Fanfiction hit summary by country

Starting in August of 2008, fanfiction.net began providing ‘country of origin’ data for the hits on stories posted on their website.  So I thought it might be fun to take a look at how my hits distribute out by country since then.  (Well, I always thought every spot on the planet was associated with one country or another, but I have hits from two nebulous locations: ‘Asian/Pacific Region’ and ‘Satellite’.  I think I am going to pretend the satellite hit means I have a reader on the space station! LOL)

Duane

	Aug08-Jan10	Percentage
Argentina	61	0.3
Aruba	1	0.0
Asia/Pacific Region	1	0.0
Australia	1147	5.6
Austria	51	0.3
Bahrain	25	0.1
Barbados	3	0.0
Belgium	277	1.4
Bosnia and Herzegovina	5	0.0
Brazil	86	0.4
Bulgaria	14	0.1
Canada	1156	5.7
Cayman Islands	2	0.0
Chile	4	0.0
China	35	0.2
Colombia	7	0.0
Costa Rica	5	0.0
Croatia	72	0.4
Cyprus	1	0.0
Czech Republic	69	0.3
Denmark	83	0.4
DominicanRepublic	4	0.0
Egypt	1	0.0
Estonia	7	0.0
Finland	164	0.8
France	294	1.4
Germany	1109	5.5
Greece	11	0.1
Guam	1	0.0
Hong Kong	4	0.0
Hungary	15	0.1
Iceland	9	0.0
India	17	0.1
Indonesia	15	0.1
Ireland	77	0.4
Israel	29	0.1
Italy	33	0.2
Jamaica	2	0.0
Japan	5	0.0
Kazakhstan	2	0.0
Kuwait	42	0.2
Lithuania	12	0.1
Malaysia	73	0.4
Mexico	27	0.1
Netherlands	313	1.5
New Zealand	122	0.6
Norway	170	0.8
Panama	11	0.1
Philippines	99	0.5
Peru	3	0.0
Poland	86	0.4
Portugal	154	0.8
Puerto Rico	32	0.2
Romania	70	0.3
Russia	62	0.3
Satellite	1	0.0
Saudi Arabia	4	0.0
Singapore	62	0.3
Slovenia	1	0.0
South Africa	14	0.1
South Korea	12	0.1
Spain	51	0.3
Sweden	489	2.4
Switzerland	6	0.0
Tanzania	3	0.0
Taiwan	3	0.0
Thailand	2	0.0
TrinidadandTobago	22	0.1
Turkey	9	0.0
Ukraine	18	0.1
UnitedArabEmirates	3	0.0
UK	1708	8.4
USA	11697	57.5
Uruguay	5	0.0
Venezuela	29	0.1
Vietnam	18	0.1
Zimbabwe	1	0.0
Total Hits	20338
Total Countries	77

A place to read my ‘Chapters in Progress’ and discuss my various stories

Hi,

I started a ‘Chapter in Progress’ page several years ago for a couple of reasons. First, I like to do long chapters of 10,000 words or more, so when you get a new chapter from me you will know you have a nice long read that tells its own portion of the overall story. Of course, the downside of long chapters is that they also take a long time to write. Therefore for the people who don’t mind getting the new chapter in smaller chunks, they can find it here. Secondly, I thought some people might find my creative process interesting. To help you follow how a chapter evolves during its development, you can use the ‘track changes’ function in Word. With this function turned on, the most recent changes I have made will be highlighted in a different color like red. Generally, I write in a very linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the chapter. But lots of time I proofread the last couple of days worth of writing to clean up typos and tweak sentences that just don’t flow right. I do occasionally go back and make more extensive changes when some new idea which will greatly improve the story occurs to me.

I have had a different version of this ‘Chapter in Progress’ page up for several years. During that time people have sent me e-mails asking questions or making suggestions for changes. I decided others might also be interested in these on-going conversations. So I have decided to redo my ‘Chapter in Progress’ page into a more blog-like format. This way it will be easier to have a more dialog-oriented discussion.

If you have comments of a general nature, or if you just feel a need to kick me to be more prolific, post them here. If your comments are more specific to a particular story, you can post them in the appropriate entry below.

I hope you find this site interesting,

Duane

e-mail: a_delacroix@hotmail.com

Reserved for future stories 2

Reserved

Chuck versus LuthorCorp

November 4, 2009

Here is my newest ‘work in progress’ (hmm, I do seem to have a lot of ‘works’ in progress at the moment!).  Since Kristin Kreuk from Smallville is joining the cast of ‘Chuck’ for season 3, I thought a Chuck/Lana Lang cross-over might be fun.

