Xanthe

First off, thank you for all your kind messages in response to my last post. You have been so wonderful - I can't tell you what your messages meant to me. They really did help. I hope you don't mind if I don't reply to them all individually but I'm exhausted, and I still get very emotional when I talk about it. I haven't been sleeping well since it all happened, and right now seem to be getting by on adrenaline, although I hope that things will start to improve now.

Mum has been in hospital since Friday but she was discharged today. They did an MRI and took lung x rays but all was clear which was a massive relief to me because she was a smoker for a long time although she gave up 20 or so years ago. I did worry that she might have lung cancer. The other alternative was heart disease as she had atrial fibrillation when she was admitted.

However, they now think she's had a pleuritic infection. She's been on antibiotics since Friday and started to turn a corner yesterday. She's had a high temperature but that's calmed down now, and her heart rate has also returned to normal.

Julie took me to visit Mum on Saturday, and she was bleary and didn't look well. She did perk up at having visitors though. My mother isn't ill very often and has never spent a night in hospital in her life before so this was all new to her - and to us.

When Julie took me back yesterday, Mum looked a lot better, and she called me this morning to say she was being discharged. When I called her this afternoon she said she'd been home an hour...and then she made me angry by saying she'd told Dad she'd get a cab home - and he let her! She had to walk across the street and hail a taxi and it's been a windy day. She was also on her own in the house when she got home as he'd gone to his office. She said she wanted some alone time and I get that, but I gave her a bit of a telling off. I know she doesn't like fuss, but sometimes you just have to allow people to take care of you a bit. She's been seriously ill - as she found out when she got home and discovered she was too exhausted to go upstairs so she napped on the sofa. Anyway, *I* had to bloody well accept people doing stuff for me and not being able to take care of myself, and she needs to do so too.

It's been the worst few days of my life. I started to feel a bit better yesterday when I knew she was getting better and all the truly awful diseases/ailments had been ruled out. My dad refused to take her to the hospital I was taken to with my broken ankle. He took her to a hospital closer to their home, and the difference in treatment and attitude was amazing. The nursing staff came up to mum and to us, introduced themselves, and asked if there was anything they could get us. They were so incredibly friendly and stopped to have a laugh and joke with us. It was totally not like that in the hospital I went to. Mum's hospital is only about 10 miles away from mine, if that, but it's one of the best in the country while mine is one of the worst - it's an extraordinary state of affairs.

I got a 'no' on the driving which didn't surprise me. So one of my brothers is going to take me to work this week and bring me home again after (well, I hope so anyway!). Julie is going to take me to my pre-op assessment hospital appointment on Friday. I've had lots of support from friends, colleagues and neighbours - my secretary and HR manager have both offered practical help. And my next door neighbour came in for a couple of hours today to chat.

I've spent most of today figuring out ways to get by. Did a ton of washing and tidied up around the place. It's all doable - it's hard work and time consuming but I can get by as long as nothing big, bad or drastic happens. I had a bad tummy upset in the night - I'm assuming because of the accumulated stress of it all so I'm a bit shattered now.

One of the hardest things has been going cold turkey from mum's help in such a shocking, wrenching way. I got very tearful at doing some things by myself that we used to do together and had a little laugh about while we were doing them. It's been much tougher emotionally than physically, and physically it's hard enough.

I'm going to take myself off to watch TV for the rest of the evening, but I just wanted to do an update to let you know what was happening as you have all been so amazing.

Gloria1 is coming to stay this weekend and Flyingnorth the weekend after that. Then I'm hoping that after my operation things will be a bit easier but we'll see.

Title: Soul Deep
Author: Xanthe
Fandom: NCIS
Genre: Slash
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Categories: AU, angst, romance, hurt/comfort, supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 82,500
Status: Complete. I'll post in four instalments, starting on Thursday Sept 30th and finishing on Sunday October 3rd when I'll post the entire story to my website.
Spoilers: None - this is an AU take on the show as a whole, ranging in time from 1978 to 2006.
Summary: Most people never touch another person's soul...but when a 20 year old Leroy Jethro Gibbs meets an 8 year old Tony DiNozzo, it sparks an event that links them forever.
Author's Notes: This story is set in an AU where people have external souls in animal form called daemons, a concept taken from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. This isn't a crossover or set in one of Pullman's universes though. It's a Gibbs/DiNozzo story all the way.

