Update 12/17/13: Yeah, it's been a while. I'm alive and well. Just haven't been writing so much on Black Swan over the last two years. My dad's health took a turn for the worse, and he passed away in September. My hours at the job changed, requiring me to completely change my daily routine and lifestyle for the first time in 15 years. I had some other challenges too, all of which conspired to pull me away from finishing what I started here.

I'm back, for now. We're house-hunting and still have lots of real-life obligations, but I want to try to and finish out the open fic left here. It's still very much "alive" in my mind and I know how it ends.Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Update 7/13/11: News! I am going to be doing a LOT of writing in the near future. Most of it may be rated too high for this site, but check in at my Black Swan fic journal for updates and links. I am planning to enter the Porn Battle, the femslash_kink meme, and I signed up for kink_bingo. So yeah, lots and lots of smut in the next couple months. *facepalm*

I do have some Black Swan projects in the works. There's those short stories to fill in the 20-yr gap between Finale and Epilogue in Coda. And then there's a very interesting AU, with an older and much darker version of Lily as the director of the New York Ballet. Imagine all of that power-imbalance and uncertainty from the Thomas/Nina relationship, translated into the Lily/Nina relationship. It's a challenge to write, but I think it will be worth it.

I also have a couple of deeply angsty fics that I may post here, if my betas say they're worth it. One is in my 'usual' fandom, Superman movieverse, where I normally coauthor with kalalanekent. She 'ship strictly Clois, and this story is, weirdly enough, Richard/Clark. I don't even know where that came from. The other is an HP fic that 'ships the trio (Ron/Hermione/Harry). Why? No idea. I blame the medication I'm on for back pain.

Also, I got an anonymous review asking about Coda. I couldn't reply there, so I'll answer here and hope the reviewer sees it. DreamsofVegas asked why I had chosen to write in present tense instead of past tense. Honestly, it wasn't a conscious choice. Coda was an idea that wouldn't let me go, and I started writing it almost stream-of-consciousness. The first two chapters just happened to come out like that, present-tense, very immediate and unbeta'd and just THERE. After that, I kept to the present-tense thinking this would be a fairly short story, but you see how wrong I was. I normally work in past-tense, but I liked the intimacy and the sense of urgency I got from present-tense, so I stuck with it.

I guess I should finally post something here, huh? Forgive me, I'd rather talk about fic than talk about myself.

A little about me, though: I'm 30, I live in Florida, I'm marrying my girlfriend Lois (better known as kalalanekent around these parts) in September 2012.

I saw Black Swan on Christmas Day and fell in love with it, but couldn't let the story go at the end. The plot bunny that became Coda started nibbling my ankles as I walked out of the theater, and over the next couple weeks it became an enormous, Night of the Lepus-style plot bunny absolutely demanding to be written, and threatening my sanity if I did not get to work on it. So I typed the first two chapters in the same day, and then more and more scenes kept occurring to me. The first 25 or so chapters of the story really felt more like I was receiving information than creating a story; I've never followed my muse like that before.

As I'm winding up the various conflicts, I'm actually starting to feel more like a writer and less like a reporter commenting on events taking place in my head, but that's not a bad thing. I hope that I'll be able to bring this story to a "convincing conclusion" (click here to see where I got the title and this quote from). Yes, Coda is coming to a close - I expect it to be finished by the end of May at the latest. No sequels are planned, but there may be oneshots if the interest is there.

Thank you to all of my readers, and especially the anonymous readers whom I can't directly reply to. You are wonderfully inspiring. Reviews are appreciated and replied to!

Update 03/02/11: One of my readers, Roxy, sent me a fanart poster for Coda. It's utterly gorgeous and you should click here to see it. Thank you very, very much, Roxy!

Also, I have a LiveJournal account just for bits of fanfic that are related to but not part of Coda. Visit it here, but be aware that it contains mature content and will eventually have everything that's too intense for fanfic's rating system. ETA: LJ is being weird. If that link doesn't work, try this: why so hyphenated?

Update 5/17/11: Well, everyone, Coda is officially finished. The end of a fic is always kind of emotional for me; it's hard to let go. I do have some oneshots in the works to fill in that 20 year gap between Finale and Epilogue, but it will take a while to get there.

Thanks to all my readers for following the story and for reviewing. I appreciate it deeply.