A short bit about me

I write a lot, read a lot, love colors, and “What-if” scenarios.  And NaNoWriMo. NaNo is awesome.

So far I’ve published the fantasies, A Net of Dawn and Bones, Count Taka and the Vampire Brides: A Comedy of Epic Vampire Bromance!, Seeds of Blood, Pearl of Fire, Tell No Tales, and Oni the Lonely. I’ve also published a nonfiction book on worldbuilding in original fiction and fanfic, Gateway to Fiction.

For de-stressing, working on various fanfic. *G*

Sometimes I also do pretties. They help pay for book covers!

http://www.ebay.com/usr/violet_grower

If you see a piece of beadwork you’d like to get on my blog that’s not currently on sale on eBay or Etsy, leave a comment; unless that kind of beads has gone poof, I can make copies, and we can work out details through eBay or PayPal. 🙂

104 thoughts on “A short bit about me”

  1. So, all of your writing is totally awesome! I’ve had difficulty with the Urban Legends series though – I can’t seem to find all of the bits. Do you have a list/guide/recommended reading order for your fics?

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    1. They’re more or less posted in chronological order? The rare ones that aren’t, have a note inside. Frankly I’d just read them in the same order I wrote them.

      As for “all the bits” – there was one I had to take down because it was a songfic. Unfortunately I lost it in a computer crash. Drat.

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      1. Um… pretty sure I have that. (Hell, I have all of Urban Legends, including Gryph’s three stories that you use for the Godzilla stuff.) Which one is it? Can send it back to you – what format do you want it in?

        🙂

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  2. I have to say, I love your fanfic, and definitely read and reread them constantly. You have started me reading on fandoms I barely know, and your writing is so internally consistent, it is impossible for me to go back to the source material and wonder why they aren’t acting the way they “should” (aka Vatharically).

    I will be going on a 7 day cruise soon and I was planning to load up my phone with ebooks for reading. If you have no objections, I was hoping to add an anthology of the Urban Legends stories to make it easier–internet is unreliable aboard ship, I have been told. I’m using the story list found at http://traethlin.tripod.com/ as a starting point, and then just read the author notes in anything marked UL in your FF.Net author page.

    Not counting the 4 Deep Water ‘verse from Gryph/Macx, I have 54 stories listed — if I add Snowbound (Airwolf x Ghostbusters) and All I Need is A Miracle (Rorouni Kenshin x Gargoyles) there’s 56. ::boggles::

    I assume Miracle is chronologically at the beginning of UL but where does Snowbound fit in? Between ‘Tag’ and ‘Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong’, or somewhat earlier in the timeline? Any advise would be greatly appreciated!

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    1. Internet can definitely be less than reliable aboard ship, I’ve heard.

      Yikes, I lost access to the traethlin site years ago; that’s one reason I’ve started putting stuff up on AO3. 🙂

      Snowbound… Hmm. That should come not too long after Shades of White, I’m pretty sure.

      Download and enjoy! 🙂

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  3. I’m *really* looking forward to Embers as it is reposted on AO3, and the theoretical future Urban Legends series page. Thanks! I will stick it after Wild Things, since it is kind of a standalone but important intro for Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong.

    PS Flat Tire with Bad Guys is bringing the doom hammer on my heart. The military-civilian divide so starkly laid out is going to lead…someplace. Definitely someplace bad, but hopefully fixable.

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  4. I’ve really liked your fanfics. Its always fun to find people who actually do the research for their stories. I look forward to reading A Net of Dawn and Bones when I get the chance. And NaNo is awesome. Anyway, there was this bit in Embers that I’ve been curious about for a while. Is the smoke-sugar a real thing? Or did you come up with that?

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  6. Could you ever write an sequel based on the avatar world you made? The world building you had going on was so rich that I read it all within 3 days two years ago and have read it two more times completely since then. I love love love that world you have made. A sequel based on a new avatar (not korra but a new one!) or about an avatar from before would make me cry and die of joy.

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  9. So this is completely utterly unrelated to anything and everything, except that I just spotted this and it immediately made me think of A Net of Dawn and Bones:

    Do it. You know you want to. (I for sure would love to read it!)

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  10. considering the things I have to clean up at work, I’d welcome the chance to legitimately whack a monster!(monstergirls/kanmusu not included)

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  11. Happy Fanfic Author Appreciation Day! Thank you so much for writing. You’ve been one of my favorite authors since high school (8+ years, how time does fly) and I just want to say thanks for keeping on writing. You’ve always got a fresh angle on things, you always look at the consequences of canon actions in a way canon doesn’t, and it never gets too dark for hope. Thanks so much for continuing to write, even when RL sucks.

