This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

Lutetium is the 13th story in my Chemistry series, and tells the story of Max, Victoria and Kate's summer holiday in Paris. It's largely a travelogue, but there's also a character story for Kate. I've also included a photo gallery below, from the trip that inspired this story.

The story is now complete; you can read it on AO3 here: Lutetium.

Chapter 3: "We have to climb that?"

Chapter 4: What Kate was drawing (and the page header for What They Saw at the Top.)

Chapter 5: On L’Allée des Cygnes, and a view back to a previous day.

Chapter 7: Three graves and a message:

Chapter 8: The sculpture garden at the Musée Rodin:

Chapter 9: Visiting the Musée d'Orsay.

Chapter 10: At the Musée National d'Art Moderne:

I've been a fan of the musical Wicked for a good long time -- I've seen the show three times and listened the soundtrack countless more. I must confess, however, that while the novel it's based on is on the very lon list of novels I've started, it's also on the very short list of novels I never finished.

I've dabbled with the idea of writing some fanfic for a while too and, like all right-thinking people, I ship Glinda and Elphaba (let's face it, it's pretty much cannon.) I started writing a story which departs from the script in the (too me) obvious point during Defying Gravity, if only because (until recently) I'd never come across another fic that did so. Anyway, I never really got anywhere much with that, but then along came this tweet containing the headline image above, and I couldn't help but write a story about Elphaba and Glinda going to Pride.

You can read the result on AO3 here: Oh, for the Rainbow!

It's International Fanworks Day again! Last year, I used it as a kick in the behind to get me into finally posting some of the fanfic I'd been working on, since one of them conveniently matched AO3’s challenge prompt.

This year I decided to write something specifically for the AO3 challenge, whatever it was – and when they finally announced it on Monday, it turned out to be the same as last year’s. Oh, well! This time around, I wanted to play with a couple of fandoms I hadn’t touched before: Lucifer, which I’ve been watching from the start, and The Good Place, which I only recently (and very rapidly) got into.

You can read the result on AO3 here: Being Evil Has a Place

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

When I started writing Piece by Piece, it was supposed to be a shortish Max/Dana story with Kate as a strong supporting character. Somewhere along the line, Victoria decided she wanted to barge into the story, and I realised that it might be interesting to see her perspective on the events. I decided to go with a diary format both to try something different, and to allow for covering the same event in to parellel stories without having to duplicate great swathes of dialog, etc.

You can read the story on AO3 here: Fallin’ to Pieces

This series is another spin-off from my Echo Park anthology. It consists of two parallel stories in the same timeline but from the perspective of different characters.

• Piece by Piece (posting chapters) First person Max/Dana
• Fallin’ to Pieces (posting chapters) Victoria’s journal

You can find the series on AO3 here: Life in Pieces

This post contains spoilers for the Chronicles of Alsea.

The Chronicles of Alsea rapidly became one of my favourite book series after first coming across them over the Christmas holiday last year. Unfortunately, what with lesbian science fiction being a somewhat niche market, my usual shiny-new-canon search for fanfic turned up nothing, so I decided to try writing some myself. It’s a what-if story that considers what might have happened if Ekatya hadn’t come to her senses on the shuttle when first trying to leave Alsea.

You can read the story on AO3 here: Broken Bond

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

This will be the penultimate story in my Echo Park anthology, and I wanted to try my hand at a new ship, so I decided to go for a Max/Dana pairing set after the Sacrifice Chloe ending. Somewhere along the line, it seems to have gotten away from me, and after several successive chapters turning out not to be the last one, I gave up, added a parallel story and plotted a multi-year outline for where it’s going…

You can read the story on AO3 here: Piece by Piece

This post contains spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight.

So, I was re-reading the Buffy season eight comics, and I was reminded of certain… annoyances. In particular, the whole Buffy/Satsu thing almost feels like it’s there purely to set up the gag where pretty much every other character finds them in bed together. After that, it seems to be quickly swept under the rug and Buffy goes straight back to being 100% heterosexual – and various people seem to feel the need to remind her of this. Grrr argh. So I decided to take a break from the other fics I was working on and write this instead.

You can read the story on AO3 here: Oranges and Lemons

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

I've posted the antepenultimate story in my Echo Park anthology, and this time it’s about Maximum Victory. Rather than trying to find a way to get those two characters together post-game (or even during it), I decided to go for a timeline where they already appear to be at least somewhat friendly (or, at any rate, where Victoria seems to want to be friends with Max). That also gave me the chance to explore what happens to the Max that’s left behind when her primary self changes history. Last, but most certainly not least, I wanted to give the Chloe from that timeline… if not a happy ending, then at least some happiness.

