Absolutely exhausted - but quickly:

---There are 34 recipes and counting for the editrx Project. If you have sent a recipe to me in the last 24 hours, and have NOT heard back from me, please check the email address (azriona, not arizona) and send it again. I responded to all recipes received as of 10pm EST.

---Currently, we are still accepting recipes of all sorts, but I'm going to ask for additional veggie recipes if you've got them. Plain old vegetable side-dishes, or vegetarian - it's all good. Desserts without chocolate would be good, too, we have very few of those.

---Those who have signed up to be testers - my minion, jessalrynn, and I will have figured out a way to assign you your recipes by the end of the week, so you can begin testing.

---I bought a new pair of glasses today. They'll be ready next week, at which point I shall have pictures.

---Jack at Woodstock is about one quarter finished, give or take a quarter. I still have to finish the last chapter of Water Music. And now I'm going to code the next chapter of Gaston Leroux and go to BED.

I got another rejection for TRT. WOO-HOO!

(Well, it's either WOO-HOO, or cry.)

In other writing news, I have two half-chapters to write for Water Music, and then it's done. Two half chapters, because I only wrote half of Chapter 16, and half of Chapter 17, and they are halfs I can smoosh together and call a whole. I should finish Chapter 16 tomorrow, and may be able to finish Chapter 17 (and thus THE ENTIRE DAMN STORY) by the close of the weekend. This is rather exciting.

Once that's done, I can concentrate on the Jack-at-Woodstock story. And then I can finish Smurfy-Wurfy, and then the epic poem, and someday, I might even get around to wiggiemomsi's Lost Fic. Which is not actually a fic based on Lost, but I'm calling it the Lost fic because I keep getting lost when I try to write it. It's got a fantastic beginning. It just sort of has no middle, and no end. Kind of a dilemma, really.

Also, I know what I'm writing for NaNoWriMo this year. Of course, I'm not sure it'll take 50,000 words. But we'll see.

I just have to post really quickly before running out the door (because I thought I was meeting people for dinner at seven, not six - or in other words, in 20 minutes and I still have to get to Tenleytown...)----

THANK YOU.

I know we shouldn't be taking the bids personally. It's not about us, it's about Stacie. But all the same...I was having something of a dismal day. And I thought, I should check my email before I head out to dinner.

The Edward or Bella Cullen bookmark is going for $25 (to a DW fan, even - Twilight hasn't started fighting back yet).

The Pick-a-Doctor bookmark is going for $30.

But the Not-the-Doctor bookmark?

The Not-the-Doctor bookmark is going for $50.

I don't know what to say. I really, really don't. I had no idea - I seriously thought when these hit $25, that'd be it.

Wow. Just...wow.

Thank you, guys. I don't even know what to say, but thank you for both me, and for Stacie. Thank you.

Good morning, chickadees. Time for the September Support Stacie Auction Art Round-up!

In the beginning, there was man. And then there was cave drawings. And it was good.

A little bit later, someone invented fabric and floss, with which woman invented cross-stitch. And it was better.

Some time after that, television was invented, specifically to show a British sci-fi show called Doctor Who. This was generally accepted as awesome.

After a bit, there were computers, with which people created computer-based art. Socks were mainly rocked from this time on.

The current Art Auction Totals as of Sunday Morning:

alizarin_skies's hand-drawn fanart is going for $50.

mitashade's icon/banner/wallpaper set is going for $75.

alizarin_skies's icon/banner/wallpaper set is going for $46.

swankkat's fanart is going for $100.

And lastly but certainly not leastly....

My Not-The-Doctor bookmark is going for $18. NOPE! Just now, someone raised the bid to $25!

My Name-Your-Doctor bookmark is going for $25.

And, in a sad commentary....the fandom whose canon is primarily books....is still only bidding $5 on an Edward or Bella Cullen bookmark. I find this incredibly ironic. If anyone would like to go and taunt them (I kind of think me doing so would be bad form), please, feel free.

Or, you know, bid on it and threaten to make me turn it into a DW bookmark instead. I'm good with that.

Well, the bidding is on, and the bookmarks are doing pretty well for early in the process....

The Pick-A-Doctor bookmark is going to hazelwho for $16. YAY, HAZEL! BEAT BACK THAT WIGGIE-MOMSTER!

The Not-the-Doctor bookmark is currently going to wiggiemomsi for $10.

Sadly, no one has started bidding on Edward or Bella Cullen. But then, the Twilight fandom looks like it was very quiet last night. At least half the auctions don't have ANY bids in them at all, so it's not just me. Odd, for a book about vampires that don't sleep. Maybe the start time was past their bedtimes?

( Want to see a sample of the bookmarks? )

mitashade

swankkat

alizarin_skies

alizarin_skies

Yes, yes, we all know - to Support Stacie this weekend, you bid on fic.

