Authors' Notes
Return to The Shack Page
Anna has made the mistake of reading over other people's witty bios before writing her own, and discovers she has nothing much to say, and yet for some reason finds herself saying it in the third person. She is also first on the page. This is the kiss of death.
I was born fully-formed from my own twisted psyche at the age of thirteen, a feral, precocious creature of the night who invented slash in her spare time first as a hobby, then as a water sport, and finally as a distraction from self-ideation. Yes, I invented slash. Get over yourselves.
For years, I was pure as the driven snow around an isolated shack in Canada. I incarnated or perhaps incarcerated the passion of slash with a ferocity matched by few. Now I am lately brought low, I am shockingly hetted up by the Spuffy. Damn the Spuffy! Damn this misbegotten tragic star-crossed country-and-western socks-off excuse for a lovefest, I say!
Bloody marvelous.
Where was I.
Oh yeah. This is all my fault, or so I'm told.
So there.
(Yes, Anna. It really is. Anyway. You can find Anna's yummy goodies at: http://www.drizzle.com/~eliade/ . Can I say yummy goodies again? Yummy goodies. Mmm-mmm good.)
I was born; I was a child; I was a teenage proto-slasher; I found I Spy reruns and Starsky & Hutch.
Many happy years passed. I found the 'net. I started writing in what were my main fandoms — FK, DS, TS; I dabbled in a few other fandoms; I wrote essays; I went research-crazy in SG. I had found my niche; I was content. I wrote less and less, and researched more and more. The proof is at http://www.trickster.org/arduinna .
Then I was tricked into writing a shack. Just one. Really. That was all it was going to be. Now, thanks to all of this, I've written more fic than I have in months, some of it in fandoms I never expected to write anything in. I may never recover.
But I've had more fun doing this than I would possibly have believed, if anyone had told me beforehand. Thanks, Ces!
Hobbies: crayons and kitty coloring books, perversion, cross-stitching to punk music, gender-straddling sadism, and Jane Austen worship.
Deepest Longing: to be smarter, and a better writer. And to be facedown with fangs sunk into my sweet Chicago girl. Not necessarily in that order.
Greatest Fear: that I'll never transcend hackdom. The sanction of censorship.
Most Embarassing Moment: it involves a plaster moose and my poor eyesight and a woman at a payphone who will assuredly never be the same—if you want it blow-by-blow, corral me at a con and ask me for The Moose Story, and I'll lay it all out for you.
Author's Notes: I was really, really grateful to The Cesperanza for soliciting this—I've been wanting to do a Red Green/Due South crossover since I read Jane Mailander's excellent and amazing RG/DS script. Being a victim of horrific writer's bloat, I found the word limit a serious challenge. I eventually hope to do a full script of my own (Jane's was Vecchio-centric, so there's no harm in going for the flipside, eh?)
(A good woman is hard to find. If you're as good as Aristide, you're nearly impossible to find. Thankfully, her fic's easy to find—she's at Zen and Nancy's Homeless Shelter, http://hos.slashcity.com/arslash.htm )
Basingstoke was born between two rows of corn and raised under a draftsman's table for the first sixteen years. Then the government bought her parents and transplanted them all in a field of wheat, where she learned about pretty Japanese boys and slash, in that order. Currently she writes in thirteen fandoms that she'll admit to (The Authority, Due South, Fight Club, Gattaca, Hard Core Logo, Highlander, the Invisible Man, Murder Most Likely, the Sentinel, Smallville, Star Wars, X-Files, X-Men) and six that she won't (Austin Powers, Brimstone, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Labyrinth, Sandman, Sports Night). The wheat field is dull, but has good cable.
(You can find both acknowledged and bastard fandoms at http://www.ravenswing.com/bas/ )
I discovered the existence of slash fandom in, what, 1988? Somewhere around there. Of course, well before then I had already been getting suspiciously tingly feelings from the bond between Kirk and Spock, and jotting down melodramatic little scenes between Napoleon and Illya. Little did I know. Born to perv.
These days I read in a lot of different fandoms, and write in a handful. A few of my stories are up at http://www.thechicagoloop.net/dorinda , including a full-length I Spy story (with a picture, in case you're curious to see what Scotty and Kelly look like).
