The great typing job is over!
4 April 2017 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlode"Blue Remembered Hills" is finished!
The grand "Blake's 7"/"Phantom of the Opera" crossover project that I started in response to a forum challenge ("least likely crossovers") back in December 2013 is finally typed up and -- barring some proofreading on the final two-and-half-thousand words -- completely computerised. The challenge is long since over, the forum itself is now defunct, and I did wonder with increasing urgency whether the computer itself would survive long enough to see the end of the story... but it's done. The final few months went considerably quicker once I'd given up on trying to get the chapters properly beta-read, alas, but I think the improvement in quality achieved thereby was probably not worth the enormous delay caused by lack of communication at the other end and massive procrastination on my part when it came to tackling edits.
In the interim I've published another 25 stories, including the one that I took five days off in the middle of writing this manuscript to write -- and have probably inevitably ended up recycling bits of it elsewhere in the process. The good side is that I've made something of a name for myself in the "Phantom" section of fanfiction.net at least, and picked up a selection of 'followers' along the way, some at least of whom are still active. So it might get more of an audience than a crossover by an unknown author would previously have had.
(Though let's face it, a story which focuses on a Gan/Blake team-up on the B7 side and a Raoul/Christine pairing on the Phantom side is not inherently going to appeal to the majority of fans in either direction!)
Still not sure how I'm going to publish it; for the prologue chapters I uploaded each into the "Phantom" section and then moved them to the slower-moving "B7" section after a week or so's exposure, using different customised summaries for each. I'm leaning towards uploading the first chapter of the main story as a true crossover, since it's heavily B7 and this will give me an idea as to how many of my Phantom-based 'followers' (who are the only people who will find out about it save for the tiny minority who monitor the crossover section!) are prepared to take an interest. I might revert to uploading individual chapters with the story listed under first one fandom and then the other afterwards, in the hopes of picking up readers who are just checking to see what's new in the listings.
On generating a contents list I discovered that I'd accidentally based two chapter titles on the same quote :-p
One advantage of not uploading until you've finished typing is that you get to fix this sort of thing; another is that you get to do things like changing a character's name because he's an Andrew Lloyd Webber invention and this is supposed to be Leroux-based!
Still no titles for the last two chapters (I've run out of poem to quote). I'm thinking something about the far lakes of the North for the penultimate chapter and then "the end of the Ghost's love story" for the last one, keeping the Leroux theme.
The whole thing comes out at a round 75,000 words, which is a decent novel length, even if tiny in comparison to the multi-hundred-thousand-word soap operas of popular fan-fiction (or indeed my own three-decker B7 zine, even if that had a definite plot arc).
The grand "Blake's 7"/"Phantom of the Opera" crossover project that I started in response to a forum challenge ("least likely crossovers") back in December 2013 is finally typed up and -- barring some proofreading on the final two-and-half-thousand words -- completely computerised. The challenge is long since over, the forum itself is now defunct, and I did wonder with increasing urgency whether the computer itself would survive long enough to see the end of the story... but it's done. The final few months went considerably quicker once I'd given up on trying to get the chapters properly beta-read, alas, but I think the improvement in quality achieved thereby was probably not worth the enormous delay caused by lack of communication at the other end and massive procrastination on my part when it came to tackling edits.
In the interim I've published another 25 stories, including the one that I took five days off in the middle of writing this manuscript to write -- and have probably inevitably ended up recycling bits of it elsewhere in the process. The good side is that I've made something of a name for myself in the "Phantom" section of fanfiction.net at least, and picked up a selection of 'followers' along the way, some at least of whom are still active. So it might get more of an audience than a crossover by an unknown author would previously have had.
(Though let's face it, a story which focuses on a Gan/Blake team-up on the B7 side and a Raoul/Christine pairing on the Phantom side is not inherently going to appeal to the majority of fans in either direction!)
Still not sure how I'm going to publish it; for the prologue chapters I uploaded each into the "Phantom" section and then moved them to the slower-moving "B7" section after a week or so's exposure, using different customised summaries for each. I'm leaning towards uploading the first chapter of the main story as a true crossover, since it's heavily B7 and this will give me an idea as to how many of my Phantom-based 'followers' (who are the only people who will find out about it save for the tiny minority who monitor the crossover section!) are prepared to take an interest. I might revert to uploading individual chapters with the story listed under first one fandom and then the other afterwards, in the hopes of picking up readers who are just checking to see what's new in the listings.
On generating a contents list I discovered that I'd accidentally based two chapter titles on the same quote :-p
One advantage of not uploading until you've finished typing is that you get to fix this sort of thing; another is that you get to do things like changing a character's name because he's an Andrew Lloyd Webber invention and this is supposed to be Leroux-based!
Still no titles for the last two chapters (I've run out of poem to quote). I'm thinking something about the far lakes of the North for the penultimate chapter and then "the end of the Ghost's love story" for the last one, keeping the Leroux theme.
The whole thing comes out at a round 75,000 words, which is a decent novel length, even if tiny in comparison to the multi-hundred-thousand-word soap operas of popular fan-fiction (or indeed my own three-decker B7 zine, even if that had a definite plot arc).
