Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

One can tell that I am getting antsy as the school year (both grad school and work!school) comes to a close because I am doing fannish stuff when I really should be doing other things. *sigh* Anyway, here's what I've been up to the past few days.

Does Kindle Worlds Mean the End of Fandom? And Monster-Shouting. Because I had typed this post in truncated form so many places, it seemed as though it should go on my permanent record somewhere. And the monster-shouting thing was one of those get-it-off-your-chest kind of things, being as it's one of my pet peeves in life, not just fandom.

I would like to say that I then stopped thinking about Kindle Worlds, but then Rhapsody posted a link with some interesting insight from one of the authors who wrote for the launch, about the contracts and vetting process.

New Information on the Kindle Worlds Contract and Vetting Process

That one gets the prize for my most creative title ever.

Now I am done talking about Kindle Worlds. Promise. I have posted on my Tumblr asking for any ideas of what people would like to see me write about on the Heretic Loremaster next, preferably something Tolkien-related, as all this real-world stuff is kind of getting me down. I'm open to ideas here too, of course!

Finally, I have posted my in-progress and messy but hopefully somewhat useful "consolidated timelines" for the Years of the Trees and First Age in The Silmarillion. I started this project years ago and got the worst of it done before my life became what it is and has been for several years now, and time for working on stuff like this went out the window. Once upon a time, I was super-sensitive about the unfinished nature of these and used to share them sparingly (I even have a copy I shared on a group once that has a threatening-sounding warning about not sharing them beyond the group!), but I'm kind of over that. They'll do more good unfinished and unpolished than they would unposted. So here are the consolidated timelines on Google Docs.

As some of you already know, in addition to my LJ--which is for personal stuff and stories--I have a weble called The Heretic Loremaster for critical discussions of Tolkien's books and fandom and literature in general. I used to keep all of this stuff on my LJ but separated it because the types of responses that I felt were acceptable to my critical posts I was uncomfortable having applied to my personal posts, and I felt like mixing the two was a bad idea. Also, at the time, I was very annoyed with LJ and didn't want to give them any more traffic than I had to, so I moved my critical discussions off of LJ entirely.

Anyway, there are two HL-related issues. First of all, since I am now freelancing, I am back to trying to get the HL off the ground. One of my goals, when I first set it up, was to provide a discussion forum for critical discussions of literature and book-based fandoms. However, because my life has been so busy, I haven't been able to do much beyond post my own thoughts occasionally. But I would like others to write with me and so am asking if anyone would be interested in being a regular writer on The Heretic Loremaster or a guest writer.

( More Beneath the Cut for Those Who Are Interested )

Now, the second issue concerns posting to LJ. I am no longer angry with LJ like I once was. It still ain't what it used to be but at least the current management doesn't seem bound and determined to piss off fandom every six months and hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, done anything insanely stupid along the magnitudes of Strikethrough at all, so I'm willing to vote with my feet back here again. The HL does have a feed, heretic_lore, that will add notifications of new posts to your friends list, but if people would rather see HL content more accessible on LJ, then I'm willing to consider it. (The only thing I'm not considering is posting it here on my personal LJ, as that did not work well for me back when I used to do it. But I would link to it or post the start of the post with a link to the rest on the main site. Or set up a separate account to cross-post to.)

Anyway, if you have an opinion, there be a poll.

[Poll #1583048]

But, really, I'm hoping that some of you smart cookies on my flist might want to come write with me occasionally. :)

Whenever I post on sites outside my journal, I periodically link to those posts here. I haven't rounded anything up in a while because there hasn't been anything to round up! But, as a personal reward for finishing my American Fiction course, I've allowed myself to make my first blog post to my shiny new blog.

The Heretic Loremaster

Tolkien, Allegory, and the Maddening Perseverance of Denial. The first in a series looking at allegory (or the lack thereof) in Tolkien's works and the fan response to it.

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This is my blog's debut. My website, www.themidhavens.net, is still under construction. I've tested the blog in the most recent versions of Firefox and IE and in that bane of my existence, IE 6.0. However, I appreciate, if anyone sees anything that looks off or doesn't work as it should, that she or he lets me know.

I normally don't allow comments on round-ups, but I'll leave them open for this post, so feel free to let me know here if anything is awry.

Also, note that I'm looking for other people to write for this blog, either as regular or guest contributors. The subject need not be Tolkien. Literature, book-based fandoms, and history are all fair game. I'd particularly like someone to write about Harry Potter. If you think you might be interested, please drop me an email at the usual place.