Mythology

It's been a slow, sleepy weekend, and I feel as if the time has somewhat run away from me. I started Saturday at the gym (my legs still ache), and then met Matthias in town for lunch with one of our friends from our PhD years, who was in the UK for a conference and some work with manuscripts. He lives in the US south and has a tenured job at a university there, so our conversation was somewhat grim at times, but it was nice to catch up and show him our town, and eat food truck food under clear skies in the courtyard garden of our favourite cafe/bar. It's always a bit odd to reconnect with people from my postgrad days who are firmly embedded in academia — it's like a reminder of a past life, when that was my whole world, too.

The post yesterday delivered me a postcard from peaked (amazing stationery choices, especially the stickers and washi tape), and she'd included a bunch of puzzles cut out from the newspaper, which was a nice touch! I've totally failed to complete them, but I imagine that will be for next week.

This morning, I went to the pool, and spent most of the morning slow-cooking an Indonesian curry, since Matthias and I will need to eat dinner very early in order to make it to a 7pm film at the community cinema (Sorry, Baby). The entire house smells of lemongrass, garlic and ginger, which I can't really complain about. I went into town for a quick wander and coffee, but have otherwise spent the rest of the day lounging around at home, with the athletics on in the background, dipping in and out of the internet, feeling somewhat unfocused. I did manage to complete Hannah Kaner's epic fantasy trilogy with Faithbreaker, which pretty much stuck the landing (although I felt it relied slightly too much on handwaving difficulties away by making one character ridiculously overpowerful), and I'm eyeing Tori Bovalino's adult fantasy debut, The Second Death of Locke, which Matthias received as the second book in the monthly SFF subscription programme run by our local independent bookshop. Bovalino is one of the few current writers of YA whose books I enjoy, so I'm keen to see what she's like writing for an adult readership.

The heating actually came on in the house for the first time this season. The hedgerows were bright with rosehips, rowan berries, blackberries and sloes on my walks to the gym, and the leaves on our cherry trees are yellowed and falling. I'm ready for summer to move on, and it seems that the landscape agrees with me.

After a lot of dithering, I finally got my Yuletide nominations in, and added them to the nominations coordination spreadsheet and post on yuletide. My approach this year was to nominate things I'd be both happy to write and receive: a mixture of perennial unfilled requests, old favourites to which I love to return, and fandoms I'm looking to request with a slightly changed batch of characters from those I've requested and received in the past.

I've generally had a really excellent time in every year in which I've participated: I've loved pretty much every gift I've received (some remain some of the best pieces of fanfic I've ever read, in any fandom), in general what I write is well received, and it reliably remains the one exchange whose focus tends to play to my strengths (such as they are) and interests as a writer, and result in the type of fic that I most enjoy reading.

So, consider today's open thread post the opportunity to talk about Yuletide. Are you participating this year? How long have you been participating? What is your approach to nominating (a mixture of things you want to write and receive? more emphasis on one or the other?)? What are you hoping to see in the tagset? What do you think will end up being the unexpected 'big for Yuletide' fandom? How has your experience of the exchange been over the years? Or talk about anything else you can think of that's relevant to Yuletide!