Actually, scratch that. You know how authors sometimes write about their characters taking on a life of their own? Chloe had some… very definite ideas about how this story should progress, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue with her about it. Some of that didn’t really fit with the original story I was telling, so there are already some sequels in the pipeline, even as I post the first chapter of this…

The story is now complete; you can read it on AO3 here: Oxygen

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

This series is a spin-off from one of the stories in my Echo Park anthology. It’s set in the alternate timeline where Chloe is disabled; initially this was because I wanted to write a Max/Victoria story using the very different starting dynamic there, but soon grew to explore their interactions with Chloe and then Kate. I ended up having a bunch of additional ideas which either didn’t really fit into the original story I wanted to tell, or would have pushed the rating beyond the ‘T’ I want to restrict the Echo Park anthology to.

Here’s the current list of stories, you can view the series on AO3 here: Chemistry

• Oxygen (complete) Max and Victoria build a relationship together, and a friendship with Chloe.
• Hydrogen (complete) Victoria relates the story of her summer romance in London.
• Buckminsterfullerene (posted) Chloe explains just what her chair means to her.
• Promethium (complete) The Scooby Gang of Blackwell solve the Mystery of the Dark Room.
• Osmium (complete) Chloe feels left behind, her parents are overwhelmed.
• Ozone (complete) Max, Victoria, and Chloe become ever closer.
• Gold (complete) Christmas/New Yer special
• Uranium-235 (complete) Friendships evolve as Chloe's condition worsens
• Lead (complete) The girls deal with Chloe's passing.
• Silcon (complete) Posthumous messages from Chloe.
• Tellurium (on hiatus) Chloe and Rachel reunite in the afterlife.
• Argentum (complete) Kate does something about her crushes.
• Lutetium (complete) The trio spend their summer in Paris.
• Graphite (on hiatus) The next installment...

I've just posted another story from my Echo Park anthology, which is an entirely unnecessary crossover with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Rather than chasing down Skye, Phil Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. team are investigating a temporal anomaly in coastal Oregon. Can they help Max & Chloe wrap up their investigation and deal with that pesky storm?

You can read the story on AO3 here: Heads

So, I’m kinda late to the podcast party. I dimly remember looking at them when the phenomenon first took off, deciding that they were mostly like talk radio, and losing interest. Fast forward a few years, and I find myself reading a fanfic called Four Girls on the Road], which was tagged on AO3 as a crossever between Life Is Strange (Video Game) and Alice Isn’t Dead (Podcast).

Generally, I avoid crossover fanfic where I’m not familiar with all the fandoms involved (partly because I know I’m going to miss stuff, and partly due to spoilerphobia if I ever want to get into the other canon), but in this case it was the sequel to a non-crossover. I was no more than a couple of chapters in before I decided that I had to go and listen to this podcast. We were on holiday at the time, but thankfully my parents’ place (deep in rural France) has pretty decent Internet access these days, so I soon had the first episode downloaded and started listening. Not long after that, I had all the episodes downloaded.

Alice Isn’t Dead takes the form of a non-linear series of CB transmissions by a truck driver who’s searching America for her missing (and long presumed dead) wife, the titular Alice. Quickly, the narrator is drawn into all sorts of weird (and frequently terrifying) supernatural goings-on, and – rather more slowly – begins to uncover a vast conspiracy. I reallly can’t recommend this enough, the podcast has recently finished up its second season with a final one due next summer.

What triggered this post was the news a couple of days ago that Alice has both a book due out late next year, and a TV show in development. I shall remain… cautiously optimistic about both. Translations from one media to another don't always go well, but with Joseph Fink (the creator of the podcast) writing the book and as one of the exec producers on the show, I'm hopeful. Although, if they don't hire Jasika Nicole (the narrator of the podcast) to front the TV show, I'll be bitterly disappointed – she does, after all, have the genre TV chops as one of the series regulars on Fringe.

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

I’ve posted another story in my Echo Park anthology. Having played with stories following each of the endings to the game, some where I magically hand-wave away the storm altogether, and one where I combined the worst of both, It's time for the third way - sacrifice Max. For all that, it’s perhaps not the most serious of stories…

You can read the complete story on AO3 here: Satellite News

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

I've posted the first chapter of a new story in my Portland Ninja series, itself a spinoff of my Echo Park anthology. It continues the story I began in Buck Rogers, but with more of a focus on Max’s super-heroic exploits. I'll be posting chapters as I write them (so, sporadically, at best) rather than waiting until I'm completely finished.

You can read the story so far on AO3 here: Flash Gordon

This post contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

I’ve posted another story in my Echo Park anthology. This is another Kate/Victoria fic, but unlike Bug it takes place immediately following on from the game. It’s set in another branch of the multiverse where Max doesn't have her powers, but does still have flashes of memory from the “real” timeline. I wanted to try exploring the dynamic between a Victoria who’s broken not just by what she did to Kate, but the betrayal by Nathan & Jefferson, and a Kate who’s struggling not just with the events of the game, but with something else as well…

The story is now complete; you can read the it on AO3 here: Tell All Your Friends