The first three chapters of this story are available here.

Origins – A sequel to Biological Families

Here is one of my ‘works in progress’.  ORIGINS is a Smallville story and a sequel to ‘Biological Families’. It will explore the origin of a number of things like the Kryptonian race, Chloe’s civilization, Brainiac, Superman’s ’suit’, and more.

The first chapter is available here.

UPDATE 1/2/2010

If you would like a preview of the second chapter of ‘ORIGINS’ click here.

1963 – A ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ Story

1963

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a new favorite of mine.  After only a couple of episodes, I had a strong urge to tell a new story, exploring things a little differently than they are doing in the show. And what intrigues me the most is Cameron’s evolution from robot girl to something more. Now, if you have read some of my other stories, you will know I have an affinity for time travel stories. Although unlike most of my others which primarily stick to one place in time, the first arc of this saga jumps around a lot with each chapter taking place in a different time period or alternate time line (Sort of how the old show ‘Sliders’ did each episode).

The first arc, consisting of four chapters, are available here.

What was going to be the fifth chapter, exploring the next time line, kept growing in size and scope until it needed to be its own story rather than just a single chapter. The idea came to me when I started watching the new ‘90210′ TV show and it reminded me of how Brian Austin Green had appeared in that show’s earlier incarnation, I decided a cross-over chapter with 90210 might be fun. In the end it grew to five chapters and I think it turned out well. A lot of the people who have sent me comments said they thought Terminator+90210 was a pretty bizarre mash-up, but that, surprisingly, it worked.

This second arc of my Terminator story is available here.

So now I have started thinking about what to do next. I sort of like the longer form of the previous arc, where the story stays in one time line for multiple chapters. And I thought the obscure, unexpected cross-over was fun and I would like to try it again. So, I am thinking of doing another cross-over only even more obscure.

At the moment I am thinking the next story will be a variation of them battling Skynet on the moon in the late 1970’s I had mentioned in the last chapter of the first story. And for a long-time sci-fi fan like me, the obvious cross-over for this time frame is the 1970 British TV show ‘UFO’.

The show was set in the distant future year of 1980 and involved a secret organization (with its headquarters buried below a British movie studio) battling alien invaders. Now if you aren’t old enough to remember 1970, when this show was created, you may not understand how things on this show like the existence of many large moon-based operations by multiple countries and corporations felt entirely possible a mere ten years in the future. But in 1970 it had been less than ten years since the first person had gone into space and they had already landed a man on the moon. I think if you asked people in 1970 which was more likely: the space travel of this show in ten years or mankind not sending anyone back to the moon for more than 50 years, they would have all voted that events in the show were more likely. What has happened with space travel in the last few decades seems to be almost ‘stranger than fiction’.

Anyway, as I said, this show was done in 1970 and tried to extrapolate things to 1980. And not only did they try to extrapolate technology, but also everything else. It feels so anachronistic, at least to a modern American, to see all the characters sitting around their offices smoking cigars and drinking hard liquor. And then there are the fashions. 1970 England was still in the whole ‘mod’ scene and this show is a lot like Austin Powers on steroids – the men all wear turtlenecks and Nehru jackets and the women are all in short, short skirts. But my favorite bit was always the women who manned the secret organization’s moon operations. They dressed in these shiny metallic jumpsuits and all wore matching purple wigs. I think it would be a lot of fun to see Sarah, Cameron, Naomi, and Lisa forced to wear the purple wigs and skin-tight spacesuits to blend in!

I still have to figure out the ‘hook’ to tie these two stories together into a seamless whole, but it simply feels like it will be a lot of fun if I can make it work.

Just to help you picture what I am talking about, here are a couple of photos. You can find lots more info, if you google ‘ufo tv series’.

The first chapter of the third arc of my Terminator story is available here.

Can you picture Cameron, Sarah, Lisa & Naomi in these moonbase outfits?

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The moonbase from the show

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The DVD available from Netflix or Amazon

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If you would like to discuss my overall terminator saga, or more specifically the upcoming story arc with ‘UFO’, please leave a comment.

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Are you a Cameron Fan?

