So I'm always hanging around Fantasy Literature and commenting on their Thoughtful Thursday posts, hoping to win a free book.  I've been successful more than a few times, too!  

This last week, they had the Second Annual Speculative Fiction Haiku Contest, where you had to write a little poem with a sci fi, fantasy, or even horror twist to it.  I wrote this:

Though I only see
my own footprints, yet I know,
it still follows me.

I guess I was inspired by that long Christian poem about a person looking back on his or her life and seeing two sets of footprints in the sand, but only one set of footprints on the rocky areas, whereupon the person accuses Christ of abandoning them during the hard times of life.  Christ simply answers that he carried the person during those hard times.  It was definitely going around in my head at the time, though there's probably nothing farther away from horror than that particular poem.  Though I have read a kind of, hmmm, shall we say, variation on the poem where it's explained to the person that there is only one set of footprints because "sand people walk single file to hide their numbers."  Anyway, the three lines above are what came out of my brain.  

I don't think I'll win, becuase there are lots of other good haikus in the running, but it's good to know that my creativity isn't completely dead after all, even if it does need a certain incentive to get going.

  

So here's a link to my new story:

From Foggy With Love

Foggy wins Matt in a card game, but it's not the outcome he was hoping for.

Never say never, but I think this might be the last Daredevil fanfiction I will write.  It's obvious that I'm just writing the same thing over and over again, bromance with varying amounts of hurt and comfort.  It's also painfully obvious that it's not what other Daredevil fans want to read.

​I was reading an interview with Bernard Cornwell yesterday, which naturally I cannot find again, and in it he said something to the effect of "writer's block is nature's way of telling you you aren't cut out to be a writer."  Thanks,  Bernard.  Just ... thanks.

f finished writing and polishing a new Daredevil fanfic yesterday, which I will put up here later.  After I posted it, I then spent all evening waiting for feedback.  I got one small comment that was more about a character and less about my writing, but hey, at least it was a reply.  Then I went to bed, hopeful that I'd have more comments when I woke up.

I dreamed that I was taking a bunch of paperback books to donate to the library, but when I approached the desk and announced my intentions, I heard all the employees groan.  Apparently they were absolutely drowning in donated books and couldn't even start to cope with what they had, so they didn't want mine as well.  Discouraged, I walked away from the library, and tossed the books one at a time onto the ground as I went.

I woke up this morning and eagerly ran to the computer to check my story, but there were no new comments.  A fair amount of "kudos" but no actual written feedback.

Sometimes it just seems like nobody wants what I have to offer.

I've written some more stories.  Two of them were inspired by the Daredevil Minor Character Fic Fest, in which we were encouraged to write from the POV of minor characters on the show.  The other was inspired by several prompts that I mixed together in my brain.

In Fanged Robbery, Sergeant Brett Mahoney and his mother Bess are held up at snakepoint -- but not for long.

Hospital Administrator Shirley Benson and her niece have an encounter with Daredevil on the roof of their building, and he's not the criminal she was expecting.  In fact, he turns out to be A Different Kind of Superhero.

A Cheerful Giver has Foggy inheriting the healing gift from his dying grandma.  But someone from an alternate universe wants to use that gift to keep their version of Daredevil alive -- so they can torture him again and again.

So I've written a fourth Daredevil fanfic, in which Foggy and his family are all shapeshifters, and Foggy's ability to turn into a bear come in very handy when Matt is kidnapped.  

Learning to Bear It

(Here's the Daredevil Fic Page with all my other Daredevil fics.)


But since then, I've started three or even four stories, only to get a few pages in and realize that they're not working.  Also, I'm a bit tired of hurt/comfort stories after this recent glut, but I don't know what else I'm capable of writing.  Whenever a prompt certain site catches my eye, I read it and think, "Oh, that would be cool ... but I don't know enough about that particular experience to write it convincingly."  And after that horrible experience three years ago, writing convincingly is even more important to me.  Gosh, has it been three years already?  And yet the effects linger ... 

