Darkness and Daylight

My how time flies even when you're having fun. I can't believe it has been almost 6 months since my Reader's Choice Contest. I still owe MelBelle her fic, but I do promise you all that I'm working on it.

RL has been rather topsy turvy lately.

My sister moved in for three months, which was great. Love her to bits, but there was no time for writing. My little writing rhythm went haywire.

She finally found a job that suits her skills, pays enough to be worth her while, and presents enough of a challenge not to bore her. Workaholics kinda run in my family. LOL. Apparently I'm the slacker of the bunch.

Things are slowly getting back to normal around these parts. I am weaning myself slowly from the Facebook games to which I have seemingly become addicted. Even though I had no time to write I managed to find enough time to click a mouse a few thousand times, and now have several hundred 'friends' who appear to be equally addicted. Do you ever feel like a mindless drone sitting in front of a computer pressing a button that causes someone else's bank account to increase every second their advertising flashes on your screen?

The past couple of days I have actually managed to get back to writing again. The test will come later this week. I'll be at work for two days before my next stretch off begins, so it will be interesting to see if I can pick it back up again.

Keeping my fingers crossed on that one!

P.S.  (sigh) Oh, David. 

Fanfic muses are skittish creatures. Not in the physical sort of course but in the way RL seems to butt in way too often. One day you're typing away in a writing frenzy and the next you're unable to think of a single word.

At the moment my muse seems to be happy. Here's hoping it stays that way.

I just posted Chapter 35 of Season of Solace over at Angel's Oasis. It has been ready to go for a little while, but I can never leave well enough alone. There was some pre-posting tweaking done here and there.

Now I get to turn my full focus onto Melbelle's Fic. I can already tell that this will be more than just an added scene. LOL! I have never learned that less can be more when it comes to my writing.

Hmm...

I just got a returned message stating that my site update email was undeliverable. I don't know if that was for everybody or just one person. Grrr. Looks like 'Websites for Dummies' is also on the list of things to do today.

Reader's Choice Contest

A big thanks goes out to everyone who took the time to get creative and come up with a new Scene for one of my stories. We had 8 participants.

By Order of Entry Submission:

Angelus96: 'Baiting a Master Vamp'

Trix: 'Double Take'

Keo: 'The Eternal Connection'

Pleth: 'Double or Nothing'

Tracgyrl: 'Season of Solace'

BarbMack: 'Double or Nothing'

Melbelle: The Mirror Crack'd

Gilly: 'The Eternal Connection'

Each and every idea got me excited about writing fic, so that's always a great sign that my muse will be cooperative. It's difficult to judge exactly how long the writing process will take, but working on the winner's scene/fic will be a top priority.

I drew the winning entry last night and got to work on a variation of the ficpic. 

The Winner Is...

Contest Participants will get a WP, Banner or Icon as a thank you for submitting an entry. Just reply here with some specifics as to what you'd like.

Congrats, Melbelle! And thanks again to everyone for playing. Maybe we should do this again next year.

Just a reminder, folks! You have 4 days left to enter the Reader's Choice Contest.

Come up with a scene you want me to add to any of my previously written fics/series.

The winner will be announced July 1st.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next 2 chapters of Season of Solace have been written.

Chapter 34 was posted at Angel's Oasis this morning, but will not be archived here for couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I added 'Fun with Ficpics'. It's a visual history of my art for Season of Solace. The link can be found in the fanfiction section.

I just found out that the Wicked Awards have announced the winners for Round 1.

*squee*

I won! I won! 

This is extremely cool. I've never actually won anything like this before.

Double Take won top prize in the NC-17/PWP category. 

JUDGES' COMMENTS:

"Cordelia and Angelus as a couple in Sunnydale? A pairing that absolutely needs to be read and spread... These two characters clash and complement each other in a way that makes this ensemble story shine. And, what a surprising turn of events at the end!"

Double or Nothing was selected as a Runner Up in the Showtime/Best Original Plot category.

JUDGES' COMMENTS:

"This is potentially the best Whedonverse threesome we had the pleasure to read in ages. Not only were all the Scoobies well characterized but they were involved in a fantastically plotted storyline that kept you on the edge. This is a novel size fiction that links seamlessly the BtVS and Ats world around the exciting, jealous, tense, passionate, and loving relationship created by Angelus and Cordelia with Angel."

How cool is this!

I've been nominated over at the Wicked Awards in 3 categories. 

