Who was Kaede? What happened to her after Kikyo died? How did she go from the half-blinded, young girl listening to her sister's last words, to the unshakable, old miko who befriended Kagome and collared Inuyasha?

I've always like the character. (It's always nice to have a woman in a story who is not young and pretty.) I didn't write "To Never Know" intending to start a serial, but having now written a second piece (and a third begs to be written, just to answer the question about what happens to Kaede when the "other" miko arives), so, I decided to start a serial. It's both on Fanfiction.net and mediaminer.org. We'll see how people like it... (Some people did like the first story...)

Well, the "Little Bits" catchall series has been updated again, with the latest piece written for the Issekiwa community. Last year, in one of the first pieces I wrote for LiveJournal contests, I had young Inuyasha discovering his "Blood Claws" during an encounter with Sesshomaru. Now's he's discovered his other weapon...

Whups - did I go almost two weeks without posting any writing? Meant to do better than that! :(

But I did post another almost-at-the-last minute piece to the IY_Themes community. Haven't sputtering my three story serials, so I went this time with a short look at Kaede, several months after her sister died. It had to have been a pretty rough year for her...



And having gotten that one posted, I remembered to get the last entry for that community uploaded to fanfiction.net and mediaminer.org. I admit that I'm tempted to take the three separate pieces (Someday:Tonight, Vigil and Turnabout) and re-write them as a single story. (Might keep that one in reserve for when I need a "block breaker"... :) )

Ah, well. After not having won anything in the 2nd quarter voting over at the Inuyasha Fanguild, I can at least take pleasure in winning two in a row from the Issekiwa community, which tends to average close to the highest number of entries per contest among the various Inuyasha challenge communities. (At least, among those I monitor. And, the last contest for Issekiwa actually drew a relatively low number of entries.)

The first of the two winners was "Recompense", which was added to the "Waiting for Kagome" serial several weeks ago. With the holiday weekend, the voting on the #85: Pair contest was extended a day, so I've just uploaded "Partners" to the fanfiction.net and mediaminer.org versions of the serial "Little Bits." I've only written a couple of pieces that include Kirara, but I do like the character (with two kitty-cats of my own, how could I not?), so she'll probably continue to pop up from time to time.


Also, a belated thanks to landofthekwt for nominating "Dance", from the serial "Could Love Have Been Enough.", and to DYquen for the second.


And hopefully, I can get soon past my writers' block on said serial, at least before the next deadline on Wilted Rose!

I wrote two connected pieces for "Waiting for Kagome" on the 11th, placing the first one into a contest just starting, while the other one was almost over. As a consequence, "Delay" was voted on before "Recompense." Now that the voting for "Recompense" ended, I've updated both to Fanfiction.net and MediaMiner.org.

Both pieces did pretty well...

I didn't realize until a few days ago, that a piece I wrote for the "Waiting for Kagome" (Invitation) had not gotten posted to the serial, even though the contest had ended weeks ago. Worse, I had updated the next chapter in the sequence. Whoops!

At least that's one little point where MediaMiner gains over FanFiction.Net - it is fairly easy to insert a chapter left out, whereas in FF, (at least tonight), I didn't observe any way to insert, except to overwrite or delete the last chapter. At any rate, the 8 chapters are now all posted and in order. And once the winners for the current Issekiwa contest (theme 'White') are posted, I'll be able to update the next two chapters in this saga.

Second update to the catch-all collection on fanfiction.net. It's another sequel, this time to "Someday: Tonight". This story, "Vigil", is post-canon, taking place on the first new moon after Kagome returns to Inuyasha (at the end of the manga). Just like the first new moon in the manga, Kagome is once again guarding an injured Inuyasha. She gets a hint or two about his first new moon of the three years that the well was sealed...

Doing some catchup here... I'm finally getting around to updating some of my serials, where I've written pieces for LiveJournal contests, but haven't posted them in the fanfiction.net and/or MediaMiner sites.