Aren't you TIRED of fic? Doesn't the thought of ONE MORE FIC just make you sigh and moan and reach for something else?

Like, say, a BOOK?

WELL, FRIENDS, I HAVE THE SOLUTION FOR YOU.

Who needs fic, when you've got books? And you know what you need when you have books?

That's right! BOOKMARKS.

Yes, that's right - you can have you very own Doctor Who bookmark, with whichever Doctor or character you like. I'm offering two bookmarks now (and very likely more in the next auction, if this goes well), in two separate auctions. The winner gets to decide which character I stitch for them.

You can bid on the bookmark with your choice of Doctor here....

or you can bid on the bookmark with your choice of companion or other character (NOT the Doctor) here.

And just to make sure it's clear - I will cover all shipping and handling charges, to anywhere in the world.

( Want to see a sample of the bookmarks? )

And just because I found some sparkly floss at the craft store last week...I'm also offering a bookmark in the Twilight fandom. You can bid to have your very own Edward or Bella Cullen in bookmark form.

So don't just fall in with the regular crowd! Be bold. Be different. Be CREATIVE.

You know you want a Doctor Who bookmark, don't you????


Happy Bidding!

The auctions are posted, so I'm happy to announce - I will be participating in the September Support Stacie auction, although not quite the same way I did before. Instead of offering fic...I'm offering bookmarks.

Yes, that's right - you can have you very own Doctor Who bookmark, with whichever Doctor or character you like. I'm offering two bookmarks now (and very likely more in the next auction, if this goes well), in two separate auctions. The winner gets to decide which character I stitch for them.

You can bid on the bookmark with your choice of Doctor here....

or you can bid on the bookmark with your choice of companion or other character (NOT the Doctor) here.

And just to make sure it's clear - I will cover all shipping and handling charges, to anywhere in the world.

( Want to see a sample of the bookmarks? )

And just because I found some sparkly floss at the craft store last week...I'm also offering a bookmark in the Twilight fandom. You can bid to have your very own Edward or Bella Cullen in bookmark form.

Happy Bidding!

Oh, life is interesting. Isn't it?

I know I promised Phantom fic this week, but I'm feeling a bit of fic fatigue after the run to get Parting up yesterday. It will keep until next week, and then it's nine chapters and a teeny tiny epilogue, so you will all be happy as clams until Halloween, at which point, I devoutly hope to have Water Music up and running again. I have maybe three, possibly four, more chapters to write, and then I'm DONE DONE DONE with it. Over a year after I began, too, which is just SAD. Catch me posting a WIP again.

Which, of course, reminds me of the Smurf fic. I'll work on the next set of chapters this weekend, I think, and possibly intersperse them with the Phantom fic. I've also got a couple of Crossroads shorts to wedge in there somewhere, as well as the writerinatardis fic that got me kicked off in the last round.

In the meantime, the cat is snoozing and I have two NetFlix movies, and a whole lot of cross-stitch waiting, and I'm going to wander downstairs and not be on the computer for a while. At some point this evening, EGT is bound to find her surprise in Parting, and I'm greatly looking forward to her reaction. And I don't think Wig's found her surprises, either, unless she didn't know to look for them. Which is possible.

Writing Parting was a bit like childbirth. I'm already quickly forgetting the pain of trying to get it up and running, because here I am in the dizzy afterglow, and I'm trying to determine if there's another episode that would lend itself to the CYOA format as well as this one did. I'm not sure there is, honestly - when else does the Doctor have such a clear-cut choice ("Coward or Killer?") laid out before him?

(I'm sure he does, I'm just not thinking of it at the moment. Ten minutes after I post this, half a dozen of you will likely have chimed in with the obvious answer.)

Weird dream last night, probably precipitated by the fact that I woke up at 2am with cramps, and ended up sleeping sitting up on the couch downstairs. I dreamed that for some reason, Bill and I bought a new house, and I was seeing it for the first time. The kitchen was...weird, and little, and every appliance in it (fridge, dishwasher, oven, even a deep-freeze) was avocado green. I don't think deep freezes even were made in avocado green, but nevertheless, there they were. It was kind of frightening.

Although - when I was growing up, our fridge was avocado green. That fridge was older than I was; it died while I was away at college. Apparently, when the repairman announced the time of death, my mom was already in the car, ready to go to Sears and pick out a new one.

Weird dream, plus I slept late - I only woke up about half an hour ago - so now my whole day feels a bit off-kilter. I finished editing the Phantom/Doctor Who fic for momdaegmorgan yesterday, and it's off with one of the usual suspects for betaing. I looked at the O.S., laughed, and put it away again. I wrote a query letter for Two Roads Traveled, but I'm going to write two additional scenes for it so the query letter is probably a bit premature. (But I've never actually written a query letter before, so maybe an early start isn't a bad idea.)

