You know how I like to save up my little bullet points until I have a respectable, post-worthy length?

Yeah, this is not one of those entries. I am posting to squee for squee's sake.

We all know that I enjoy a good fandom conversion (or ten) every once in awhile, especially where my smaller or lit fandoms are concerned. On the latter front, the most recent conversion attempt was spreading love for Suzanne Brockmann's Troubleshooters series through the whole of Yulechat. hhertzof caved, to my overwhelming delight, and to my surprise, mjules was already passingly familiar with the series, having been gifted the All Through The Night novella. But my squee piqued interest in the Jules/Robin backstory, which was perfectly fine by me, as they're one of the few pairings I have left, and one of the very, very few I consider OTPs. Several used books, marathon reading sessions, one cosmic name in common, and lots of flailing later, I had a new partner in Troubleshooters land.

And then Jules wrote me fic.

Oh yes. Glorious, glorious fic that encompasses every bit of our personal canon for these amazing characters, and made me flail in feedback as I have never flailed before (and even used another conversion connection! Jules is just that good).

I know there are at least a few other Brockmann fans on my flist, so come sigh and squee with me over And Every Breath We Drew. It's poignant and perfect and desperately needed to be told, and all I can say is... hallelujah.

P.S. As if I could just leave without furthering my nefarious plan. (I kind of want a little trademark symbol after that.)

The Troubleshooters books are little slices of heaven, trufax. Even though they tend to be marketed as mainstream romance, they're more military suspense with arcs that are heavy on the romance. They're dark and plotty and completely without formula, which is about the furthest thing from mainstream romance that I can imagine.

Brockmann's cast is a wonder - her characters are three-dimensional and flawed and awesome, and their stories unfold over multiple books. There's no arbitrary conflict for conflict's sake, difficult problems and issues aren't glossed over or ignored because it may reflect badly on the character, and the world is incredibly diverse, but oh-so-believably. They're also, as mjules puts it, full of genderwin, racewin, and queerwin. Not just non-fail, but win. There is win all over the place. The win runs rampant.

If you're not familiar with the series, there's no time like the present.

(Note: Like I said, it gets dark in there. Several books are triggery - Over the Edge, Flashpoint, and Into the Storm in particular - for a variety of subjects. Just wanted to warn.)

A day in the life...

• 18:04 An updated version of "Charade" starring Allison Mack, Jensen Ackles, and Andrew-Lee Potts. Best film dialogue ever. #dreammovieremakes #
• 18:19 Number of people converted so far this week: 4 (not counting @mjaedin, who hit two fandoms). Mwuaaaaaha. My nefarious plot is working. #
• 18:26 @mjaedin Ari Hest! #
• 19:53 @jules_robin *sniff* I'm so proud. And squeeful. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Brandon Routh is on my television. And will be there every Monday for weeks to come. martinigrl hates him already, much like one twice-dead Bryce Larkin, so I am destined to love him like no other. I adore Routh on general principle, even moreso than Bomer, so this was probably a foregone conclusion. *squeefully looks forward to the impending Sarah/Shaw foeyay*

YuleChat continues to be the best bad influence ever, and as such, I'm kinda sorta considering sncross_bigbang as a plotting exercise. Kind of. Maybe. A little. There are more than a few bunnies of the epic persuasion floating around in my head (SPN/Dexter, SPN/Leverage, SPN/SGA, SPN/Primeval, and the ever-present SPN/Smallville), but it's a big commitment, and I've got a full plate, as usual. In related news, on the heels of a very recent discussion about all the smutty fic urges being dead in me, I'm giving serious thought to signing up for the Porn Battle. Mostly because there's a Connor/Abby prompt that intrigues me greatly, and it'd be smut that's less about the sex than about Something Else Entirely, which is my favorite kind.

Hush, miniglik. I can hear you cackling.

Off to watch Alice. Again.

One of my late-made new year's resolutions was to be better about updating, so here I am. With updates. For the next few minutes, please act as if you care.

