Hiding fandom in the underwear drawer since 1977

Well, at the expense of several client deadlines this week and a memo still to be edited in my inbox by Monday morning, and most of the NFE still unread and nothing responded to, I decided to make very poor use of time and... formally begin Book 6 of the Stone Gryphon, Heart and Crow Make the Peace.

Book 6 in The Stone Gryphon story cycle. Lucy and Edmund find their way in Spare Oom.

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
Mahatma Gandhi

"The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds."
Dalai Lama

I don't know when I'll be able to update again.  Much of this is repurposed and reconfigured but it's now in once place.  There is also new content starting at chapter 5 and various pieces have been adjusted so that if all flows better. 

The WW2 material is not as spot on as typical.  I'm having some trouble with that for various reasons.  Edmund should really be in Cairo with Dudley Clarke or he and Walker-Smythe should both be in London. While Operation Mincemeat is well researched and reported on, it was part of Operation Barclay and there is virtually nothing on that other than a few paragraphs repeated over and over.  There is a real dearth of material on the things I've wanted Lucy to do and I even make fun of it a bit -- she's not going to be able to commandeer a ship, steal foodstuffs, and sail off to Greece.  And while the British Red Cross is a good place to start for her, it was the International Red Cross that was involved in the grain shipments from Canada and South America.  With my recent NFE story The Doctor Is In, the Red Cross now ties back to Narnia. 

I have tweaked the parts with John Pevensie.  He IS an ass and that hasn't changed.  But going way back to the beginning of Oxfordshire 1942 I never wanted to deal with anyone actually IN the service.  HA HA I know.  One way I did that was to make John opposed to Peter's service -- which is not true to the time or patriotic.  BUT if he had say, been a radio operator and heard men suffocating in submarines or dying at Dunkirk, yes, this begins to make sense.  And further, it adds to the choking irony that he'll be really pissed to find out about -- that he went to war to keep his children safe only for a stupid ass Lion to rip them out of this world and march them into war.

I've also changed the letter that Helen writes to Edmund after Morgan's visit. 

Anyway, thank you to those of you still out there.  Welcome to the new!

After posting Black, White and the Gray Wolf In Between, I had a number of requests from readers for more Narnians landing in Helen's drawing room. Ask and you shall receive.

Helen learns about Rat and Crow and gets another visitor (or two) from Narnia.

It took me a week, but I had a lot of fun with this one.  Though lurking  underneath there are buckets of angst.  As Heart and Crow Make the Peace begins to organize itself, there are certain themes and loss of love and loved ones are principal ones.  I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  So, I started waltzing around it a bit here. 

Thank you!  And responses to the lovely comments on other posted stories comes tomorrow. 

So, as previously stated, I got two stories in the Narnia Fic Exchange and authors are now revealed. 
The Polly Plummer character study, Draw the Patterns Out was by the lovely LittleRaven.

Rack n Roll was by the incomparablesyrena_of_the_lake .

Do go and check out the whole exchange here!

I had three stories. 
My main gift, A Wolf in King's Clothing is per the requests of my recipient, Hydrangea, an AU, steampunk, urban fantasy mild Lucy/Caspian with Spare Oom as magical and Narnia as the "mundane." And added werewolves.
You read that right. Yes, that really weird story was MINE.  I WROTE LUCIAN.  WITH ADDED RINGS.  Because way back when, we were all joking on Twitter about were-Caspian and I had no idea it was a thing.  And then Hydrangea's prompt presented itself, and so here we are.  I really struggled at the end but am very happy with how it turned out.  The story hasn't gotten much love but if you're willing to try something that really pushes the bounds of Narnia fic and is definitely way further out there than anything I've done before, I hope you'll give it a go.

And then we have the small and silly written in a day Cocktail Hour, in which Fooh continues to show himself to be a remarkable Guard as he helps Peter navigate a cocktail hour in the Seven Isles.  Cocktail Hour harkens back to my NFE of last year, Father Goose.  Snacky dearly loves Fooh and had views on Edmund's poor treatment of Princess Peony AKA Even More Dim, in By Royal Decree and so here is a bit of her revenge, presenting an idea I've had for a long time.

And last, we have Black, White and the Gray Wolf In Between.  I need to jigger Apstolic Way somehow but readers should assume that this is the next chapter in The Stone Gryphon. In other words, I updated Apostolic Way.   One way to think on it is that chapters 16 and 17 of AW are really chapters 1 and 2 of a new book, Heart and Crow Make the Peace.  Black, White and the Gray Wolf In Between is chapter 3 of this new book Heart and Crow Make The Peace, which will tell Lucy and Edmund's story and bring us to the end of the war.   Elements of this story were hinted at in the first chapter of Father Goose.  And, it begins to tell the tale of the Traitor Noll and the Mole Spies, a story that had its origin 10 years ago in a post on the old NFFR boards and has been referenced many times across multiple stories.  It's been a long time in coming and I'm really happy to be able to share it with you. 

Phew.  Got that?