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    1. Thank you! Wow, it’s been well over a decade since I first posted something on Fanfiction.net; time does fly. 🙂

      Not sure where I read it, but someone roughly said that anyone can write dark stuff; all we have to do is look around. The real trick is writing something better than what we’ve got. Because that way we’ve got something to aim at to make our own personal lives brighter. 🙂

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  13. Hey, Im an old fan, I started reading back when you were still doing Embers. I was just wondering, Did you ever get around to posting the dragon love story between Ryuuko-hime and Kingami? Ive looked but if its out there I never found it. much love!

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  14. Ahh, I see. Thank you anyways! I appreciate you:) I just wanted to say thanks as well, I have a special kind of mental disorder that makes words difficult sometimes….. I made my SO read the dragon thoughts as you wrote them, and it really helped him understand me better. And I have never met anyone else who was able to accurately describe my brain when it goes haywire. Im forever grateful to you for bringing me the beauty that you did. Thank you.
    Look after yourself ❤

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    1. *Wry G* You might be amazed how many writers also have brain-to-word difficulties. People tend to become writers because they want to communicate. And that often means accurate communication is very hard.

      Oof. Glad the dragon POV helped! Differently wired nervous systems and sensory whiteouts real things, and very hard to deal with even when you know that’s what’s going on.

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  15. Hi, I sent you a message on Fanfiction.net about recording a podfic of Embers, the full thing is on the site. But the gist of it is that I love your story and what a chance to do it justice. If you have a response you can reach my at my fanfiction account Honeymon14 . Thank you for reading and have a nice day.

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  17. A reviewer said that Count Taka had too many in-jokes for people who hadn’t read your previous work.

    Speaking of which, the closest thing I have to a helpful book for Princess Rama is the Arthashastra, a hair-raising self-help manual from the Mauryan Empire.

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    1. I’m sorry, I just realized how that sounded and I was hoping to prevent this, if it exists, from cropping up again.

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  18. I can’t believe I didn’t find this before now. I always get alerts for your new fics as soon as you post them, but I didn’t find this until today. Why? I’m so ashamed. I’m Quatre Winner on fanfiction.net, though I doubt you’ll know me.

    I can’t figure out how to follow you atm, but know that I will be checking back frequently :3

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  19. I would like to submit a plotbunny for your consideration. I’m not as talented as meshing together two worlds as seamlessly as you or else I’d handle it. But, you are the undisputed queen of Kenshin alternate universe worldbuilding.

    What if the characters of Kenshin lived in Final Fantasy XIV’s Eorzea? Lalafell Yahiko and Roegadyn Sanosuke along with Hyur Kenshin and Kaoru – although you could have Kenshin be half-Elezen, I know you love making him nonhuman 😛

    While Eorzea isn’t very Japanese, there is a Japanese culture interacting with them as of Heavensward and I think Stormblood takes characters TO that culture. I’m seeing a lot of screenshots of NPCs in kimono. There’s also a war in the game’s backstory with the Garleans, if that helps.

    Someone in a XIV group is trying to glamour their character to look like Kenshin and it spawned the bunny.

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      1. Eh, no big 🙂 It’s a great game but I understand that being an MMO and requiring a buttload of time can be daunting. I had to stop playing when I started a second job simply because I didn’t have the time to do the daily and weekly quests, much less the new content as it was coming out. I just thought I’d toss the bunny to the queen before I tried to handle it.

        By the by, I reread Upon A Fiery Steed a few days ago and had the sudden image of the rubber Goa’uld going through ten days of captivity with Jack and Siler, Is it okay if I write that bunny? From the point of view of the rubber Goa’uld, mind you, and it’s going to be interesting to write the POV of an inanimate object.

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  21. I was finally able to order count taka (My budget doesn’t thank your amazing writing) – i got paperback of course, i want to be able to lend out my copy to all my friends. I’ve only gotten a few pages in but I can already tell I’m going to love it. Keep up the good work

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  22. Sorry if this is a double post I tried to leave this on a page you recently posted and it didn’t appear to show up if it has and I missed it I aplogise sincerely.

    I am thinking about doing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Log Horizon fanfic and since you have done some amazing work with both settings and the characters I’m considering using I was wondering if you had any advice.

    The basic idea is that after the events of Season 2’s Final Drusilla (dragging an unwilling Spike along with) threatens a magician about a way to access whatever Hell Dimension Angelus/Angel was dragged into. The corned and freaked out magician ends up blasting Spike/Dru into the world of Log Horizon.

    Now Shiroe and the various guilds of Akihabara have to deal with the Spike/Dru’s plans to establish themselves as Vampire Warlords int this new world. Politics, Magic and demons all collide in a epic mess.

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      1. Firstly thanks for responding to my inquiry. You raise a fair point in regards to the difficulties forSpike/Dru. Guess it’s back to the drawing board for that one.

        While I have your attention another fic idea/plot bunny I have been entertaining is a Magi/Bleach crossover which takes some inspiration from your excellent Avatar/Bleach: Zuko is Kaien’s reincarnation piece.