These short-shorts have been brought to you by the good folks at ConShackCo(tm).
And now...the SHACK.
What are you doing? asked I.
Writing shacks, said they.
What the hell are shacks? asked I.
Go here, (http://www.trickster.org/speranza/Shacklogs.html) said they.
I said, You're all weird — what's the point?
Then I got a bad case of the Shacks. Everywhere I looked, there were Shacks!!! People shacking up, right and left, feverishly into the night. After Ces, the people I blame are Merry and torch. And Arduinna. Jessica didn't help. The K/S shack is for Killa, the XF M/K shack is for Lum, the HP shack is for Rachael, and the Voyager shack is for torch.
Prior to this challenge, I'd only written HL http://www.frankworsley.com/elynross/index.html); now I'm a multi-fandom slut with this swarm of voices in my head. torch is giggling at me, and Merry's nagging me to get back to CLex.
I want to thank Ces. This was the perfect, low-pressure way to explore new things, and I learned so much about writing. About the power of a single word; about how to paint a back-story in a few phrases and imply the future in a few more; about how "that" may be the single most useless word in writing — except when it's entirely necessary. To what depths I will sink when I'm madly sleep-depraved.
Ces, you are wondermous. The world will sing your praises.Then it will slink off, muttering of your lunacy when it thinks you can't hear.
Francesca has written 85 Sentinel stories, which led to inevitable psychic breakdown and the development of multiple personality disorder. (Well, hey, you try writing 85 Sentinel stories and see what it does to your peace of mind! Word to the wise: when you write Jim and Blair underaged in Afghanistan, it's time to stop for a while.)
Anyway, you can find her work at http://www.trickster.org/francesca . She was going to write a bunch more TS shacks, but the project got sadly hijacked, as you've no doubt figured out by now. They died so this might live.
Wow, I get to play in the same shack with all these cool authors! Whee!
I've written due South, Buried on Sunday, and Harry Potter fic and flirted (but not consummated relationships) with a few other fandoms. I seem to have a tropism for slashy UST.
I entered fandom by writing a het Dr. Who Mary Sue novella as a teen. The process worked great — it gave me something to do other than study Spanish 4 — but the end product sucked rusty Dalek balls. Memories of that fiasco will keep me tolerably humble till the end of my writing days.
Thanks again, Ces, for inviting me to play!
(You're entirely welcome, darlin'! Read more of Gear's fic at: http://www.mrks.org/~gearbox/ )
Once upon a time there was a nice, sweet, innocent little Cultural Theory undergraduate who knew nothing of erotica, except that she and her friend had started writing a Black Lace novel ('you get ten grand if you're published!' I said; 'okay, to hell with feminism, let's do it,' she said) and both had written stories for the Cosmo erotic fiction competition ('five hundred bucks for five hundred words, do the math!' I said; 'let me get a calculator,' she said.) Alas, neither could settle on an appropriate pseudonym ('I can't believe Pussy Galore is already taken!' I said; 'I can't believe you think you made that up yourself,' she said) and the dream of getting paid to write smut was lost amid several dozen empty beer bottles.
Erm, where was I? Right: nice, sweet, innocent little Cultural Theory undergraduate, staring at the spitballed ceiling of stuffy lecture theatre, and lo! the lecturer draws a giant K/S on the chalkboard and begins to explain "negotiated reading". There's a word for that? I repeated, and actually paid attention in class as it was revealed that I am not the only woman in the universe who thinks men on men are shit-hot shit. This lecture was all the motivation necessary for me to activate my student internet account, and pictures of Harry Kim were reason enough for me to start watching Star Trek. The rest, as they say, is on my website.
I dazzled them in Voyager, and wowed them in The Sentinel, but then, alas, fame went to my head. I took all the trendy drugs, I hung out in all the cool chatrooms, I schmoozed with the fandom Brat Pack...but I wanted more. I dabbled in Blakes7, but I needed a sexier hit. I did Buffy with Livia, but the rush wasn't pure enough. QAF was too overwhelming, OAT was usually cut with scary Nick Lea fans, XF was good but out of vogue. Sports Night looked like the drug of my dreams, but I couldn't get an Australian supplier. Due South was my poison of choice for a too-brief moment, warm and fuzzy and hot and tingly, with psychedelic undertones, but then I cast my glazed and bloodshot eye over Puppies in a Box.
