lady_phenyx

I said earlier this year I would post here more often...guess I just don't often have that much to say.

Anyway, I wanted to post the list of books I read this past year here. My two resolutions were to make a dent in the move and the to-be-read pile, and thought it doesn't look like I did, the fact that there's 101 books on this list says I did. I have brief commentary on it about each one, I always forget I'll post it somewhere so they're pretty frank.

( See the list )

Progress continues on the 2nd draft of A Witch's Secret! I have to re-write this one from scratch, it's so old and was done completely on the fly. I've fixed five plot holes and started work on fixing some things that seemed fine at the time but now need major fixing already. :)

Also, work on the Merlin novels continue. I'm thinking an Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere polyamourous trio. ;) I never did like love triangles much.

Be ready, I want to try and post more about my original work from now on, hopefully other people will enjoy it as much as I do.

(Also, yes, I am working still on the fanfics, I just have no ideas on how to finish some or where some are going and they get worked on after the original novels.)

The tricksters and spirits of love and marriage were reluctant to leave. They wanted to stay, to help the Guardians – all of them – work through these first few days.

 

Still, there was a line between 'helping' and 'meddling', between wanted and unwanted interference, and staying longer would be crossing that line into bad territory.

 

Each made a point to talk to each Guardian anyway before they left, offering everything from a line of communication if they needed advice or a willing ear to another modified shovel talk. Sometimes both, and sometimes the shovel talk wasn't exactly all that serious.

 

The Guardians, after all, wouldn't hurt Jack on purpose. On accident, though...they'd probably end up punishing themselves worse than the tricksters could, but that wouldn't stop them from taking advantage of a perfect opportunity to get away with pranking some of the most well known and powerful spirits around with impunity.

 

The first few days were tentative, as the seven spirits did the emotional equivalent of tiptoeing around each other.

 

As much as they wanted to stay by each other and try to fix this, they all had duties, and all too soon Tooth and Sandy had to leave. No matter what was happening to them personally, the children were still losing teeth that needed collecting, and they needed sweet dreams, and Tooth's fairies could only go without their mother so long, and Sandy could only leave the Dreamsand on its own so long.

 

Jack was almost relieved by it, and promised to go visit them both soon, after they'd gotten things back under control. He faltered a little when trying to explain, finally falling back on, “I want some one on one time. This is...getting a little overwhelming.”

 

Continue on AO3 // Continue on FF.net

So, state of the Phenyx now that we're a bit into the new year...

-I'm working on a sort of bullet journal/low-key scrapbook. The kind of thing that would make people who take bullet journalling seriously foam at the mouth, but it's suiting my needs. I'm also back on my diary bullshit, writing that after I do the daily bullet journal.

-Working on an original manuscript...it seems like I never have time to finish one before nano hits, let alone doing the second draft. But...

-I'm working on getting this house livable. I'm the only one working on it, and there's just...a lot of things I can't make calls on, and it's daunting and hard to find any way to make progress.

-Also still writing To Have and To Hold, though it's getting a bit frustrating at the moment figuring out where it's going

-Started some work on the soundtrack for The Starlight Princess. It's getting me back working on it, so there's that. Not easy, but fun. Also keeps making me ask who would ever have made this movie, Alcor's a DEMON, and yet.

-Resolutions are to make a dent in the cleaning and in my 'To-be-read' pile. Last count topped out at a little over 400 books. I...may have a problem.

So, 2018's almost over. The theme song for me for 2018 was Sonna Rele's "Strong", I'll find out at midnight what the theme song for 2019 will be.

Been a hell of a year. Feels like it was over in a blink yet lasted for much longer than a year.

Because I can...I was writing down all the books I read over the year, to keep track and motivate myself to get through my ridiculously huge to-read pile, which is blocking my way of putting away my books.

The list, along with a summary of the book's plot and if I liked it or not (written without the intention of posting, so...) behind the cut.

( Read more... )

Hey, it's the Solstice and the First Day of Winter, so how about I post my Winter playlist?

It's on 8tracks right here.

Tracks:

Francesca Battistelli – Marshmallow World // The Piano Guys – Winter Wind // Nox Arcana – First Snow // Within Temptation – Ice Queen // Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Wizards of Winter // Celtic Women – Let It Snow // Two Steps From Hell – Blizzard // Idina Menzel & Michael Buble – Baby It's Cold Outside // Nightwish – White Night Fantasy // Enya – White Is In The Winter Night // Mercedes Lackey – Snow Beast // Garth Brooks – Sleigh Ride // Kate Rusby – Little Jack Frost // Enya – Amid the Falling Snow // Heather Alexander – Stormbringer / Kiss Me Jack Frost // Pentatonix – Don't Worry Be Happy / Winter Wonderland // The Piano Guys – Vivaldi Lets It Go // Two Steps From Hell – Winterspell // Celtic Women – The Voice // Heather Alexander – Snow Magic // Blackmore's Night – Midwinter's Night // The Boston Pops – Sleigh Ride // Emerald Rose – Four Jacks // Rise of the Guardians – Alone in the World // Blackmore's Night – Winter (Basse Dance) // Charlotte's Web – Mother Earth Father Time // Kate Bush – Under Ice // Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Siberian Sleigh Ride //Vienna Teng – The Last Snowfall // Vivaldi – Winter

Yes, I'm posting this here now, the way I was posting it on Tumblr, with links to the AO3 and FF.net versions.