Granger, Texas Ranger

Granger, Texas Ranger

I think crossover stories between ’straight’ and ‘magical’ ones work better than most attempts to crossover two ‘magical’ ones. Since I have never tried a Harry Potter story, I thought it might be fun. Of course, women always seem to be the central characters in my stories so one centered on Ms. Granger seemed more interesting than one about Harry. Anyway, I was driving to the gym one day while waiting for book seven to be released when suddenly the ‘Granger, Texas Ranger’ refrain started bouncing around in my head. Since I live in Fort Worth, setting a story here has a certain appeal to me. The first chapter seemed to flow out of my fingers almost as fast as I could type, which is usually a good sign. So, we will have to see where this one decides to take us.

The first chapter of this story is available here.

If you would like to chat about this story, please leave a comment.

Kandor

Kandor Cover Art

I started this story after seeing the movie ‘Superman Returns’.  I had been looking forward to this movie since it was first announced.  I ordered my tickets early so I could see it on the opening weekend in 3-D at the IMAX in Dallas.  Then it turned out to be just a huge disappointment.  It was like they were trying to do nothing original but just redoing the first Christopher Reeve’s Superman movie with better special effects.  And somehow in the process they lost the special feeling of wonder the original movie had instilled in me when I saw it in college and instead kept every bad cliche that had been bad even in the original thirty years earlier.  The worst for me was Lex Luthor.  I wanted him to be a seriously scary, bad-ass industrialist.  Instead we got a loser who steals from little old ladies and surrounds himself with a group of buffoons.  How can Superman be Superman when he doesn’t have a worthy opponent?

So Kandor started out as a variation of the movie I would have liked to have seen.  I salvaged the two plot lines (Superman had been gone five years and Lois had a son) and the one action sequence (Superman saving the shuttle and mother craft) I found interesting and scrapped everything else. Like the movie, this story takes place after the first two Christopher Reeve’s movies, but additionally it takes place after the Smallville TV series because the movies don’t provide enough background information to flesh out the story.  To make it all work, I have from time to time made a few adjustments to the original movies/series so things will be at least somewhat consistent.  For example, I am sticking with the dates from the TV series, so in this story the first Superman movie takes place in 2013, the second in 2015, and this story begins in 2020.

Setting the story a dozen years in the future certainly makes for a more interesting writing challenge.  I mean, simply look at all the things we take for granted that didn’t exist twelve years ago: Only a primitive pre-cursor to the current internet (with no amazon, no ebay, no google, no worldwide fanfiction), no digital cameras, almost no cellphones, no DVDs, no Ipods, there were CDs, but no way to burn your own.  The list could go on and on, but you get the point.  And then next dozen years will probably see even more and faster changes.   With this story I will really have to get out my futurist hat.

My version of Kandor is based on the ‘Silver Age’ of Superman (the 1960’s comics to the non-comic fans), with Kandor, the historic capitol of Krypton, stolen from Krypton by Brainiac through the use of a minaturization ray beam appoximately seventy years prior to the destruction of the planet. At the time of this story, approximately one hundred years have passed for the residents of Kandor since their removal from Krypton.  Even for the long-lived Kryptonian race, most of the inhabitants at the time of the story never knew their homeworld.

I currently have five chapters of this story finished.  You can find them here.

If you would like to talk about this story, please leave a comment.

Biological Families

Biological Families

Wow, I never guessed when I started that it would take three and a half years to write this story.  And when I started I thought this was going to be the first of three short stories that would combine to a nice 150,000 word novel.  Instead, this story all by itself grew into a truly massive 350,000 words.

This is a sequel to ‘The Portal’.  After having Clark go up against Romans in the first story, I thought a Nazi battleship would be a nice step up in the size of the challenge.  Of course, as always happens with me, by the time I reached that point in the story it had morphed into something different then what I originally intended.

Deciding to involve the Nazis, it was a matter of picking a specific time.  As I started writing, the 2004 Olympics in Athens were about to start (and interestingly, I am watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics as I write this) and I decided it might be fun to set the story during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  Of course, I had to have them try out for the American team and having them interact with Jesse Owens ended up being one of my favorite chapters.

Then once I had gotten the story to the point where they were actually back in 1936, I decided you couldn’t have Nazis in the 1930s without throwing in a little Indiana Jones action.  Since the best Indiana Jones stories always involve biblical relics, I put on my thinking cap and came up with one I hadn’t seen anyone use before and that was perfect when you throw Clark Kent into the mix.

