And the continuation...

( Part 2... )

I don't know who what came over me recently when I saw, quite by chance, the submissions for the R/D Challenge - they had closed. But I noticed a post from the mods saying some people had dropped out and something inside must have been yearning so hard that after over a year of slashy silence from my keyboard I just couldn't resist. I emailed the mods asking if they felt like reopening sign-ups, they did, I signed up and I'm damn glad I did. The whole challenge was full of some really fantastic fic,really high quality stuff. This is my little contribution:


 

Title: Untouchable
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: "I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside."

Word Count:12,900

Pairings:R/D, D/Vol

Warnings: Some potentially disturbing imagery, dubious consent, dom/sub play.

Summary: The war has been over three years and in that time Harry, Ron and Hermione have given themselves over to ‘fixing‘ the many things that were broken by the war. Ron is shocked however when Harry introduces Ron‘s newest assignment.

Author Notes: Grateful thanks, as ever, go to my super-speedy and extremely kind beta, Thevina.




( Part 1... )

I'd like to thank my mum and dad....

no, seriously, I didn't know anything about these awards until a lovely email arrived in my inbox from the mod of bestmatesawards asking if I wanted to accept the nomincations I'd got in a couple of categories. It's one of those lovely things that happen unexpectedly and give you a warm glow inside all day, and if it does that for all the authors nominated and makes them even a smidgen more likely to write another H/R slash piece then it was well worth it.

To actually win one of them is really shiny too.

A huge round of applause also for the organisers of the awards - a lot of work and probably nowhere near as much affirmation in return as they deserve - but thank you all the same.

I'm told I should put the award up here for people to see so that's what I'm doing. Also, its a nice way just to give a nod to people out there in the HP slash world who might have thought I was dead or dying. Actually, I am writing a long piece of H/R slash at the moment which was supposed to be an entry for the Gingerlust symposium but wasn't completed in time ::hangs head in shame:: So I hope to have this done and dusted at least sometime this year!

::waves to folks who haven't heard from me in months::

ttfn

CJ

Red and Gold Tangling…
By Callum James.
Ron/Draco NC-17.
Warnings for angst.
c.3000 words.
Author’s notes: I love writing short fiction. The shorter the better sometimes as the challenge is to hone and chisel away the chaff until every word has it’s right place and every image and symbol is carefully related to each other. I don’t claim to meet my own challenge but I wanted to write something for Thevina and it had to be short (or it would take me several years to finish) and it had to be her OTP (because that’s only polite) and, I’m afraid it had to be self-beta’d, as Thev is my only beta and it just seemed mean to ask her to beta her own gift. So, for what it’s worth: a short and highly structured piece which, I suppose is DH compliant to an extent, but I don’t really care if it is or not.

For Thevina, friend and great soul.

I can feel myself slowly being swallowed whole by fandom... do I mind being swallowed? Who does?

So it should come as no surprise to me that I couldn't resist doing this...

...and which lesser Harry Potter character are you?

The really nice thing about the desription it gives of Bill is the fact that Harry thinks he's cool. I can live with that!

And delightfully, when I did the lesser character set of questions I got:

...and which lesser Harry Potter character are you?

Now is this a way of creating challenges for slash - write a story with the pairing which comes out of your major and minor characters questionnaires? Bill/Dean... ::cogs begin to whirr::

And now for something completely different...

I know I said I wasn't going to be prolific but this is just a little something I knocked up while I was waiting for long-suffering Thevina to slog her way through beta-ing NlmD. On reflection I think it probably suffers a bit from being written too soon after I'd finished NlmD. There's NO connection between the two stories.

Title: Better Than Chocolate
Author: Callum James
Paring: Harry/Ron PWP
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Dementors and stolen chocolate…
Summary: Harry's in the Infirmary - again! Set in some undetermined year at Hogwarts when hunting Horcruxes didn't get in the way of Quidditch.

_______

 

Flagstones.

High gothic windows with a lead web dividing the ink-black sky: framing some stars, crossing out others. A vaulted ceiling with a reach so high it fades to infinity above two rows of beds, most of them empty, their white sheets precisely squared, a little lighter than the dark, like tombs in a cemetery.

Just wanted to say a more general thank you to all you kind, gracious and generous people who have read and commented on Nor Let Me Die Before I Have Begun to Live.  As I'm sure many of you who are also writers will know, feedback does make an enormous difference.

I don't want to labour the point but I am new to LJ - had I mentioned that! - and to have any response at all to blog posts is a new phenomenon for me, a little overwhelming and scary too but in a good way. Please excuse me then if I am not as good as I should be at responding, keeping up with your own work and posting, and for any inadvertent breaches of LJ etiquette.

Particular thanks to  mrsquizzical for explaining the whole 'friends' business - I think I'm getting the hang of it.  thrihyrne has kindly promised to walk me through the intricacies of posting to places like The Quidditch Pitch and sundry other places of slashy goodness so that little hurdle is to come shortly.

I don't imagine I will be a very prolific slash author (the current story took weeks to put together in between other commitments) but for anyone who might be interested to know, there is an H/R short PWP currently being beta'd and I have an idea which I'm rather fond of for a Harry/Ron/Ginny story which should widen my experience a little!

I have left myself an opening for continuing NlmD as well, but you won't be able to guess what that is, it's too well hidden at the moment.

So, thank you once again and I'm looking forward to having a trawl through all your journals in the near future...

xx

CJ

PS. Thank you also for the postcard from The Burrow, how did you know that's one of my all time favourite photographers?! You know who you are...

Title: Nor Let Me Die Before I Have Begun To Live
Author: Callum James
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: H/R
Word Count: c. 30,000
Summary: After the Final Battle, Harry Potter is missing presumed 'killed in action'. Only Ron refuses to give up hope that Harry might still be alive and when, six months later, he finally finds The Boy Who Lived, what he finds horrifies him and he discovers he has a lot of rather unconventional work to do to bring Harry back to the wizarding world.
Warnings: Much angst and many tears, a significant dom/sub element, WS and rimming.
Author's Notes: The title is from a poem by Matthew Arnold. Thank you to Thevina, without whose inspiration, encouragement, friendship and support I would never have begun this, let alone finished it - her beta-ing was pretty damn good too. All mistakes remaining are mine own.

 

_ - _ - _ - _ - _ - _ -

Ron hovered three storeys high over a narrow London street.

Unnamed churches tolled midnight across the capital and a slow, warm rain fell over his face. Beneath him small figures hurried through pools of sickly light. They paid as little attention to him as he paid to them. Someone who knew him well might have seen that tears were threatening to mingle with the rain that wetted his cheeks.