I discovered an HTML file copy of my Joseph Buquet story sitting in my website that had been there ever since 2017, but never actually linked from the index of fan-fiction. Evidently I got as far as doing the conversion, but never got round to all the laborious site maintenance involved in adding all the necessary headers/footers/links required to make it consistent with everything else!

I've been trying to update my exceedingly out-of-date website fan-fiction listing in parallel with uploading stuff to AO3, on the grounds that at least I only have to do the conversion once. ( Read more... )

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I'm not terribly impressed by the author statistics provided by AO3, which are missing a lot of the information afforded by fanfiction.net; they don't record which chapters receive page hits or kudos, for example, so you can't tell the difference between a reader who glances at the first chapter and rejects the story as not what he was looking for (which is the most common reading pattern experienced by *all* fanfiction authors) and one who gets hooked and goes on to read all the way through a story.( Read more... )

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On the plus side, I've typed (but not proofread) what will probably be Chapter 10 of Arctic Raoul, though the precise scene boundary with the next chapter may change, which takes us up to the calf-kissing episode. And I've finally made some necessary revisions to Chapters 1–5, and sent off Chapters 6–8 (which again had to be typed as a single entity before I could work out where the chapter boundaries were to fall) for beta-reading.

And I discovered completely by chance that I could still access stories on fanfiction.net via their www links rather than via the (easier to navigate) mobile site, and managed to 'evacuate' another eleven one-shots before the site cut out on me again, though I haven't been able to repeat the feat. That leaves me with I think eight stories still missing, although they are the longer ones -- I went for the 'quick wins' for obvious reasons.

I've spent about a month mulling this over (and writing it!) for the Writers Anonymous Alternate Format challenge; unlike with the Halloween Challenge, I did actually put some effort into fulfilling the challenge requirements this time (and a lot less, i.e. none, into dutifully reviewing the other entrants, I'm afraid!)

I originally had ideas about taking up the 'epic poem' option and writing a ballad about the Daroga's rediscovery of Erik in Paris (which must have come as something of a shock) with a refrain about the bulls of Mazendaran. However, this foundered on my inability to come up with a plot idea for how on earth the Daroga did discover where Erik was living (EMK81 suggested that the obvious way was for Erik himself boastfully to let it slip, but I didn't really like that one) -- never mind the strain of actually writing a poem to a minimum of a thousand words!

In the middle of this I finally got round to rewatching the 2004 filmed version of "Phantom of the Opera" so that I could get a clear idea of what the 'canon' for a movie-based fan-fiction that I was reviewing was, and was rather surprised to find that, despite the fact that fan-fiction inspired by this film depicts the stage-hand Joseph Buquet as a villain purged from the world by the righteous hand of the Phantom, the film actually shows a man trying to do his duty and being hunted down in a horror-filled sequence. And when I was thinking as a result about doing a Buquet-centred fan-fiction to go with my Piangi-centred story, it occurred to me in a blinding flash that the unexpected narrator challenge would very nicely solve the problem of writing a man's death from his own point of view!

(I had the same issue in "Blue Remembered Hills" when trying to write a passage where the only person in the room throughout the whole scene from start to finish is the dead man -- in the end I had to write it from the point of view of two characters watching on CCTV.)

I still don't have a decent summary on this one for fanfiction.net purposes, though I've got four or five discarded attempts, but I did have a brainwave over the title on Wednesday. And at the last minute it occurred to me that the 'sun-allergy' theory (which I thought was rather neat) didn't explain why the Phantom only feels the need to wear a protective mask on one side of his face, so I decided I'd better remove the 'protective' element, though it was a pity :-P

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The Man Who Knew Too Much

Joseph Buquet was no saint, that’s for sure. But for all his curses he took good care in his work, and I think he was fond of me. I trusted him. One has no choice, of course, but I’d have trusted him anyway.

And I never forgot the way he ended.

Who was Joseph Buquet, you ask? And well you might, for he was no-one. No-one who mattered at all to Paris beyond these walls; no-one they ever saw, save for those indelible jerking moments on that one night. He died a long time ago, when I showed a bright new face to the world, gilded and full of hope... but he was with me from the first. It’s something one doesn’t forget.

For I was young then, still fresh and raw beneath my elegant trappings and the paint so artfully applied, and he took me in hand: those calloused big hands of his, strapped in worn leather and hardened by rope. He learnt my ways, and I came to know his. And we went through our intricate dance of cues and curtain calls and backdrops night after night, until the last tremors of the roar at the climax had ebbed away at the last, and he was grouchy and sleepy and wanted only to slip away home. Sometimes, if he’d taken enough drink to be sentimental, he’d leave with a parting pat or a passing caress as he went. He’d learned his trade elsewhere — mastered it before ever he came to me — but I counted him as mine all the same. And no man set a hand out of place when he was around, not where I was concerned. Not where it mattered.

( Read more... )