Book Three: Pretence
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine

Book Two: Parted
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six

Book One: Pack
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Title: Soul Deep
Author: Xanthe
Fandom: NCIS
Genre: Slash
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Categories: AU, angst, romance, hurt/comfort, supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 82,500
Status: Complete. I'll post in four instalments, starting on Thursday Sept 30th and finishing on Sunday October 3rd when I'll post the entire story to my website.
Spoilers: None - this is an AU take on the show as a whole, ranging in time from 1978 to 2006.
Summary: Most people never touch another person's soul...but when a 20 year old Leroy Jethro Gibbs meets an 8 year old Tony DiNozzo, it sparks an event that links them forever.
Author's Notes: This story is set in an AU where people have external souls in animal form called daemons, a concept taken from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. This isn't a crossover or set in one of Pullman's universes though. It's a Gibbs/DiNozzo story all the way.

Book One: Pack
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Just hopping on really quickly as I have the fabulous Bluespirit staying here this weekend :-). We're having a fine old time gossiping, squeeing, and playing with the cats. We went to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on Saturday and loved it :-). It was a great, feel-good musical that had our toes tapping.

I'm driving her back home today as I'm working in her neck of the woods tomorrow. I won't be back until late on Tuesday, so it's a busy-busy time all round at the moment.

I am hoping to start posting Soul Deep on Thursday 30th Sept in four instalments finishing on Sunday 3rd. I'll let you know if that slips at all owing to my extreme rushing-around-ness but that's my intention at the moment :-).

I'm back! We got back on Thursday, and I can safely say that REAL jetlag is almost as bad as the NCIS ep of the same name. I have real jetlag and it's making me irritable and so DAMN TIRED! I am tired all day, can't wait to get some sleep, go to bed at night...and lay there, staring at the ceiling.

On the plus side, I had a really nice holiday. We didn't stop walking for two weeks solid, which was great if a tad exhausting. We did SO much. We started out at Boston where we did the trolley bus several times because all the tours were different. Eck and Scout were our favourites in case anyone cares *g*. We went to the museum of fine arts which was terrific, and we went to see the Cirque Du Soleil performing Ova, which was not. I was incredibly disappointed by CdS - I'd expected so much more. I thought the whole thing was outdated and lazy. We did have some fun taking the piss out of it though. We also went to Paul Revere's house and had lunch in a terrific Italian restaurant.

Then we drove to Salem where it rained...and rained...and rained. Salem was a bit of a disappointment too - especially the trolley bus tour. Don't take it! It tells you nothing unless you're really interested in bushes in the shape of sea monsters! However we did discover two very nice coffee places and the Peabody Museum was really good. We also visited the House of the Seven Gables which I particularly enjoyed. But the storm got so bad that in the end we were forced just to go shopping in a mall nearby. We had to abandon our plans to explore the scenic towns up the coast as you could barely see a few inches in front of your own face and driving was treacherous with floods everywhere. We went to see The Switch at the movies but that was dreadful. Another thing I wouldn't recommend!!! We also visited the Louisa May Alcott house and did the trolley bus tour of the revolutionary sites around Concord and Lexington. We actually became trolley bus experts during our vacation and can tell you all the best ones *g*. I loved the LM Alcott house - I was a great fan of Little Women as a kid and it was great to see the house where she wrote it and understand a bit more about her as a person.

Things got much better when we left Salem - the weather was glorious on the morning of our departure and the drive to Amherst was beautiful, as was Amherst itself. We visited Sturbridge Village on our way up there and had a good time. It's a reproduction farming village from days gone by (very Little House on the Prairie!) and we had great fun thinking up new professions for the town which seemed to be missing a shagsmith and a spankmaster, both of whom are as vital as the blacksmith and school teacher, as I'm sure you'll agree ;-).

We were only at Amherst for one night and then went to the Emily Dickinson house on our departure - which I loved. We had a great tour guide, and I particularly loved the house next door belonging to her brother, Austin, which was still in its original Victorian state - it was crumbling around the edges, but I was glad they hadn't tried to restore it. It was brilliantly authentic in all its decay.

We made the journey to Cape Cod via the Mark Twain house (we really did the literary house thing on this trip!) which was great too, but in a completely different way to the Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson houses. It was much more opulent and richly furnished. I loved our tours of these houses and would totally recommend them.

We stayed at a lovely place in Sandwich, and took trips to Provincetown, Nantucket, the Newport Mansions on Rhode Island, and Martha's Vineyard. We finished up by travelling back to the airport via Plymouth Rock in 100 degree heat.

