Nice to see you again, Enitharmon.
All your HDM fanfics are excellent, our fandom is just going through a low patch in readers on FFN. They've got buried under more recent 'cough' Will/Lyra 'cough' stories as well. They are certainly not dross. That 'Shadows at Morning' fanfic, for example...seriously, heaps of reveiws generally go to people who write huge amounts, rather than people who are necesserily good.
Danny, thank you for that reassurance - we writers are notorious for being insecure and feeling unloved. Do you think I should really press on with
Shadows At Morning? Because I think my crime-writing style went down like a bottle of Peshach wine at the local mosque!
But I think you've touched on something that I'd missed in my naievety about the nature of 'fandom'. I write stories based on minor characters and speculation about the HDM universe and its inconsistencies. What fans want is 'news' about Lyra and Will, who are almost real people to them, as their daemons are real, and they have a real destiny that they want to know about. I want to play with the possibilities of the universe, and experiment with daemon writing as a literary tool. You probably noticed that I steer clear of armoured bears and witches; although Serafina Pekkala makes an appearance in
The Cassington Scholar I think she comes across as a doughty feminist rather than a witch, and her cloud-pine branch is just a useful device to get her away when no longer needed! I also prefer to work with human nature rather than magical knives and machines that fly without explanation. I don't think that's what fandom are looking for.
I loved the books but there are thousands of books yet to be read and I've moved on. I'd no more think of going to a convention dressed as a witch or Mary Malone than I would of flying to the Death Planet. I'm not a 'fan' in that sense. I'm a fan of Ian Rankin's books but that doesn't make me want to dress up as Gill Templar (although I might reconsider that if it got me in the sack with Rebus! Or - be still my beating heart - John Hannah!)
Where does that leave me, I wonder? Does it matter?
Thinks: Shut up, woman....
)so it wouldn't be quite right for Kate's super drawings to appear on the main board's fanart page - unless the Powers That Be decide differently. Anyway, here they are (can you tell I'm really rather chuffed by them? 
Perhaps somebody would like to tell me what's wrong with them?
