Coming back (drabbles)

Finished uploading the full drabble-fic. It really needs a better summary, since this one isn't going to draw in anyone save those who read all new uploaded POTO stories (probably most of the surviving readers in that fandom, I suspect; posting levels seem to gave gone down in the last couple of years) or those who are prepared to read anything with my name on it...

Part of the problem was that the opening chapter was designed to be deliberately ambiguous (which creates naming problems further on!) and therefore when uploading the initial section I didn't want to give too much away. But you have to give people some reason to read.

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Coming back

A life in vignettes.

She grew up in a little town in Sweden a long way from the sea, and there was never any thought in her mind that she might leave. And for all her love of music, how could she guess that it would weave through every sorrow and joy in the long years to come?

Yet it would take her far from the steep wooden houses and streets of her birth, through the great cities of Europe and even out to Brittany's desolate shores. And in the end, memories and love would bring her back to the simpler music of home.

~o~

( chapters 2–11 )

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Due to time constraints (I only started this about three days before the deadline!) I ended up uploading the drabbles in four chunks, which certainly produced some interesting traffic stats. With hindsight I suspect it would have been better to upload each fresh set as a single chapter -- especially as they have no identifying titles -- since fanfiction.net doesn't allow the reader to jump to the last unread chapter but only to the latest. And again, the reason why I didn't was that I wanted that first chapter to stand on its own with no 'giveaways' that it wasn't Christine...

( viewing patterns )

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I think I've got the timing problem with Plot Point Fifteen more or less sorted out by having Christine dealing with the wounded man (since Stefan is now actually injured by the Punjab cord, instead of its being a near miss) while Raoul has his initial talk with Erik. She can hear what is going on but Erik, having collapsed after the expenditure of strength in that final reflex attack, isn't aware of her presence. If Erik ends up dangling over the edge of the bed, that provides a motive for Raoul to take hold of his legs at some point...

Still worried about this scene. I need to get on to the dialogue, I need to do it well, and it has to be plausible. I'm not all that happy with the 'travelling' chapters (unsurprisingly), but I can get away with a slight sag there if there's a blistering finale.

Odometer

I successfully reset the clock on my cycle computer without wiping the other settings (always a ticklish business, since I've long since lost the instructions), but took a note of the odometer reading first just in case. It currently reads 1381.7, which is profoundly uninformative, since it's considerably less than the last recorded reading exactly two years ago!

I have no recollection of resetting it, accidentally or otherwise, and I know I haven't been cycling all that much in the last couple of years; I've been going to the cinema a lot less, and I've been making an active point of walking rather than cycling whenever I can after discovering that it was the only reliable way of getting myself to write on a regular basis. I find it hard to believe I've done thirteen hundred miles in two years after only doing five hundred a year previously.

Unless the odometer has been going backwards, I really don't know what the figure represents! (Moral: I should record the readings more often if I want them to be meaningful...)

List of names used, Part II

And here as a placeholder is the list of names used in the first two-thirds of the Swedish story, excluding the final third which is currently drying out under a heavy weight after having replacement endpapers glued in :-p

Full list of names in the Swedish story (unless I introduce any more OCs in the final chapters!)( Read more... )