Provincetown was as gay as a very gay thing and adorable. We took the trolleybus tour, naturally *g*. And very amusing it was too! Nantucket was beautiful with good shops. The Newport Mansions were spectacular, but we had some issues with the tourist experience there which wasn't as good as it should have been. I started to feel ill that day and it ended with a vile Chinese meal at a crap restaurant and me battling nausea for the rest of the night. However, Martha's Vineyard, the next day, was a magical day. Very very hot, but the ferry ride over there was lovely and, guess what? We did the trolley bus tour! And this one was really good, so we thoroughly enjoyed it.

On the way home we stopped off at Plimouth to see the reconstruction of the settlers' village and Wompanoag settlement too. It was all very well done and interesting, and I particularly enjoyed the "in period" food in the cafeteria and the real story of the first Thanksgiving. We struggled through the heat to go to the Mayflower II and view the rock but by then we were totally exhausted by the heat and rather relieved to make the trip to the airport - in fact anywhere with air conditioning was welcome by this point! We were also glad to get out before Hurricane Earl hit.

It was two weeks of chai tea, constant sightseeing, and trolley bus tours, and very enjoyable! We even came up with a lovely idea for a Gibbs/Tony fic, based on some of our adventures! No idea if I'll write it, but some of the places we visited were very inspiring! However, I still have my long Gibbs/Tony fic to edit and tweak. I got comments back from beta and audiencers, and they liked it, so I'm going to polish it up for posting :-). Those who like long fics but don't like BDSM might enjoy this one. To be honest, it's hard to tell what the reaction will be because it's so different - I have no idea if it'll be loved or hated! But it was an interesting writing experience and it was good for me to tackle this particular challenge. It took me outside the box a little.

I'm back at work next week, so I hope I can beat the jetlag by then. At least I'm getting lots of fuss from a certain pair of furry people who were delighted to see me and have been snuggling me like crazy.

I hope you all had a good two weeks! I'm trying to catch up a bit on LJ but clearly won't be able to cover all I missed. Please let me know if you think there's something I MUST see. I see there's been a hoo-hah over linking to FB and Twitter. I have Twitter and FB accounts but don't use either very often to be honest. I don't make flocked posts on LJ hardly at all (I can't even remember the last time) but obviously I think it goes without saying that I wouldn't expect any of my posts, flocked or otherwise, to show up in other places. So please don't click the linky button when making replies to comments.

Some select vacation pictures are beneath the cut for anyone interested :-).

( Piccies )

A friend of mine has done the most wonderful and hilarious photo story to go with my recent silly ficlet Wood. She's posted it here, in the Gibbs/Tony photo thread on the CBS boards if you want to go check it out!

Having bored you all senseless with my writing woes, I thought I should tell you that the Gibbs/DiNozzo fic is now 38,000 words long so hopefully there will be new long Xanthe fic at some point :-). This story is a strange one. I've never attempted anything like it at all, so I'll be interested to know what people think when I eventually post it. I'm going away on vacation on the 19th, so it doesn't look likely I'll be posting it before then but we'll see. I think the reason I wasn't able to write for so many months is that my brain was burnt out after two years of non-stop writing and needed a rest. I wouldn't have managed to get this far with this new story if it wasn't for Nikita's constant support and encouragement. My writing brain is definitely on the mend now I think - fingers crossed anyway! For awhile back there I couldn't put anything together in my head and that's slowly shifting now.

When I've finished the first draft I'll do a teaser post complete with Bluespirit's GORGEOUS graphic. It's so incredibly beautiful!

First off - a vid rec! It was made by a friend of mine, and I got to see it as it was being put together, so maybe I'm biased, but I think this vid is just *amazing*. It's actually become my favourite Tibbs vid of all time. It can be read as slash, or father/son, or deep friendship - but what it does is showcase the many ways they help and complement each other. It's beautifully angsty, and the ending makes me sigh over and over again! This is exactly how I see them - Tony makes Gibbs laugh and tries to fix him with all his angst and grief over Shannon and Kelly, and Gibbs grounds Tony and tries to fix him after his crappy childhood. Run, don't walk, to watch it!

Fix You - Music by Coldplay, Vid by Justfourfun

Secondly, a big thank you to the person sending me editions of Watch magazine that they think I'll enjoy :-). I LOVED the Pauley Perrette spread - she's so beautiful and classy. And I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to continue sending me the magazine. It's very kind of you. Big hugs!

Thirdly, I went to see The A Team last night, and the Hannibal/Face slash was as strong as it was in the original TV show! Also, as a pairing they are amazingly like Gibbs/Tony in temperament. Strong, military, toppy bossman figure (Face even calls him 'boss'!"), and naughty, good looking, younger guy in need of a firm hand and lots of hot man loving - well, that's my view anyway *g*. And The A Team totally works in the BDSM universe! In fact, most things do :-). If you're going to see it, sit through the credits as there's a very cute thing right at the end :-).

