![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Meadowville
Apr. 25th, 2026 03:59 pmFinal chapter is up: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77509026/chapters/220732166
Weekend Report
Apr. 20th, 2026 12:45 pmYesterday was Bicycle Day, and today is 4/20. I looked up Owsley Stanley AKA “the Grateful Dead’s chemist,” and fell down a rabbit hole of 1960s counter-cultural references. I’d only known of Wavy Gravy by name, but his Wikipedia page is impressive. Also in his Greenwich Village beatnik days he sort of looked like a thinner version of Victor Buono as “Bongo Bennie” on 77 Sunset Strip.
Simon Fisher Turner and others talk about scoring the reissue of The Great White Silence.
Plus you get someone from the BFI remarking “Gaumont, one of the (Terra Nova expedition’s) sponsors, had specifically requested footage of penguins, and by God did they deliver.”
Turner’s Wikipedia page is also a rabbit hole.
L.T.C. Rolt's ghost stories are kind of like M. R. James, except Rolt was an industrial historian rather than a medievalist, so a large number of the stories are about haunted railways tunnels, canals and in one case, a car-racing track. It’s a good thing I watched that video of a foundry a few weeks back, or I’d have had a hard time visualizing the climax of 'Hawley Bank Foundry.'
Even more so than James or other ghost-story writers I’ve encountered, Rolt will give the reader just enough information to guess what likely happened, and then end the story very abruptly, implications hanging. He’s also quite adept at something I’d subconsciously noticed with this genre and still don’t have a convenient name for.
See, the protagonist’s usual job in these stories is to be the witness to/victim of events, so he (the characters are usually men) doesn’t actually do all that much. But at the same time, for the story to be believable we need to believe in him, so he’s got to be characterized economically, yet vividly.
Also the supernatural elements are scarier if our protagonist 'isn’t prone to flights of imagination.' In Rolt’s stories, that means we meet a gallery of veteran railway workers, hard-headed retired manufacturers from the Midlands, etc, along with the usual ambiguously-middle-class urban professionals on holiday. We usually meet them rather briefly.
Simon Fisher Turner and others talk about scoring the reissue of The Great White Silence.
Plus you get someone from the BFI remarking “Gaumont, one of the (Terra Nova expedition’s) sponsors, had specifically requested footage of penguins, and by God did they deliver.”
Turner’s Wikipedia page is also a rabbit hole.
L.T.C. Rolt's ghost stories are kind of like M. R. James, except Rolt was an industrial historian rather than a medievalist, so a large number of the stories are about haunted railways tunnels, canals and in one case, a car-racing track. It’s a good thing I watched that video of a foundry a few weeks back, or I’d have had a hard time visualizing the climax of 'Hawley Bank Foundry.'
Even more so than James or other ghost-story writers I’ve encountered, Rolt will give the reader just enough information to guess what likely happened, and then end the story very abruptly, implications hanging. He’s also quite adept at something I’d subconsciously noticed with this genre and still don’t have a convenient name for.
See, the protagonist’s usual job in these stories is to be the witness to/victim of events, so he (the characters are usually men) doesn’t actually do all that much. But at the same time, for the story to be believable we need to believe in him, so he’s got to be characterized economically, yet vividly.
Also the supernatural elements are scarier if our protagonist 'isn’t prone to flights of imagination.' In Rolt’s stories, that means we meet a gallery of veteran railway workers, hard-headed retired manufacturers from the Midlands, etc, along with the usual ambiguously-middle-class urban professionals on holiday. We usually meet them rather briefly.
Meadowville, Chapter 9
Mar. 29th, 2026 07:36 amhttps://archiveofourown.org/works/77509026/chapters/215938916
Walter and Livia continue their adventure underground. Hannah’s search for them takes her to an unexpected place.
Walter and Livia continue their adventure underground. Hannah’s search for them takes her to an unexpected place.
Weekend Update
Mar. 7th, 2026 10:02 pmPosted more Meadowville and Gentleman of the Shade.
