Update
Apologies to people who have left me comments and who I haven’t answered. 2008 decided to round off its Amazingly Crappy Year Status by my mother being hospitalised. My mother, as I said, was very ill, to the point where we were told to get my sister, on oxygen or not, to get herself over from France somehow if she wanted to say goodbye. We were told twice that there was definitely no hope, but the hospital kept trying things to save her and she kept hanging in there and to cut a very long, very stressful story short, she is now alive and home with me, although still not a very well person and, like my sister, with no real prospect of anything except inevitable degeneration, but I was pretty much incommunicado during that period.
[My mother and I have now privately agreed that my incredibly bossy old dog, who died at the end of May, might indeed, as he often told us, have been the only thing keeping the forces of chaos from our door, as in none of the previous fifteen and half years when he was around to do his thing did we both get rushed to hospital. Presumably then, to stay well, one should always have a three-legged Italian Greyhound in the house to bark a lot if people are seconds late with his food. This, more than an apple a day, actually keeps the doctor away.] As to my health, thank you, again, to the people who have asked, and my apologies - again - for not getting back to you as quickly as I should have done. I won’t know if I am as well as I feel for two years, which is the period of time they advise for regular ultrasounds for people who have iffy test results, to find out if my remaining ovary is cancerous, but I feel absolutely fine (apart from missing my bossy dog and the sky-high stress levels over my mother) and did from three days after the operation.
Anyway, my belated summing up of 2008 is that, result of the American Presidential Election aside, it pretty much sucked. (That result, however, was so amazing I’m still kind of in shock. I know there are people who remember there being leaders in the US or the UK who actually had vision and principles and policies and thought one shouldn’t do things if they were morally wrong and should do things if they’re morally right, but Barack Obama is a first in my lifetime. After George Bush, I thought the only way I was ever going to see a US President who had vision and intellect was by shoving in my West Wing DVDs…so, as I said, still processing the fact that the people of the USA finally have a President worthy of them. The fact he’s also African-American, like the fact that he’s young and handsome and can orate like Cicero, is the icing on the cake. I really didn’t think there was ever going to be any intellect admitted to the White House ever again.)
On the Year of Suck side, belated commiserations to the Atlantis fans for their show being cancelled. I’m really sorry. I know there might possibly be a movie in the future and that the show will anyway continue to live on in fanfic and fanvids and that it basically belongs to the fans now, but having one’s favourite show end is just a crappy thing to happen. I know that afterwards one can think ‘Oh well, if there had been a S6 then x or y might have happened and I would have hated that so…etc’ but it doesn’t alter that sense of loss of the prospect of losing new episodes and finding out new things about characters that you love. I presume the crew and writers and producers and so on will get work on the new Stargate show, although I presume they will still miss getting to hang out with these characters in their heads, (hopefully writing for the Universe characters will fill some of that creative void) but I’m sorry for the actors (who presumably won’t be working on Universe).
I’ve no doubt at all that the SGA actors will get other work but it still must be hard to have that forced separation from a character that you care about and in whom you have invested so much time and energy. After ‘Angel’ was cancelled (a show which, even with me having many, many times told myself that if they were really going to make Gunn a vampire I would have hated it and I wasn’t wild on the whole post-apocalyptic LA thing, still seemed to me to end several seasons too soon) J. August Richards talked about how not playing Gunn any more was causing him actual separation anxiety because he’d spent the previous four years having this guy in his life. I imagine the Atlantis actors must be feeling some of that, and DH in particular, as he played McKay, on and off, from S5 of SG-1.
Pro-writing-wise, I have about six scenes to write to finish Book Three: The Iron Crown of The Charndras heroic fantasy series. Then it needs to be edited. [I’ve also written some of Book Four, through juggling things around and not being sure in which order events needed to be told. Not to mention Book Five and the Tales of Otieno…I’m finding it difficult with so many stories in my head within this world to work out when and how various characters and events need best to be introduced.] I do apologize for the horrendous delay, but, barring more unforeseen circumstances (like another year like 2008), it should be published some time this year. [And if my publisher should read this, yes, I also know I promised two years ago to rewrite ‘Alchemy’ and it is also on my To Do list.]
Fanfiction-wise, I’ve only written a tiny bit more of (Buffy/Angelverse) ‘Shadows’, but still have every intention of finishing it. (And thank you to the people who have sent helpful suggestions.) I know what happens with Angel and Wesley next but I’m hazier on what everyone else will be doing. I’ve written about 100kb (30 pages) of the next story in the (Buffy/Angelverse) ‘Tea Shop Detectives’ series and have a much clearer idea of what happens next with that one, and, as with the SG-1 fic have been able to write little bits and pieces of it in between other things. ‘Angels of the Tenth Choir’, the sequel to ‘Into the Labyrinth’ (SG-1verse) has had a lot of false starts but is now at least starting to feel coherent. (I wrote a lot of stuff that was stopping the story moving forward so I have taken it out and had another go at trying to get across the plot engine information in a more succinct way. I think it’s getting a bit less confusing now, but I’ve written 190kb and I still haven’t got them to the Destination Of Adventure, never mind what I think of as the Actual Story part, so it’s still a long way from being done.)