trace_of_scarlet

I finished the first chapter of A THING! Please, please, please give me your thoughts. No need to be gentle with me - I like it rough! ;)

Elizabeth Hilton had never, ever liked Tuesdays. They were sluggishly grey days, miserably far from the weekend, with a high chance of heavy drizzle and still four days left to slog through in the company of the sulky grey- or red-faced boors who filled the newspaper offices where she worked as junior photographer #3 with an alcoholic, middle-aged haze of beer, cigarette fumes and sweat. Her grandfather had died on a Tuesday, her last angry dispute with her older brother Pip had been on a Tuesday, and she was very nearly positive she had signed the paperwork for her grub of a flat on a Tuesday, too. And all of this culminated on this particular Tuesday morning in the rattling, too-cramped lift to the fifth floor of the offices of the London Standard, and the unmistakable feeling of her chief editor’s fat, sly fingers groping without shame at her posterior as they both exited it. Betsy reacted as her mother had always taught her to: by taking deep breaths and counting in a ladylike, restrained way to twenty.

And then, since she was still furious, she threw her camera at him anyway.

( The camera, which Betsy had always referred to as Philip for the way it liked to thwart her at all the worst possible moments, was not by any means a small piece of machinery... )

The state of the Bethan: permanently psychologically and physically tired. Very tired. Trying desperately to work up the mental energy to have a go in the milliways_bar Allpocalypse before it's too late, and still failing.

THEREFORE:

What are you guys working on at the minute? Fannish or original, art or words or fanmix -- anything you're working on right now that you're enjoying. Titles, first few sentences, drafts, sketches ... anything.

I'LL START.

Firstly, I'm approximately five thousand words into what should have been my 2011 NaNoWriMo project, an update of the Enid Blyton Five Find Outers series with the cast grown up in the 1950s. Essentially, Enid Blyton with a twist of Agatha Christie meets Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and all the other classic fifties noir. (Oh God, Blyton and her ISSUES. So much fixing, so little time.)

It's tentatively called The Mystery of the Burning Bridges, and here's the first paragraph:
Elizabeth Hilton had never, ever liked Tuesdays. They were sluggishly grey days, miserably far from the weekend, with a high chance of heavy drizzle and still four days left to slog through in the company of the sulky grey- or red-faced boors who filled the newspaper offices where she worked as junior photographer #3 with an alcoholic, middle-aged haze of beer, cigarette fumes and sweat. Her grandfather had died on a Tuesday, her last angry dispute with her older brother Pip had been on a Tuesday, and she was very nearly positive she had signed the paperwork for her grub of a flat on a Tuesday, too. And all of this culminated on this particular Tuesday morning in the rattling, too-cramped lift to the fifth floor of the offices of the London Standard, and the unmistakable feeling of her chief editor’s fat, sly fingers groping without shame at her posterior as they both exited it. Betsy reacted as her mother had always taught her to: by taking deep breaths and counting in a ladylike, restrained way to twenty.

And then, since she was still furious, she threw her camera at him anyway.

Secondly, I think I have finally managed to suppress having All The Feelings at Sherlock long enough to get writing for it, and I am therefore working on something called The Emperor's Wrath (Jim Moriarty and Seb Moran leading up to and during The Reichenbach Fall), and another, which has been rather more fleshed-out, which is called Upstairs, In Baker Street and features ex-MI:6 Mrs Hudson calling on some old friends (Victoria from RED, M from James Bond, probably also Harriet Jones of Flydale North Doctor Who) to protect Dr Watson and keep an eye on Sherlock, who she knows damn well is not dead). I think I am going to deliberately turn it into a reference hunt and see if people can spot all the references to various kickass women.

Vaguely also tempted to do something with the title All Our Smiles Are Fixed, And All Our Hearts Are Broken, possibly with John/Mycroft/Lestrade/Molly reacting to the Reichenbach Fall, or maybe with Dumbledore's Army immediately after the Battle of Hogwarts.

I also really need to get around to finishing Mornington Criminals, a fic about certain of the Criminal Minds team ... well, playing Mornington Crescent, basically. It's been stuck without an ending for over a year, so I really should be able to finish the damn thing.

Lastly, I do believe I may finally get to put some work in on a long-wanted one-shot about River Song and Indiana Jones: I don't have a plot as such, but as of today it has a title (Cups and Saucers), which is generally a good sign - as a rule, if it has a definite title, I will generally finish it. Also mulling around in my brain since aaaaaages ago is a character study-type fic called To Save The World Entire about Dr Erskine and Yentzen, and about what it means to give your life and create a superhero (movieverse!Captain America and Iron Man, respectively).

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR STUFF, MEIN FREUNDES-KREIS.

This entry was cross-posted to http://splash-of-blue.dreamwidth.org/166926.html. I'd prefer it if you commented here rather than there, though.