Luzula

This has been lingering unposted for some time, because there were some details I needed to fix. My brain is now unfortunately fogged by a cold, so I hope my judgment was not impaired when I filled in the details and then posted... As always, thanks to garonne for beta reading!

A Rich Harvest (2511 words) by Luzula
Fandom: The Jacobite Trilogy | The Flight of the Heron Series - D. K. Broster
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant, Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant/Keith Windham
Characters: Ewen Cameron, Alison Grant (Jacobite Trilogy)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Everybody Lives, Established Relationship, farming
Summary: Alison, getting used to married life at Ardroy.

Welcome, and I am so happy that we share this rare fandom! I hope you have fun writing. : )

( Mr Rowl, The Wounded Name, Kidnapped, Flight of the Heron, Lady Eve's Last Con )

Hello, and thank you so much for writing for me! Sorry the letter is late...I moved a week ago, and am still quite busy with that.

( Requested fandoms: Flight of the Heron, The Wounded Name,  )

All right, here's the first chapter of my current WIP! \o/ I have got over 20K so far, and will be posting in chapters as I go.

Far Frae the Bonny Hills and Dales (5843 words) by Luzula
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant
Characters: Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron, Alison Grant (Jacobite Trilogy), Lachlan MacMartin, Margaret Cameron, Lord Aveling (Jacobite Trilogy), Earl of Stowe (Jacobite Trilogy)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Grief/Mourning, Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Penal Transportation, Slow Burn
Summary: Ewen is brought to trial in Carlisle and convicted, but sentenced to another fate than the scaffold.

I now have a new computer, but none of my files are gone, because I back things up. I have lost all my Firefox tabs and bookmarks though, but perhaps a clean slate is not all bad. Let it gooo, let it gooo...

I'm at the family summer place and graaaaading student essays and generally very busy. But this morning I went birdwatching with my dad and saw, among other species:
- two vigilant whooper swans with seven adorable newly hatched cygnets, who hadn't even left the nest yet,
- a red-backed shrike sitting still on a branch,
- a couple of horned grebes with their strange red eyes.

Also, I have received gifts! : D For unsent_letters_exchange I received A Former Acquaintance, where Jill and Kitty meet again post-canon when Lady Trecastle spreads malicious rumours about them, and Known Jacobite, Cameron of Ardroy, which is loosely inspired by events in GitN and where Keith has to deal with having Ewen as his prisoner, while his superior officers want information about Archie from him. I love epistolary fic, and both of these do a great job of showing what's going on even when important events happen off-page.

It cannot remotely be said that I have been in a writing slump lately, given that I have written over 50K this year so far. But still I've been feeling a little bit like something was off, and it's because I have not been working on a long fic. Since the beginning of 2020 I have written four Heron works that are 100K or more, and one that is 50K. I've been missing that feeling of having a long arc to work on, and I'm happy to say that I have now started work on another longfic! \o/

I have been toying around with various ideas, such as the sedoretu fic, and the crossover with Flemington. But the plots of those have refused to solidify so far. A couple of days ago I started working on what I'm calling the transportation AU, where Ewen is sentenced to transportation. Later on, Keith is posted to the West Indies and discovers him there… This story will have some challenges, namely dealing with slavery. : / But last night I was thinking about the story and it did that wonderful thing where the plot just starts blooming and embellishing itself in your head, which is such a great feeling! So now I think I have a grip on the plot and emotional arc of the thing. : D

I do have one other WIP which is a short story with Ewen/OMC, Ewen/OFC, where two members of the French aristocracy upon Ewen’s arrival in Paris consider that he is the finest piece of manhood they have seen that season. The OC:s are a Comtesse and her gay best friend. This is admittedly a fun story, but it's also slow going to write, because French aristocracy. Er, and it is also the anti-Liaisons Dangereuses, because I cannot bear being cruel to 20-year-old Ewen. (I could probably be cruel to 20-year-old Keith; I don’t know what’s up with that—perhaps partly because Ewen in canon bears no scars of that kind, whereas Keith does.)

I didn't plan this sequel to start with, but after I finished A Double Nature, I got to thinking that I've only written established relationship fic for Ewen and Alison, and that it might be interesting to write them falling in love when they've both loved and lost before. And indeed I really enjoyed writing this, and think it turned out well! It's interesting to compare one's feelings towards different ships: in a way, I suppose I do ship Keith/Ewen more or at least differently, since I would never write a story where they break up and then Ewen gets together with Alison. OTOH, I've written it the other way round multiple times (but Ewen and Alison breaking up was always in the backstory of the fic--I don't think I'd want to write a full version of that).

Love and Loss (12302 words) by Luzula
Fandom: The Jacobite Trilogy | The Flight of the Heron Series - D. K. Broster
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant, Past Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham
Characters: Ewen Cameron, Alison Grant (Jacobite Trilogy), Margaret Cameron, Hector Grant
Additional Tags: past major character death, Romance, Grief/Mourning, Courtship, Werewolves
Series: Part 2 of A Double Nature
Summary: A few years after the Rising, Ewen meets a comrade-in-arms from the Rising in Maryburgh, who is accompanied by his widowed sister.

Thanks for Garonne for beta reading!

I just had an idea: could I manoeuvre Keith into the Jacobite army and Ewen into the Hanoverian one?

