Pretty Poison

Title: Hour of Need
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: Mature
Pairing(s): Anna/Castiel, Haley Collins/Kat
Genre: AU
Warning(s): None for this chapter. The story as a whole contains some stuff which isn't usually warned for, but which squicks me out, so (highlight to reveal) fair warning - this story involves pregnancy and childbirth. And also zombies :)

Summary: Lucifer has his chosen vessel and is stronger than ever. Dean fights on with his small band of allies, but it seems there is little hope. In a desperate attempt to help him, Castiel enlists Anna to raise John Winchester from the dead. Her success has consequences none of them could have predicted. Sequel to When The World Is Burning.

Notes: I'm almost finished writing this one. Normally I would wait and post when it's finished, but I decided to post chapter one so I won't be tempted to enter it for spn_j2_bigbang It would be a royal pain in the arse to categorise for the big bang anyway, since it's got both het and femslash pairings.

( Hour of Need 1/6 )

New layout on LJ and DW. Nothing hugely creative - I've just used a standard theme with the right colours and replaced the original header with a photo, but it's the photo I want to show off. I took it with my phone, which is the best camera I have these days. It's a footbridge over the river Ebbw near my home, taken on a misty morning back in September.

Back to loaves of bread this week. Well, one loaf. This is from Dan Lepard's recipe for Sour cream sandwich bread. The recipe looked a bit complicated to me when I read it but it was very easy to make and the dough rose like a dream. I increased the amounts in the recipe by about 20% to fit my tin (I must buy a smaller one when I can), and this is the result.

( Picture beneath the cut )

I did some shopping on my way home.

Tesco (don't judge me - it's the only store within walking distance) has snow shovels, sleds and rock salt/grit piled high at the entrance.

Snow is not forecast; nonetheless this troubles me. What do they know???

Here's my latest adventure in baking.

While I love a good home-baked loaf of bread, I can never finish one before it goes stale. So I decided my next baking attempt should be rolls. These I can eat fresh, or freeze and defrost to eat later. Dan Lepard's recipe for Alehouse Rolls calls for either ale or stout (you boil off the alcohol so it doesn't kill the yeast). I used a locally brewed dark ale called Celt; it has a beautifully rich flavour in the bottle and it worked brilliantly for this recipe. I think stout would be a bit much. The other choice in the recipe is between wholemeal, rye or spelt flour; I used spelt. The recipe also involves toasted oats and honey.

I wasn't able to follow the directions for rising the dough perfectly as I was unexpectedly sent shopping in the middle of working on it. This meant that the first rise was about an hour, and the second about 30 minutes, instead of the other way around. But the mistiming does not appear to have adversely affected the result. It's perhaps a little denser than it should be but only very slightly.

The result:

( Picture behind the cut )

The crust is firm but not crunchy, which is how I like it. (Crunchy crust tastes wonderful but it cuts my gums to shreds.) The crumb is amazingly tasty. I could eat this bread on its own, no butter or anything, just the bread. The ale gives it that lovely dark colour but the taste isn't beer-like. It tastes of malt and roast nuts, slightly sweet.

It will go beautifully with cheese or a salty meat like ham or salt beef. And I'm definitely making this one again...lots!

Day Two of the Fandom Snowflake Challenge:

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Drop a link to your post in the comments. See if you can rec fanworks that are less likely to be praised: tiny fandoms, rare pairings, fanworks other than stories, lesser known kinks or tropes. Find fanworks that have few to no comments, or creators new to a particular fandom and maybe aren't well known or appreciated. Appreciate them.

( This is hard for me, because... )

Found via andeincascade:



Day One: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Drop a link to your post in the comments.

( Wow, that's a hard one )

Just saw the Dexter season finale and...

( spoilerish )

1. Today I learned that my new job has penalties for doing things too well.

I finished up a report I've been slogging over for two weeks. It was irritating work, because my part depended on collating a lot of information that other people were supposed to give me. And mostly didn't. So I ended up doing a bunch of the analysis myself, downloading the statistics myself and pretty much guessing what would be in some of the missing papers. I explained all of the parts I'd imputed (that's what statisticians say instead of 'guess') when I handed the report over to my manager for approval.

She promptly passed it to her manager, who passed it to someone else. I came back from lunch to find J waiting for me. "This is excellent work," he told me, and I thought, okay, this is cool. Then he dropped the bomb. He wants me to present it to the frigging board at a meeting on Monday!!!

(Note: while normally this would be a real vote of confidence, I am conscious that the board are not going to like the content of my report. It concerns this big project and between the lines I'm basically saying they're going about it all wrong.)

2. Today I learned that The Sentinel is my happy place.

Well, I kinda knew that already. But it's nice to be reminded.

I started writing Sentinel fic with stories about serial killers. Wild Justice has possibly the most odious villain I have ever created (and, yeah, I include my SPN fics in that); I still feel the need to scrub out my brain after re-reading those murder scenes. And Predator took a hero and turned him into a serial killer. (Actually I am amused by how close Dexter has become to my Dark!Jim. I wasn't even aware of Darkly Dreaming Dexter when I wrote Predator and the TV series hadn't been made.)

Anyhow, my point is Sentinel used to be a place for my darkest side to come out and play. My creative brain has been in a dark place lately. No light and fluffy stuff for Morgan, I've been all death and addiction, betrayal and PTSD, the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-is-the-headlamp-of-an-oncoming-train kinda dark. My Yuletide assignment fit that perfectly, which is probably why I found it so easy to write. More serial killers and betrayal, though I did manage to squeeze a positive ending out of it.

Tonight, I have written 2,000 words of Sentinel. It's a little angsty, but it's basically two guys in love, trying to live a normal life. It might turn into something...it might not. But it's like a pallette cleanser for my brain. I'm back in a happy place.

Very cool.

My internet access was down most of last week - the week Yuletide signups were happening. I'd been dithering over whether to bother this year. I've got so many fics in progress that taking on another seemed, uh, unwise. Especially as the window to write seems to shrink every year. But when it looked like I might miss signups, I realised I really wanted to do it.

I got in just under the wire. And this morning I got my assignment. I was surprised. Not only was there a request for a fandom I offered, but another of the requests was a show I know very well. I hadn't offered it because I thought requests in that fandom would be, well, stuff I wouldn't like to write. But this gave me a choice of prompts.

When I first read the requests, I thought I would write in the fandom I didn't offer. But nine hours later I'm almost done with a first draft in the other one. Guess I got inspired. I never write this fast! (Of course, my first drafts are very rough: this will take a while to polish. But it's a fab start!)