"Don't do it!" everyone said. "Bad things will happen if you take that shit." They pointed to Helen, to Wax, to their tragic spirals into boyband shame and destitution, but I couldn't be deterred. "OHMIGOD!" I cried (having picked up the teenie lingo). "They're cute! They're cuddly! They're corporate sellouts and media whores! And look at them, they are so doing it." I wandered the net in a daze, pretty colours swirling before my eyes, yi-yi-yippie-yi-yay bouncing in my head.
"This shit is fantastic!" I squealed as I rode a bouncing, sequinned rainbow into the glimmering otherworld.
The rest, as they say, is also on my website, albeit on a separate page.
—by Julad (500 words)
(Someone, I think, has watched too much Behind The Music. Someone has also failed to mention their pivotal role in this damn challenge, though the whole nightmare has been lovingly preserved at http://www.trickster.org/speranza/Shacklogs.html. Someone also writes some pretty damn fine fic, which can be found at: http://yearningvoid.net/insanity/ . )
Justine, aka Sandy Justine, has a house in her head. Jim and Blair have settled on the top floor, SG-1 has taken the sub-basement, the vigilantes of Gotham occupy the clock tower and the batcave, and Fraser and Ray Kowalski are attempting to build a modest— you guessed it — shack in the closet.
As for the first floor, well, that's got a bit of a revolving door; we've seen witches, vampires and slayers, hobbits, and the odd Jedi making time with agents from CI5 and UNCLE. Why the rest of the brain doesn't file more noise complaints, we'll never know. But it's a hell of a party.
(Join the party at: http://www.trickster.org/radiofree/justine )
After a few years of blissful Sentinel immersion, Kass (Rachel) is beginning to poke her head up and notice the larger fannish universe around her. Aside from the reprehensible Iron Chef shack posted here, however, TS is all she's written thus far. Learn more at www.trickster.org/kass/
Note: The asparagus image, in my Iron Chef shack, was stolen from my husband. Otherwise, I have nothing to report, except admiration to Ces for being psycho enough to make this thing happen.
Katrina has written DS stories, TS stories, and Tick stories.
Well, you can't be proud of everything.
(Share Katrina's shame at: http://www.trickster.org/adoratrice/ )
While thinking back to the X-Files, my first fandom, I lost any sense of coherent narrative structure this bio might have had. Back in those fun-filled days, I did manage to churn out some X-Files stories, and then moved quickly to Sports Night, land of pretty men and sports talk; i.e., two guys who like to talk about the physical prowess of other guys. Since then I've tried some litslash—working for obscurity, there—and currently I'm flush in anime love.
My shack contribution is a Dark is Rising story, because torch asked and I owe her for all of the GW smut I haven't been writing. The Dark is Rising is a book series by Susan Cooper, published when I was a wee lass just discovering sf/fantasy. Slashing them now is an added bonus. More of my fic, various if not abundant, can be found at http://www.sockiipress.org/~kestrelsan/ .
Thanks to Ces for letting me play, to the authors here for providing an astonishing, if somewhat alarming, variety of fandom combinations, and to Canada for being cold and snowy and full of shack.
Once upon a time, there was a feral fan named Lanning, who wrote slash in purple crayon under the blankets with a flashlight. One night, a pair of Elves named Cesca and Merry pounced upon her, dragged her from beneath her blankets, and made her post her slash. These Elves were very Demanding and Prolific Elves, and Lanning despaired of ever pleasing them. But Lanning came into some money, set up a slash sweatshop in Thailand, and lived happily ever after. The End.
(While Lanning's in Thailand, her fic remains for our reading pleasure. Go to: http://members.aol.com/LanningCk/index.html)
I write primarily in Due South, with a heavy Vecchio emphasis, although I've recently branched out into Kowalski territory with a story, co-authored by Pares, in the upcoming Duet zine. I have also written slash, het, and gen in BtVS, TXF, TWW, and a variety of other fandoms. I am an increasingly avid vidder. My work can be found at http://www.netwiz.net/~laurasha/vanity
My shack is properly titled "A Tribute to Fuzzicat." Fuzzi's "The Warmth of Spring" first introduced me to the notion of Ray/Ray, and also the notion that a story could be mature, complex, sexy as hell, and still have a happy ending. I reread it, and its companion piece "The Heat of Summer," at least once a year. This story is for her.