Best Storyteller / Best Series (Double or Nothing)

and

Best Original Plot (Double or Nothing)

and

Best NC-17/PWP (Double Take)

It's an honor to be nominated.

Double or Nothing is one of my personal favorites. I could probably write little tasty tidbits in that world forever. The thing I like about it the most is that it would still be an interesting story even if the smut was deleted. What can I say? I love twisty plots.

The nomination for Double Take was a surprise. Although I know people like it that story is a little screwed up, imo. It started out as a parody, so the characterizations were deliberately written all over the place. The middle of the story turned out to be less of a parody and more a regular fic. And, at the end, I kind of chickened out with the threesome smut. 

There are also some other C/A & C/Aus goodies amongst the nominees:

Scorch's C/Aus series, Passion Personified

Little Heaven & Starlet's Ghost of a Chance 

Grand Opening Celebration!

Season of Solace:  Chapter 34 Sneak Peek

The chapter is currently 22 pages and growing, so I have the suspicion that I'll have to split it into 2 parts by the time I am done writing the parts I have plotted. To give you a little taste of what is to come, here is a sneak peek at the first two scenes.

The 2009 Fic Reader's Choice Contest

To celebrate the grand opening of my new website I decided to have a contest to thank C/A fans for continuing to read my stories. Pick your favorite from my fics and dream up a scene you wish I'd written.

THE GRAND PRIZE:

I will write a new scene of your choice for any of my fics.

This can be a 'missing scene' set within the timeframe of the story, a prequel, or a future scene.

HOW TO ENTER:

Post a response to my Lysa's Website Update threads at AO or ST, or leave a comment to this CONTEST & Sneak Peek blog entry.

Your entry / request must be received no later than June 30th at midnight.

SCENE CRITERIA:

Please include the name of the fic and describe the kind of scene you want. Be as vague or as detailed as you want.

THE WINNER:

Will be announced on July 1st. Selection will be made randomly.

As far as I know you should be able to upload your own User Icons/Avatars to your membership control panel.

Today, I added a bunch of new icons to the gallery which you can snag if you want to use one of them rather than uploading your own.

Some of you may have followed the link I left behind at the old Darkness & Daylight site. 

Geocities is closing later this year, so I figured I needed a jumpstart on building a new place. This one is much more user friendly than the last and ultimately cheaper than what I'd end up paying to upgrade to the other services that are being offered.

I feel like I've run a daily marathon the past few days. The content from the old website has been added, plus a couple of missing fics. Hopefully I caught any glaring errors that were still in the fics, but if you spot something just click the 'Contact Me' link or leave a comment.

The fanfiction section requires you to sign up for membership. That's just a tiny level of security that hopefully won't be a pain once you've bookmarked the site.

Before I have any kind of official Grand Opening announcement I want to try to finish the next chapter of Season of Solace. I'll be working on that as much as possible next week. 

In the meantime, browse around the new site and let me know what you think. There were three standalones and 1 chapter of SoS not published on the old site that you might not have read yet:

The Mirror Crack'd

If We Fall In Love

Where Dark Things Dwell

Season of Solace: Chapter 33

Things are moving along very well, very quickly. 

I have added all of my Fanfic Titles and Summaries to the Fanfiction page. That's the first step to getting the actual fanfiction posted. For now I am still in the dark about how the actual stories will look once they're on the website.

If you get to the point where you're reading a fanfic I'd like to know if the format is easy to read or difficult. I know that font size and color is an issue for some people. My guess is that it will look something like the text you're reading now. Too small? Too green?

The fanfiction section is now protected by a master username and password. I didn't use one at my Geocities site, but it's probably a good idea for more than one reason. If you're 18, it won't be an issue for you other than the first time you have to log in. Just bookmark the page and it should save the info. If you're under 18, you can contact me and I'll consider making a separate area for the G/PG/PG13 fanfics.

Good news is that I found two or three fics that were not posted at my old Geocities site. I don't even think they've been posted at AO. They were either ST or CA_at Last challenges, so there might be some new stuff for a few of you.

I'm not sure how long it will take to get the fics up. I might cheat by linking back to the old site so that everyone can get their membership here up and going without having to hop back and forth. New art and New Fic Updates will be posted directly on this site. I won't update the old one.

As I feared, the MB required to store all of my current fics and art will exceed the 'free site' criteria, but it's well within the 'Starter' package, so I didn't have to shell out an arm and a leg. The Site Builder is so much easier than the last one I used (so far) that it's worth it.