Watched the first couple of episodes of Bookish, starring Mark Gatiss as Gabriel Book, who runs Book’s Books and solves mysteries on the side in 1947 London, along with his wife Trottie (Polly Walker) and assorted other characters.
Watched the first couple of episodes of Bookish, starring Mark Gatiss as Gabriel Book, who runs Book’s Books and solves mysteries on the side in 1947 London, along with his wife Trottie (Polly Walker) and assorted other characters.
Writing update
Jan. 20th, 2026 03:47 pmFinally put up a new chapter of WWMBD? (Ao3’s going down for a few hours tomorrow, for a code update or something, so read it tonight or wait): WWMBD (15246 words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 10/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Musicians, Academia, Romantic Comedy, Rock and Roll, Age Difference, 1990s, Smoking, Bodyswap, Trans Character
Chapters: 10/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Musicians, Academia, Romantic Comedy, Rock and Roll, Age Difference, 1990s, Smoking, Bodyswap, Trans Character
Gentleman of the Shade
Jan. 11th, 2026 08:29 pmFinally posted a new (short) chapter! https://archiveofourown.org/works/55953232/chapters/202134506
Meadowville
Jan. 11th, 2026 02:49 pmI’m trying to get back to my ongoing writing, but I’ve also finally decided to start posting Meadowville in weekly installments on Ao3, as it’s more-or-less complete and I’ve long since given up on the idea of trying to publish professionally. First couple of chapters are up:
Welcome to Meadowville (6791 words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Original Fiction, 1950s, Fantasy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Amnesia, Domestic Fluff, Period Typical Attitudes, though not always
Summary: Long Island, 1950. The Healys—Walt, Hanna, and their daughter Livia—aren’t quite the stereotypical American nuclear family they might appear to be at first glance, but they’re happy.
Then a mysterious mushroom ring appears around the neighborhood, and Walt begins to question his identity and childhood amnesia.
Welcome to Meadowville (6791 words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Original Fiction, 1950s, Fantasy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Amnesia, Domestic Fluff, Period Typical Attitudes, though not always
Summary: Long Island, 1950. The Healys—Walt, Hanna, and their daughter Livia—aren’t quite the stereotypical American nuclear family they might appear to be at first glance, but they’re happy.
Then a mysterious mushroom ring appears around the neighborhood, and Walt begins to question his identity and childhood amnesia.
Woke up early this morning thinking of The Wild Guys, a play from the 1990s that (fairly gently, iirc) satirized mythopoetic men’s retreats, which were a Thing at the time. Eventually I had to go look up Iron John: A Book About Men and Women Who Run With the Wolves to see who’d written them (Robert Bly and Clarissa Pinkola Estés, respectively).
As someone in SFF fandom, I don’t know how to feel about Jung-based movements. I get that some stuff is hard to convey except by analogy, or by constructing some kind of initiation ritual that puts people into a context where the thing you’re trying to tell them is more likely to make experiential sense. And of course I’m likely being unfair to Bly and Estes, whose writings may well be more down-to-earth than their popular image. Bly, at any rate, seems to have had a sense of humour, if this poem is anything to go by.
The advantage of fiction, and art and music, is that you can explore and play with these same kind of potentially-useful ideas without asserting them.
Meanwhile in my own mythopoetic life, I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to figure out if I’m having those menopausal hot-flashes people talk about, or if it’s just the late-September weather—the temperature has been swinging between twelve and twenty-four degrees here. Either way, I’ve spent so much of my life too cold that this, whatever it is, kind of feels like unlocking superpowers. Flame On!
As someone in SFF fandom, I don’t know how to feel about Jung-based movements. I get that some stuff is hard to convey except by analogy, or by constructing some kind of initiation ritual that puts people into a context where the thing you’re trying to tell them is more likely to make experiential sense. And of course I’m likely being unfair to Bly and Estes, whose writings may well be more down-to-earth than their popular image. Bly, at any rate, seems to have had a sense of humour, if this poem is anything to go by.
The advantage of fiction, and art and music, is that you can explore and play with these same kind of potentially-useful ideas without asserting them.