The ‘biological families’ in the title was selected when I thought this was going to contain three short segments.  In this first part we meet Clark’s ancestor, Var El of Krypton.  And along the way get to find out what actually caused the destruction of Krypton, as well as a little about the origin of the Krypton race and a hint at why Kryptonians look just like humans.

This hardly covers more than a small fraction of what takes place in this story, however If this quick description  has sounded enticing, you can start reading it here. (Although I would strongly recommend reading ‘The Portal’ first.)

I tried to put a reasonable amount of effort into researching the historical references included in the story.  But a number of people have sent me messages disputing some of my ‘facts’.  I am always happy to discuss the details.  So if you would like to chat about the history or my weird science (or is that science fiction?) elements in the story, just leave a comment.

(Oh, and I don’t have a ‘no tights, no flying’ limitation like the TV show has self-imposed.  In this story Clark gets to fly and in the next he will get ‘the tights’.)

Alicia’s Diary

Alicia's Diary

The character of Alicia was introduced during an episode in season 3.  Then they brought her back for two episodes in season 4.  And then they KILLED her.

Alicia is probably my all-time favorite guest character.  I don’t know what it was exactly, but there was something about her eyes and voice when she was with Clark.  Plus, of course, the whole teleportation thing, which hasn’t been explored much in science fiction since the 1950s and 1960s.

So after seeing her second and third appearances, I went surfing fan fiction sites looking for stories involving Alicia and I couldn’t find any.  So I decided to do my own.

Now, personally, I like fun, upbeat stories and I felt I could capture the essence of Alicia without making her crazy like in the show.  The ‘Alicia’ in my story is part Nancy Drew, part Supermodel, and part budding Superhero.  The story so far (Read chapters 1-4 here) takes place during season 1 even though she doesn’t appear in the show until season 3.  After an introductory chapter, the next three chapters retell the events of the ‘Necrodemis’ episode from Alicia’s perspective.  To me, that episode had a lot of big plot holes that just begged to be filled.  I think I have managed to completely change what is really going on without changing anything that actually happened on the TV screen.  And along the way we get to explore some things from the second season involving the local Indian legends as well as how people’s lives would change if they had the ability to teleport.

If you have any thoughts about where you would like see this story go, just leave a comment!

Boris, Doris, and Faith

This is a cross-over story between ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and the movie ‘True Lies’.  With the actress Eliza Dushka playing both Faith and the daughter in ‘True Lies’, this has always been an obvious cross-over to me, but I have never seen it done.  I think I have come up with a logical explanation of how the eleven-year-old Dana Tasker of the movie would have evolved into the fifteen-year-old Faith who arrived in Sunnydale during the third season.  However this story mostly focuses on events after the series finale with events before Faith’s arrival in Sunnydale covered via flashbacks.

I originally started this story when I was in the middle of writing ‘The Portal’, as I wasn’t happy with my ability to write action sequences and wanted to get a few more under my belt before I reached the climax of the other story.

Currently, I have completed the first five chapters and you can read them here.

I have made several attempts at starting the next chapter of this story.  The problem I keep running into is that the story really needs a transitional chapter to move the action from Cleveland to Transylvania.  However since it has been so long since I last updated this story, I would like to come up with something special and exciting to restart things.  I guess one solution would be to do an extra long (even by my standards) chapter to accomplish the transition as well as some follow-up action.  Anyway, if you would like to read the 8,000 word start I have made to the next chapter, you will find it here.

If you would like to discuss this story or push me to get back to work on it, leave a comment.

The Portal — My first fanfic

This story was the first piece of fiction I ever wrote.  You can read it here. 

It is a Smallville story set near the end of season 1.  This story involves Clark, Chloe, Lex, and Lana being stranded in ancient Rome by a time machine.  There is a big plot twist involving Chloe which occurs in chapter 5 and exploring the consequences of this plot twist is the whole reason I wrote the story.  Let’s just say it involves some far-out nanotechnology.

Let’s see, what else?  Oh – Romantic pairings – First up Clark & Chloe.  Chloe has always been my favorite and even though they were half way through the second season when I started writing the story, I set it right before the season 1 finale because that was when Clark and Chloe were briefly a couple.  When I started the story, that was the only pairing I had planned, but then in the middle of the story a story line involving Lex and Lana just seemed to blossom of its own accord.

I finished this story before I started my first ‘works in progress’ page, so I never created a ‘book cover’ piece of artwork to go with it.  If you have read it and feel inspired to create a piece of artwork, I would be happy to put it up.

Finally, if there are any aspects of this story you would like to chat about, just leave a comment.