sang, and because it was 6.30am on a Sunday, Doyle thought, swinging out the door to his flat, and pausing to take a breath of fresh air, you could actually hear them.

11. Doyle woke to an incessant ringing from the bedside table, dragged from deep sleep and dreams before his alarm went off.

12. Underhill had found them.

13. "Look at that." Doyle gestured out the window at their view of the snow-covered street with his cup of coffee.

14. The sun had unexpectedly come out, and the summer felt almost like summer, which wasn't what Bodie'd expected when he'd dressed for the grey sky that had lowered sullenly outside his window that morning.

15. It’s never Valentine’s day for them.

16. “I’m gonna put it in my letter, you know.

17. Something was wrong with Bodie.

18. As most right-thinking people should know, it has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a Ray(mond Doyle) of sunshine, but on this particular day, in this particular office on one of the more discreet streets in Whitehall, William Andrew Philip Bodie found himself having trouble.

19. Two o’clock, Bodie thought as chimes rang out in the downstairs flat, and all is well.

20. The world rushed past outside the train in blurs of green and yellow and sky blue, cut by darker lines of trees and bushes, dotted white now and then with sheep, or brown with cows.

Huh - interesting... I can't see any patterns myself! Can anyone else? I was going to say that if it's Pros I usually start with Doyle, but that's not true. All but two of them, both written for the Yuletide challenge, are Pros. *g* Quite a few are scene-setting, but definitely not all... nope, no patterns that I can see!

And pick my favourite opening line... not sure I can do that either, cos they're quite different... I like #1 because it feels melancholy to me, and #7 because I quite like imagining it, #10 because it makes me feel warm and blue-skyed (did I mention it's cold today?!) and #18 because it was fun to write...

Does anyone who's read this far have a favourite line from those above? Or maybe one you don't like?!

Because gilda_elise asked for people to join in, and to wake me up a bit this morning. *g*

Except that I changed it a bit cos I'm one of the many people in the world/on lj who don't live in the USA... *g* Also wow - is being divorced on many people's bucket lists?! Or watching someone give birth/die? I think this is maybe an experience meme rather than a bucket list meme!!

Anyone else like to play? *g*

Been married:
Been divorced:
Been in love: ❤
Gone on a blind date:
Skipped school: ❤
Watched someone give birth:
Watched someone die:
Been to Canada: ❤
Been to Spain:
Ridden in an ambulance: ❤
Been to Hawaii:
Been to the Shetland Islands ❤
Been to Europe: ❤
Been to North America: ❤
Been to Las Vegas: ❤
Been to Manchester: ❤
Been to Washington D.C: ❤
Been to London: ❤
Been to Nashville:
Been to Nottingham: ❤
Visited Florida: ❤
Visited Cornwall: ❤
Visited Mexico:
Visited France: ❤
Seen the Grand Canyon in person: ❤
Seen the Swiss Alps in person: ❤
Flown in a helicopter: ❤
Been on a cruise:
Served on a jury:
Been in a movie:
Danced in the rain: ❤
Been to Los Angeles:
Been to Edinburgh: ❤
Been to New York City: ❤
Been to Cardiff: ❤
Played in a marching band:
Sang karaoke:
Laughed so much you cried: ❤
Laughed so hard you peed:
Caught a snowflake on your tongue: ❤
Had children:
Had a pet(s):
Been sledding on a big hill:
Been downhill skiing:
Been water skiing:
Rode on a motorcycle: ❤
Travelled to all 50 states in the USA:
Travelled to all 50 sovereign states in Europe:
Travelled to all 4 countries in the UK: ❤
Jumped out of a plane:
Been to a drive-in movie: ❤
Rode an elephant: (Nope, but I've ridden a camel! Why doesn't this say camel?!)
Rode a horse: ❤
Been on TV: ❤
Been in the newspaper: ❤
Stayed in the hospital: ❤
Gotten a piercing: ❤
Driven a stick shift vehicle: ❤
Driven an automatic gears vehicle: ❤
Been scuba diving: ❤
Lived on your own: ❤
Rode in the back of a police car: ❤
Got a speeding ticket: ❤
Broken a bone: ❤
Gotten stitches: ❤
Travelled alone: ❤
Bought a house:
Danced all night:
Road tripped with friends: ❤
Gone white water rafting:

Hello! Long time no... well post, and even not much see! I miss my lj-world! And it's all down to life and work, and some element of brain-blah, which I'm blaming on menopause, and which means that I seem to have lost all control over time and focus...

But what can you do except keep trying? And now that Job 3 is over again, Job 2 has settled down a bit, and Job 1 is on hold (for Job 2) - and in fact Job 4 is only once a week...! - and I have put in my order for a new laptop because my gorgeous gorgeous Sony Vaio is well on the stony wee path to complete breakdown (please excuse any surfeit and/or dearth of the letters e, t and s, for instance), and I finally have all my travel sorted to go to Germany next week (next week!) for a holiday (and Switzerland! *g*), I think I can post to lj again...

So thesmallhobbit gave me three apparently random words for the Three Word Meme, and what you're supposed to do is say something about them, and offer three random words to anyone else who would like to play!

