Reading

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promptfic:biggles

A couple of Biggles promptfics

I had a long plane flight yesterday (holiday travel) and decided to try to clear out a little more of my Tumblr prompt backlog before the end of the year.

1. Friendly fire: Algy and EvS

200 wds - Also on Tumblr

( Under the cut, with prompt )

2. Drug that mimics death - Erich & Biggles

700 wds - Also on Tumblr.

( Under the cut, with prompt )

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2570 / Fic - The Pitt

Nobody Puts Baby in the Pumpkin
The Pitt | Jack/Robby | ~1100 words | For

traveller, with thanks to

sheafrotherdon for betaing.

(Also on AO3)

( It had been a running joke at first, and then passed into a simple fact of life together: Robby ran cold and Jack ran hot. )

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meta,
tv:babylon 5

Still thinking about B5? More likely than you think!

And writing about it instead of getting ready to check out of my Airbnb as I ought to be.

( Spoilers obviously, especially for character death/survival )

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No depth found

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What I'm Doing Wednesday

Rockstar Lestat is LIVE in my shop! Both the pattern and the doll are now for sale! \o/\o/\o/

And here's the tumblr link, if y'all wouldn't mind giving it a reblog.

books
The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple. Really all over the place, and fails at sticking to a theme. Not academic enough for my taste, though there's some fascinating history in there.

media
Watched PBS's Great Performances 2025 Twelfth Night and really enjoyed it. Sandra Oh's Olivia was a delight and Peter Dinklage's Malvolio was stunningly good. Lupita & her brother were a refreshing take on the twins, too. It's available to everyone to stream through the end of the year, and then after that you need a PBS Passport to view.

( failing at fandom )

yarning
I went to yarn group on Sunday and had a nice time. We had our Christmas party with a lot of food, the vast majority of which I couldn't eat, darn it, but it was fun nonetheless. And my friend from there who I do ebay with gave me a big bag of craft books to list. I also worked on another burgundy kickbunny, as the one I just finished last week sold already. A number of people have sent me photos of their cats playing with things I made -- it's super gratifying, because CAT! And I've had two more people commission kickbunnies this week, yay!

yuletide
I finally stopped tinkering, knock wood. I still have a lot of anxiety over it, though, as I'm writing out of my comfort zone and I don't know if it works or not. The majority of my creative inspiration is yarning, so making words work is extra hard atm. ION: AUGH!

rl
Damn it, my amazon account got hacked AGAIN last night. It must have been a brute force attack, given the givens, although I did use public wifi yesterday, so maybe that was it. Hrm.

I hope you're all doing well, or as well as can be expected, or better! <333

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books:vlad taltos

The chaotic Dragaera reread continues

.... but much more slowly. I reread Vallista this past week, and that book sure hits different in a few ways after reading Tsalmoth!

( Spoilers for both Vallista and Tsalmoth )

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2569 / A Few Good Men; Murder Before Evensong; Witness for the Prosecution

( A Few Good Men )

( Murder Before Evensong )

( A Witness for the Prosecution )

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#685, Bashō

with lightning
one is not enlightened
how valuable
-1690

Translation by Jane Reichhold.

( 俳句 )

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2568 / Fic - The Pitt

Let There Be Light
The Pitt | Jack/Robby | ~3600 words | Thanks to

sheafrotherdon for betaing. This fic makes 2025 my second most prolific writing year ever. *tiny kazoo noise*

(Also on AO3)

( Eight nights of Hanukkah; eight gifts from Jack to Robby. )

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life or something like it

there are two kinds of products in the world

We have these envelopes I use to half-assedly organize coupons. After our local Kroger analogue recently remodeled, I had to rename some of the envelopes because they dissolved the "natural" section—where I did most of my dairy-free, gluten-free shopping—and moved those products around the store.

So now the "deli & meat" envelope has "dairy & non-dairy" added to it, which amuses me every time I get it out because "dairy & non-dairy" encompasses everything in the universe.

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2567 / Fic - The Pitt

Hit a World, At Every Plunge
The Pitt | ~1400 words | Jack/Robby | Thanks to

sheafrotherdon for betaing.

(Also on AO3)

( 'If it's all right, I think a lot of us here would like to attend Nick's funeral.' )

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Rec-Cember: Two recent short Murderbot gen fics

As I don't have the bandwidth for a lot of reccing tonight, here are two quick recs of short Murderbot friendship gen from the last couple of days that I enjoyed. Both of these are more bookverse than show-based.

Ransom by

BoldlyNo (400 wds, Gurathin-centric)
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.

The Truth, Bitter as It Is by

HonorH (900 wds, Gurathin & Murderbot)
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.

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A couple of links

amperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.

Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:

“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”

Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.

Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:

“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”

Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.

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2566 / Fic - The Pitt

Scenes from a Lavender Marriage
The Pitt | Gen (Santos, Whitaker) | ~5600 words | Thanks to

sheafrotherdon for betaing.

Trinity shrugged. "So marry me."

Whitaker stared at her. "You're a lesbian and I'm the opposite of a lesbian."

"Like that's stopped people before," Trinity said.

(For formatting reasons, only on AO3)

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year-end roundup

Year in review and next year's plans

I normally do this at the end of the year, but I'm doing it early this year because I'll be out of town 'til the 27th, and I don't really expect much to change; all my publications for the year are publicated. See the tag for previous years' updates!

This year's cover grid:

3 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 collection. That's honestly much better than I was expecting; I spent most of the year clawing my way back from burnout, and the final two books were slammed out at the end of the year when suddenly my creative brain came back online.

( Checking in with last year's plan )

( Next year's plans )

( Edited to add: one more thing )

On grief and a rotten year

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fanfic:babylon 5

Babylon 5 fic: Movie Nights

I finished something I started a while back!

Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.

(no subject)

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

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fanfic:mash

MASH Christmas fic

This is actually something I wrote last winter, February or so, when I was bingeing MASH. I figured that although I could post it at the time I wrote it, I could also wait and post it at actual Christmastime.

Goodnight Moon (1816 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Christmas, Missing Scene, Episode: s09e05 Death Takes a Holiday
Summary: Hawkeye makes a discovery. (Missing scene for 9x05 "Death Takes a Holiday," the season 9 Christmas episode.)

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News

Some news:

* The Murderbot and fantasy novel Humble Bundle has returned for two days. The charity donation is still World Central Kitchen:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books-encore

* I'll be co-guest of honor with John Picacio at AggieCon 55 on January 30-February 1 2026 in College Station, TX.

https://www.aggiecon.net/

* Also you can preorder Platform Decay, the next book in The Murderbot Diaries, at whichever retailer you prefer, and it will be out on May 5, 2026. Published by Tor Books, cover art by Jaime Jones, edited by Lee Harris.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/platform-decay-martha-wells/8cf1662cf8bf8d15?ean=9781250827005&next=t