Arghhhhhhhhhhhh, arghhhhhhhhhhh, arghhhhhhhhhhh was all I wanted to scream after I had read the latest chapter of Irene’s Cherchez la femme (rated A, available at AHA), which is a modern spy story (I know spy story sounds a bit clichéd, but it’s a great spy story!). Due to a very cunning intrigue Esther Brighton, 27, an unremarkable medical examiner in the office of the Los Angeles Coroner has two choices: Serving a longtime sentence in a maximum security prison or joining intelligence service. By chosing the latter Esther Brighton becomes Elizabeth Bennet and starts working for Center One, an organization tied to the CIA, where she is partnered with Darcy, a hardened CIA secret agent, with whom she will expierence adventure and happiness and try to solve the great puzzle behind it all.

This story has had me hooked right from the beginning (I do have a thing for spy stories… you know, I write one my own…) and I’m completely fascinated by Irene’s storytelling. This story is a piece of genius because it’s mystifying, I’ve read a lots of mysteries and sometimes I’m quite good at guessing how it will turn out in the end but in case of Cherchez la femme I don’t even have a clue how all this different levels can be linked together!  I do have the suspicion that Esther’s/Elizabeth’s origin may have something to do with it (she’s a orphan and doesn’t know her parents) but apart from that I’m completely at a loss concerning any part of the story (apart from Darcy and Lizzy ending up together of course ).

So, the thing that let me to blog about it was my own frustration because at the beginning of the week Irene posted chapter 18 and it has a cliffhanger that almost made me bite my desk! Arghhhhhhhh! I want to know what happens next – I want a new chapter – immediately! Immediately! (Some cliffhangers at the end of a chapter make me behave almost like a spoilt child, I want to stomp with my feet, scream, start crying and run around in my flat! Yeah, fanfiction probably brings out the worst in me…) Cliffhangers a purely torture! I know, they have to be there, otherwise a story would be less interesting and I use cliffhangers myself to torture my readers but nevertheless they are evil, evil, EVIL!

Well, before getting too carried away I’ll end this post with a thorough recommendation and a passionate plea to Irene:

I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering!

So I’m back. Blognapping is over and Angelika has to share the power again. New York was a great experience and participating at NMUN as awesome ( I absolutely recommend it!).

I first discovered the realm of fanfiction when I was about 15 years old. My Lord of the Rings (LotR) obsession had just begun and I was searching for everything: Information, fotos, whatever I was able to find…

And so I came across fanfictions and was enthralled. At the begining I just read, not caring about quality. Just absorbing everything.

I found some really nice (German) fanfictions on a site I’m still frequenting (OBL) and some other sites with fanfictions. Some of them are – after rereading them – not so good as I remembered them.

What happened? What changed?

Truth is – at least I think that is the truth – that I am pampered now, in a way I wasn’t before. I have read some of the best fanfictions in the fandom (IMO) and now some others are  – after I know what is good and have developed certain preferences – just mediocre, eben if I would have considered them good at the beginning.

Fanfiction are the major reason why Angelika and I met. I joined the German Austen Forum (there is just one as far as I know) and somehow we connected… and I brought her to LotR FFs (Yeah I’m responsible for that part of her addiction *evilcackle*).

Jane Austen fanfiction I discovered some time later – with 17/18 – shortly after watching P&P05. The German fandom is awfully small – approx. 100 fanfictions in total – and therefore I turned to the English ones.

My writing “career” started when I was about 16 with LotR and I still love it. As all writers I was awfully anxious to see my stuff published and was afraid how people would react, but I shouldn’t have worried. They were nice and encouraged me. But still it is the same everytime I publish something new – in all genres. I’m horribly nervous, question myself and nag Angelika if it is good enough. (then she patiently tells me “Yes  it is. And now PUBLISH!”). But she is a little bit the same when it comes to publishing and I understand so well. It is always exposing a part of myself and that’ss something most people feel a little bit uncomfortable with, I think. But up till now I have my approx. 25 fanfictions online on about 7 sites and I’ve received not much negative response so far. So that’s very encouraging…

But that was enough rambling for today and the next time you’ll see here again a recommendation what to read next.

Btw. I see the statistics and I know some people are reading (at least I hope they read)… Comments would be awfully nice. (when it comes to that I’m just a normal ff writer – absolutely addicted to comments *g*)

Normally I’m not on the extremely pessimistic side, but in this case you have to confront the truth, the Hyacinth Gardens forum is down for over four months now and that’s an eternity in internet terms. There is a backup board, however you cannot register there and as I’ve heard it’s not really active There is this All Love Austen Yahoo groop (of which I’m not a member), but updates about the last developments are scarce, apparently there isn’t much to report Apparently there are some severe server issues and their technie no longer has time to be part of the site… I have really, really hoped for so long to HG to come back but I’m losing hope each time I try to access HG und the site still is unavailabe.

