Latest installment in Adventures in Old WIPs: So just was I was starting to drift out of Dresden Files fandom, there was a fic fest where you were assigned something in Real Chicago and had to work it into a fic, and I got assigned the Chicago Blues Festival. Which was exciting! I like the blues, and music + magic is always fun, and I'd been wanting more fic that involved Harry's guitar-playing. And Real Chicago. So to get some ideas I re-watched that episode of Due South where Holly Cole sings Neon Blue, and I read a couple of articles on Chicago's music history, and watched a documentary on Chess Records, and read a biography of Robert Johnson, and started putting together a setlist on spotify, fell a little bit in love with Muddy Waters' sound and a lot in love with Howlin Wolf's, watched a bunch of Youtube videos taken at the festival, attempted to get better at playing the harmonica, mourned that there was no clean recording for most of Ma Rainey's songs... and then realized it was a couple days before the deadline and I should probably, like, write something.

So I sat down to write a story and this is what came out, which was not AT ALL what I was planning to have come out:

( a bonfire in Missouri )


...and then I decided that if Martha Liberty was warning me off then maybe I should just. Not. Not right then, anyway.

So I defaulted. One of only three times I've totally defaulted on a formal fanfic fest.

This has been your official glimpse into my writing process.

(...and now I guess I should go do my nano words, ugh.)