Meanwhile in my own mythopoetic life, I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to figure out if I’m having those menopausal hot-flashes people talk about, or if it’s just the late-September weather—the temperature has been swinging between twelve and twenty-four degrees here. Either way, I’ve spent so much of my life too cold that this, whatever it is, kind of feels like unlocking superpowers. Flame On!
Writing Update
Jun. 24th, 2025 05:03 pmI wasn’t planning to include a supernatural element in WWMBD? but, uh, after some waffling I decided a body-swap plot makes narrative sense*. So then I had to go back and rewrite the ending of the most recent chapter, since that’s where the swap would need to take place.
WWMBD (7759 words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 5/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Musicians, Academia, Romantic Comedy
* 1. Gives me a plot thread (trying to reverse the body swap)
2. I was going to switch to Sam’s PoV (still might eventually) but this way I can put Jim’s PoV in Sam’s body
3. There’s a detail about Sam that Jim hasn’t yet twigged to, and this is a hilariously awkward way for him to discover it
4. I think Sam’s reaction to having Jim’s body could be…interestingly mixed
WWMBD (7759 words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 5/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Musicians, Academia, Romantic Comedy
* 1. Gives me a plot thread (trying to reverse the body swap)
2. I was going to switch to Sam’s PoV (still might eventually) but this way I can put Jim’s PoV in Sam’s body
3. There’s a detail about Sam that Jim hasn’t yet twigged to, and this is a hilariously awkward way for him to discover it
4. I think Sam’s reaction to having Jim’s body could be…interestingly mixed
Late May Links and Stuff
May. 27th, 2025 02:48 pmFilm Noir fanfic vignettes, everybody! (mostly for I Wake Up Screaming)
I seem to be drifting into an obsession with Lionel Bart. Here’s a clip of him in the 1970s visiting the Stratford East Theatre Royal. Having seen a few other photos and clips, the man had a sincere commitment to Hats.
Enjoyed Albert Finney enough in The Green Man that I went looking for Dennis Potter’s Karaoke in which Finney is the protagonist and probable author stand-in (he’s also in the sequel, Cold Lazarus, but it sounds like he’s mostly a frozen head in that one). Accidentally watched the third episode first (ETA-- no wait, it was Episode Four), which was confusing—I’d a general idea of the plot from the Wikipedia entry, but I was starting to think “oh, so it starts near the end and then tells the story in flashback” and then I kept waiting for the flashback to start. Went back, found the first episode and watched that, which made more sense; although I’m now withdrawing at least half of the sympathy I felt for Richard E. Grant’s character after his beating in Episode Three Four Have also decided not to watch this one with Andrew as there’s at least three plot points that would likely be triggery for him.
Have a terrible feeling I’m going to have to read John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra for research purposes-– I mentioned in the latest chapter of Gentleman of the Shade that Eddy acted in a movie adaptation – it was just sort of a throwaway bit, but Mel speculated that Lambkin is going to track the movie down and watch it, and y’know, she’s right.
Have risked starting a new novel, well, multi-chapter original fic, anyway; two chapters posted so far: WWMBD
I seem to be drifting into an obsession with Lionel Bart. Here’s a clip of him in the 1970s visiting the Stratford East Theatre Royal. Having seen a few other photos and clips, the man had a sincere commitment to Hats.
Enjoyed Albert Finney enough in The Green Man that I went looking for Dennis Potter’s Karaoke in which Finney is the protagonist and probable author stand-in (he’s also in the sequel, Cold Lazarus, but it sounds like he’s mostly a frozen head in that one). Accidentally watched the third episode first (ETA-- no wait, it was Episode Four), which was confusing—I’d a general idea of the plot from the Wikipedia entry, but I was starting to think “oh, so it starts near the end and then tells the story in flashback” and then I kept waiting for the flashback to start. Went back, found the first episode and watched that, which made more sense; although I’m now withdrawing at least half of the sympathy I felt for Richard E. Grant’s character after his beating in Episode
Have a terrible feeling I’m going to have to read John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra for research purposes-– I mentioned in the latest chapter of Gentleman of the Shade that Eddy acted in a movie adaptation – it was just sort of a throwaway bit, but Mel speculated that Lambkin is going to track the movie down and watch it, and y’know, she’s right.
