cairistiona | Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 1

Day One

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

(Before answering this, a minor vent about DW... it doesn't save your post as a draft like LJ does. I spent an hour writing up the response, then had to go offline for some reason. I wasn't worried, figuring the draft in its entirety would reappear as it does with LJ... but all I got was a big, fat blank. *sigh* I may gripe about LJ but I do actually prefer it to DW in many ways. Oh well, this new post is no doubt shorter and more concise and I'm not really doing much this New Year's morning anyway.)

I've been active to varying degrees in several fandoms over the years, but these days I play solely in Tolkien's playground. I write gen/het, canon-based stories, because I enjoy the challenge of creating new stories that stay in the lines of canon. I leave the AU and speculative stories to others who do it far better than I ever could. Writing is all I do... that seems to be my only area of anything close to expertise, though I'd love to be able to draw or paint Middle-earth. I've long since resigned myself to having to do that with words instead of paintbrush and sketchbooks.

This was a good challenge for me, because I tend not to do a lot of ssp-ing or any deep navel-gazing when it comes to my writing--I know my writing style has changed, hopefully for the better, through the years, but I don't do a lot of analysis as to how it's changed. I rely on my betas and reviewers to tell me if I'm still hitting the mark, I suppose, although I do occasionally re-read old stories and see places that make me wince, as all writers no doubt do! Most of the time, the wincing isn't bad enough to compel me to do any major re-writes, though. I have too many unexplored ideas simmering on the back-burner to spend a whole lot of time on fiddling with finished stories.

Here's my three recs:

The Mariner's Son
The One Ring is not the only ring that brings peril to Heir of Isildur. Rated G

This one's technically a one-shot; I just separated it into 4 chapters for posting purposes--why I did that, I'm not really sure, other than rookie insecurity over its length. This was my very first tiptoe into the Tolkien fandom. I remember literally screaming when I hit enter to send this story winging through cyberspace to the Teitho Writing Contest. I'm late to the party compared to most Tolkien fans--I saw the movies, fell in love with them (and Aragorn, in particular), and then read the Lord of the Rings trilogy once, and somehow that gave me the cheek to think I could write a story. It's been fairly well received, though, so I guess I knew just enough to get by! These days, I write mostly book-based stories, so the bit of movie-verse in this one makes me wince a little in spots.

At Hope's Edge
It is October, T.A. 3000, and the Dúnedain continue to dwindle, a scattered remnant held together by hope in their Chieftain. But what happens when the Chieftain’s own hope starts to falter? An exploration of tragedy, grief, injury and illness and its effects on "the most hardy of living Men". Complete. 1st Place winner, 2009 MEFA. Rated PG-13 for violence, angst, and OC character death. Except for a handful of OC’s, the characters belong to Prof. Tolkien.

This one was my first multi-chapter novel. Aragorn was from the first, and still is, my favorite character, book- and movie-verse, and when I read The Fellowship of the Rings, I knew I wanted to explore the reason why Aragorn seemed to suffer a bit of a PTSD reaction when he spoke of the Black Riders to the Hobbits. I didn't want to go the oft-repeated route of giving him an encounter during his travels near Mordor, so I went a teeny bit AU (though there's some slim canon-based justification) and sent a Nazgûl to the North. This story ended up laying the foundation for my own take on the Dúnedain, as several original characters joined Halbarad and Aragorn. If any of you Bernard Cornwell fans catch a whiff of Sharpe and his Chosen Men... you're right. I love the Sharpe novels and they influenced how I wrote the brotherhood of Aragorn's Rangers. There might also be a little Hornblower influence as well.

This story does have its issues--some overblown prose and typos, mostly. I do intend someday to fix the rough patches and post it at ff.net, though the story will remain largely intact, and the original will always remain at my main "home" archives, Stories of Arda and Naice a Nilme.

By Such a Foolish Name
A farmer meets a stranger with an even stranger name on a rainy afternoon in Bree. Winner of Teitho "Names" challenge. 2011 MEFA nomination. Rated G.

Another one-shot, written far more recently. This one introduced me to Bowen Rushlight, who has become such a favorite OC of mine that I've decided to tell more of his story. No Better Name is a completed, multi-chapter follow-up, and I have a WIP novel, tentatively titled By Such a Kingly Name, that's about half completed. Originally, I thought to do a trilogy, but it may end up a trilogy+1 or more, depending on how the last story is received. All the stories, however many of them there turn out to be, cover a period of time from roughly 20 years before the Ring War to, as the title of the third story indicates, Aragorn's ascention to the throne in Gondor and his eventual return to Annúminas. The third novel will focus on Bree during the Ring War, as seen through the eyes of Bowen Rushlight and his wife, Flora, and includes my own homage to those who died at the Battle of Bree, Men and Hobbits who we only know as names in Tolkien's book. I think they deserve a moment in the spotlight. Real life, however, has kicked my writing progress to the curb in recent years, but I hope 2014 brings more calm and thus more time for my favorite hobby.

I hope if you try out these stories, you enjoy them, whether you're a die-hard Tolkien fan or have never heard of Middle-earth.

Cheers!