abby82 | Various and sundry

I've been away from the computer for a bit so I've been neglectful of the LJ and the comments which I do plan on getting to. I'm not ignoring anyone.

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I uploaded my first vid file online. The TV Guide Channel was running a special on returning favorites and they had a small segment featuring some behind the scene stuff for Smallville's 150th episode "Apocalypse".

I'm rarely in the right place at the right time for these type of things but I was this time. I managed to get the segment onto my computer and cut out the non-Smallville portions but the file of 28 seconds was still huge. Chumpy of DI talked me through the steps of shrinking the file on Windows Movie Maker via MSN Messenger. In my vidding for dummies lessons I haven't quite gotten to that portion of the tutorials so I gained some useful knowledge in the process. It was way cool being the first to post the clip for the Smallville community. I'm glad I was able to contribute to fandom in that way and now I've got a brand spankin' new youtube account to boot.

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I finally have a much better title for my Forever Knight pre-series fic featuring a young Natalie and Richard Lambert.

It was called "Lives Interrupted" which I never liked but now it's titled "Break So Easy" after a very delicate and lovely Johnathan RIce song of the same name. I haven't touched the story in a while but I love the atmosphere the song creates. By playing it non stop I'm hoping it'll motivate the muse.

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I've managed to vid the opening 25 seconds for my Schanke Forever Knight fanvid.

I've clipped about 17 episodes from season 1 but only 2 out of 9 episodes for season 2. I really am getting ahead of myself because I know there's some really great stuff in the remaining episodes but I think it's necessary because I can experiment with how Premiere Elements works.

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The deadline to post my fandom pimp over at

smallfandomfest is fast approaching. I signed up back in February to pimp Forever Knight and I want to do the fandom justice.

I've created natural color bars to add a little sparkle to the pimp but so far I've only managed to do one for Nick and Natalie. Oddly enough I'm having trouble with the Janette bar. I feel like the pics I do have just don't do her justice. LaCroix is another one I'm struggling with. Hopefully those two will be done before the end of the week so that I can move on to Schanke, Tracy, and Vachon.

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I'm still having trouble posting to the FK Fan Fic Yahoo Group.

I posted "The Ease of Friendship" and "Of Friends, Foam Fingers, and Frankfurters" with no problem at all last year. Back in January I tried posting "What Would Happen" but it wouldn't go through. I chalked it up to it having been a while for me so I didn't think too much of it and decided I'd try later. Well now that's it's later I'm still have trouble. The list isn't down, a new multi part story has come through. I even tried sending a general SOS test post and not even that went through. Weirdness. I don't know who the moderator is but I guess I'll have to drop them a line to see if this can be sorted out.

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I've been working on "Flight of the Imagination" again. I sent it out for beta back in mid February but boy did I get a shock to the system. Both betas were rather confused by it. I couldn't quite understand why until suddenly it hit me between the eyes.

I thought I'd done a decent job of setting up an element of the story but apparently I sucked at that part, hence the confusion. How embarrassing to realize that not one but two people read a really subpar version of my story. One of the goals behind betaing is to catch these sort of errors but it's still embarrassing. I set the story aside for a bit so that I could approach it with fresh eyes. I've since rearranged, added, and subtracted elements from the story. It still needs a little tweaking here and there but I do think its in a better state than my first version. I was originally really worried about the smut portion of the story but oddly enough that wasn't the part that needed a lot of revision. However I don't think I'll be writing much smut in the future anyway. The struggles with this story have left a bad taste in my mouth as far as writing smut is concerned. I guess part of it has to do with me trying to force a situation and my attempt to make it plausible aren't entirely convincing. Even though "What Would Happen" has it's problems, namely that I don't think I did as good a job with the Natalie and Clark characterizations, I feel it was a fairly successful outing--smut wise. With this one...well I guess when I get it beta'd again I'll be more sure where I stand.

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I got an article printed in the local paper. It was really more PR than journalism. What wasn't in the article would make a good follow up story. My name wasn't attached to it even though my boss wanted for people to know that I wrote it.