I still remember when HG was some sort of the fanfiction site for me, back in those times when I was still underage and not allowed to register at HG (I do sound very old now ) the site was some kind of mystery. You had heard about it, of course, and about the masses of stories you could read there. Furthermore HG was one of the few site I knew back than that allowed stories with adult content.

Losing HG is very sad not only because of the uncompleted stories which were posted there until it’s breakdown (although some authors have started posting their stories on other boards, not everybody did), but also because of the archives, some stories are irrevocably lost, because they were only available at HG and the authors are no longer active in the JA fanfiction community.

I have lost almost all hope of HG ever coming back – if it indeed does, it will be a very nice surprise!

BTW: This will be the end of my Blognapping week, tomorrow I will put back on the normal theme and I’ll return home (I have been visiting my parents this week). Fiora will return the day after tomorrow and I will start working in a new department on Tuesday. I don’t know about what and when we will blog next…

I had some serious problems with today’s post, I do have several drafts of posts but none of them seemed to fit today. Today the weather was simply great, I spent most of the day outside (in the garden etc.) and just got onto my computer recently. And suddenly it was clear, the problem with reading fanfictions online is that you cannot take it with you, granted, I do have a laptop and I could take my fanfictions with me but it’s not the same when you do have a printed version.

I like my books very much and I cannot think of getting myself a kindle or a sony reader for example, because it’s not the same. Books are full of memories, the little scratch on one page because you were so eager to turn the page to read what happens next, the water mark on another page because you cried at this spot, the dog-ear at even another page because you had to stuff the book rather unceremoniously into your bag to catch the train home after you had been so engrossed in reading. The kindle for example is just too slim and too cold and too unemotional for my taste, books smell, books make a indescribable sound, books are full of anticipation when you hold one of them in your hands before reading the first line.

But I think I’m a bit off topic now, what I wanted to say is, there are certain disadvantages of reading online, especially if you don’t have laptop. If I could, I would definately print out all of my favourites, but there is this tiny little detail: I cannot afford it, printing is expensive And I had the perfect surprise gift from Fiora one week ago:

She sent me a printed copy of “Rainy Days” by Lory L., click the picture to enlarge it (also one of the blogger’s favourites, you can expect a review sometime in the future).

I became a bit emotional then, because I thought back to the times when I discovered fanfiction. I had to share the computer with my little brother by then… And he was not amused that I spent hours after hours on the computer reading. It was also very uncomfortable because I sat on our old office chair for ages, which lead (on my part) to pain in the back. Yeah…. those are times worth remembering
Now I do have my little, white, shiny MacBook (maybe I’ll post a photo in a later post when I talk about my general writing conditions ), however there is still nothing better than a printed version. With a laptop there comes more flexibility, as you can get away from your desk and uncomfortable office furniture and read where you like (on your bed, sofa, in the kitchen…), however it still is not the same. I tried to take my MacBook outside into the sun when I wanted to read a fanfiction, but the screen reflected the sun which made reading impossible, it didn’t matter how I sat. And in addition to that it’s a bit unromantic I think, sitting in front of a screen and read… Another reason: Most of the fanfictions are online and with my addiction I think I’d die without internet connection…

I don’t want to complain, the online fanfiction community is one of the greatest institutions imaginable and I still read online and I wouldn’t want to miss it for a fortune as nowhere else there is such a eager exchange between writers and readers, but it becomes more and more uncomfortable and for the future (when I’m not longer a poor student) I plan to print more and to buy the books. Until then I have to live with the more or less uncomfortable alternative with taking my laptop with me.

It’s more or less unbelievable that it took me more than half a year to finally read and comment on RuthO’s simply fabulous story “My B.F.F” (a/k/a “A Beautiful Friendship”), available at AHA or the Meryton Reading Room, Rated MA. She started posting this story in August 2008, when I had just begun my apprenticeship and I was simply too busy to follow the story and afterwards I procrastinated reading the complete story again and again also due to a very stressful RL.

Truth to be told I have to go back even further into the past when RuthO posted two short stories at AHA at the beginning of 2008, with which I immediately fell in love, her stories “Mr. ———-” (link to AHA and the MRR) and “Baby Blue” (AHA and MRR) were the first ones I dared to comment at AHA and when RuthO wrote that Baby Blue was actually a chapter from a longer story I was dying to get to read it. (To explain the title of this post – Baby Blue is a scene from My B.F.F., which was posted individually before My BFF was finished) And this I did today, all in a rush, thanks to my one week holiday before starting in a new department next week.