        My idea being that Ailababa and Morgiana of Magi are the reincarnations of Kisuke Urahara and Yoruichi Shihon who died in an alternate take of the final battle against Aizen.

        Due to Hogyuku meddling their souls ended up in the Magi verse where time moves at a faster rate in comparison to the Bleach universe. I was thinking of making it a collection pieces where the curious Captains/people close to Kisuke/Yoruichi find a way to access the Magi reality and drop in on the two. The reactions on both sides in these meetings promises to be interesting.

        I’m propably going to have the first such visitation be right after the end of Magi Season 2/The battle with the Medium. Maybe David connecting to the Medium weakened the barriers between worlds enough for Shinigami to drop in.

        I’m having a great deal of amusement imagining Ichigo’s reaction to a teenage Kisuke/Alibaba being the ruler of a country. Once the two start to remember things from their prior existences I can see them wanting to keep Ichigo far, far away from Sinbad. Because they would propably get along like a house on fire.

        Any thoughts/suggestions for interaction in this scenario?

        Regards,
        toxinvictory

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  25. I hope real life gets better soon! Because as much as I really want a continuation of Waking to Another Sky, I am willing to wait patiently. I don’t to be seen as whining and ignoring that authors have a life as well.

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  26. Youuuuu!!! My work has an infestation of Rats. NORWAY rats. We can hear them in the walls and vents. But we never see them. So now I’m even more twitchy about the stupid things. I would not be surprised to find that Hueco Mundo was renamed…

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  28. The Gundam Wing HD remaster made Duo’s eyes clearly purple… And Quatre’s are GREEN. Do you have strong feelings about this? I’ve gotten used to it and now pictures of him with blue eyes look strange.

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      1. Well, now we now /o/ Q has green and Duo is officially purple. Go check it out, everyone has slightly tweaked eye colors. It makes some crossover ideas of mine less plausible (pfft like they were before) but still workable /o/

        Incidentally, my plot bunnies are jumping around in your Blades of Blood universe.

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  30. By the way, I want to apologize for forgetting that you addressed the issue of second puberty in yuurei before. I think. Did I imagine that?

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  31. Hello, If you don’t mind, may I nudge a series in your direction? I’ve noticed your enjoyment of world building, deep character relationships, and prickly teenage boys in waaay over their heads, and a series that I love with a huge dearth of fics that fits the bill is Zatch Bell. I would probably actually consider selling an arm or a leg for you to dabble in this universe, but I think you’d enjoy watching/reading it (or rewatching/reading it if you have already) regardless. They’re such good girls and boys, and since it’s an older series with little to no romance, it’s rather overlooked. 😦

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  33. I have a few recommendations to make.

    Exalted is an epic fantasy RPG with a very similar feel to the Embers version of the ATLA universe, currently in its third edition.

    Nobilis is a diceless game about people who have been each been made the absolute rulers of an aspect of reality: their Estate. One can play as the Duke of Breakfast Cereal, the Viscount of Fire, the Marchessa of Violence, Spite’s-Regal, or really anything else you can imagine. Opposing you are the Excrucians, who want to unmake reality for a variety of reasons, some of which are surprisingly sympathetic.

    Really, anything by Jenna Moran is awesome. Including her current project, Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

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  34. Hello! I wanted to say that I really love all your stories and I was recently rereading your Kingdom Hearts story on FFN for the first time in ages and the way you dealt with Axel and Vincent and just everyone is amazing. I love the depth you’ve given to Axel’s character and the very world of the Multiverse. It feels so rich and sends my heart all aflutter with charm. Did you happen to have any further thoughts on that series or general Kingdom Hearts headcanons that you’d be willing to share? I’d always love to see more Axel stuff from you if you ever return to that fandom, but I’m just super interested in hearing your thoughts on anything Kingdom Hearts right now as I work my way through the game and think about buying the sequels once I’ve beat it.

    Again, thank you so much for your awesome stories and well done on an amazing work.

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    1. Thanks!

      I have two unfortunately unfinished KH/SG-1 fics in storage – one of them is more Keygate, the other is “what if everything KH could be explained in SG ‘verse terms”. And one unfinished KH/RK one that’s just strange….

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      1. Oh those sound neat! More Keygate would be amazing and I was actually wondering if you’d had a epilogue drabble up somewhere at one point for Keygate because I feel like I read something with Axel and Lea and how confusing that must be internally after their World had been restored, except I didn’t find it on your blog here so maybe I imagined that? How you could possibly explain it all in SG verse terms is baffling to me right now though so I’m sure there will be lots of ooohing and aaahing for that story one day.

        Is it a plot kink that’s leaving them unfinished? Those are just the worse – I’ve been stuck on one myself for forever because of a problem I missed for way too long during planning.

