Yuletide recs

Sneaking in with some Yuletide fic recs before reveals ...

I already recced the story written for me - Troublesome to Others, But A Torment To Themselves (Vorkosigan series, Mark/Kareen + Miles) - but really, it's great and I just had to say again how delighted I was with it. :D

I have definitely read more than this, but these are the ones I bookmarked and therefore the only ones I can remember to rec. See, this is why I should have done this a week ago.

( Recs - Dark Tower, Rivers of London, Dalemark Quartet, Red Dwarf, Cadfael Chronicles, Quantum Leap )

2016: definitely a year that happened

I realize it's been a total trash fire of a year overall, but for me on a purely personal level, it's actually been a very good year.

( Nice things )

My Yuletide fics this year

The Yuletide reveals are out! I wrote:

And Still of a Winter's Night (Benjamin January Mysteries, 10K, gen; When a young woman turns up dead during Carnival, Shaw needs Ben's help with the investigation -- or, rather, Dominique's.)

I read six or so of the books back at the beginning of December in preparation for writing the story (this series has a very distinctive narrative voice) and I really wanted to talk about them, but I didn't want to tip my hand! Working on this story was a lot of fun. (sheron is probably laughing now because she got to be the recipient of all my wailing and gnashing of teeth about it, but it actually WAS fun, and I made her read the first book in case I needed to discuss plot woes with her, which as it turned out I didn't; it all went together nicely. Also, belated thanks to wordsofastory for doing a canon beta on it for me!)

I had already picked out this person's letter for possible treating, so I was halfway to planning to write a story based off my favorite of their prompts anyway, and opening up my email to find THIS as my assignment was probably the first time that I've gone "EEEEHEEEE" rather than "nooooo, why did I offer that canon /o\".

The other two things I wrote were treats for a book series it so happens I had JUST finished rereading when Yuletide prompts were revealed, and I discovered that more than one person wanted fic in this fandom with exactly the characters I like best, so I decided to try writing some. The stories are both fairly similar: gen 1960s-era cozy spy fic.

The Spy Who Came to Christmas (Mrs. Pollifax series, Emily + Farrell + supporting characters, 8200 wds; Mrs. Pollifax anticipates a quiet holiday with her daughter Jane's family, but instead there's spy trouble afoot.)

Playing the Odds (Mrs. Pollifax series, Emily + Farrell, 3100 wds; Tag scene after the main action in The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax. She promised to visit him in the hospital, and Emily Pollifax always keeps her promises.)

The books, by the way, are adorable. The quality is uneven, as you might expect for a long-running series that was written over about 40 years, but the first one in particular is really good (if you are willing to swallow the basic premise of an elderly widow who semi-accidentally becomes a CIA operative due to an identity mix-up); it's one of my go-to books for feel-good friendship h/c. Also, having just spent most of the summer writing Agent Carter fic, this was not much of a departure. Actually, while I never got a Peggy-and-Jack vibe from these particular characters in the books, I noticed when I was writing them that it really felt like writing Peggy and Jack. Except with very different backstories for the characters, of course, and a 20-year age difference.

All my commentfic/promptfic in 2016

One thing that happened in 2016 is that it's the year I learned to write short fics from prompts. I've always done it a little, but I was never that good at it. And then Tumblr happened. Now I'm going to have to start a new Agent Carter commentfic doc because my current one has 50K of fic in it (YES REALLY) and I can't find anything anymore!

Under the cut is a full list of all the commentfic/promptfic I wrote in 2016, from oldest to newest. Some of these ended up long enough to post individually to AO3, but are included because they were written for one of the prompt calls; there are also some "just for fun" ones that weren't actually for a prompt but weren't long enough or complete enough to go on AO3 as a standalone fic.

If you just want the most recent ones, I've been maintaining a running list since my last prompt call in July, so you can go here to read those. (The most recent one was added tonight: a Happy New Year ficlet.) I'll start a new list for 2017.

Under the cut: 53 Agent Carter promptfics, 5 White Collar, 1 other. About half the Agent Carter ones are collected in From the SSR Files on AO3, but the July-and-later ones haven't been added yet.

( 2016 prompt fics/commentfic )

ETA: This list is also posted on Tumblr.