• Had a surprise early offtime from work yesterday (thank you, day-before-holiday closing rules), and we headed out to our favorite fusion place for a few hours. Our dining party looked a bit like something straight out of central casting ("quick, we need a Diversity Table!") but there was great food, great company, and great conversation. Also pictures of my sister's boyfriend walking hot coals and Dr. Mike eating a guinea pig in Indonesia. They serve it whole. It was so very disturbing. But all in all, good times.
  
  
• Brace yourselves, San Diego... martinigrl, darkmuse_ic, kalenodonnell and yours truly are headed to the Whale's Vagina. Comic-Con is coming! There was some scrambling for passes that we hadn't anticipated, but after literally years of saying "one day we really need a group vacay" we're actually doing it. These are a few of my favorite people in the world, so getting to hang out with them for five days is the real reward. That we get ubercool stuff like Chuck panels and cosplay gazing and the BPAL booth is just the icing on the cake.
  
  
• Everywhere I look (except at martinigrl), the Andrew-Lee Potts love is swelling. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
  
  
• Speaking of (smooth non-sequitur, eh?), I've got two ALP fandoms on my fic offering list at help_haiti, among several other things. Bidding is open through January 20th. For those who favor immediate gratification, there's also the Lightening Round. A quick donation to Doctors Without Borders netted me Firefly flashfic from the marvelous elishabet, who wrote a lovely, Simon-centric piece, Like My Parents Taught Me, that I've already read three times now.
  
  
• With the fic talk done, that brings me to my biggest and most important resolution for the year: to be more productive and focus more energy on original efforts. I have a novel to finish, another to start, a couple spec and pilot bunnies to sort, and something to do with G. Our respective strongest points tend to be the other's weaker, so together we'd be a force to be reckoned with, right? We have plans, I tell you. They may or may not involve taking over the world.
  
  
• Adam Lambert is very pretty. That is all.

Joining the many, many people of my awesome f-list for help_haiti, fandom's auction answer to earthquake relief. A donation to a very good cause nets you not only karma points, but fic/art/miscellaneous goodies made just for you.

My post is here: Offering one fic, of at least 1000 words, either new from prompt of your choosing or a brand new part of one of my (many) by-the-wayside works in progress. Fandoms include Supernatural, Dollhouse, Leverage, Chuck, Primeval, Psych, White Collar and more. Even a few tiny fandoms (Everwood? Troubleshooters? A little of Syfy's Alice, anyone?) made the cut, and crossovers are welcome and encouraged.

The minimum donation is just $5. Every $5 thereafter (up to $25) bumps the length another 1000 words. A bid over $25 gets you a matching banner (here's an example for posterity). And if you're feeling particularly generous (say, $50 generous), there'll be a special surprise.

Comment directly to the post to pledge your bid, and make sure to check out the other offers as well. There are literally thousands, from truly talented people.

I feel like I should cue up "Come Together" or something. For all the wank, sometimes fandom rocks.

Well, all has been revealed, so I guess it's time for the traditional yuletide post-mortem.

I wrote And To All A Goodnight (Jennifer Crusie's Faking It) for w0rdinista. Another year, another lit fandom... I think the Yuletide gods are determined to make me push my limits, since writing litfic is such a vastly different animal than I'm used to. Last year was the strange, visceral, violent world of J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood, which definitely has a language all its own. So when I got my assignment this year, I admit to breathing a little sigh of relief. Writing chicklit couldn't possibly be as hard as writing Ward's paranormalverse, right?

Wrong. Oh so wrong.

Crusie is deceptive. She makes it all look so easy, but she has a certain cadence and a very distinct style - even beyond the banter and the puns and the scene closers and comebacks that snap, crackle and pop, there are the touches she adds, little details, that have become stealth trademarks. Quirky alliteration. Paragraphs that are sentences in and of themselves. More than one person speaking in any given paragraph (or, hell, in any given sentence). These are things that fly in the face of the rules of writing, laughing all the way ("Rules? I need no stinkin' rules!"). Things that totally work for her, book in and book out, and all conspired to slowly drive me insane.