And finally, here's a beautiful picture of MW and PP from the recent CBS summer party. I love their obvious friendship - I hope we'll see more Tony/Abby friendship scenes in Season 8!



Now, what are you doing still reading this? Go watch that fantastic video and then hop back here and tell me what you thought!

PS Thank you Audrey for the waffles delivered to my story journal!

I thought I'd share some pics of Harley in an unsual pose he does. I've never seen a cat do this - none of my other cats have. I think it's because he's got such very long paws and a broad chest! So me and a yoga teacher friend of mine have christened it "Lion Pose" *g*.







I'm writing something. There's about 8000 words of it so far. It's Gibbs/DiNozzo and a bit strange. I've never seen anything like it done in NCIS fandom before but maybe I've missed it. Anyway, this is my take on it. It's slow going - the muse is only at 60% but I suppose that's better than where she was before.

I'm also pondering posting the Gibbs/Abby/Tony threesome story I started writing about a year ago. I get it out and polish bits of it up every now and again. It's also 8000 words long, and it's reached an "end of part one" moment so I could post it and see about writing more. I dunno. I don't know if there's much of an appetite for GAT threesomes out there! I did think it had an interesting premise.

Is it my imagination or is True Blood both darker and more sex oriented this season than last?

Voting closes in the NCIS awards on August 1st.

PS Just adding in a fly-by fic rec. I've really enjoyed slashscribe's new Gen series about Tony "coming out". It isn't Tibbs but I loved the way she handled his coming out to Gibbs and Abby in the stories she's written in this series so far (not sure if she intends to do more but these were great!). A Little Liquid Courage (Tony comes out to Gibbs) and Tea and Incense (Tony comes out to Abby).

I should have done this ages ago but never got around to it.

I created the bdsm_universe community awhile ago. By all means join it and encourage others to do so. It's basically for any stories set in or inspired by my BDSM universe stories. I know some people have lists of stories set in the BDSM universe - please feel free to post those lists in the BDSM Universe community. Or if you've written a story, you can post that there too.

When I first posted General and Dr Sheppard, I had no idea that the concept of a bisexual, BDSM universe would prove so fascinating (and controversial!) within fandom. I'm really delighted that the universe struck a chord with so many people.

I often get asked by other fanfic authors if it's okay for them to write a story in my BDSM universe. My answer is always the same so I thought I should state it publicly:

I write fanfic based on other people's universes and have no problem with people using mine as creative inspiration. So it's fine for you to write in the BDSM universe, either my exact same one, or one of your own invention that uses mine as the original inspiration. ALL I ask is that if this is the case, you credit me with the original idea for the universe and put a link back to my original stories in this universe.

However, please don't write a fic within one of my actual *stories* (EG a missing scene from "Hiding in Plain Sight" or a sequel to "Coming Home") without asking me first. That is something I'm a bit antsy about.

Please note that I often don't read stories by other authors set in the BDSM universe. This is for a variety of different reasons and shouldn't be taken personally.

I'm in a bad mood for lots of blah blah blah boring reasons.

I'm bored now by this back pain which has gone on for far too long and okay is getting slowly better but even so, enough already! It's tiring and exhausting and makes me feel a bit weepy. Also, it's expensive - bloody osteopaths and pilates instructors and masseuses etc. I feel so for people with chronic pain conditions. I'd be in a permanently bad mood.

I woke up at 3.30 a.m. last night, tossed and turned for half an hour, had a great idea for a NCIS/True Blood crossover fic. Tossed and turned for another hour and a half writing it in my head - and it was SO bloody good! Loved it. Couldn't wait to get up and write it. Got up and wrote it this morning and it was crap. Clearly the muse hates me at the moment. Did I ever write those mammoth 100k - 200k fics on my website? It doesn't feel like it. I'm sure someone else did. I can't write a damn thing right now.

And I saw this on the cat_lovers community. There's also a video here. I admit the fact the cat was called Harley got my attention but it's such a sad story. Bastards! And I went to donate and realised I couldn't as it was Paypal and some shits hacked my Paypal account a few months ago and it's still frozen because Paypal are stupid and don't reply to my emails.

I did the "Who do you write like" survey thing and apparently I write like Chuck Palahniuk, Vladimir Nabokov and Stephen King. I'm pretty sure I don't.

And that's it. Blah blah blah.

Blah.