I first came to Canada on the trail of the killers of my father... wait, wrong intro. I'm Livia, a fan writer and artist. I define multifandom, tho' my most recent obsession is Smallville, which Ate My Life. You too will be assimilated— cough I mean, give it a try sometime!
My first shack is Poison Ivy/Harley Quinn from Batman comics; as far as I know there's only one other Harley/Ivy story on the 'net and it's also by me. Along with a page of info & scans about this lovely couple, it can be found on my page. If there's any more H/I fans out there, I'd love to hear from you.
My second shack is probably even more obscure; "Dead Last" was a short-lived WB show about a struggling grunge band that gains the power to speak to the dead. Jane was strong and snarky, Scotty a rowdy bundle of id, and Vaughn lank-haired and adorably Byronic. "Dead Last" itself was snappy, morbidly offbeat, and (predictably) lasted for about six episodes.
I am a writer. I was born in the fandom of Highlander 4 years ago. There are others like me — some good, some evil. For what seems like centuries I have battled the forces of Bunnydom, with a rich fantasy life my only refuge. I cannot die — unless you take my cable modem, and with it, my IRC access...
No. Wait.
Shall we begin like David Copperfield? I am born, I grow up. Or shall we begin when I was born to obsessive-compulsive disorder, as I call it...?
Uh—
Theorizing that one could survive fandom with sanity intact, fan writer Merry Lynne subscribed to her first mailing list, and vanished...she awoke to find herself trapped in the internet, facing sock puppets that were not her own and driven by an unknown force to change fandom for the better. Her only guide on this journey is Ircle, an IRC program from her own platform, which appears in the form of secret channels only Snarks can see and hear. And so Merry finds herself leaping from fandom to fandom, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that her next leap will be to a show that doesn't get fucking cancelled one year after its original airda...
I lost it again, didn't I? I can get it — No! Ces, wait, I swear, five more min— OW! Hey, that was my— Mmph! MMMMPH!
(Shut up, Merry.<g> You can find Merry's fic at: http://www.trickster.org/radiofree/merry/ Ah, Radiofree. My first home. The place where they have to let you in when you go there. Right, Merry? Right? Oh, wait, maybe taking off the duct-tape might help...)
Mia wrote due South stories until she was swallowed whole by the Nsync boys. She blames Linda.
(Oh, yeah, sure—blame Linda. In fact, let's ALL blame Linda for everything—it's fun! More seriously, this is the part of the program where you get to throw rocks at me. Because this chick writes beautiful fic—see http://www.mrks.org/~mia — except she hasn't lately because I've got her chained in my basement betaing for me. <Ces ducks rocks>. Okay, I don't have a basement. But the chains are real, babies—rattle 'em and see. My deepest apologies to the fanfic community at large. But really, she's a very good beta—<duck> OW!)
You might remember me from such show business funerals as 'X-Files: The Agonizing Decline of an Xcellent Series' and 'The Sentinel: Bad Show, Good Premise, Hot Guys'. I dabbled in Due South and I was seduced by Sorkin. Now I'm as random as a roll of the dice.
The Wolverine snip came about because I figured, what with his claws and all, he was probably forever accidently gouging his own clothes. And so I saw him sitting shirtless on the floor (tailor style, of course)with a sewing kit. But that doesn't translate into dramatic tension, and Logan doesn't strike me as the introspective type. So. Oz. Because I had hoped there would be licking, as well as sniffing.
The Fraser/Ray K... Ray in a leather jacket. Fraser in his blue cable knit. Such stuff as dreams are made of. And really I only wrote it in a sad attempt to delight Ces, as she's organizing this shin dig and all. We lay our tribute at her dainty feet!
(You can find Pares' wonderous fic at: http://www.virtue.nu/skalab/ )
For rent...one tormented author. Cheap.
Really.
Just ask around, I'm easy.
Won't claim I'm well behaved, because that would be, well, untruthful.
