["Overage"?]

From a purely personal perspective, old age is very much a state of mind. I've known people who acted much older than their chronological age, and then there are people like me who get challenged on their age constantly. Despite being six years older than my husband, most people assume I'm roughly that much younger than he is. Go figure. I attribute it to the fact that I never cry if I can resort to being a sarcastic bitch and/or laughing instead, and damned good genes (thanks, Mom!).

Well, that and sex just gets better as I get older.

[Review Replies for Alchemy]

I've been concentrating my writing in the NWN fandom, and there's a small core of decent writers who do give some good concrit. We've gotten to know each other pretty well, and I can count on them to poke me hard when I go off on a tangent. A lot of it is via PM, which is fine by me.

And yes, I did NaNo this year for the first time. It occurred to me that I was sustaining better than novel length on fanfics, and when my muse gets cranked, I'm good for some seriously scary output. NaNo is harder in that I'm not taking time to edit as I write, and my inner editor required a massive intervention as a result. I also tried not to write elf smut for NaNo, which was a huge mistake, and one which shall not be repeated. The challenge is a blast, though. I took today off, but I'll reach the 50k words tomorrow by my word count widget. I'll add a little more and submit Sunday, since I hear their word count widget is not as generous as mine. Margins of error, my new golden rule.

I'm good with about 5 hours of sleep, as long as I keep pounding the caffeine.

[Review Replies for Alchemy]

Heh. I'm going for it. I've gone insane, truly I have. I'm still writing the parent story.

And then there's the other story languishing on my HD because I really need to spice it up more, and didn't want to make heads explode elsewhere. I started the rewrite, trying to tame it, and now I get to put back all the parts I cut out, and ramp those up.

Of course, NaNo should be done by Sunday, which will give me back that time, and since the family's already trained not to bother me unless blood is involved...

Sleep is vastly overrated anyway.

[Review Replies for Alchemy]

Oh, gods... I'm not sure if I love you or hate you, KS. It occurred to me that I could most likely post a rewrite of the relevant sections of the parent story, edited to include all the good bits I had to edit out while writing it, and to exclude a lot of extraneous plot stuff that works elsewhere but really doesn't fit the slant of this fic.

On the bright side, the writing is basically done. I just need a more reliable source of my current favorite coffee, preferably administered intravenously.

[Review Replies for Alchemy]

I suppose the logical place for me to start is to say that while I'm not new to writing fan fiction, I'm new to writing on AFF.

Alchemy is actually a plot bunny that latched onto my ankle with nasty sharp teeth and refused to go away. It spun itself off a rather long fanfic called Stormborn over on (cough-cough)FFnet, in which a certain sarcastic elven wizard features prominently. Because he is who he is, he insisted that I write a back story for him, and that would be right about when my ankle came under attack. I'm trying to stick to both the OC game campaigns for NWN and NWN2, as well as the character development I've done in the parent story, while still writing the parent story, a NaNo entry and a few other projects. I am now officially addicted to espresso and chocolate.

Having said that, I wanted to reply to my two wonderful reviewers, Shadow Knight and wanderingaddict. It's always encouraging for a first story to get attention so quickly.

Shadow Knight: I do agree that the rape scene is sketchy. I will admit to actually having a great deal of trouble writing that at all. I much prefer consensual sex, which puts me in a bind when I need to write noncon. And yes, the snark develops over the course of the fiction, as Chapter 2 shows. I've never seen Sand as fluffy in the slightest, and even in the throes of passion, he is still the same edgy, sarcastic elf we all love. I'm glad the sex works in Chapter 2, and I will have to work on spicing it up a little more, since Vale and Sand are not a one-night stand by any means. There's some big time jumps, which is why I did include dates throughout the chapter. I was hoping to imply, but probably need to make it clearer, that Sand has spent nearly a year in contact with Vale, and has been interested in Vale, but still resents being forced to work for Neverwinter. And, because I am an utter geek, thank you for loving the elven! I actually work from the glossary and grammar rules, and while it can be painstaking to find a way to phrase something, I love the challenge. Finally, this really is my first slashfic, so I'm loving the feedback. My elves don't view same gender relationships as out of the ordinary, so I can't see making them stick to purely het affairs, even if the parent story is het.

wanderingaddict: I actually feel like I should begin by saying this is partially your fault, you know. I read Ceald Amothien first on FF, and then here, and was totally blown away. I am very much a fan of Valen, and gods-be-damned, that was HOT! Okay, fangirl rant over... Vale is a character that really screams to be developed, in my opinion. He's snarky, powerful, and he's an elf, which should pretty much say it all. And then there's Sand, also snarky, most likely powerful (but not sharing that with the Neverwinter crew) and an elf. It had to happen. As far as my timeline for Alchemy goes, it begins well before the NWN OC campaign, will surf past that and the NWN2 OC campaign, and end up well beyond that. For the record, I am pretending that WotC's 4e crap does not exist, and the Spellplague never happened.

Anyway, I will check back here, and would love to hear more from you, since I am having way too much fun with my elves and have a feeling I might be revising another story that's been bouncing around my HD to fit AFF.