Insert Clever Blog Name Here

None! Yep, big fat goose egg.

That's mostly because I've been writing. :)

Reworking my Binding story has really been good for me. I've written every day since 6/22 and really changed it around. It still centers on Snape and Hermione being magically bound together, but I've changed the timeline to after the war, aged Hermione up to 20 and am trying to focus on the effects of sexual assault and on mental health issues.

And it's been really interesting, doing the research and changing things around. The first chapter has been changed so much it's almost completely different. And from Chapter 5 on, it is different since I have a different big-bad than before.

Hee, my beta readers must think (know?) I'm nuts because they keep getting chapters followed by emails saying, wait! I've changed it again! Snerk.

Now I have three days to indulge. With the exception of Saturday evening when my kids will come over for food and to watch fireworks off our back deck.

Rewrote the first 3 chapters of my multi-chapter fic "The Binding of Hermione", which I think I'm going to change to simply: The Binding. Not sure yet.

I am trying to ret-con the piece to age her up some (made her 20 instead of 17), re-set it during the second year after the War, even tho it's obviously still AU since Snape lives.

And instead of Lucius/the Death Eaters being the bad guys, I'm making it Draco. He's gone a bit mad, I think, but I'm still pondering that, at the moment. We'll see.

I am quite enjoying the exercise. Plus, I am ashamed to say, it really needs this run through. The punctuation was horrid, for a start.

Hermione was wildly out of character. Which I've managed to correct, mostly, I think.

Anyway. I think it's better.

I am happy to report that the latest chapter in my (years-)long neglected WIP, "The Binding of Hermione" is now posted at Ashwinder.

And, in an embarrassment of riches, my wizard_love entry, "The Auction" is also posted today!

And I rate Outstanding!



I achieved my goal of reading, viewing and reviewing every chapter of every story and all the art.

Go me!

The sshg_exchange reveals are up.
My gift from slytherinlaurel is Awake. Go, read and leave a properly squeeful review. It's lovely.
My humble offering for electryone82 is The Wise Forgive. It was a buggar to write, mostly due to author insecurity. But thanks to my gorgeous beta, islandsmoke's patience and encouragement, I was able to get it finished.

I want to thank the mods, scatteredlogic, shiv5468 and ginny_weasley31. And much thanks to mollyssister for the help she gives.

The exchange_bingo was fun, too. So thanks to christev, pokeystar and pyjamapants for keeping track of that game.

And, if someone chose as their prize a story from me, please let me know.

All in all, a wonderful three months or so. Can't wait until next year!

It's gotten cold (for us) here again and it looks like it might be here to stay this time.

My sister and my nephew (who live in south FL) will be here on Thursday--the day the weatherfolk are calling for snow flurries. Heeeee, hehehehehehe.

In other news, I'm writing furiously and the story just keeps getting longer. *facepalm*

Oh, and one of the supervisors at work decided that it would be a great idea to have four teams get together for lunch on Wednesday--a "get to know each other" thing. And the team social directors, of which I am one, get to plan it. And my damned team is so anti-social, anti-everything that I've gotten nothing but resistance from them. Seriously. It got so bad last week that I had to sic my supervisor on them. I can't wait for it to be over.

Oh, and my daughter has an interview with an elementary school today. Please send good thoughts her way because this would be the perfect job for her.

Got more birthday cards in the mail today. Got one from one of my Delphi Forum friends which was a perfect card for me...has the doctor holding a naked baby by the ankle (the implication is he's spanking it for the first breath)and inside it says "From the day you were born, you were into the kinky stuff." And she wrote that this card just screamed "ray" to her. Hee. You see, she's read some of my fanfic...

The second card was from my dear friend in Texas who I love and miss so much. My first ever Star Trek buddy and my best friend for ever so long. I've known her longer than almost anyone else, and we shared so much...I hope that someday I get to visit her or she gets to visit me again.

The last card I got was from my best friend in Ft. Lauderdale, my sweetest little punk girl (heh or she used to be until she decided to get a 'real' job). We've been through Subway, growing kids, college, term papers...so much. I am so sad that she will be in NY when I go for my quick visit in September...but she sent me a gift certificate to RED LOBSTER!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! My hubby can't get out of it now!
( Don't click if you're not interested in my latest smutty fic idea )

Hubby went back to the doctor again today as he has not been able to shake the cough which has been bothering him for weeks now. He was also going to go stake out the house and septic area on the property so the surveyor knows where things are supposed to be...don't ask me why the guy just can't go survey five acres from the fence-row downward, but whatever. Hubby isn't home yet, but I expect him any time. I was hoping to get some writing done, but there was a bit of bother on my favorite forum which needed attending to, and my friends are much more important to me than anything else.

Dang, this is a long update for me, guess I'd better stop now.

edited to add, I received a most kind and EXTREMELY gracious email from Metamuse which cleared up a lot of my misunderstandings about the validation email I received earlier which I then went off the handle and ranted about here. I am not deleting the entry because I was wrong and I am willing to admit it. I want to apologize to Metamuse and everyone at SH. I will remember how wonderful you all were to a raging lunatic and not be so damned touchy about things in the future.

Got an email from SH today..."correcting" several "errors" in my latest chapter. Now, this chapter has been checked by my word processing program spell-check and grammar check and was beta-ed twice.
There were a couple of things which needed correcting, especially my non-capitalization of "Mudblood" which neither I, nor my betas caught. I am going to have to correct that in my MS Word program so it will auto-correct that particular word.

So, I'm wondering if this has anything to do with my question to them last night regarding validation. This is the FIRST time I have had any chapter sent back to me with ANY corrections since a few canon corrections they asked for in the first chapter. Not to mention, I fucking WON FIRST PLACE in their damned Spring Faire contest...wonder how THAT happened if my punctuation is so bad???
Obviously I was out of my mind. The one had nothing to do with the other.

I'm really pissed off. This is NOT the way to start the day.
I am better now, the day is going quite well, as a matter of fact. I'm wearing my GoF hat and my "Marauders" t-shirt, my HP watch and I brought my HP lunchbox to work today. Getting lots of comments and lots of chances to squee about the book!

I fired back an email with the above (without the cursing and without the last sentence) and now I'm waiting for a reply. If they insist, I may just have to pull the story and all of my other stories from that archive. This is a petty revenge response, in my opinion.
Hey, I know my writing isn't perfect, but there's NO WAY that more than six punctuation and/or capitalization "mistakes" were missed by me or my betas.
Again, I can only plead temporary insanity. And I did delete my final, arrogant "Fuck them, I'm pissed. It was uncalled for and I should know better than to write in this thing when I'm mad.

The latest chapter is live at SH:
http://ashwinder.sycophanthex.com/viewstory.php?sid=4732