So here's the first one, "Reminisce", that is a sequel to Little Bits #18--"Monster At the Door", which was written last fall for a Halloween challenge. It's been several weeks since the aged hanyo appeared on the Higurashi doorstep, and it's the day that Kagome would have celebrated her 19th birthday, had she stayed in the present. Souta has a question...

One of my former coworkers used the expression of going 'into the well' when he was getting into a tricky piece of coding that required intense concentration. I do not possess his ability to get entirely wrapped up in a project, but for the next two weeks, my concentration is going to be almost entirely focused on an intense training course to increase my programming skills. I'm not even living at home -- the course is taking place in Chicago! (Took the train, as I detest flying.)

So my production of fanfic over the next two weeks is going to be low or non-existent. I do hope to work on the next piece for the Wilted Rose, but will probably be it.

I tend to update Media Miner less often than I do fanfiction.net, in part, at least, because I find it more difficult to get a chapter's html coding to work. (The code that parses the html file upload must be ancient, since it won't even properly parse a "align=center" setting inside of a paragraph tag--which is the code the fanfiction.net inserts into a story being downloaded from the site to a saveable html page.

At any rate, this series is updated on that website. And, following is the latest banner, created by the banner-master Forthrightly, for one of the chapters in this saga:

Whew! That was a heat wave. When you go out 7 o'clock in the morning, and it's already warmer than inside and muggy to boot... That was too darn early, especially after a cool spring! It's supposed to get almost unbearable in August, not June!

At least temperatures are back to around normal, which means opening windows at night, and being a bit more willing to work in the garden--or go for long walks while pondering the next bit of fan-fic writing.

The new update to the "Waiting for Kagome" series, wherein Kagome and Inuyasha visit the well in their respective times 3 days after it closed, was intended to be an entry for the FirstTweak community. Oops! I had the date down wrong, and so it didn't run in any contest. It's been edited a bit, so its first official publication date is today--6/29. Enjoy!

And meanwhile, I entered a story for the first time in the Inuyasha Themes. It's a follow-on to the short piece, "The Monster At the Door", which one first place (short-short category) for the 4th Quarter Inuyasha Fanguild. Those two pieces will probably become the start of a new serial, once I get some RL issues out of the way. Click on the participation banner below to go to the link...

I've added two chapters to the Waiting for Kagome serial. Both were submitted to the Inuyasha FanFic Contest community, but out of sequence. They're in sequence in the serial, however, being chapters five and six. Chapter five covers mid-morning on the first day after Inuyasha returns, wherein Shippo's rude awakening of Inuyasha in the previous chapter gets a follow up. Chapter six takes place in the late afternoon, and covers Sesshomaru's reaction to learning that Inuyasha is back--alone. Chapter 7 should follow in a few days, once the current contest at the IYFic Contest concludes. And with chapter 7, comes the end to day one of Inuyasha coping without Kagome. (1 day down, 1095 to go?)

The 'catch-all' collection, Little Bits, has been updated with a piece I wrote for Issekiwa last week. This one takes the point of view of the warning gong mounted in the watch tower of the village.


Meanwhile, I've also added two entries to LiveJournal contests today. (Okay, I should be working on other stuff...) I actually had the newest entry for the Issekiwa community finished before the contest started. The other entry is a lagger, as I started to write it for a contest some weeks ago; ran into a full-stop and didn't finish it until today, for a different contest.

So, at least most of my writing block (except for Blood Unbound) has disappeared. Now to get the some of the job-hunting blocks dissolved...

Posted my first entry to the IY Fanfic Contest community in several weeks last night.It's a one-shot that will eventually be added to "Waiting for Kagome", but before I do that, I will have to finish the current one-shot that takes place before it!

