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Well, I didn’t post much fic this year, but it’s actually not as terribly little as I’d have thought, given health stuff/applying to grad school/moving to Scotland/DOING grad school.

Here's what I did:

What I wrote this past year:

[JANUARY– APRIL: working tirelessly on my novella-length Snow Wolf fic…but it’s still not gone through my final editing process, thus not reflected here]

MAY
• In Twenty Minutes (a post-S4 Sherlock fic, i.e., a thing I was sure I was never going to write!)
• Little Amusements, or How Anthea Got Her Name (I had so much fun inventing this backstory for “Anthea” from Sherlock!

JUNE
• Son of Demeter, No Friend to Hades (yet more Sherlock? Yes, because Holmestice. :-) My first proper Johnlock, too!)
• Twenty Years On (twenty drabbles about twenty characters in honor of the twentieth anniversary of Harry Potter)

JULY
• If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High (the “coda” to the Be the Light in My Lantern series, but can also be read as a standalone)

[AUGUST–SEPTEMBER: working on my big RS Games fic, and also the minor matter of moving continents…again]

OCTOBER
• Northern Sky (Remus/Sirius, inspired by my time in Iceland)

NOVEMBER
• The Fall of the House of Black (my RS Games fic, a fusion with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”)

DECEMBER
• The Fixed Foot (a new fandom for me! and my first time in one of the small “More Holmes” Holmesian fandoms – in this case, My Dearly Beloved Detective. For Holmestice, of course.)

Things I did:
• rt_morelove
• Snowflake Challenge
• RS Games
• Holmestice! both summer and winter!
• made and met “mini-NaNoWriMo” word count goals I set myself for the months of both January and April
• made some new friends in different fandoms, even though I’m suuuuuper shy and awkward about that :-)
• blogged A LOT about books, and about my then-work in a library
• joined a writing group and went on a (one-day) writing retreat with them
• passed the milestone of 500,000 words on AO3
• wrote the final piece in my “Be the Light in My Lantern” series – all in all about a seven-year project!

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More, maybe, since there was so much upheaval in my life that I’m pleased I managed to write anything!

Looking back, was your fandom involvement (modding, cheerleading, fest participation, etc.) more, less or about what you'd predicted?
Somewhat more? I really didn’t have the time to sign up for either the RS Games or the winter round of Holmestice, but I love them too much to sit it out.

What's your favorite story of the year?
Hmm, I’m proud of both “If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High” and “Northern Sky.” But the fic I’ve poured my heart into is “The Snow Wolf,” this Remus/Tonks Snow Queen fusion I’ve put so much thought and research and detail into. I hope to post it soon!

What's your favorite fandom fest/project of the year?
I’m going to have to say Holmestice, because the community there is so fun and welcoming. It’s quickly gone from being something I was shy about first getting involved with, to something I’d hate to miss.

Least favorite fandom project?
Nope! I don’t have least favorites. :-)

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Hm, let’s see. I pushed myself to write a sexier fic than anything I’ve written before, in “Northern Sky.” I wrote femslash for the first time, which I’m really happy about! (And then proceeded to write femslash for the second time, too.) :-) I continued doing more fics that are fusions (with Greek mythology, with Edgar Allan Poe, with fairy tales…) as a structure around which to write plottier, more intricate stories.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?
Honestly, if I can just keep writing for fun even a tiny bit while also completing grad school/writing a thesis, I’ll be happy! As always, I’d eventually like to start doing some original writing again too (I even have a few barely formed ideas knocking around…) but if that doesn’t happen this year, I won’t beat myself up about it. Everything is grad school from now until October.

And GOSHDARNIT finally post “The Snow Wolf,” which I’ve been working on now for literally an entire year.

My best story of the year:

(I always wonder: is this different from “my favorite story”?) Maybe “If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High,” which has so much thought and careful craft and worldbuilding behind it …and which has been read by basically no one, of course, because it’s genfic ;-)

Or if we’re talking “best” as in “most popular,” then definitely it was “In Twenty Minutes” – which is Sherlock and John and the emotional aftermath of Sherlock series 4, so it generated more interest than the obscure things I usually write!

Most fun story:
Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Mixing Sherlock with Greek mythology is awfully fun, so maybe “Son of Demeter, No Friend to Hades”?

Most sexy story:
“Northern Sky”

Story with the single sexiest moment:
Probably also “Northern Sky.” Though the kiss at the end of “Son of Demeter, No Friend to Hades” seemed to get a good reaction too!

"Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
I…don’t really write that kind of thing. For better or worse. The most “wrong” thing I can think of here is the one where I had to make the reader (and the main characters) think a secondary character had died even though they hadn’t really – which was so painful for me to write, but it was necessary for plot reasons!

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

This is such an excellent, thought-provoking question!

Not sure in this case, though; definitely inventing my own whole creation of a backstory for “Anthea” from Sherlock has made me way more invested in her as a character. And every time I write about Regulus and Sirius, I gain even more sympathy for them and such a desire to find ways for their stories both not to end as tragically as they did.

Also, writing “If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High” was really enjoyable – it follows two minor characters from my big Remus/Tonks story, and there they were secondary characters seen through Remus’ eyes, but here I got to center the story on them and see the world through their eyes.

Hardest story to write:
Huh, I don’t think any of this year’s stories gave me much trouble. They took a lot of time, because I was dealing with so much other life stuff and didn’t always get to write much, but nothing stands out as difficult per se. Some of them required a fair amount of research, and that was fun. :-)

Biggest surprise:

Maybe what a positive reaction my post-S4 Sherlock fic “In Twenty Minutes” got?

Or just pleased surprise at myself for branching out into a very new fandom, and how fun/easy it ended up being to write that fandom, when I offered in Holmestice to write for various smaller Holmes fandoms, instead of just BBC Sherlock…and then the mods deliberately matched me on someone for My Dearly Beloved Detective (the Russian female Holmes & Watson!) which I hadn’t even watched yet at the time when I offered to write for it. So I had to quickly get to know the film, and then write fic for it!

List of WIPs:

• The Snow Wolf. Augggh, I just looked back and realized I listed this as a WIP when I did this year-in-review post last year, too. Really, really time to get this fic posted. Here's how I described it last year: "A fairy tale fusion, of Harry Potter characters (and world) with the story arc of "The Snow Queen." Except it's a Snow Wolf, because the person who gets abducted is a werewolf: Remus. Tonks is the main character, forging her way northward on a quest to reclaim the person she loves from the clutches of this powerful, magical beast, and along the way she meets a whole lot of characters who help her along her quest in different ways. Also known as: I took a 19th century fairy tale that's surprisingly full of strong female characters, and added even more of them."

• A Sherlock one-shot that’s still a secret for the moment. ;-)

• Hopefully a short fic for rt_morelove, but it’s still at the “I’ve got an idea but I've only written the first paragraph” stage.

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