Still, there's a real freedom in spinning a style that's so completely not your own. The structure kind of set itself (I hemmed and hawed for a week and a half after assignments went out, then opened up Word and thought Write something, dammit, and out came "On the twelfth day of Christmas..."). Then, of course, it took on a life of its own. Davy got to conning, Steve got creative, and several characters who were not in the original plan made surprise cameos. There were frantic freakouts along the way, and the urge to default for safety when it spun out of control, and the lingering feeling that I was chickening out by writing from Davy's POV, when Crusie is all about her heroines, but it all worked out. And I ended up with a 21,500-word monster that I absolutely loved writing, my recipient enjoyed it, and she left not one but two glowing comments, the second of which made me teary.

Huge, huge thanks to martinigrl and Stacie for being the best betas ever, and to darkmuse_ic and kalenodonnell for the moral support. And all of the #yuletide IRC channel, attempt_unique and Kat in particular, for their endless encouragement and bottomless pit of procrastination devices.

Until next year.

yuletide is live and kicking, and once again, my Yuletide Santa was very good to me.

The New York ComicCon Con
Leverage. Hardison, Elliot and Parker steal ComicCon for a young hacker.
First off, it's Hardison at a con. That's made of win, in and of itself. Eliot and Parker show up to tease him (then get drawn into the madness), the kindred spirit scheduled to be Hardison's con buddy isn't who he was expecting (in any way, shape, or form), and the whole thing turns into a job, complete with Parker pinching IDs and Eliot beating up bouncers and Hardison doing an impromptu bad guy rundown with a projector instead of his beloved LCDs. It's amazingly awesome, and you should go read it right now. Yes, now.

I'll be back at some point with a proper rec list, but I betaed quite a few fics this go-round, all of them marvelous, and wanted to link the few that I could without outing the authors (I'll link the rest post-reveal).

Those That Be Not What They Seem
Leverage/Othello. Hardison knows he should be concentrating on memorizing his lines, because those suckers were difficult with all the 'thees' and 'thous,' but all he could think about were the tights.
I love this fic so much. I haven't even been able to bring myself to feedback for fear of totally outing the author with a chorus of "HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME?!" You all know me and cracktastic crossovers, so this was right up my alley to begin with. But Hardison as Othello! And iambic pentameter! This is truly glorious, and must be read to be truly appreciated.

A Revenge Play in 3 Acts
Roswell. This time, she's not the villain of the piece.
Ah, my very first fic fandom. I've never written Tess, and I'm one of the few who actually loved Isabel, so seeing Isabel as the mastermind of destruction and Tess sort-of redeemed (even in her own head) is fascinating. Especially because, even within the structure of canon, it's entirely plausible. Dark and chilling and more than a little heartbreaking.

Juxtaposition
Fringe. 24 hours in the life of Astrid Farnsworth.
This is the Astrid fic I always wanted (no, seriously. I originally requested Astrid fic, then scrubbed it in favor of Hardison. And since I actually received said Hardison fic, betaing this was like the best of both worlds). It has a delightful Walter voice and an equally-strong Peter, but there's no doubt that Astrid is the star of this piece. Marvelous.

Gifted
JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood Series. Christmas presents the Brotherhood way.
I wrote BDB last year, so it was all kinds of lovely to sit back and read it this year. A few of you are well aware that Vishous/Butch is my OTP in this fandom. My thoughts of them are usually filled with angst and longing and long-shot impossibilities, so this light and easy piece was a breath of fresh air.

Hour of Separation
True Blood. The Vampire Council has an unthinkable edict for Eric and Godric.
Lovely look at the bonding and ties between maker and child, and just how those ties are severed. Wonderful, conflicted Eric and dead-on Godric. Complete with Council OCs and bonus Swedish.

Some Things Are Different, Some Things Are The Same
Susan Elizabeth Phillips' Chicago Stars series. No matter what changes, some things remain the same. Four AU's and one possibility.
Dean and Heath (with cameos from Kevin and Phoebe) working their way through a few universes that might be familiar. Dean's still the hothead with dreams of getting glory of his own, and Heath's still the Python with dreams of pulling the strings on everyone else's glory. Clever and original.

And if you like those, there are about 3400 more where they came from, all in the shiny new Yuletide archive.