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      2. Hmm. “Doorway to the Heavens” got derailed when I had the characters all in the SGC and was trying to juggle an infiltration… Keygate got stuck after 8 chapters in part because my situation got stuck and I couldn’t get out of my own head to get the characters moving. It’d take serious revamping from about the second chapter on.

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  35. SGC definitely has an intimidating number of characters alright. That on top of an infiltration might need a flowchat just to keep track. Do you enjoy what you’ve got on Keygate enough for the work of revamping or is it one of those set-aside-start-new kind of things?

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    1. I’d love to revamp it, but I need to carve out some time to re-immerse myself in KH first. That’s not going to be doable for… at least a few months. RL is being nasty, though I am finally seeing a potential light at the end of the tunnel.

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  36. When I read Embers, I wished I could pay you for it, but of course since it’s in someone else’s world you couldn’t receive money for it. So I’m glad I found your blog; dropping some money in the research-books pool (as I just did) is the next best thing to being able to pay you for your awesome work on Embers and other fanfics. (And yes, I have also bought your Kindle books. Count Taka is my favorite of them; don’t know why, but it hits my funny bone just right. My wife hasn’t yet gotten around to reading it yet, so once she does I have her reaction to look forward to as well. *grin*)

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    1. Thank you! 🙂 One of my aspirations is to dig myself out of the current RL mess enough to be able to write sequels in the Count Taka setting. Because it was fun. That, and book 3 in the Net ‘verse.

      Currently I have 1 and most of another rough draft that I’m hoping to edit into finished books this year; I’m going to try for even more books than that. *G*

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  37. Have you ever heard of anyone considering doing an AU where the Mitaka Documents are a pretentious trunk novel that lay untouched for fifty years until the author died? And then was assumed to predict Hei screwing humanity at Hell’s Gate? With Bai assumed to be Izanami once the fools responsible for the coming mess realize she was a separate person and not a pre-op Hei after watching the security footage they needed to supplement what was left of Syndicate records?

    I’m asking because I am not aware of this being done.

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  38. How do you come up with plots? Everything is taken into account, like worldbuilding, personality, and human nature/science, when you put it together, so it all feels like a natural progression of events, instead of being contrived. How do you do that? You don’t seem to decide on a single BBG and focus on that, for example.
    Do you just start with character goals and current events in their world, and build from there?
    I just don’t know how to write longer, more complex stories the way you do.

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    1. I read a lot, so I’ve internalized the basic framework of how stories in the genre I love are supposed to work. Also I’ve read up on survival psychology. Given main characters in a fantasy/SF are often under survival-level stress, knowing how people work in that situation is a big plus.

      And I try to figure out a Major Goal for each character. Revenge, honor, getting your life back together, that kind of thing. Know what people want, you can get a handle on what they’ll do.

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  39. Hello there! I wanted to thank you for writing such a beloved story in Embers on fanfiction.net. My closest friend says it’s her favorite book – so for Christmas this year I’m going to print her a physical copy of the entire series. I wanted to say thank you – you made such an impact in her life through Embers!

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  40. Just reread Shadows of Starlight. I really love your Rurouni Kenshin crossovers. I wish that your plot bunnies inspire you to do a sequel. 🤞🏼

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  41. Count Taka sequels would be eagerly purchased by my entire extended family! Likewise for “book 3 in the Net ‘verse.”
    In the interim, you’re on my “buy new books on first sight, with the only checks being “author’s name” and “do I already own it.” I think that’s approximately the same as saying “write faster, then shut up and take my money!” (But only as much faster as is consistent with the health and well-being of the author)

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  42. I also later found a Nature Medicine article describing the asymptomatic transmission rate of COVID-19 as 44% even after they fixed their math. It was published April 15, 2020.

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      1. Girl why are you talking to me about covid? No one else has mentioned it in this thread, especially not me, and I still mask up when I leave the house because I don’t need the exact math to know it’s dangerous and highly transmissible. I didn’t reply because I thought you would figure out you posted on the wrong thread and leave me alone.

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      3. I didn’t know where else to bring this up. The original post I was afraid to dump this in from 2020 seemed to be gone and I felt like I had been derelict in a duty to warn. There are other posts I have been thinking about for years like American Ronin Part 2 and I absorbed years ago that necroposting was rude.

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      4. Also, I didn’t take in that I wasn’t supposed to bring it up here. Is there a necroposting policy I didn’t know about?

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      5. I have a really hard time believing you’ve been on the internet this long without running into one of the chief rules of netiquette: “Do not derail posts or threads with unrelated topics.”

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      9. Now to put the thread back on its original rail: I still read your Darker Than Black fanfiction. There’s not much of it, but this was the first time I was inspired to buy an entire season’s worth of DVDs and two entire manga runs including one in Japanese and learn a foreign language.

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