The story begins HERE ON AO3 and HERE on FF.NET

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The throne room was already half destroyed by the time they got there. Sand, both black and gold, was trapped in spikes of ice that thrust violently around the room, though they still looked different from the one Jack and Pitch had created in the Arctic.

 It was the ice, Jack decided after a glance at it. This ice had none of the sparkle that his had, and too much menace. Clear still, but dull still, the harsh ice of a long, unforgiving winter.

 He tore his eyes away from the spears of ice to the action. The Snow Queen had taken up position by her throne, and though it looked like she was cornered, Jack had spent too much time with her already to believe that.

 The other thing that was still hard to believe was that Pitch was still here, and fighting alongside the rest. It made no sense. The urban myth spirits were gone, though what exactly had happened to them and where they were Jack didn't know, (and wasn't sure he wanted to know) and the Guardians and Pitch had some weird feud thing going on that had been going on for centuries now, so there was no real reason for Pitch to still be here.

 Yet there he was, waving that ridiculous scythe around like it was an actual weapon and not the awkward thing it was, flinging sand about when the opening arose. Then again, when the scythe was combined with Sandy's whips and the nightmare with the dream sand, it seemed to be doing some sort of decent damage against the ice the Snow Queen was throwing at them.

 They seemed to be doing about the best, along with Cupid and his arrows, Nightlight and the beams of light that came from the crystal topping his spear, as most of their attacks were from a distance. But most of the fighters depended upon close hand-to-hand fighting, and the Snow Queen seemed to have no interest in allowing them that close.

 Katherine was crouched against the wall behind a pillar, shooting off spell after spell, unable to do more than that. She was the calming force, the one that could talk everyone around, not the fighter, and was keeping out of the way of the battle. Her spells now were for healing and protection, and not unwanted.

 The Snow Queen was having no trouble attacking from a distance, and though she preferred the up close and personal approach when it came to Jack, it seemed she was willing to forgo that if it meant getting a Guardian on her side, and the shards, some so tiny they were only visible as a speck of light, flew about the room as easily as snowflakes.

 Tooth cried out, dropping to the ground, her hands going to her eyes, covered by North and Puck as Katherine scrambled out of hiding, sliding across the floor to Tooth. Katherine kissed Tooth's face as Tooth's eyes flashed gold, love and warmth melting the tiny, tiny speck of ice before it could do damage.

 And Jack saw red.

KEEP GOING ON AO3 // KEEP GOING ON FF.NET

Still chugging along at the writing. A little stymied on To Have and To Hold - my outline got abandoned about ten chapters ago, and I'm debating how I'm going to wrap up the Snow Queen's part and what happens after. I may write more in the 'verse once I (finally) finish it, but they'd have to be much shorter.

My computer's back to doing a weird thing where all the services for my antivirus don't start/stop themselves during startup and I have to open the antivirus UI and start them. I asked on their support site back when it was first happening and after three, maybe four reinstalls and them looking through some more info I sent them, their solution was basically 'hell if we know. maybe reinstall your OS?' which hell no.

So that's stressful, not knowing what causes it even if I can fix it until the next startup.

I'm debating songs for Princess Mizar. I know if I want to keep it like an actual musical, I can't do so many songs in one section, and there should only be one villain song. But damn do I want to do more than one. Like, three. Also, I've never done a full on songfic, and I think this is going to end up my first. Everyone should do one once, right? Haha.

(Merlin and their family are in a zombie uprising and trapped in a mall with a bunch of werewolves that follow actual wolf behavior. Whoot! Now to decide when Arthur shows up...yay for the first draft being the 'worst version'.)

Got a bunch of Xmas light up - there's a bunch of new ones this year, and they're solar, but the switches are so hard to figure out. No way to tell if they're off or on, and one is so stiff. :-/ But hey, the tree's up, though there's nothing on it and none of the other trees are up.

Finally got the bathroom mirror fixed, at least temporarily. One door kept falling off. Let's hope I got it after all that stretching and bending to get everything taken down and put up!

Back to making presents for me. Maybe this year they'll get done before the eve of. :)

I have nowhere else really to post this, so...going ahead to say this here.

I had a virus on this computer. Now, as far as I & the person helping me can tell, it's been gotten. However, a lot of my space is missing - I think it's from the system restores made before I figured out it was a virus, since none of my scanners picked up anything, even Malwarebytes - but I've never made this many in this short a time before, so it's hard to tell.

I've managed to clear out most of the space I lost, but now I keep waiting for the next shoe to drop. I have this feeling that something else is going to happen, and it won't go away. It's rather miserable. I keep watching everything like a hawk, especially firefox - it would go to 100% CPU usage within five minutes of being opened, which is how we figured out it was a virus - and I get worried each time it does. Thing is, before this all happened, it would sometimes go to 100% and need shut down anyway.

This whole thing has thrown off my plans - I was going to work on putting up decorations and start doing my prompts again, but now I'm scared to. Oh, and my DVD burner isn't working anymore for me to make my backups, so I'm stuck with a flash drive and hope that we get a new computer around here so I can transfer my stuff to it and burn it.

Just needed to get that off my chest, and this seemed the place to do it.

Title: That Damn Dress
Warning: None so far
Genre: Humor/Fluff
Summary: Helping shift crap about in one of England's homes, America finds an old elaborate ball gown amongst other historical clothing. After much pushing and prying and siccing Canada on England, England finally tells its story - he'd worn it to attend a ball on France's arm in the past, after losing a bet to France. America and Canada freak a little bit - even taking height/age difference from then into account, the dress' waist is tiny. (And they then resolve to get France to help them get England into such a dress again.)

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