The 35th Precinct

I have done nothing but t00b the Internet all day, and sadly no one has spoken much. The holidays have pantsed everybody, I suspect, and I can wholly sympathize. I'm still lethargic and sluggish, and given the way I always feel in the immediate aftermath of the holidays, I wonder why anyone looks forward to them. Aside from the retailers, who stand to make money hand over fist, no one is happy. They're all too busy scrambling for presents and eating Tums by the fistful in a futile bid to stave off an incipient ulcer. Christmas 2006 can never be too far away.

On a cheerier note, I'm nearly done with September When It Comes V. At present, Greg is reflecting on how brutal even the gentlest of questioning can be when all defenses are down and battered. An excerpt:



( SWIC 5-How the Other Half Lives )

I wrote one page of CSIfic before crashing last night. One minute, I was plodding merrily along, and the next, my brain announced that there would be no more writing tonight and promptly went into sleep mode. I slept and dreamed of HP and lucha libre, and I have no idea how that particular hybrid spawned in my subconscious.

Writing CSIfic is, in many ways, more difficult than HPfic. Grissom fans are less forgiving of character mutilation, and if you write yourself into an impasse, there is no spell to conjure an escape hatch. You're cooked, and the Delete/Edit key is your only hope. I've done more research on the two chapters of September When It Comes than I ever did with SLS-Vegas street names and area codes, hotels, restaurants, rental rates on one-bedroom apartments, CSI I salaries. It's mind-croggling. God help me when I've got to investigate decomposition, wound tracks, et al. With SLS, I just clapped my trusty keyboard into my side holster and saddled up.

I haven't been in the fandom long, but by all appearances, it is markedly more serene than HPfen, where you're no one unless you've been threatened with grievous bodily harm, cyber-stalking, or being reported to your ISP for writing child porn, and where writing a "Sue" is grounds for fandom excommunication. Oh, I'm sure that CSIfen has its share of the sweet, screaming crazies, and I've already been blasted by a card-carrying member of the Spoiler Police for my author's note in SWIC 1, but the Crazy is not yet so virulent here that I feel uncomfortable.

By no means have I left HPfen, however. I'm still very much involved, and I have no plans to leave. As I type, Moody is drinking in his office, watching the mist outside his window and waiting for Stanhope so that he can persuade her that Helping Snape Is a Bad Idea Because There Are Things About Him That She Hasn't Been Told before he teaches her a few useful spells to dodge the Aurors. She dismisses him, of course, and Moody can only shake his head and mutter.

CSIfen is merely a vacation property in fandom, a place I can go to unwind and shake off the unrelenting melancholy and grinding misery of SLS.

An Excerpt From SLS 53:

( SLS 53 )



On another HP note, the recently circulating pictures of Snape make my girl parts mouth water. That man is the sex.