so why. why why why. Do I so often come across fic where the author clearly a) doesn't have any idea how far apart two places are, or how to get from one to the other, and b) never thought to check google maps?

Just read a fic where one character is thinking that "it's only an 8-hour plane ride!"

and. I have driven basically between those two places.

It's a 6-hour drive unless traffic is really bad. if you hit the most congested bits exactly at rush hour, it might take you 8 hours. to drive.

Flying? Well, if you were starting at a small regional airport and needed to make a connection, it might take you four hours.

I actually mind this shit more than the big stuff. The big stuff is hard to research. Google Maps is really really quick and easy.

Hello, I am still recovering, etc. Quite nicely as these things go, but still not up to doing all my usual little things.

Anyway, thought of something fannish and fun I could do if anyone wanted it - I made a personalised bingo card for theseatheseatheopensea once, which was fun, and I do always love doing that kind of thing. So...


... if anyone else would find a custom-made bingo card (for writing/creating prompts) fun/useful/inspiring, comment here and I will have a go at making you one!


(I'll use the Bingo Generator, so it's very easy, and if I fail and include some rubbish prompts, a new card without such prompts can magically be re-generated with no trouble. Will do any size from 2x2 to 5x5.)

So just comment here if you'd like one & say what size card you'd prefer. You can also point me to/away from any fandoms/prompt types etc if you'd like, but no need. (If I'm really stuck for some reason, I'll just ask you for some pointers!)

When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust… from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.

In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.

I love Cañas’ writing, but I felt that this book didn’t quite hit the mark. I never felt that the two main characters, Alba and Elías, were as compelling as they could have been. I never got to know them as well as I would have liked, and have come to expect from Cañas’ work.

I tend to think that part of the reason is that more time had to be given to explaining the situation, unlike her first two books where the situations were those most readers would be familiar with. Because of that, the romance side of the story was overwhelmed by the horror.

And horror there is in Alba’s possession. Some parts are out and out creepy and I liked that the reader is kept guessing as to what’s really going on and who can be trusted. But for my self, I would have preferred more time spent on the romance's development, which at times felt rushed.

I won’t go so far to say that I didn’t enjoy the story, because I did. But the book would place last in line when it comes to her three books.




Mount TBR 2026 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2. Four Past Midnight by Stephen King
3. The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas







Main Character Female







Indigenous, Asian, or Latino author
1. The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas

Of all the sports I do not follow, american football is certainly up there as a sport I do not follow.

However, of all the sports I do not follow, american football is one where I think they are doing their post season completely correctly: as single elimination.

Can you win a game? No? Okay, season is over, bye bye.

Yes, yes, the season goes on way too long into weather not appropriate for the sport; american football makes sense as a summer or autumn sport, not so much when it's snowing.

But they pick the location of the super bowl years in advance, they hype the fuck out of it, they make it an event, and they know three years in advance what day it will be.

They have achieved marketing perfection and among the reasons they can do that is: SINGLE ELIMINATION PLAYOFFS.

Had a moment last week where I was like "that Parent Trap post canon fic where the twins encounter Meredith in an airport is, like, basically done, I just need to smooth it all out, how long could this possibly take, 10 minutes" and then had the horrified realization that this fic is in my Started In 2023 folder. Truly, I have no intuitive understanding of time.

On the other hand, when doing a quick note to self on this to figure out the time period, I gave in and referred to the twins as Allie and honestly it just makes life so much easier.

Meredith is so much fun to write, she's got such a specific point of view.

"Oh, girls, girls, girls," Meredith chides them. "Let bygones be bygones! I don't hold a grudge. You made your point perfectly clear: you weren't going to allow your father to use me like that. I respect that in a preteen. You knew your minds and you were looking out for me, truly."

Also and here's a bit from my initial notes from the rewatch, which informs the whole thing:

but wow yeah annie's being such a jerk here, and meredith is rising to it and kind of liking it. I think she sees Annie as more of an intellectual equal than Nick is.

The next Firewhiskey Fic event for the altered-states creation of fanworks along with lots of sociability amongst fellow participants will take place from Friday, February 13th to Sunday, February 15th. If you'd like to spend some time creating fanworks while either imbibing or doing the 420 in an environment of online partying with the FWF fen, join the comm at Firewhiskey Fic on Dreamwidth. No signups, no stress, no sobriety.

