Current fannish projects

[regshoe]

Well, now that the busyness of hosting WED is over, I'm taking a review of the other fannish things I have going on and trying to do some sorting out. So! At the moment I am working on:

• My Flight of the Heron/Kidnapped crossover longfic! I'm on chapter 17 at the moment and the total wordcount has just passed 90,000; I think I've got another four or five chapters to go, give or take a little epiloguing, which suggests a final wordcount somewhere in the 110-120k range. This is exciting! There are definitely plot difficulties, but I am making steady progress working through them and keeping going (very much thanks to beta feedback from the excellent sanguinity and luzula). If all continues well, I'm fairly comfortably on track for my goal of getting to 'only final edits needed' stage within this year.
• Another meta post resulting from the FotH Wikipedia research. This one has been fully written up for months, I just haven't got round to posting it; I will soon.
• A meta post about the textual history of Kidnapped. Also mostly written, needs a bit more polishing.
• The Flight of the Heron ebook! This has slowed to a crawl due to various technological problems, but I'm now three-quarters of the way through scanning and OCR-ing the text and hoping to make a final push on the last quarter soon. And then will follow the pleasant text-corrections stage in which I get to read FotH again. :D
• A Wikipedia article on NTS Kidnapped. ♥
• A vague plan to make my own fansite, probably over on Neocities. This is an idea I've had for some time, resulting from a convergence of 'I love all this cool HTML and CSS I'm learning for ebooking, what else can I do with it?', 'I want to archive my Flight of the Heron and Kidnapped fic somewhere where no one can tell me they know better than I do what the fandom is called' and 'hmm, it'd be nice to have some kind of permanent place to put all this stuff I'm digging up about FotH and D. K. Broster', and the recent Things happening to do with AO3 have lent it further impetus. I've got a collection of disorganised and half-finished HTML files, which need a lot more organisation before I can do anything with them, and I need to make a decision about the scope of such a site ('everything I'm interested in' is all very well for Dreamwidth, but I feel a proper website ought to be a bit better-defined; but it needs to include at least both FotH and Kidnapped, and fic, meta and general canon/history info; perhaps a broad 'old books about Jacobites' theme?). But it's progressing, somewhat.

So that's enough to keep me busy for a while, and who knows how long any of it will take. But it's good fun :D

Comments

[muccamukk]

I think a website for FotH and Kidnapped is a really fun idea. You could do pages with all your research resources, and pictures of locations!

[regshoe]

Yes! I think I'll have a sort through my various geography meta/location pictures posts and try to write up something more comprehensive...

[garonne]

Ooh, I'm very much looking forward to when these different projects see the light of day. (Also, wow, I had no idea your crossover longfic was quite that long. Very nice news for me as a reader!)

[regshoe]

Hee, it surprised me, too! And thank you, I'm glad to hear it :)

[sanguinity]

I've wondered sometimes if there's enough Jacobite-posting between the half-dozen of us to warrant having a DW comm. Pros: easier to find the various history and meta posts? Cons: we all follow each other anyway, it's not like we need a central meeting place.

But provided I can remember-the-URL/find-at-will your neocities site (and depending on how you organize it!), it might solve my problem of having to dig through your tag to find the timeline posts or what-have-you. It's a lovely tag, full of many good things! But because it's full of many good things, it's also just a little awkward, sometimes, to find the reference post I'm looking for.

[regshoe]

I've never really managed to get the hang of DW comms, for pretty much that reason: if I write a Dreamwidth-suitable post I'll want to post it on my own journal, and there's not much point also posting to a comm if everyone in the tiny fandom is subscribed to me anyway. Also an active comm would probably end up suffering from that same organisational issue—I like the idea of a site where I can just list things on a front page and organise them however I like as a more permanent archive.

[sanguinity]

I realise I didn't make the connection between my two paragraphs explicit: your having a fansite solves a good 80% of what I wanted a comm for. (Sometimes it's a post of luzula or hyarrowen that I'm looking for, but truth be told, most of the time it's one of yours.) And as you point out, a fansite does some of what I wanted more efficiently.

Re double-posting to comm and journal: yeah, I hear you. I've been putting all my Hornblower rec posts here on my journal since they're mostly for you anyway, but I've been cross-posting to hmsloop_hotspur because I refuse to let that comm die for lack of content. Even if it means that all the posts for the last yonk and a half are mine...

[regshoe]

Well, I am flattered to hear that my posts are so useful :D But I also share the problem of trying to dig up posts on other people's and my own journals, especially if I don't remember exactly which post a particular comment/piece of information was in. Anyway, it sounds like this project will be worthwhile!...

[luzula]

Oh, you should totally make that website! This sounds excellent: it needs to include at least both FotH and Kidnapped, and fic, meta and general canon/history info; perhaps a broad 'old books about Jacobites' theme?

I don't know if you also want to include other people's contributions, such as my book reviews of Jacobite history books and old fiction about Jacobites, and my write-up/summary of the Jacobite risings for salon? You would be very welcome to, but also I would understand if you don't, in case you want to keep to just your own stuff.

Also looking forward to your various DW posts!

ETA: Another great thing to include on the website would be theseatheseatheopensea's list of where to find Broster's works!

[regshoe]

:) Yay, I'm glad you think so.

I don't know if you also want to include other people's contributions, such as my book reviews of Jacobite history books and old fiction about Jacobites, and my write-up/summary of the Jacobite risings for salon?

That's a good idea! Actually I was working on the Geography article yesterday and thinking I might ask you if I can use some of your pictures—but I'd love to include your history posts and book reviews somehow too. I'll think about structure and what to include... And yes, theseatheseatheopensea's Brosterlist will definitely be a good thing to use :D