First of all: I LOVED it, wonderful to read, I didn’t stop until I was finished and I will definately read it again some time soon. I was lucky that I could read it all in a rush, I guess, so all the angsty scenes were not so terrible. I don’t know where to start, IMO RuthO is simply a great writer, I LOVE her style, her descriptions, her charactarisations, her dialogues, the background details (she posted links with pictures of her dream cast and accessoires and a MyBFF-youtube-playlist) and her original characters. I may have developed a slight crush on Geoff (which of course has nothing to do with him looking like Rupert Penry Jones ). Also the plot was developed fantasticly, I would never have imagined that for example the a South American businessman who was just mentioned in a little sentence in chapter 13 would play a bigger role afterwards. I also liked the cameo’s of Austen characters from other books, for example Wentworth was Darcy’s head of security, Frank Churchill his PR consultant and so on…

And one really funny idea about which I laughed a lot where the extracts from gossip magazines at the beginning of the chapters, which were simply hilarious and had some serious background (I can’t believe why some people take existing gossip magazines for real BTW).

And now lets come to the most important thing: The relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy – once again I have to say: perfect. You could so feel the attraction between these two (again due to RuthO’s wonderful descriptions) and when they were “just” friends, it was no wonder that nobody believed them. I do have to admit that I was a bit sceptical about Elizabeth at the beginning with her being so perfect, you know, breathtakingly beautiful, smart, funny, successful and all and I was (like the Richard) relieved that Elizabeth had “some nasty skeletons in her closet”. Darcy was – as always – (now I have to search for a synonym for perfect *laughs*) fantastic, very much in character with him being the successful businessman and kind of emotionally traumatised due to a bad past experience, which is why he has some issues with serious relationships.

What more can I say? I think, I’ve sung enough praises now So, if you haven’t read it already – GO FOR IT!

This is also something I do in my freetime -- making songvids. And I simply couldn’t resist the WordPress SmartYoutube plugin. I had to try it

This is my first multi Austen couples songvid -- I hope you like it!

I thought that I might introduce another category here at the blog (this is a total solo attempt here of which Fiora knows nothing, I begin to like this blognapping very much because I don’t need to consider other’s opinions *evil laugh* This is very good for my despotical, stubborn and tyrannical nature ). The category’s name is “Blogger’s favourite” in which I (at least) will post stories that have made it to my absolute top list and which you can read again and again without getting bored or tired of it.

Today’s story is “Moonlight”, a short story, alegretto7 posted at AHA in July 2008 (you can find it here), it’s a little piece about what would have happened if Bingley had returned to Hertfordshire but without Darcy. The story then takes place three years later, at the christening of the Bingley’s first child, a daughter.

At first the story is very melancholy, painfully so, as both Darcy and Elizabeth have given up hope to ever get together and are determined never to marry. A little excerpt of Elizabeth’s point of view.

Lizzy had always found a fault with every man she met since him. They were too amiable, too talkative, not intelligent enough, not willing to argue with her over books or philosophy, or simply not handsome.

Then at the evening of the christening finds the two alone, Lizzy hears somebody playing a song so full of ache and longing which draws her to the music room. It’s Darcy who plays Beethovens Moonlight Sonata (that’s where the title of the story comes from, another notation of the moonlight sonata would be Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2), which leads them to a discussion about love and loss. I won’t give away the ending

The whole story itself is simply perfect, perfectly drawn characters and settings and the atmosphere simply fits. Even the musical background is perfect (I’m listening to Wilhelm Kempff playing the Moonlight sonata while I’m writing this blog entry – link to youtube) and I was melting when I realized that Darcy was playing it. In addition to that allegretto’s style and descriptions are wonderful, and you feel very close to both Darcy and Elizabeth when you get to know their thoughts. I have to admit that had a bit watery eyes when I read their initial thoughts about their feelings for each other, about how much heartache they suffer because they both thought that their love was without hope.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read this story by now, I think more than ten times, as – as mentioned – it’s one of my favourites and I can recommend it without a guilty conscience to everyone. Who doesn’t like this story, him/her cannot be helped IMHO

Well, now that I’ve announced yesterday that I’d kidnapp this blog, I might as well tell you something about my addiction (ha, Fiora! I managed to get an alliteration in my title, too! )

First of all, Angelika is my real name, I’m simply too lazy to come up with a good nickname and I’m also too lazy to remember them. Sometimes I go by the nickname of Amerna, which is in the end also only an combination of my first name’s initials, so that’s also not so far away from my real name.

I discovered fanfiction in 2005, I was 16 by then. It started very innocently when I was bored on a Friday evening (I think) and I wondered what “Bits of Ivory” at pemberley.com was. BIG mistake – I don’t know how many fanfictions I read on that single weekend and afterwards I was lost. Imagine my surprise when I then discoverd the DWG, an even bigger and more active fanfiction site!

I couldn’t wait for my 18th birthday when I would finally be able to register at HG (of which I had heard somewhere, although by then it was generally thought to be “the site which must not be named”). I have read loads of fanfictions in my life, loads, but only in the Jane Austen genre and one author of Lord of the Rings fanfiction (the one and only Zita).