More info will be posted the week before the event.

Past midnight, something happens to time, that fragile concept we employ to order our sense of reality. It bends, stretches, turns back, or snaps, and sometimes reality with it. And what happens to the wide-eyed observer when the window between reality and unreality shatters, and the glass begins to fly? These four chilling novellas, a feast fit for King fans old and new, provide some shocking answers.

After all, past midnight is Stephen King's favorite time of day....

One Past Midnight: "The Langoliers" takes a red-eye flight from L.A. to Boston into a most unfriendly sky. Only eleven passengers survive, but landing in an eerily empty world makes them wish they hadn't. Something's waiting for them, you see….

The story keeps you on the edge of your seat, mainly because you can’t stop wanting to yell at the characters, “stop yammering and get on the damn plane!” I guess that only happened because I couldn’t help but be drawn into their stories and come to care about what happened to them. And the Langoliers are crazily frightening as they draw inexorably closer.

More science fiction than horror, but it certainly has some horrifying scenes.

Two Past Midnight: "Secret Window, Secret Garden" enters the suddenly strange life of writer Mort Rainey, recently divorced, depressed, and alone on the shore of Tashmore Lake. Alone, that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger.

I couldn’t help but see this as more of a tragedy, as we slowly understand that what Rainey is experiencing isn’t what we think. But what is it, exactly? And what is real? A terrifying, yet heartbreaking story.


Three Past Midnight: "The Library Policeman" is set in Junction City, Iowa, an unlikely place for evil to be hiding. But for small businessman Sam Peebles, who thinks he may be losing his mind, another enemy is hiding there as well--the truth. If he can find it in time, he might stand a chance.

Unlike the first two stories, this one is definitely in the horror genre. Peebles must face the horrifying experience of his past while facing the real horror of the present. But with the help of his friends, he may just come out okay.

Four Past Midnight: The flat surface of a Polaroid photograph becomes for fifteen-year-old Kevin Delevan an invitation to the supernatural. Old Pop Merrill, Castle Rock's sharpest trader, wants to crash the party for profit, but "The Sun Dog," a creature that shouldn't exist at all, is a very dangerous investment.

A creepy take, though most of the creepiness was because to Old Pop Merrill. Really liked the story until the very end.

With an introduction and prefatory notes to each of the tales, Stephen King discusses how these stories arose in what is the world's most fearsome imagination. But it is the stories themselves that will keep readers awake long after bedtime, into those dark, timeless hours past midnight.

I enjoyed all four stories very much (though, as I said, I could do without the ending of the fourth one.) As always, King creates characters that I come to care for. The passengers on the red-eye from LA, Sam and his friends, Dave and Naomi, Kevin and his father. Even the writer, Mort.

It’s a wonderful collection of short stories/novellas that are well worth reading.




Mount TBR 2026 Book Links


Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2. Four Past Midnight by Stephen King







Short Story Anthology












JANUARY - Read Around the Clock - Read a book with a clock on the cover.
Four Past Midnight by Stephen King

Thank you kindly to the fen who sent me holiday cards in December and early January: noxelementalist, james, dine, adafrog, aurumcalendula, spikesgirl58, elayna, lauramcewan, sidleypkhermit, and brumeier.

If you sent me a card and you aren't listed here, that's a postal fail. If you are listed here and didn't get a card from me, that's another postal fail.

Title: Caryatid.
Author: lannamichaels
Fandom: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
Series: Part 2 of Pillar Of The Community
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: "How did you know?" Jud asks Blanc.


( Coda )

After spending large parts of December getting behind and catching up and getting behind and catching up... I finished Zevachim two days early. The power of bamos! ;) On to Menachos!

My notes behind cut.

