Just let me lie here on the tile

(Suddenly realized I need a Woohoo! icon. All my present ones express, at the most, mild pleasure. I know I'm in a rut, but sheesh. Aaaanyway:)

The Yuletide challenge will return this year! Also known as While We Tell of Yuletide Treasure or the Obscure Fandom Challenge.

I participated last year and it was terrifying tremendous fun. I wrote, I beta'ed, and I was presented with not one, but two wonderful stories, plus a whole archiveful of others to read.

For anyone who doesn't know what in Tartarus I'm talking about: WWTOYT is a cross-fandom story challenge on the Secret Santa model. You submit a bunch of obscure pairings you would really really like someone to write a slash/het/gen story about just for you - and yes, some of those pairings can get pretty damn obscure, which is half the fun - and a second bunch of pairings which you venture to write yourself. The intrepid organisers, tzikeh and astolat, will match up one of your requested and offered pairings. You receive notice for whom you are writing a story, so you can go read that person's LJ or website and see what sort of things she likes, if you want; but you don't know who is writing a story for you, or about whom.

And then the stories go live on Christmas morning, still without the writers' names attached, and everybody starts reading and posting recs and trying to figure out who wrote what, and it's just joyful madness all round.

I am urging everyone on my friends list to join in this year, especially the H:tLJ fans - our fandom is so small by now that there is no pairing that doesn't qualify for this challenge, as far as I know. (Xena/Gabrielle is another story.) And of course this is a chance to ask for other pairings, crossovers, anything you've secretly always wanted to read. The more the merrier.

For news updates and further info, I direct you to yuletide. Go join, please. :-)

ETA that it's not only a cross-fandom challenge but that, as tzikeh pointed out, slash, het and gen are all equally welcome - it's pan-fannish, in other words. Woohoo!

Now that we're well into the new year and I'm back from my winter holiday (have learned to chop wood! I feel so butch), I'm allowed to reveal that

- eyebrowofdoom wrote the gorgeous Hornblower story Knowledge, Late in the Day for me (thank you again!).

- I wrote Swords Against Dreams for lynnmonster, set in the Fafhrd & Grey Mouser series of fantasy books by Fritz Leiber.

( More about Leiber and my yuletide story )

I've never been so excited about Christmas as this year, and it's all because of While we tell of yuletide treasure, the obscure fandom Secret Santa project. I wrote a story for it that I never would have dared write otherwise (you'll be able to see which one was mine come January 1st, if you're curious) and I learned a lot about what a good beta can do for you.

As if that wasn't fun enough, I got a story of my very own in return. It's a Hornblower/Pellew tale called Knowledge, Late in the Day and it is gorgeous and I love it. My original Secret Santa defaulted, and this writer kindly stepped in at the last minute to write me this story, which makes it even more impressive. Let me quote my favorite line so you can see how amazing it is:

And neither, now, could he unlearn of this space he had in his body in which another man might sheathe himself: he would carry the knowledge of it around with him, indeed feel as though he newly carried the thing itself around, like a freshly grown limb.

Thank you very much, my mysterious Santa! You made me very happy indeed, and I hope you get a story just as good as this one.

And of course there are hundreds of other stories to read, a gift basket the size of a house. I haven't read more than a twelfth of them yet, but here are some I liked particularly:

- Fine: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And Etta. Wonderfully written and characterized, a gem of a story.
- A Hogswatch Carol: Discworld. I've never seen a fanfic come so close to the true Voice of Pratchett. This one has it all - an original character who's no less engaging for being dead, Death himself, the Watch, an Igor, ladies of negotiable affection and a murder mystery. I loved it.
- A Helping Hand: Good Omens. This one captures Crowley and Aziraphale perfectly, from an outside POV that really works. And: footnotes!