Lately, I've been thinking a lot about life and... serendipity in terms of unexpected discoveries, and it comes down to a sci fi convention.

Starfury Cross Roads is a con for Supernatural and The Boys. The former is the crux, and the fact that my favourite dipshit Todd Stashwick guest starred in an episode. (Monster Movie. Go watch it - it's hysterical.) And obviously I have to go meet him. Because that man has changed my life immeasurably.

But there are some weird, crazy happenstances and, the fact I use tarot cards aside, I've never been much of a believer in the universe providing. I'm a practical, nay cynical, bean. Still...

1. It dawned on me that the hotel hosting Cross Roads is the same one where I first met Cliff Simon all those years ago. Where his meet-and-greet was cancelled and I DMed him (yes, he was following me on Twitter) and we met in the bar and spend 40 minutes nattering like old friends. This fact gave me a huge wobble. It made me question going, until another friend pointed out that Cliff would be the first to tell me to go.

2. It's in April. Ten years and eleven months since Chevron.

3. Chevron 8. Starfury 8.

4. Back to April, Cross Roads is exactly a year since I was so irritated how Shaw's death hurt me that I went and told Todd about it and tipped myself down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of D&D, board games, and other nonsense. Back to the whole changing my life immeasurably shtick.

Which I've gone into before so won't now. Largely because I'll get sappy and maudlin and no one wants that. But the last year has been immense and Todd is largely the cause. I may tell him this. If I can be sure that I won't turn into a blubbering mess. Snowball chance in hell, then, lol.

Anyway, I needed to get this out and there was nowhere else for it. Soz.

Wow... just wow. And I thought my life was complicated recently...!

FEBRUARY
Month Goal: 14,112 / 16,667
KWIF: 10,472 / 7,500
5k Weekend: 2,520 / 2,500
NMM: 2,085 / 1,800
WriDay: 2,576 / 2,500
FMM: 1,092 / 1,000

MARCH
Edit Hike?
WriDay: 2,500
NMM:
5K:
FMM:

My February total is off, but I can't be bothered working out what I wrote on ACD and what I edited. This story has taken over my life. Which means going over and over the first few chapters, trying to build in the worldbuilding I lost when I scratched off the serial numbers.

But with my head still very south, I'm just going where the muse takes me.

I think it's time to acknowledge that the projects I intended to start the year with are on a back burner and my brain is taken over by my bitchy witch and the sarcastic demon she gets saddled with. A Certain Darkness doesn't have a back-page blurb (yet) but it does have a mock cover.

But does it have words? XD

Yes, but it's complicated.

There's 15K of fanfic, but I'm rewriting it as original, so I'm having to build my own world. And remove all the fandom references.

Oh, I've had to do that. Good luck!

MARCH
Month Goal: ? / 16,667
Edit Hike
WriDay: 3,400 / 2,500
NMM: 2,267 / 1,800
5K: 6,309 / 5,000
FMM: 1,280 / 1,000

I FUBAR'ed my March total by consolidating all the bit parts of A Certain Darkness into one line on the spreadsheet. Oopsie-doodle. I know I hit the goal amount because I wrote a 6.6K fanfic, but I'm unclear on the exact amount. I also wrote most of said fanfic in a day and now I'm taking the weekend off writing as my brain is soup.

But! A Certain Darkness now stands at 21K and I've outlined the latter half. Yeah, I'm just as shocked as you are. I've already jiggled this outline a little, but it's mostly holding up. And I more or less know how it ends.

Back to the source material (such as it is) and there's a scene in "To Shanshu in L.A." between Vocah* and the employees of Wolfram & Hart where he's so just annoyed by them that it ends up being funny, especially if you've ever had a fairly menial job that was 80% sorting out the nonsense your employers have pulled. Anyway, it was that sort of pissy attitude that I wanted to bring to ACD. My intent was to write grumpy/grumpier couple.

However, he has other ideas and, while he can be sarcastic and the most gen x demon you'll probably ever read, there's a softer side to him that I'm loving. I mean, he's still hella dangerous and vicious in a fight, but Lenore is definitely his weak point.

“I said that I would protect you,” Volker reminded me. “Hear me, Lenore Grey, that on the Circles of Hell itself I swear that I will allow nothing to harm you. Nothing in Heaven or Hell or on the Earth will touch you if I can prevent it from doing so.”

I mean, who wouldn't melt a little bit at that?

So, yeah; Volker remains my favourite sort-of-original character in ages. (*I had to change his name for obvious reasons)


APRIL

I'm tempted to do Rez April with a contemporary romance novel. Yes, I know what I said, but I've several just sat there and it seems a waste. I'm thinking of picking up Dungeons and Dragons and Daiquiris which sees a post-divorce woman find new confidence in playing D&D (hey, they say to write what you know!) Despite that premise, I do want to keep it light (and sexy and fun...) so let's see if I can write a rom-con.

Todd claimed that it was nice to meet me finally, and thanked me for my support. I did not tell him about how much he's changed my life, but there really wasn't much chance. Starfury was lightyears away from the relaxed atmosphere of Chevron and, away from Todd and his nonsense, not that much fun. I'd expected this to a degree as he was the only person I went for, but I wasn't prepared for how stressful it'd be.

I did ask him two weeks before on his IG live whether the con would be okay. I was very nervous about saying something stupid. I know myself well. He said it would be fine and we'd look after each other. Which I kind of dismissed. Turned out that he would and did take the best care of me as Overwhelm became a very real thing and I started disassociating. God, he was so sweet. Just really gentle and reassuring. I don't know how much he figured out (he has ADHD as well so likely recognised some signs) but I'm very grateful.

Anyway, it turned out to be a good day. It did not, however, lessen my level of fannish love for Todd. Quite the opposite, lol.