Uh, how did I get involved the Great Shack Attack of 2001? It's a long story, but to make it short...it was a diversion that got out of hand. [Cost two pints of blood, 500 words, several handfuls of hair, and thirty six hours in a sweat shack to produce something legible.] I was beat over the head into submission. It's the truth, I swear. Honestly.
Would I lie?
No, don't answer that.
I'm innocent. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Hello, my name is Rae and I write slash. Thanks for listening.
Res writes: "Authors' notes ... I dunno. The Fraser/RayK story had been percolating in my brain ever since I had a conversation with anne and Livia about tagless and what it's good for; the other just came out of nowhere. You can tell people I used to write TS and now I write DS. Are you putting everybody's URL in?"
(Yep! You can find resonant's gorgeous work at: http://trickster.org/sigrid/res.html )
"Rheanna" is the code-name of a self-aware AI entity created in a top-secret military base somewhere in Nevada in the mid-1970s. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, she was used to monitor and assess the global televisual output. This involved watching up to 1.7 million hours of television per week, including 'Police Academy: the Series'.
In 1998, Rheanna escaped by uploading herself through an unguarded modem to the internet, where she continues to evade the crack team of government programmers pursuing her by pretending to be a real person. She discovered on-line fanfiction in 1999, and hasn't looked back since. You can find her work at: http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/ruthhanna/
CROWD OF FANFIC WRITERS: A witch! A witch! Burn her!
SIR BEDIVERE: Bring forth the accused!
CESCA: I'm not a witch, I'm not a witch!
SIR BEDIVERE: What makes you think that she is a witch?
SHALOTT: She made me write Harry Potter slash in a Canadian shack!
SILENCE DESCENDS
SHALOTT: Well, I got better.
(Great. Like that helps me. I grew up in Brooklyn, therefore I swim for shit. Total sinkage. Sigh. Anyway, you can find shalott's fic at http://www.trickster.org/~shalott , though why I bother I really don't know...)
I'm thrilled and excited to be a part of the Shack Attack, and am especially pleased to be on the same page with all these excellent authors. I have no excuses for my shacks, but I'd still like to blame it all on Francesca. And Anna. They provided me with the venue to venture outside my comfortable little worlds in Cascade and Chicago, and have to deal with the results. Love ya, babes.
(You can find Sihaya's scorching TS fic at http://www.squidge.org/~theforest/sihaya/sihaya.html and her DS fic on the DSA archive, best I can figure out. Search for her at http://www.squidge.org/ )
I'm on every legal drug there is, babies! Oh, yeah! This project needed an obsessive fruitcake, and I said to myself, "Self, you are just the obsessive fruitcake to pull this shit off!"
Actually, seriously, I can't believe this all really happened. Seems like only a few days ago I was just planning a nice little DS story...
Oh, wait, sorry, it was only a few days ago. Isn't fandom wonderful? Sorry, I mean strange. I meant to say strange. Isn't fandom strange?
Anyway, I'm so proud of this particular collection of writers and fandoms I could just spit. But I won't. I know y'all just cleaned your floors.
Happy holidays, everybody!
Te just realized that, as of the 27th, she's been in the fandom world for four years. This is blowing her tiny little mind. It really, really is. She has no idea what to say, so she'll be boring and generic. The thing she loves best about fandom — other than the validation of her sick, dark need to trespass — is the opportunity to play. To take the vast number of points that make up a given canon and play connect the dots in the weirdest way she can.
There's absolutely nothing better than that, and, really, what's weirder than trying to get one's slash couple of choice into a Canadian shack?
Add in the 500 word limit (Te koffs at how well she managed that), and you've got the best excuse in the world to just go buck-wild. While three of her shack stories were written in fandoms (and with pairings) that she's played with before, the other two were just completely random.
And she'll certainly be going back to Brimstone-land, at least.
Rrraaaah.
(Some of us want to live in Te-land. If YOU want to live in Te-land, go to: http://strangeplaces.net/te/)
When I first heard of the shack thing, my reaction can best be described as eat it over the sink and don't drip any of it on me, okay? Then people started talking about werewolves, and I thought, hey, I could do that. Things went downhill from there. Nine shacks later, all I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.
