attackfish

I wrote a guest post for Love Joy, Feminism about my experiences with home hospital education as a high school student.  Might be interesting to some of you.

Homeschool Reflections: Home Because of Sickness

So I am not the only one who thinks it's time for a fandom auction! fandomaid is running a fandom charity auction to benefit the victims of Hurricane Sandy in North America and the Caribbean, and I will be offering fic, and I encourage everybody who writes fic to do the same. Also, everyone who has any money on hand, please bid!


For more information, links to the different auctions, and directions on how to offer an item or make a bid, please click this link.

I'm offering a 2000 word fanfic in Avatar: the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Harry Potter, or White Collar fandoms, starting bid $15.00 AUD.

This morning, my step-grandfather, my grandmother's beloved husband for four years and dearest friend for twenty more, died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by falling onto a tile floor.  Just recently, he fought off a benzodiazepine addiction, and was staying with his children for the holidays in Florida when he took a sleeping pill and woke up in the middle of the night for a drink of water.

Though he went into the hospital conscious, the Plavix in his blood prevented his body from being able to stop the bleeding, and prevented the doctors from being able to operate to relieve the swelling and save his life.  Unlike other anti-coagulants which can be reversed in an emergency, Plavix cannot.  The doctors were able to do nothing to save his life.  If you are on Plavix, please, please, please talk to your doctors about this risk and ask if you should consider switching to other medication.

Matt grew up in New York City to German immigrant parents in the 1930s.  He learned to box and joined the merchant marine, owned a restaurant and a marina, loved both his first wife and my grandmother for as long as he was able to have them, had three children and many grandchildren and step-grandchildren.  He nursed his first wife through the lung cancer that eventually took her life, and is one of the best people I have ever known.

He and my grandmother met when my grandmother moved into his neighborhood and became good friends.  My grandmother helped him get through his first wife's sickness and death and was a dear friend to both.  After his first wife's death, friendship turned to love, and they were married.  I have never seen my grandmother so happy.

My father's father died before I was born, and my mother's father and I have not been close for a long time.  Matt was my grandfather and my whole family misses him terribly.  Due to severe winter storms, my grandmother couldn't even fly out to be with him when he died.

Just this Thanksgiving, he carved the turkey and stole bits of food while we cooked.  Since the beginning of September, my cockatiel Nero, my mom's dog Liam, and my step-grandfather have all died sudden and surprising deaths.  This is the most stunning of all.  He had just fought his way out of a horrible addiction and was healthier than he had been in years.  It doesn't seem fair.  He was eighty-one years old.

RIP Matthew, 1930-2011

So you folks who had an earthquake?  Mind telling me how you're doing?

I'm running a fest!  The wc_women_fest is a prompting fest focusing on the women characters of White Collar.   White Collar fandom is lucky to have many awesome female characters and this is the place to celebrate them!  All genres of fic and fanart are welcome, including gen, femslash, het, and OT3, so long as the fic is focused on our awesome ladies.  Round one is here, please join us!

Remember how a little while back, Livejournal enabled the crossposting of comments to facebook and twitter without the journal entry poster's consent? and how the hew and cry from their customer base (which would be us) caused them to change it so that users could only cross-post comments on public entries?

Well, Livejournal has gone back on its word. Now anyone who has opted into Cyrillic services can cross-post comments on anyone's (even someone who has not opted in) f-locked entries.  The solution Livejournal proposed before was not satisfying, but acceptable.  This smacks of deceit and manipulation on the part of the Livejournal business administration.  If you disagree with this move on the part of the administration (which also smacks of ethnic prejudice) please comment on the above linked post.

Thought I'd warn you all, this mess has unfortunately not gone away.

There is less than a day left to bid on my  help_pakistan auction offering of a 2000 word fanfic in either the Harry potter or Avatar: the Last Airbender fandoms.  It can be found here.  Bidding currently stands at  $25.00 dollars, and bidding ends August 29th at 1:00 PM EST, so hurry up.

The lovely jayfortuna has translated "Blurring" into Russian. The first chapter is already up on their account on hogwartsnet.ru here.  EEEEEE!  See, unlike "No Difference" in French, I can actually read enough Russian to read my own fic in another language!

Would anyone who reads this blog be interested in reading some of my original fiction short stories?

There's no excuse, I know.  I promised I'd have a Children of Mars chapter for you on the first of every month, and less than a year in, and I've already broken that promise.  To make it up to you, dear readers, I'll have a chapter up on Thursday at the latest, and a new installment in the Parchment Underground universe sometime late in the month.

The lovely Flemmardise is translating No Difference into French.  The first chapter is already up on her account on Fanfiction.net here.  See this?  This is Fish happy, because someone liked my fic enough to translate it.  So, if anyone who reads my fic is a francophone, you can now read the story in French.

Now that I have finished No Difference, I thought I’d tell all of you my evil plan. I am writing a short story set in the No Difference universe called “Literary Minds” with Albus Potter, Snape, and Draco Malfoy. Hopefully I will finish it sometime in the middle of October. Also, I’m beginning another chapterfic called Children of Mars set during the Marauders era about what would happen if Lupin had bitten Snape in the Shrieking Shack when they were fifteen. I intend to post chapters of this once a month on the first of every month, so that I have a deadline, and so that I have a lot more time to write my original fiction novel, finish editing it, and hopefully get it published.  So, hang in there; there's more to come.

I have a new cockatiel, a healthy young male named Nero. I had to get another bird, because Archie just didn’t know what to do with himself.  We took him down to the bird shop and let him pick his new buddy out, and the pair get along great.  They share a cage and have even started to preen each other, because even though I know I should have quarantined them, I was worried that Archie would self destruct without a flock mate. Nero even has Archie chirping and whistling.  He’s a little showman, my Nero, and very personable.  I miss Beauty terribly, but it’s nice having this new little ball of feathers around.

 

Since I made the damn things, I might as well pimp with them, and while I'm at it I can test the code.

Remember the community I wrote about here some time ago, the one I wrote Closing Doors for?  Unusuallygen is a multifandom challenge that turns all the clichéd plots used for romance fics into gen fic prompts.  Ever wanted to write a fic where Draco is a veela, Harry is his mate, and they still don't get together?  Here's the place to do it. The Tardis tries to get the Doctor and his companion together and it doesn't work? There's a prompt like that too.  So, everyone should check the site out.  If you do, you get to see the bigger version of my pretty banner.  The banner below is hotlinked for your convenience.

I will be out of town visiting family as of tomorrow, so I will be without a computer for two weeks.  I'm leaving you with chapter ten of No Difference, and as soon as I come back, I'll have chapter eleven for you

Happy Holidays