Antonia Forest fans

Yuletide nominations open on 25th September. 2014 was a good Yuletide for Forest fic, and it would be great to see something similar this year. Here's a schedule for Yuletide 2015, and here are the nominations rules. It's the same as last year: you can make 3 fandom nominations and nominate 4 characters for each fandom. That means a bit of co-ordination is probably desirable to get a good spread of characters. Please feel free to discuss co-ordinating Forest-related nominations below. Nominating doesn't commit you to signing up, so if you're still undecided, think you might only want to write treats &c. you can make nominations. You will need an AO3 account to make nominations, however.

Your contributions to the Forest fanworks fest are due tomorrow, 1st September, at 8pm UTC (Calculate time differences here.)

The collection will go live on 7th September.

Just a reminder that Forest Fic Fest stories are due on 1st September 2015 at 8pm UTC. We've a few in the collection already, but there are still lots of prompts to claim. I've opened sign-ups again if anyone fancies claiming and writing one. The collection is here, on AO3. You'll need an AO3 account to participate.

I've nominated the modern Marlows series for Rare Pair Fest 2015: the tagset is here. If anyone fancies adding to it (or nominating the Players books), nominations are open until June 15th.

I've also made a fairly random nominations slate for Exchange at Fic Corner, a fic exchange for children's and YA fandoms. It might not have been approved yet, so here are mine:

Modern books

Nicola Marlow
Lawrie Marlow
Miranda West
Patrick Merrick
Tim Keith

Players books

Nicholas Marlow
William Shakespeare
Humfrey Danvers
Christopher Marlowe
Richard Burbage

Exchange at Fic Corner generated a little crop of Marlows fic last year, so if you're not too busy writing for the Forest-specific fest, which is here, you might like to have a go. Nominations for Fic Corner are here and run till June 11th.

Sign-ups for Remix Redux, a fic exchange challenge in which you remodel other people's fic, are now open, and for the first time there's no restriction on fandom size. There are a few rules and restrictions about writers' eligibility (you need to have written 5 non-crossover stories of 500 words or more, or 7 of 100 words or more, to make a request for your fic to be remixed) but quite a few writers here might be eligible and interested. I'm going to have a shot, anyway.

Queries are probably best addressed to the LJ comm for the challenge remixers_lounge: I'm a noob to this one too and can't answer with any authority.

Since beginning the readthrough, I've thought it might be fun to have some sort of fest for Forest-based fanworks. And it also happens to be Forest's centenary next month, so I've started a prompt meme on AO3. (Here's the AO3 FAQ dealing with collections and challenges, and here's the specific bit dealing with sign-ups for prompt memes on AO3.)

The idea is to have a fairly low-pressure form of commitment, but with a structure that will create bit of a sense of occasion. Signed-up creators can browse the available prompts left by other fans and choose ones they'd like to fulfil, rather than (as in a gift exchange) having a recipient assigned to them. But there will be a sign-up period and a deadline, followed by reveal of the collection.

I'm thinking of something like this for the schedule:

From now: preparation--nominate characters, promote the challenge, get yourself an AO3 account if you don't have one already. You can get an invite code here. The waiting list is currently quite short, so you should have an invite code within a day or two.
26th May: sign-ups open
26th June: sign-ups close
1st September: deadline--fills for prompts claimed are due
7th September: reveal of fills and authors

And these for guidelines:

You may nominate up to 5 characters. An experimental tag set is here. If you have an AO3 Account you can start nominating characters now.

You must specify at least 1 fandom in each of your prompts: you may specify (up to) all three Forest fandoms and 8 characters in each prompt.

You may make up to six prompts. They may be as detailed (or not) as you like, but somewhere in the middle hinterland between 'anything at all about anyone at all' and a detailed plot outline for your Ginty/Patrick/Giles crime caper with bonus tentacles tends to get best results. State clearly any non-negotiable Do Not Wants: e.g. underage sexual content.

The default setting is an anonymous prompt: you can de-anonymise your prompt if you wish. Anonymity is not absolute: in a small fandom like this, it is probably a bit compromised from the start.

You may prompt for art or fic (I don't know if we've any fanartists among us, but it would be great to see some Forest-based visual art.)

Works may be of any length.

You may claim as many prompts as you like, but try not to over-commit!

There can and may be multiple claims on the same prompt.

There are no restrictions on content or rating, but obviously, do try to be respectful of your requester's prompt, especially their DNWs. Ratings and Archive Warnings can be helpful, but Choose Not To Warn is sometimes the only possible option too.

More detailed instructions for sign-ups and posting to the collection will follow in due course. In the meantime, do feel free to publicise the fest in your own journals and on other forums that might have an interest (link to this post, as there's not much info at AO3 yet.)

Please do feel free to ask questions and suggest modifications. This is my first time running a challenge on AO3, so I'm open to all suggestions and advice.

This year's Renault fic exchange included a couple of Forest crossovers which people here might be interested in, if you haven't already seen them. One is by yours truly, which is here, and the other is by legionseagle, which is here. Not part of the exchange, but related to the Marlows/Rumpole/Renault fic is this story by legionseagle, which, as well as being a fascinating study of Mme Orly before she was Mme Orly, suggests a plausible origin story for Nicola's 'out cutlasses and board' look.

The whole collection is here.

legionseagle has suggested the following fic challenge and offered a ficlet to start us off:

Holders (including past holders) of the Alice Prosser Scholarship and others whose lives have been touched by her legacy reflect on what it means to them.

And, to kick off, this pump-priming ficlet:

"Standing here in Stockholm before you all I am both proud and humbled. Proud because this is the highest honour a scientist can receive; humbled because I feel the comparison with so many greater than I, both those recognised by the Nobel Committee and those who never have and never will be. Truly, Isaac Newton observed, "I appear tall because I am standing on the shoulders of giants." Before I go on to mention the outstanding contribution made to today's award by my research team, without whom I would not merely not be standing here before you today, I doubt I would be standing at all, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to one of those giants. Alice Prosser was not a giant in stature, so far as I have ever been able to ascertain; the surviving photographs show a slight woman, made slighter still by a certain evasiveness before the camera's gaze. She was, I believe, a woman defined in life by self-effacingness; she would, I rather think, be sidling unobtrusively for the exits could she be present in this hall today. But, nonetheless, she was a giant in spirit, with a vision that saw how, if one only chose the right place to stand, with the leverage of her backing one could move mountains..."