My three almost-random words were: mesembryanthemum; valley; whisper

I say almost random because mesembryanthemum is probably my favourite flower, and I have an icon of it! I remember it from growing up in Australia, where it was planted in the district hospital flower beds across the road from where we lived (my mum was matron of the hospital), and sometimes near the beach where it grows in sand dunes even more succulently (it's a word!) I just think they're so cheerful and beautiful and I love the way their little faces follow the sun around... *g* Here are some in my garden this year!
Apparently they're really called Cleretum bellidiforme now, but over here they're still mesembryanthemum, which was their original name. And they're from South Africa, like my dad was, although I didn't know that until recently!

My next word is valley, and that makes me think of watching How Green Was My Valley as a tv series growing up. It was one of those all-gathered-around-the-telly-in-the-evening series. I don't know what my dad thought of it, but my mum really liked it, and I remember enjoying it too. It will have been this 1975 BBC production - and look, Gareth Thomas was in it! I'm pretty sure I was in high school when I saw it though, so it must have take a few years to get to us in Australia - I don't remember recognising Blake though, so it must have been before I saw Blake's 7 (or maybe I just didn't recognise him... *g*)

Finally - whisper! Shhh... We don't whisper much as adults, do we? Most of the whispers I remember are from being a kid - or maybe that's just the mood I'm in tonight! Whispering with my sister and brother at night, or with friends on school camp... It was whispering so grown-ups didn't hear, wasn't it! Is that the best kind of whispering? Actually we do whisper as grown-ups - so as not to wake kids at night, or to disturb other sleepers in a YHA dorm, or... *g* No, it's definitely more magical and full of promise when you're a kid!

So - let me know if you'd like me to give you three random words! *g*

Only one taker for the meme in the end, but thanks to solosundance, here are my top five Pros eps (not that that was pretty inevitable or anything... *g*) Hmmn...
Oh, I know - lets do it this way. You can have a pic from each of my top five eps but no title, and see who can tell which ones they are... *g* Shouldn't be very hard, really!

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.

...and it turns out I'm kind of in the mood for bizarre questions, courtesy of reading solosundance's post, so here are the answers to 44 questions. Yep, 44. Hold you breath, sunshine...

( Do you like...? )

Have lads. Do you reckon Doyle went to punch him, and missed? *vbg*

Still with water - all the same photo. I love how the drops cuddled up to the fibres of the plant, and how you can see such fine fibres through the drops at high resolution. *g* Nope, I didn't leave the house today either, except into my gravel garden. *g*

Also - pinched from solosundance who pinched it from The Friday Five - 2015 in brief:
1. Favorite TV show - Hmmn... Can't be Sherlock, that was 2016. Doctor Who? I wish, but Clara... Might have to be Poldark, unless I'm forgetting something that I loved more... *g*
2. Favorite movie - I only saw two - so Suffragettes, beating out Mockingjay
3. Favorite book - Jackdaw by K.J. Charles. No competition.
4. Favorite video - I'm not entirely sure how this is different to the above - video of what? But I watched Outlander on dvd, so that! Or the new Pros dvds!! Or do they mean music vid? I don't really watch those much... though perhaps I could shout out sc_fossil's Gone, Gone, Gone Pros vid here... *g*
5. Favorite current event - Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader. Let's just hope he can stay there and has a chance to fix things...

Have you got any favourites from 2015? *g*

Oh - and just cos...

Reading - The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins, for some Victorian ambience, but I'm not sure how that's worked, and some Victorian non-fiction, for the same, which worked better! Back to The Poisonwood Bible tomorrow.

Fanfic - Clean and Decent by O.Yardley (the lads in the showers at CI5 hq when Doyle makes a shocking discovery... *g* Got a bit soppy at the end, and I can never quite believe it when the lads go from oh it's you I want! to right, we'd better settle down together then from now on in about five sentences, but otherwise pretty good. Catching up on discoveredinalj too - read both of murphybabe's stories at once, which was a good thing, cos I'd've hated to wait! *g*

Writing - ack, still on research this morning, but also plotting... must get some more words down tonight...

Telly - think I might watch Sherlock again if I can get iPlayer to play...

( Day the Next )

And the day after - for which I did take photos. *g* I had to nip down to the hospital again, and decided to walk there. The spring and early summer flowers of last time are mostly gone, but look what's out!There's been an autumn feel to the air for a few days now, and blackberries on bushes make me happy!

Here's my destination - a completely changed place from when I was first walking along the (no-longer-existing) path to work every day... (Just tried to find pics to compare, but can't - I should have tagged better...) The two biggest buildings on either side, and the big road leading to them didn't exist! And I loved the skateboarder bird graffiti!

And then later, another of those look-out-the-window-and-ooooh moments!

And all of that started as a much longer wittering post that actually only I would really have been interested in, so I deleted it (in case you did read it and wonder now what's going on). The 100 Days of Happy was a much clearer focus! *g*

In the meantime, mescott posted a book question meme which I thought looked quite interesting, so if anyone fancies giving me a letter from it, that might be fun... hmmn, maybe they'd even make cool individual posts... you know, focussed. *g*

( Book question meme )

Gosh look at all those not-red places on the map! I need to do something about this! (I'm being very good and not counting the airports we stopped at on the way from Australia to the UK too, though the map looks far more exciting with them coloured in... *g*)


visited 23 states (10.2%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Where shall I go?

Where do you guys want to go, if you could go anywhere?

Today is apparently meme day... *g* Last week, I commented to caffyolay's meme, and she gave me the letter "L", so here goes...

Comment to this entry and I'll give you a letter. List ten things that you love that begin with that letter and then post that list on your journal.

L...L... actually "L" is kind of hard... erm... what begins with L...

( Things that begin with L... )