Have risked starting a new novel, well, multi-chapter original fic, anyway; two chapters posted so far: WWMBD
Just two totally normal men from the 1930s who are definitely not any of the Marx Brothers.
A propos of nothing in particular: 'When That Man Is Dead and Gone.'
Writing Quandary
Feb. 6th, 2025 02:45 pmAbout two days ago a narrative in my head got vivid enough I thought I’d better start writing it down. I might be able to incorporate it into a multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on—it fits with some imagery from earlier chapters and might provide some much-needed backstory. And I don’t want to get side-tracked from the multi-chapter fic, and it’s due a new chapter, and I don’t want to let down myself and the two people reading it.
Howwwwever, the idea is also showing signs of developing into its own stand-alone short story, possibly even something I could try submitting somewhere. I think it’s been a decade since I bothered trying to submit anything anywhere, but I can dream.
The obvious solution would be to write both versions—but I saw a tumblr post a few weeks back by a professional writer whose novel got flagged by her publisher’s anti-plagiarism filter, whereupon she had to explain to her editor that the reason her novel shared a couple sentences with a very sexually -explicit LotR fic posted on Ao3 a couple of years back was because she was the author of both, and had figured those lines were too good not to reuse in her professional work.
I wonder if simply setting the multi-chapter fic to members-only would be enough to keep it from being spotted in the admittedly-unlikely event that I try to get the other version published someday. Both my readers are Ao3 members, so it wouldn’t inconvenience them.
I wonder how often this kind of thing is going to be a problem, now that there’s an option to check for plagiarism by having a computer check every word in a work against everything else findable on the internet? Not to mention the cases that probably exist where a writer didn’t intentionally steal, but did subconsciously recall some turn of phrase from a story they read as a kid…
Howwwwever, the idea is also showing signs of developing into its own stand-alone short story, possibly even something I could try submitting somewhere. I think it’s been a decade since I bothered trying to submit anything anywhere, but I can dream.
The obvious solution would be to write both versions—but I saw a tumblr post a few weeks back by a professional writer whose novel got flagged by her publisher’s anti-plagiarism filter, whereupon she had to explain to her editor that the reason her novel shared a couple sentences with a very sexually -explicit LotR fic posted on Ao3 a couple of years back was because she was the author of both, and had figured those lines were too good not to reuse in her professional work.
I wonder if simply setting the multi-chapter fic to members-only would be enough to keep it from being spotted in the admittedly-unlikely event that I try to get the other version published someday. Both my readers are Ao3 members, so it wouldn’t inconvenience them.
I wonder how often this kind of thing is going to be a problem, now that there’s an option to check for plagiarism by having a computer check every word in a work against everything else findable on the internet? Not to mention the cases that probably exist where a writer didn’t intentionally steal, but did subconsciously recall some turn of phrase from a story they read as a kid…
Yuletide 2024
Oct. 21st, 2024 08:00 amGot my assignment on the weekend-- it seemed to me they came out faster this year. I was expecting it to take a week after sign-ups closed, but it was only about a day.
Obviously I can't say what fandom it's for. I will say it's one I added as an afterthought to my list of offers and had no particular plans to write for, but I had some ideas yesterday (and re-read the recipient's requests) and I think I can do something good with it.
Other fics will have to be tabled for the time being, naturally.
Obviously I can't say what fandom it's for. I will say it's one I added as an afterthought to my list of offers and had no particular plans to write for, but I had some ideas yesterday (and re-read the recipient's requests) and I think I can do something good with it.
Other fics will have to be tabled for the time being, naturally.
Yuletide 2024
Aug. 26th, 2024 02:30 pmThe Yuletide fic exchange heaves into view, which means that in a few weeks I’ll likely have to put both Spooked!...in Soho and Gentleman of the Shade on hold for a couple of months (tbh, Spooked!already stalled out a couple of months back), and also that I need to start thinking about what fandoms to nominate. Iirc you can only nominate fandoms that already have at least one fic on Ao3, and fewer than one thousand, I think?