Gakked from shinyopals:

Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations.

Actually...this could be interesting.

Therefore....let's play a game. The first person who guesses correctly which WIPs these quotes are from gets their choice of a Doctor Who bookmark.

The stories are, in no particular order:

1. Part Five of Crossroads.
2. The epic poem for doctorsdiva.
3. The Phantom Fic
4. The unfinished Nine/Rose smut
5. Timey-Whimey, Smurfy-Wurfy
6. The reworking of The Locked Room.
7. Water Music


( Lines under the cut! )

Off you go, then. Bill has to do a bit of studying, so the winner - assuming there is one - may not be announced until tomorrow.

And congrats to time_converges, who correctly paired the quotes with the WIP. I think I know what her choice of bookmark will be....

Right, so when we're all done being overklempt regarding the JB/DT kiss.....

And we're anxiously awaiting the news from this morning's panel, which hasn't happened yet but is sure to already be forming a line of screaming fangirls, all dressed as the Doctor if we're lucky....

It would be a very good time for you to saunter over to writerinatardis and read the thirteen stories up for voting this week. The stories are in two posts, and you can submit your votes here.

Only thirteen stories this week - lots of skips were used, apparently - and I'm one of them. I can't tell you which - but I can tell you that I'm a bit worried, because the quality of the stories this time is just fantastic. I had enormous trouble trying to decide which story to vote into the TARDIS - I would have voted my own, actually, because I hated to ding anyone, except that's against the rules!

Of course, the main question for me is not how I fare (if I get plus one again, I'll have three plus-ones in a row), but whether or not papilio_luna correctly guessed which is my story. I think I know which is hers. We'll see tomorrow if I'm right.

In other news: am finally going to see Harry Potter today. Yes, I know, about time.

But most importantly:

Today's is Cleo's third birthday. I would post a picture of her, but she has hidden herself away for a beauty-nap, so the celebratory picspam will have to wait.

For some reason, over the last few days, I have been sneezing like sneezing is suddenly the hip thing to do. I CANNOT STOP SNEEZING. I have, in the last minute, sneezed something like five times. This is highly unusual for me. Now, I'm not one to dislike a good sneeze, but seriously, this is getting to be ridiculous, particularly because it's not just the sneeze - it's the whole build-up to the sneeze, where you're not sure if the sneeze is actually going to happen or just fizzle.

If I've suddenly developed allergies to life, I'm going to be much annoyed.

In other, more entertaining news: a young, enterprising soul has translated Three Times In Which a Certain Time Lord Did Not Have a Cold into Russian. Two of the three parts are already done. I'm seriously tickled over here.

Hmm. That tickle might be causing the sneezes. That sucks.

I turned my writerinatardis story in early(ish). And posted another chapter of Smurfs. And wrote another chapter of Water Music. The plan is now to finish the whole darn thing - I'm close - and then I'll start posting chapters. I'm still reading Phantom of the Opera, but I'm getting lots of good ideas for how to make momdaegmorgan's story twistier, so that's good.

I look at wiggiemomsi's fic every so often, sigh, and move on. It has unfortunately joined the rank of the unfinished Nine/Rose smut on the computer, which is really not a good place to be.

I want to sign up for Support Stacie in September...but I've got so many unfinished projects going on, I don't see how I can.

The Long Way Home was recc'ed at torchwood_house.

I am FULL OF SQUEE. I've written two Torchwood fics (The Long Way Home and Eugene's Alien), and both have been recc'ed on various sites. That's a 100% average there, and with Doctor Who? One rec out of at least a dozen fics.

Maybe I should switch and write more Torchwood......*grin*

On the plus side, though, I figured out and wrote my writerinatardis fic today. It is not the first idea I had for it - the first idea, while brilliant, would have gotten me locked in the TARDIS for sure. The second idea, equally brilliant, wasn't going to work in 1500 words or less. The third idea, not quite so brilliant, will probably let me skate by with zero votes. I'm willing to accept that, because I'm saving my skips for when I need them.

So, the writerinatardis fic this past week ended up with one positive vote for it. Meaning I am currently running a plus-one streak in Round Two, the exact opposite of the negative one streak I ran (or seemed to run) in Round One. I find this kind of amusing. I wonder how long I can keep it up?

The story, by the way, will be posted, I just haven't figured out when, because I've got a Torchwood CoE fic that I really want to share as soon as it's ready, Posting Wednesday be damned, and I really do need to post the next chapter of Smurfs, as there's going to be a live-action movie apparently, and heaven forbid I get Jossed.

(Although we all know perfectly well that there's not much chance in the Doctor and Rose showing up in Smurf village having turned blue.)