So anyway, I'm a bit stuck and I don't know if I can overcome my fear of failing to try something new.

I haven't been able to stop reading or writing Daredevil fanfic since I started, so here are more stories that I've written, usually for prompts on that certain site that you can ask me about if you really want.  

The Guilty Party
Matt helps some of the Avengers thwart a small but rapidly growing invasion of aliens. In return, Thor promises him a favour, which Matt thinks he'll never call in - until Foggy is kidnapped and tortured. Rated R for a graphic torture scene.


Foggy The Miracle Worker
Matt teams up with the Avengers to fight a sorcerer, but when the effects of an aggressive spell take away his hearing, they need to find a way to communicate with him.  Rated T or PG-13 for some language and canon-typical violence.

Well, it's been a while, and I truly thought I'd never write again, but then Daredevil came out on Netflix, and I started reading Daredevil fanfic just because I wanted more Matt and Foggy.  Then I found a place where you could post prompts and have other writers fill them.  I won't post a link because of the, ahem, nature of many (though not all) of the prompts, though you can ask me if you really want to know.  I posted my own prompt, hoping somebody might come along, but the more I thought about it, the more it took shape in my mind and the more I wanted to write it, so I did, and this is what came out.

The Nelson Shot

Please note that this is rated a very strong T (or PG-13) for the kind of language they use in the show.  Yes, I freely admit I'm a bad person for not even trying to find a way around it.  So there.

So I might have some very small talent in writing, mostly in the category of hurt/comfort, which is what this story is.  And it felt good to be creative again, I must admit.  But I'm not making any promises for the future.

I couldn't keep away from writing, although it's another fanfic, and not an original story.  This spring, I was introduced to Blake's 7, a British sci fi show that first aired in 1978.  I've watched all the episodes now, many of them more than once, and I've also listened to many of the new audio adventures produced by Big Finish.  (Big Finish is probably best known for its audio adventures featuring Doctor Who, and I've listened to many of them, too.  Highly recommended!)    I also couldn't help writing my own Avon fanfic, which is called Hell Hath No Fury.  Yes, there's a woman involved.  She feels scorned, and Avon feels betrayed, but it's not a romance -- far from it!  There's also enough action and adventure to keep any B7 fan satisfied, at least I hope so.  Hope you enjoy -- and if you do, give me some feedback!

Well, the letter from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine arrived last week.  They've officially rejected Viruskiller.  I'm not surprised.  I'd been expecting it for some time now, actually, so it was actually a relief when it finally came.

And now, after many months of consideration, I've come to the conclusion that I don't write because I have a story to tell.  I am not constantly inundated by plot ideas.  Instead, it seems that I write in order to process what's going on inside of me.  Or maybe less of the processing and more just recognizing what my subconscious thinks.  There's not always a resolution.  Heck, there's not even always a plot!  And never mind the character development.  

So in other words, I guess I just don't have it in me.  Any talent that I thought I had for writing is probably just an offshoot of my capacity to memorize.  I'm good with grammar and spelling, because that's something you can learn by heart.  I've also memorized a few writing tools along the way, too, such as how to present POV.  But as for the rest, it's just not there.  I don't know how else to describe it, but I know there's something missing that I'll never have.

In the last months I've been both sad and mad; sad that I'll never see success in this venture, and mad at myself for being the way I am.  I guess it was a kind of grieving after all my many daydreams and hopes.  Now I'm more resigned than anything else, and left wondering just what talents I do have and, assuming I ever find one, what I can do with it.

You might be wondering where I've been lately.  Wonder no more -- I'm over at Big Finish Audiobooks listening to the Doctor Who audio adventures.  My favourite audio doctor is Eight, played by Paul McGann.  The latest Eight release is Dark Eyes -- give it a try!  I also couldn't resist listening to The Confessions of Dorian Gray; I especially liked Ghosts of Christmas Past, where Dorian Grey meets Sherlock Holmes!  

If I'm not careful, I'll end up spending all my money here and have nothing left over for books!