We're also about a year and a half out from the end of this cycle, which means I have already gotten one gentle "hey, do you know where you'll be on June 7, 2027"-type email from an org. No, I do not think this is too early, actually. Gotta make plans. Deeply hoping I can avoid being involved in organizing the in person thing here, but I have a suspicion that if I'm not involved, it may end up as unwelcoming as the women's siyum hashas I went to at the end of the last cycle. (I do trust a couple of the people likely to attend it, but I don't know who is going to be organizing anything here. So I may need to try to get involved against my will.) It wasn't actually that bad overall -- aside from how it's still, y'know, memorable 6 years removed from it -- but I am quite frankly more willing to get into an airplane and fly to a different city than go through that again. (okay more realistically if it ends up organized by a group I do not trust at all, I'd zoom in to a larger event and be done with it)

( Read more... )

That feeling when you’re reading a cnovel that’s actively being translated and you’ve caught up to the most recent chapter and you almost can’t bear to read it

it’s so good! and we’re only about halfway! though maybe if there are lots of extras like the first novel we’re closer to the narrative climax of at least this arc? but who knows

A Parent Trap AU where the twins (either set) don't end up at the same sleepaway camp, but then do some kind of DNA matching thing to try to find out about their missing parent/if they have siblings, and discover the whole situation, because their parents never came clean to them about it.

I can't figure out a plot, so maybe just a brief drabble or something?

Either set of twins would be interesting for this; with the original set, it would add a lot because they'd possibly be grandparents by that point, so this could be something their kids suggest, as a "oh, now there's this way you might be able to find out more" (of course, for the twin raised by the father, there is definitely the "this is the name on the mother on the birth certificate", although in the remake IIRC she does know her mother's name?), and then discover that there's a sibling, and meeting the sibling and realizing it has to be a twin, and trying to figure out, at this late date, the mystery of what the fuck happened.

Or with the remake twins, the parents are likely still around, and so there could be a lot of either demanding answers, or some kind of "whoops, it's the other twin who comes for Christmas".

What I did for More Joy Day: wrote a Guardian ficlet Zhen Hun Bibliomancy Tanka for amedia; made a donation to Fraser.org, an organization that supports mental health, emotional health, and disability care (made as a memorial donation in memory of andeincascade and I notified Ande's family about it); sent a letter of appreciation to my primary-care doctor of many years who retired last month; sent letters of solidarity to neighbors who have "No Kings in America" signs in their front yard; sent an ILU letter and fannish bookmark to a fan who -- the day before More Joy Day -- posted the comment "tell someone you love them today".

What I received for More Joy Day: a due South x Venom crossover fic The Pause That Reinvigorates by petra and a penpal-type letter in the postal mail from oldtoadwoman. (The letter did not say it was FOR More Joy Day, but it arrived ON More Joy Day, so I'm "counting" it.)

Challenge: 5soulmates, slash
Fandom: The SEAL Team
Pairing: Sonny Quinn/Clay Spenser

Table #0 - Custom
01. soulmate's name	02. first touch	03. touching your soulmate leaves fingerprints	04. kisses leave colour on each other's skin	05. your soulmate is the only other person who can see/touch your wings

Lee’s best friend went missing on Bodmin Moor, four years ago. She and Mal were chasing rumours of monsters when they found something all too real. Now Mal is back, but where has she been, and who is she working for?

When government physicist Kay Amal Khan is attacked, the security services investigate. This leads MI5’s Julian Sabreur deep into terrifying new territory, where he clashes with mysterious agents of an unknown power ­who may or may not be human. And Julian’s only clue is some grainy footage ­– showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.

Khan’s extra-dimensional research was purely theoretical, until she found cracks between our world and countless others. Parallel Earths where monsters live. These cracks are getting wider every day, so who knows what might creep through? Or what will happen when those walls finally come crashing down.

There’s a lot to this story: multiverses, aliens, couples who may or may not get together, an evil megalomaniac, the end of everything. And while there are parts of the book that are quite interesting, there was perhaps a little too much going on for me to get overly interested in any of it.

Several of the characters show a lot of potential; I would have loved to see more of Julian and Alison and how their relationship would progress. Same with Lee and Mal. But all the other plot lines kept getting in the way. I never got to know them the way I wanted to. Because there is something there. I guess that’s what kept me going through almost 600 pages, only to come to an ending that was somewhat flat.

I won’t stop reading Tchaikovsky’s books; I still have hope.




Mount TBR 2026 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky







Sci-Fi/ Fantasy: The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky







JANUARY - Weekend, Keep, Ground, Door, Among, Midnight, Glitter, Highway

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky