What’s up Wednesday: This Space for Rent

Well, it’s Wednesday, and I’ve been busy posting nano spotlights and eight-sentence snippets on the blog all week, so what else is going on in the life of Kelworth, you may ask? What’s Up Wednesday is the weekly blogfest that gets you the answers!

What I’m reading:

Still in the middle of the audio-book version of “Heechee Rendezvous” on my iPhone, and loving the science fiction business dealing of it. Started another library ebook on my new tablet, “Engaging the Enemy” by Elizabeth Moon, number three in the great Vatta’s War series. Also did some shuffling of ebooks, trying to get things organized so that all of my pocketable gadgets have one good book (or a few good books) that I haven’t already read cued up and ready to go, so that I don’t need to stare at the library list and go ‘Duh…’ if I’ve got my Palm TX and a few minutes to read on it. In connection with this, I’ve started reading “Jumper Cable”, out of the epic Xanth romps.

What I’m writing:

Not much. Finishing Steampunk Roswell 51 took some of my creative steam. I did get some good revision done on “Return to Civilization”; the new draft is out to the critters.org readers today, so hopefully I’ll be getting some good feedback on it. Also done a little prep-work for a new Nano idea involving an alien love triangle, and an Earthling city on an alien planet facing a threat of eviction.

What inspires me right now:

Wrimo gatherings! There were actually four of us at the Evensies write-in this weekend, and RSVPs are coming in for the Hamilton kick-off party next Sunday. Also, ‘Castle’ playing around with the notion of time travel. 🙂

What else I’ve been up to:

Trying to find time to practice drawing, like copying a preacher in perspective after Charles White. Doing critiques for Team Ambitious. Still reading slushpile for James Gunn’s Ad Astra. Working on ML stuff, like rounding up Nano swag I can give away as prizes, and delving into the ancient lore of assembling hipster PDAs.

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

Fanfiction flashback: Not Written Yet

Okay, since a lot of readers seem to have liked my posts about fanarts and vidding, and my walks down memory lane about Roswell and Buffy, I’ve decided to start a series of posts about my fanfiction writing, and some of what I like most about the favorite fanfics I’ve written or what they’ve taught me. To start with, I’d like to tell you a bit about a Roswell story called “Not Written Yet“, which I wrote between January and April of 2005. By the way, I’m going to be spoiling the fanfic later on, so if you’d like to read it fresh, you should click on the link now.

One of the things I love most about writing fanfiction in the Roswell universe is how much fun it can be to fix the writer’s mistakes. Not Written Yet is a fix for an episode of the show called “End of the World”, which was broadcast during November sweeps in season two of the show. It’s really a turning point in the plot and character arcs for the entire season, really – and a time travel story to boot. The premise is, that a thirty-something version of Max Evans (Jason Behr,) comes back in time to tell Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby,) that in the life he lived, the two of them finally sorted out their relationship issues, lived a happy life for many years without any more angst – until eventually the fact that they were together meant the apocalypse and all of their friends dying. Future Liz helps to find a way to use an alien artifact to send her Max back through a rift in space-time to fix what went wrong, though she doesn’t have any regrets.

Future Max goes on to tell Present Liz that the events of the next few days are going to be critical to the precarious love triangle between herself, Max, and Tess Harding. In Future Max’s timeline, he asked Liz to go to a concert with him, Liz said no, Max kept asking, somehow they ended up having sex, Tess found out, and she left town in a huff. Future Max figures that’s where everything went wrong, because Tess has strong alien abilities and if she’d stayed with the rest of the gang, they’d be able to guard themselves against danger better.

So – Liz and Future Max try several things to keep these events from playing out, and eventually Liz gets her ex-boyfriend Kyle in on the scheming, though he doesn’t know about the time-traveller part. When Max comes to Liz’s balcony at the date and time Future Max predicted that they’d ‘cement their relationship,’ he finds Kyle already with Liz in bed, and jumps to the obvious, but not entirely accurate conclusion about what’s happened. Max is heartbroken, runs into Tess in the park, talks and bonds with her a bit, and Future Max whiffs out of existence, saying that his work has done and the last fifteen years of his life will never happen now.