Meanwhile, I had taken a quick look at the poll results for the 1st Quarter Inuyasha FanGuild contests, and thought none of my stories had won anything. Then, last night, going through the 'friends' page, saw LandoftheKwt's display of banners and mention of (LJ) friends who had also placed, and there was my user name. Checked the IYFG website, and yup, "Keeping Watch" placed third in the 'Canon' contest. So here's that award banner (mucho admiration of Forthrightly, who does all these dozens of banners every quarter!), along with the latest banner from the Wilted Rose Community...

I've updated the collection on fanfiction.net with the latest entry to the Wilted Rose. I almost wonder if I should skip a contest to let someone else win -- my pieces have won 4 of the last 5 contests. Admittedly, there are fewer folks writing for this community, compared to the more general Inuyasha challenges. Most of my entries are also part of this same story line, which may also have an influence. At any rate, whether my idea for the next contest works out or not, the entry, if submitted, will not be part of this series. Mostly because of the theme, which is 'Kiss'. My storyline is still some distance away from the anime kiss, and I'm more inclined to work on a non-serial drabble for the prompt.

Meanwhile, I've done a bit of photoshopping to create a banner for this series...

The contest (Week 18 on Wilted Rose) ended nearly two weeks ago, but I've just now updated the serial on Fanfiction.net.

Real life has not been kind to story-writing, though I just did manage to finish and post the one-shot for the lastest Wilted Rose challenge. Inuyasha gets a bit more than he expected, when he allows his curiosity to draw him to where Kikyo is working to repair damage from the prior ice-youkai attack...

Meanwhile, more pretty banners...

I've just uploaded my last two LiveJournal pieces over to FanFiction.Net. The first one, The Dawn, has been added to the "Could Love Have Been Enough" serial, while the other, "Then Morning Came," went to the "Waiting For Kagome" set.

Meanwhile, two of the three pieces nominated for the first quarter 2009 by Inuyasha FanGuild members moved to the second stage. "Keeping Watch" (Best Canon), a drabble about Inuyasha's 3-year wait for Kagome, and "Friends Protect Friends" (Best Oneshot), one of the longer pieces in the "Could Love Have Been Enough" serial, received seconds (thanks, madmiko and Tsubaki-Hige). The latter serial itself, while nominated for Best Serial, did not advance. Which gives me the right to display the unofficial unseconded banner ...

I've updated "The Fang and the Bow" collection with the drabble written for Wilted Rose: "Feeling Human." If I'm not mistaken, this is the first piece I've written about Kikyo that takes place after her resurrection. (Everything else has been pre-canon or alternative universe.)

Well, that ended exhaustingly.

As I mentioned in my last post, my job was ending on April 20th. In practical terms, it should have ended the Friday previous, since the only thing scheduled on the 20th was to turn in equipment used at home, and sign paperwork. But when the company (probably inadvertently) schedules the official layoffs to coincide with the major trade show for the industry ...

Stuff happens. In this case, a call late Friday afternoon from (retained) employees who were setting up the display booth, indicating that a piece of software I had had to modify just two weeks previous wasn't working. I was only minutes away from leaving the office...

Long story short, I ended up working from home Saturday and Sunday, until I lost my internet connection to my in-office workstation. Add in a series of unsettled nights with poor sleeping patterns, and on Monday I was exhausted. My intent to spend the rest of Monday at the zoo, and taking in a movie vanished, as all I wanted to do was go back home and sleep. (And pick up a new, not too expensive monitor to replace the one I had to turn in.)

Fortunately, I had planned for over a month to take last week off, but any attempt to work on my fanfiction -- alas, I was simply too tired. Fortunately, that exhaustion has mostly worn off, so today, instead of concentrating on preparing for a Java certification exam, I worked on an entry for one of the LiveJournal contests. In this case, it will become (after voting ends) the next chapter in "Waiting for Kagome." It looks at Inuyasha's reactions the morning after he returns from the final confrontation with the Shikon no Tama.

Next up, a one-shot for Wilted Rose, to keep up my perfect record (of entries)...