rthstewart | I wouldn't say no, but... (Also, to Tess, Anons, and others adding Kudos and Favs)

Contrary to the notice you might have received, it is not my birthday on January 1. My birthday (a horrendous, shocking, terrible, giganormous milestone) passed without comment in October. So, it's been, gone, and I'm older than compost and very much feeling it.

I've seen an uptick in readers, with guest Kudos for Unquenchable Fire (the Narnia/Temeraire xover) on AO3 (the most popular thing I've written, it turns out) and favs and such for the older stories, particularly By Royal Decree and the seldom read/reviewed/recc'd Palace Guard. So, should you quiet types come by, thank you! I greatly appreciate it and I'm always curious how you found the stories and what you thought of them. I seem to have, on the other hand, lost a number of regular readers, so I do hope it's just the distraction of the holidays and Yuletide. My enormous thanks and gratitude to those who commented on or reviewed the latest updates to AW. It's the best present ever for me and thank you.

Tess, thank you for your lovely review for chapter 13 and I'm assuming that you had not yet read It's The Thought The Counts so you didn't know how Asim acquires the The Dawn Treader picture, which is then repeated in Chapter 14. I hope you won't be a stranger and do weigh in as the mood hits! Thank you especially for the comments about unconventional families. That was a thematic element that hit late -- when I started AW and realized that families were playing a big part in the story and that almost none were typical. I have enormous empathy for the single parent and found it interesting to play both with what a Narnian family might be (both parents, one or none, solitary/herd) and the impact of the War on family life. And you can't have Tom Clark. He's mine. MINE. He looks like some gorgeous cross between Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Gene Kelly. Tebbitt can go hang for all I care. It's Tom Clark and he has a tragic lovelorn past, too, all tied up with an ancient curse from the days of the Salem Witch Trials and his wife ran off with a trapeze artist leaving him all alone with Jack and a broken heart.

I've been pushed into hosting part of a New Year's Eve party. It is supposed to be progressive and reflect the New Year's foods/traditions of the country where it is turning midnight over several hours. So I snagged the appetizer part, beginning at 7:30 PM, at which point, New Year's will have just passed in the UK. I am ordering trays of chicken tika, samosas, tandoori, and paneek panir. We are serving Jamaican and Canadian beer, aged Scotch (from Scotland), Australian Shiraz, South African white wine, and I've got champagne (from France) that I've plastered "Aquitaine" on to. Har Har.

Work has begun on the Big Bang.

amine_eyes has graciously offered to assist with some technical and Brit speak bits but if there are any of you out there with some background in the Brit part of D-Day, military service, common language among the light infantry NCOs, and what not, please drop me a line. Help. I need it. For instance, I was writing something last night and someone poses the questions "Maybe the food would be better?" and I got stumped by whether a light infantry corporal from London, training in 1943 at a base in Bulford would say any of the following in response:

"When pigs fly." [era appropriate]
"When Hell freezes over" [militarily appropriate] or
"When [insert football team] wins the Cup." [I did look it up and Manchester United was very poor in the years leading up the War, so wondered if that would work, for the time].

That is all. Happy New Year. My sincere and deepest thanks to you all. I am deeply grateful for this community and for the friendship and support.

I wouldn't say no, but... (Also, to Tess, Anons, and others adding Kudos and Favs)

no subject