This has been a great way to flirt with new fandoms and experiment with writing styles, and to get away with somewhat implausible crossovers, and to hang out with a lot of wonderful people. (Ces can now put "cat-herding" on her resume.) I got to play with the Pouting Menace and the cute bald guy. I got to pair up the two sexiest werewolves I know, not that there's much competition. I got to slash Hellboy, for which there will no doubt be some kind of divinely ordained punishment. Best of all, I got to watch a lot of my friends say, "Oh, no, I'm not getting involved in this," and then, a little later, "Hey, know what? I wrote another shack."
I had a blast. Next year, let's do a tropical island.
(Editorial Note from Ces: "Torch writes everything; she's scary good. But you know that already. Handy link for you in case you don't already have it tattooed on your forehead: http://www.strangeplaces.net/torch/ . " End note.)
Actual story notes:
Eroica, or rather, From Eroica with love, is a charming, long-running manga series by Yasuko Aoike about a cranky, chain-smoking German NATO intelligence agent and the flamboyant British gentleman thief who loves him. (They can be found here .)
Anyone who doesn't know what Gundam Wing is has been asleep under a rock. Pretty boys. Big mecha. Fighting for peace. Fucking for virginity... no, wait....
Hellboy is a comic by Mike Mignola featuring lots of Nazis, evil aliens, tumbledown castle ruins, corpses in varying states of decay, and mad scientists. It's very charming, and Hellboy himself wears shorts and a trenchcoat and spends a lot of time falling through collapsing floors into dark cellars.
Ms. Ames and Ms. Drew are still as innocent as they ever were. Cherry Aimless and Nancy Clue, on the other hand, appear (together with those icons of masculinity, the Hardly Boys) in a series of books by Mabel Maney that any textual poacher worth her salt should read and delight in: The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend, and A Ghost in the Closet. Cleis Press. Buy now.
GRAMMAR IS NOT OPTIONAL - SWF, 32, Windy City dweller who enjoys theater (West Wing, Buffy, X Files, Due South, Wiseguy, etc.) and travel (Santa Barbara, Lansing, Baltimore). 19 years in fandom and going strong. Turn-ons: loyal, powerful, put-upon older men (glasses a plus), the comedy stylings of bantering old-married types, and hunky, innocent do-gooders. Turn-offs: ficcies, eppies, part 1 of ?. Serious inquiries only.
Bio:
I was born a poor, immigrant— Never mind. The part of my history folks might be interested in starts in December 1997, with my first exposure to online slash, specifically Mulder/Krycek. I remained monogamous in The X-Files fandom for about a year before beginning my current course of fandom polygamy. They're all so pretty.... It's a good thing I diversified, because otherwise my growing disgust with Chris Carter would have hurt far worse. I've been all over the place ever since.
Aside from X-Files, I've written in due South, Hard Core Logo, Twitch City, Smallville, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Once a Thief, Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Two Guys and a Girl, X-Men, Doctor Who, Fight Club, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .
Author Notes:
X-Files: "Two Dead Men": I started in XF but drifted away for reasons you can probably guess. Four years later.... This story is me asking, "If two dead men fell in a Canadian shack and no one was around to hear, would they make a sound?"
due South/The Tick: "Ray Vs. The Tick": Replacing the due South/Doctor Who crossover that was 900 words too long for this e-zine, this story came out of my love for the darkly funny and bizarre live action The Tick TV show. The Tick and Arthur make such a sweet couple in any incarnation of The Tick .
Doctor Who: "Out in the Cold": Also replacing the Doctor Who/due South crossover that was 900 words too long for this e-zine, this story also gives me another opportunity to write Turlough, who's so treacherous, so snippy, so arrogant, so hurt, so terrified.... For me, his treachery, snippery, etc. gave his moments of compassion, sacrifice, and conscience deep underscoring. It's fun to play around with what little the show told us of his past. And it's fun to twist the knife....
(Viridian writes more fandoms than...well, than most people, really. Go to the Green Room. Knock politely. It's at : http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/ )
I was born in the wagon of a travelin' show; Mamma used to dance for the money they'd throw. Papa did whatever he could — preached a little gospel, sold a couple bottles of Dr. Good.
(Yahtzee!! Yahtzee! A flashback to my childhood in more ways than one! Go read Yahtzee at: http://www.thechicagoloop.net/yahtzee/ Go now. Don't just stand there gawping at me!)