Over The Top nominated for a Bellie award

The Bellie Award nominations were announced last night on the Temptation podcast; and I am very honoured that OTT has been nominated in the category of Best Slash. It's a tough category with stiff (snicker) competition; and I'm pleased to be in such good company.

Voting opens on July 15. Vote early and often, my friends! ;)

Edited to add link to the list of nominees.

OTT mentioned on the Temptation podcast

Cdunbar, author of Resident Geek (featuring my favourite Geekward in the ficdom!!) and co-host of the Temptation podcast, recommended OTT in Episode 21. This episode also features Gustariana and Hmonster4, and discussion of the Indie Twific awards. Mention OTT takes place around the 1:44:30 timestamp.

Thanks, Christine!! :)

Days Go By, by Dirty Vegas

Unfortunately this video has had embedding disabled at the source, so I must supply a link rather than an embedded video. I could have embedded another video using the same song; but the Dirty Vegas vid is really pretty great. Well worth clicking on.

Starfish422 quoted on TLYDF

Manyafandom, author of The Arrangement and All I Ever Knew, contributed an article to The Lazy, Yet Discerning Ficster, called Smut 101: Choose Your Words Carefully.

It's a really good article for those considering writing fanfic lemons, examining the pitfalls often made by smut writers. My quote comes under the heading, "The Most Hated Words in Smut". Several other respected fanfic writers are interviewed as well!

The Bellies - Twilight fic awards

The Bellie Awards nominations are currently open!

From the site:

The Bellies are a light-hearted companion competition to the Eddies that run twice yearly, in Winter and in Summer. There is no judging component to the Bellies. All four nominee slots will be filled by the stories that receive the most nominations. Stories authored by Limona or Withthevampsofcourse are ineligible.

The thirteen categories for the Summer 2009 session are as follows:

* Canon Fic That's Better Than Canon: For any story written in character; this does not apply to any All-Human stories, but rather the ones taking place either pre-Twilight, during either Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, or Breaking Dawn but from another character’s point-of-view, or post-Breaking Dawn. As long as the story isn’t out-of-character (OOC), it counts.

* Best Comedy: For any story from any genre that tickles your funny bone. Can be Canon, AU, or AH.

* Plot You Wish You Came Up With: For any story that has a plot (meaning point of the story, ie “Edward never returns in New Moon” or “Edward is the King of the high school and Bella is the mousey new student. What happens when the nerd tames the school hussy?”) that is well-crafted, well-thought out, and so good that you’re slightly mad you didn’t come up with it yourself.

* Update You Twitter About: For any story you are the most excited to read about. You drop what you’re doing for this one, whether it’s work, thesis papers, feeding the hamster, feeding the husband, feeding the twins, etc.

* Alice You Wish Was Your Best Friend: For any story with the Alice character that you would like to have as your own BFF.

* Best Slash: For any story with excellent slash. Slash is an M-rated story that pits two usually non-homosexual characters of the same sex in a sexy situation. Can be M/M or F/F.

* Best Real Person Fic (RPF): For any story written about one of the actors portraying the characters in the series. RPFs are written about people who exist in real life.

* Favorite Darkward: For any story portraying Edward as much darker than his usual canon self. “Darkward” has come to mean an Edward who has a dark streak, whether it’s psychological, physical, spiritual, emotional, etc. “Darkward” is not your typical Edward, and may not be the romantic protagonist we all joined the fandom for.

* Best Banner: For any story whose advertisement “Banner” is appealing to you, whether you’ve seen it on a website or as the author’s signature in a forum.

* Most Re-readable: For any story you have or would read more than once. These are the stories you print out to enjoy over and over.

* Best Non-Smutty Story (Rated T or under): For any story that does not feature an "M" rating.

* Best Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST): For any story where two characters quite obviously want to jump each other’s bones, but for story arc, plot, and storytelling reasons, they simply do not.

* Best Twist on a Canon Quote: For any story that takes a line from the original saga and twists it to fit their own story. These tend to be the lines that are the most memorable, and are obvious to the reader that they’re a twist on the canon quote.

Click here to nominate your three favourites for each category!

Update schedule fail

Dear readers:

I have, obviously, not posted Chapter 22 according to my usual Friday posting schedule. I feel especially guilty failing at this after the simply mind-blowing response to Chapter 21 (355 reviews! That's a 3, with a 5, and then another 5! No decimals!).

The truth is that I was 2600 words into writing chapter 22, hated it, and decided to chuck the whole nerve-sucking thing and start again. As Shannon says, it has turned into a "red-headed stepchild", much as another one did (Chapter 14, I'm looking at you). I need to take a step back from it - just a small step, and a short one. I promise. I need to write a few lemons! Something happy.

So right now I'm working on my Age of Edward contest entry, and seriously considering writing an installment of We Three. I promise not to take too much time off from Over The Top - I just need to think about something else for a while.

Love you all. Mean it.

Rendezvous, by faite-comme-moi

I had the honour of being approached recently by faite-comme-moi, a reader of OTT, who asked if I would be interested in beta'ing a one-shot story for her. There were lots of reasons for me to say yes; and I am so glad I did.

Rendezvous is a Jasper & Alice fic, an entry for The Peenateers' Alice/Jasper one-shot competition. The rules of the competition were that the story had to be based on the line of a song. For Rendezvous, faite-comme-moi chose "It's Been A While" by Staind.

You may or may not be aware that I adore Jasper. Heh. Okay - reading this fic has done *nothing* to change that; in fact it's only given me more reason to love canon Jasper even more deeply than before.

I highly recommend checking out the contest entries, and please show some love to the authors for their submissions by voting sometime in the next fifteen days - voting takes place at the Peenateers' link above.

Between the Madness and the Fire, by ForeverYoung82

The subject matter of Between the Madness and the Fire, may not be for everyone - I will state that right off the bat. It involves a one-night stand between a high school teacher and his will-be-18-in-a-few-days student - neither of whom know how the other is about to enter their life. When they discover the truth, they resolve, both individually and together, to do the right thing.

I am enthralled with this fiction and this writer. It is not ForeverYoung82's first fic, so I may just need to hit up her profile for her other story which is currently at 39 chapters. Her spelling and grammar are flawless, of course; her dialogue is natural, never heavy-handed; and her characters are compelling, in their interactions with peripheral characters as well as with each other. I think she does well at sensitively handling the potentially-difficult subject matter.