On a completely separate note, and of far great importance to me than what my final writerinatardis score was: papilio_luna, did you correctly guess my fic? :)

The Good:
I have now re-written ALL FOUR LOST CHAPTER of momdaegmorgan's Phanfic. Hurrah, hurrah. It's not quite ready for beta, though - I discovered in the writing that while I can still rattle off some details (Don Juan Triumphant, Box Five, plus various characters), I kind of need to reread the original book to get the feel of it right.

(Not like that many of you will have read the book...but still. I am Accuracy Girl. When it suits me.)

(Just out of curiosity - how many of you have read the original Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux? Or any of the sequels? Bonus points if you read Susan Kay's Phantom, which I ADORE.)

The Bad:
My eyes have been killing me all afternoon. Burning, hot, sandpaper sort of pain. I don't know if it's the lights or the computer or the contacts. I switched to glasses when I got home, and they've started again, which isn't good, because I still need to do last-minute touch-ups on the writerinatardis fic.

owowowowowowow

The Mundane:
There are currently 17 entries in the Mundane Spoiler Challenge. COME ON, PEEPS, YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT. Watch the latest episode! Share the spoilers! SPOIL TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT!


And....The Cracky:
10_point_5 remixed my Broadway Style: Sound of Music crack-o-rama. I'm amazed at her chutzpah, actually, those things are fantastically grand and impossibly corny.

And yet - she did it. And did it well, I must say. Please head over and laugh at the insanity. As she says, Crackfic made from crackfic: double distilled for that extra-smooth flavour!

What I loved was that she kept a lot of the original beats, too - and included a few of my favorite songs.

(And come to think of it....couldn't one say that my version was already a remix? So really, she remixed a remix. Egad.)


*

Right, edits, then off to rest my eyes. Perhaps cross-stitch tonight is not a good idea.....

*looks at writerinatardis fic*

*laughs like a maniac*

I've decided - my goal for writerinatardis this round is not going to be trying to get the same score in every challenge. It's going to be trying to fool papilio_luna, who apparently likes to guess who wrote what. (Which I'll admit I do too - I think we all do - it's half the fun. But I'm going to see how often I can stump her.)

It was an okay day - helped mostly by the fact that the morning was so incredibly busy I didn't even have time to think about writing or fanfic or anything.

Of course, by noon my eyes were killing me - the first of the month are always computer-heavy days, and I totally spaced this morning on the fact that it's JULY now, and wore my contacts instead of my glasses. Owowowowowowow.

On the bright side - having my brain totally clear of anything related to writing was good, because when at last I had a moment to breathe, I came up with the writerinatardis story. And oh, it's good. It's enormously clever. It's one of those things that I'm sure half a dozen others are going to think of, so that's kind of worrying, but I think it'll be fun to write.

So yeah, it still sucks that I lost four chapters (half! HALF!) of momdaegmorgan's story. But I have a three-day weekend (which I also only just realized today), and Bill will be out of town, and I plan on settling in and writing like mad.

And maybe going to the Smithsonian's Folklife festival. We'll see what the weather's like. I'm very good at writing on the Metro.

I couldn't retrieve the file. That's approximately thirty pages, and the first four chapters of a nine-chaptered fic.

But what really gets me - what's absolutely breaking my heart (other than the fact that it's my own stupidity) - is that it's the first non-one-shot story that I've finished since February, and the first longer fanfic finished since.....oh, jeez. Since September or October, likely.

I've got three or four WIPs, and finished this, and was so damn proud that I'd finished it, and figured out the twisty bits, and how to tell a seriously complicated story, and promptly lost half of it.

I wrote out what happens in the first four chapters that I lost, and I think I should be okay. But the stuff you rewrite is never as good as the stuff you lose. And beyond the dear-God-this-is-what-I-remember-happening, I haven't been able to write a word all day. I've tried, and after two or three lines, I just stop.

(I even tried a free-write, and that didn't turn out anything except a bunch of self-flagellation and grumbling about how I have NO IDEA how to write to the next writerinatardis prompt. Which resulted in more self-flagellation.)

So it's not the loss that is killing me at the moment, so much as it is the fact that I finished...and now I have to start again. Dammit, I finished. Why doesn't that count???

Continuing the theme of unexpected....I actually ended up with positive points on the first round of writerinatardis. Well....positive point, singular, since I only got one. That's a switch, I was kind of used to get negative. And about a quarter of the field had no points at all, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Poll #1422741
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 25

What should Sharon post on Wednesday?

In my continuing efforts to avoid writing....

I read.

Sort of.

Apparently, my computer has a recording function. And I have a headset.


Anyone want to hear me read "When Dex Was Three"? No idea if my voice is annoying or not (I'm biased). And I can't do a British or Welsh accent to save my life, so I didn't even try because I'd probably make people cry.

But it was surprisingly fun to do.

Please comment if you take it, folks. And let me know if you liked me reading it!