nomadicwriter

I finally managed something I've been trying to do for years, and actually wrote some treats for Chocolate Box. Three more Ghosts fics; apparently a sitcom with a relatively small number of episodes but a large cast is a good recipe for getting my writing brain in gear.

Familiar Problems (BBC Ghosts)
The house is visited by a shadowy presence. [1300 words]

The shortest of my three Chocolate Box fics (you will note I am bad at writing to low minimum wordcounts), featuring Alison, Mary and the Captain.

DIY SOS (BBC Ghosts)
With Alison away, the ghosts have to rely on Mike for entertainment. [1850 words]

Ensemble fic with Mike and the whole roster of ghosts. Between this and Yuletide I'm getting the definite impression that Mike fic is surprisingly popular!

Past Tents (BBC Ghosts)
The Captain and Pat take a moment to admire their handiwork. (Well, theirs in spirit, anyway. Actually mostly Alison's.) [2500 words]

The second fic I've ended up writing based around the events of the camping episode. And back in the Captain's POV again, which just seems to be the one I find most natural to write out of all the ghosts.

---

Writing was slightly hampered by the fact Covid finally caught me in early January. (Less than three weeks after I got the booster jab, so I suspect it snuck in under the wire.) The actual cold-type symptoms were so mild as to be indistinguishable from general seasonal blech, but the fatigue was pretty rough for the best part of a month, and I'm still not quite 100% in terms of building back up to my usual daily walk or how tired I get if I work late or stay up too long. Still, glad to have bumped past the worst of it.

My project of revisiting the books I used to read in my teens continues. I reread the Earthsea quartet, which I had slightly mixed feelings about. I don't think I get on with the more mythic style of the first three books so well any more; Tehanu was a much more engaging read on that front, but also a bit of a downer, and the ending feels a bit out of nowhere. I remember reading the follow-up books back when I came out, but I don't own copies and must admit the reread didn't really ignite my enthusiasm enough to bother seeking them out.

It's been interesting, though, reading this and the Merlin books right on the back of doing a Discworld reread. I feel like Discworld went on so long and became so much its own thing beyond the basic genre parody that it's easy to forget how much the setup and early worldbuilding is actually riffing on this era of 70s and 80s fantasy, especially when it comes to all the tropes around wizards and witches and men vs women's magic. So it's particularly interesting on that front to reread first the original 1970s Earthsea trilogy where those tropes are played very straight, and then Tehanu where they're revisited more critically two decades later.

Anyway, I'm actually now taking a step aside from the fantasy genre to reread the Cadfael books. I own most but not all of them, and it turns out I don't actually have the first, but I've now reread the A Rare Benedictine short story collection and book two, One Corpse Too Many. I can see why they were unlikely favourites of mine back in my early teens - they're surprisingly quick and easy reads to zip through. I've got enough of them to keep me occupied for a while, and then maybe I'll go on to A Song of Ice and Fire.

Still hoping to write some more Ghosts fic outside of exchange prompts, since I don't think there are many big exchanges coming up for a while that are likely to provide treat-writing opportunities while I'm on this roll, but we'll see.