Fanfiction is also one of the reasons I met Fiora, we had common interest, which we didn’t know by then when we “met” online. Fanfiction now is a addiction, you can really say so. I check all the boards on a regular basis and it’s not enough now. After I had read my way through all the archived stories, I can’t get enough anymore, I want more each day (although I know by experience that a writer’s means are – unfortunately – limited).

I have to say that I’m a fanfiction snob, I do read modern and Regency JA fanfiction, but I don’t read everything and even some things I liked sometime in the past have become worse. They are good, but sometimes I ask myself, why I can’t find a story extraordinary anymore. Maybe I was spoilt by all the excellent premium stories I’ve read in between, maybe because I’ve grown up and developed my own “taste” so to speak, maybe because with time and so many stories you confuse things in your memory and you combine things wrongly, maybe, maybe, maybe.

But I’m a fanfiction lover and IMO it’s not only an art but also the biggest compliment a fan can make to an author. What else can you want as an author that your readers identify so much with a beloved character that they imagine what happend afterwards or what would have happend, if…? I can’t understand people who look down on fanfiction writers and think them to be wannabe authors that don’t have the talent to create their own characters and therefore have to borrow other’s. Just my two cents.

I always try to be more active at posting boards, however, I have always good intentions but I cannot keep them *blushes* I have blamed my language abilities in the past but now that I write this blog in English, have courses at university in English and my company’s language is English, I can no longer use this as an excuse. Well, I guess, I again have to say, that I’m to lazy, but I’ll try to improve myself and I’ll (to end this stupid little rant about me in the spirit of noone less but our dear lady ) practice.

I have had this article in the drafted section for a relatively long time but only today I had the time to finish it. Today – as you may have noticed, is Blognapping Day 1. Yeah, maybe I’m a bit crazy because my loyal partner in crime – Fiora – has deserted me *cries* She’s gone to New York and will only return on the 14th of April which means I have to survive 10 days (!) without her. So, apart from my obvious envy (she’s in New York! While I’m visiting my parents in a little village near to the Dutch border) I also miss her – what’s a girl to do then? I’ll tell you, I’m kidnapping this blog. I’m on holiday this week before starting in a new department next week and therefore I have time, so I’ll hopefully write one blog entry a day for the next seven days and I have called this blognapping because the first thing I did was changing the appearance of this blog to a Mac-theme (I’m a devoted Mac fan) and then I’ll do things on this blog about which I won’t confer with Fiora – because she’s not here >:) So for the next seven days this blog is mine! *evil cackle*

So, beginning with the original title I never thought that I would come so far that I would actually recommend a story posted at fanfiction.net. FF.net and I, we do have a very, very, very rocky past. FF.net was the first site I dared to post a story on, I still have an account with six (German of course) JA-stories there (my pen name is Amerna) however I have long learned to loathe FF.net. I don’t mean to badmouth a site so all in all I’ll just say that I think the site is somehow loveless and it’s more about quantity than quality. And apart from that, the handling of the site sucks (IMO).

There are few singular and very good stories on FF.net in the Jane-Austen-genre as many authors crosspost their stories on such sites as AHA, DWG, Mrs. Darcy etc. and this is why I’m less active at FF.net, however I found one and this one is really a gem, it’s called “Personally, I’d rather lick sand” and it’s by orchidvines, a young author of only 17 years (and I already envy her talent!).

Ever opinionated Lizzy Bennet is in for a knotted year. Manuscripts must be salvaged, revenge must be taken, and arrogant men must be stomped into the dust. Well, maybe with less melodrama. But who ever claimed the Bennets weren’t theatrical? Modern Day. (this is the link )

Personally, I’d rather lick sand (or PIRLS as Fiora and I affectionately call the story (hopefully I’ll be ready to post something about our abbreviation issue later in the week) is a modern version of P&P in which Elizabeth is a student and aspiring writer and Darcy the heir of a publishing house who (first of all) rejected her manuscript, is the brother of Lizzy’s roommate Georgiana and then did all the other things we know him to do from canon.

There are many things that make this story readwhile (does this word exist?) like for example the references to things I like or  some undescribable funny things which make me snort with laughter (example: “You’ve dialed the Awkward Hotline; leave your monosyllabic answers and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”), however one thing to point out is orchidvines style as she chose to tell the story partly from Lizzy’s point of view with a first-person-narrator. And this is just great! It fits perfectly and as I have recently had my try at writing a story with a first-person-narrator I know how difficult it is, but orchidvines manages it perfectly (and have I already mentioned that I envy her talent?).

So, in the end – Personally, I’d rather lick sand is almost finished now, only a few more chapters so it’s also safe for all the angst weenies out there, I will miss this story. Go ahead and read it – I promise you won’t regret it!