Entries tagged with challenge

OK, I knew I was old because my kid, who was in utero when I started reading slash, turned thirteen today. But it's been ten years since

cesperanza accidentally launched 101 Ways To End Up In A Shack In Canada.

I was still a beginner back then, and I can't even tell you how much the shack challenge influenced me; the 500-word length made it possible to explore new pairings, and I learned to spot the juicy center of a story and zero right in on it. It made such an impression on me that when I was writing Breaking and Entering, and I wanted to send Arthur and Eames somewhere that represented ultimate safety and comfort, I put them in a shack in Canada completely by accident.

So now we're doing it again! The details on the anniversary celebration are here, but the short version is that everyone's invited to spend 500 or so words getting pairings old and new into shacks in Canada. (Rumor has it there are actual cities in Canada, but as I've never been there, I prefer to think of it as entirely full of shacks.)

Works in this year's challenge are collected on the Canadian Shack 2011 collection on AO3. I wrote And One Way To End Up In a High-Rise On Lake Shore Drive, a little Fraser/Kowalski story, for old time's sake.

Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sitting-room in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantelpiece.

--- "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb"

The agony column (not to be confused with agony aunts, a related but separate phenomenon) was a place where readers of The Times could submit messages for publication. It was where you went if you needed to get a message to the spouse who abandoned you, or the child who ran away from home, or the accomplice who couldn't be contacted directly, or the person you'd met in passing and couldn't seem to forget.

If the Lady who a Gentleman handed into her carriage from Covent Garden Theatre, on the third of this month, will oblige the advertiser with a line to Z, saying if married or single, she will quiet the mind of a young Nobleman, who has tried, but in vain, to find the Lady. The Lady was in mourning, and sufficiently cloathed to distinguish her for possessing every virtue and charm that a man could desire in a female that he would make choice of for a Wife.

I can easily see why it was the first thing Sherlock Holmes read; it almost seems like Sherlock Holmes sprang from the agony column.

FRANGIPANI -- Do not doubt me. Numbers 67, 412, 87. You will now comprehend the delay.

Well: Alice Clay collected the entire column from 1800 to 1870, and published it in a book, and the California Digital Library has it available for download or online viewing in a variety of formats: The agony column of the "Times" 1800-1870 : Clay, Alice.

MY FRIEND. -- Should you receive a letter posted possibly to-morrow, it is important that you should read it. I shall, in that case, be awaiting your answer, no, not at . . . . . , but within a very short distance. Suspend your judgment until you receive it, and then let this act speak that regard which the expression of irrepressible feelings has hitherto apparently failed to convey. I ask for nothing but confidence, faith in me. Oh, drive me not to yet more utter affliction. Why leave me to the limited resource of A's to know you are even alive, but still not to know how you are?

Surely there are a thousand stories here. I dare you to write some of them! And link me to them!

Canadian shacks!

Selflessly presented as an inspiration to authors