And I think I can: actually there was a prominent Wyndham politician who was a Jacobite, so it's quite plausible that Keith's family could have been Jacobite. What if Keith's father on his deathbed extracted a promise from Keith that he would support a Jacobite rising? Keith himself might have mixed feelings about this, but when he is so conveniently captured at the outset of the Rising, there's an excellent opportunity to follow his family tradition and his father's last wish and join up.

As for Ewen, I don't think I can maneuver him into the Hanoverian army as long as he is a Cameron chieftain. But what if he were a younger son without land of his own? I mean, Alan Breck Stewart was in the British army before Prestonpans, probably just as a job and a way to gain experience, and Cluny McPherson had a commission in the British army before he changed sides (there are more examples). So it's not unreasonable.

I have not yet thought further about this in terms of engineering interesting plot situations where Keith and Ewen could meet--any ideas? : D

It's always nice when someone goes on a reading spree and leaves kudos on a long string of your old stories, which happened to me today. \o/

Anyway! I have finished the werewolf story and my assignment for candyheartsex. I might write some treats for the latter, but aside from that it's time for a new longfic project. Last year I made a poll for that, and I see that now I have written one of the stories on that poll (the werewolf one, which ended up at 35K), but besides that I also had new ideas and wrote three other stories in the 10K range and various shorter ones.

So what next? Some of the stories in that poll still don't have a settled plot (the Flemington crossover), or would require more research I still haven't done (the fairy tale one and the transportation one), or is too similar in tone to something I've written recently (the transportation one), or there's a snag in the plot/relationships I have yet to solve (the sedoretu one). So the Temeraire fusion it is! It ought to be fun and easy, and indeed it is proving to be so (I have 1K of it so far). I'm not even sure it will be that long--it might just end up at 10K or so, just clothing the beginning of the book in new worldbuilding. If I don't end up re-plotting the war with dragons, that is...but I don't think I will.

Meanwhile I also have various short ideas, which might end up as treats in exchanges or just as something to take a break with.

Here's what I wrote and recorded last year! AO3 says I wrote 190K, but I had about 100K of "Three Strands" written at the beginning of the year. So subtracting that, and adding the 30K of the werewolf WIP, I wrote about 130K, which I'm happy with. I have also crossed the milestone of 1,000,000 words posted on AO3! \o/

My main achievement this year is finishing Three Strands, of which I am quite proud! Eight of my stories this year were written for exchanges, and the other two (or three, counting the werewolf WIP) were longer. I think this pretty well describes my current mode: plug away steadily at a longfic, while taking breaks occasionally for shorter stuff. Although (like last year) I did also write pretty substantial fics for Yuletide. I am now in a steady long-term relationship with my current fandom, and have plenty of ideas left to write in it.

Podfic-wise, I've had a few very productive years, and have now begun taking it easier and letting the podficcing lapse for a while--I haven't recorded anything the last few months. Probably I will eventually do another Broster book at Librivox? Otherwise I have no plans, except to keep teaming up with authors for pod_together, which is a lot of fun.

Flight of the Heron fic:
Three Strands, Braided Together: 'As the threads begin to twist themselves at your first meeting,' said Old Angus, 'so will they continue to shape themselves at the rest—three strands, braided together at the end.' Keith/Ewen/Alison, 148,200 words
A Point of Honour: Ewen has gone down to Fort William to visit Keith; meanwhile, a visitor from Mingary Castle arrives at the fort... Keith/Ewen, 4,200 words
A Pup of Lassie's: In a public room in York, Keith overhears a Yorkshire farmer telling a story he has heard before... Keith/Ewen/Alison, 3,700 words
Brother of His Wolf's Mate (Come When Ye May): Keith and Ewen deal with the aftermath of their wolves' mating, and with the consequences of their mate-bond. Keith/Ewen, 10,400 words
Preserv'd for Posterity: Dear Sir, I have not the Honour of being known to you, & you will no doubt wonder at a Stranger writing to you without an Introduction, but I must hope that you will excuse the Liberty when I have explain'd my Purpose. Ewen & Robert Forbes, 1,700 words
The Flight of the Geese: Ewen flies south with the migrating geese. Keith/Ewen, 800 words
The Marrow of His Heart: When Lachlan comes back to the shieling at Beinn Laoigh to find Ewen gone, he must do everything he possibly can to track him down and help him to escape—with the help of an unlikely ally along the way. Lachlan & Keith and Lachlan & Ewen gen, 12,500 words

Le Guin fic:
A Digit of Mishnory: Therem in exile: gutting fish, being one of many, and being alone. Therem gen, 800 words
Estraven the Traitor: I had heard the story of Estraven the Traitor many times during my childhood. Sorve gen, 500 words
The White Ladies of the Ring: There was a sorcerer imprisoned in the Labyrinth, and Arha had told Kossil that she would kill him—but she did not want to. Perhaps she needed to ask someone for help... Penthe/Tenar, 7,900 words

Podfic and audiobooks:
Three Strands, Braided Together, by me (Keith/Ewen/Alison, 16h 33 min)
Nearly Enough, by sanguinity (Hornblower, Bush/Hornblower, 1h 50m)
The Gleam in the North by D K Broster (12h 54m)