About viggen:

Currently, I'm a fourth year Physics graduate student, so my time to write has been very limited.

Whoever you are, thank you very much for reading my work!

(6-28-12)- Work on fanfic has been regrettably slow; I've actually been focusing on an entirely original piece. My own world, my own characters. I want badly someday to publish a story of my own, but that will never ever happen if all my effort is directed at works owned by others. I'm decent, I see no reason to do anything but try. I do intend to continue my efforts on "Youngest Channeler" if only when there's spare time.

I'm confused about my interests here a little bit; I like making people happy with what I've written and I know people will read my fanfic if I continue to write it, but I'll never be recognized for my own talent if I waste my time living in the shadows of someone like Robert Jordan. But, I may never be able to sell a work of my own, so it's appealing to write fic.

(1-8-13)- "A Memory of Light" is out today. Guess what I'll be reading tonight.

(1-15-13)- Totally stoked when I realized that Rand Al'Thor, in gaining Lews Therin's memories, now remembers the Tinker's Song. And he's in Ebou Dar where the Tinkers are collecting. When Damane-ism implodes on the Seanchan, they've got the tinkers and their song available to take up the slack! The moment Fortuona realizes that... (Yeah, that was a total spoiler... but where best to write about it;-)

(1-22-13)- Finished "A Memory of Light." Wow. I have a strong feeling that a lot of people are going to be writing Egwene and Siuan Sanche fanfics in the very near future. Likely there will be a few Rand al'Thor/ Tom Bombadil fics too. And, I expect a few self-inserts with genius first day novices happening onto the Flame of Tar Valon. I can still sort of envision a fic with Rand giving the tinkers their song back (sadly, didn't happen in the book).

(1-30-13)- In contrast to the style of "Youngest Channeler" one good thing about writing original work where nothing has been released to the public is the ability to make big changes in widely separated sections of story without anyone knowing it. I've missed having this ability available to me in my relatively recent writing. With YC, I mostly confined myself to not changing things after they had been released. I went back and adjusted plot points only twice, I think. That's actually much more linear than I would prefer. I like having the ability to get a wicked cool idea after I've been writing for a while and being able to go back and include it. (The original story mentioned above has just passed 50,000 words and I plan on shooting for 200,000. My work!)

(4-2-13)- Good glory... I just realized that YC is the highest rated original character fic in the WOT category. That's kind of impressive. Talk about your mixed blessings. Whatever your interests are, my thanks. You may or may not have noticed it, but I've gradually begun revising YC with some intention of continuing it. I've always intended to continue, but a higher priority has gone to my original work.

viggen Award

I don't know when, or if I will ever get back to doing this. I just haven't had the time.

The award is for people who write stories exceeding 40,000 words. I did some statistics years ago and found that less than 1 percent of stories written in the WOT category exceeded 40,000 words in length, but that the ones that do tend to march on toward 100,000 or 200,000 words. If you've ever tried to keep writing a long story you'll know that it is huge challenge. My award is for people who surmount those difficulties and manage to continue writing despite the forces that stop most people before they've even really started. If I give you this award, it's for your perseverance!

viggen's work

A Layer of Dust: Written circa 1995 just after I first discovered Gunnm. Not quite my oldest fanfic.

The Hunter Warrior Killer: Written 1996-1997 in several large pushes. Started as a textural experiment, but mutated when I discovered that I really loved the villain. An inverse marysue?

Hidden Virtues: My first uber Marysue, written during the height of my Evangelion obsession in about 1998. Subsequently rewritten about four times and coming to include some of my thoughts about martial arts at that time. The formatting of this story has suffered through the upgrades and alterations to this site: it no longer looks quite like I intended. But, that's okay... I detest this story and keep it around more or less as a reminder of what I won't write again.

Serpent at the Window: My last Eva fic. Not a terrific piece of work, but written in the days preceding and following September 11 2001. This story contains my emotional response to the events of that day. I will not write an Eva fic again and almost decided not to write fanfic anymore after a confrontation with a friend based on the criticism of this story. Criticism can be hard and is best not leveled by people you care about.

Self Assembler Saga: High concept science fiction that ended up crossed with an impression of "Calvin and Hobbs." This story died in my brain when the original creator of Gunnm began to write "Last Order" and totally trashed my perspective on the main character: she wasn't supposed to be a Playboy Bunny dammit!

Weaving Luck: Written 2005. This work contains the genesis of my current marysue Ghedlyn. There are actually several characters here that I really liked, including the protagonist Aes Sedai, her Warder and the character/s about which the story was originally named. No, the story was not named for Ghedlyn. This story stalled because I realized that it was going to be prohibitively difficult to write it and keep it perfectly true to RJ's original series, which is a fairly large requirement that I impose upon myself when writing fanfic.

Youngest Channeler: 2006 to present. This is my current focus when I have time to devote to fanfic. It was written as a substitute for a blog when I realized I liked the writing experience that blogging provides, but don't like talking about my own life a la journal-open-to-the-world. This story was for fun. I am still working on this, but my time has been divided lately and work is progressing slowly. The writing strategy here was slightly different than I would prefer if I were writing something like a full novel and I think it diminishes the quality of the work: the chapters are written and presented in an episodic fashion, meaning that there is little editorial interaction between the beginning of the story and the current section. This is disadvantageous because it means I can't correct for drift or strengthen/support new ideas had in the process of writing and it means that far reaching plot points are less structured than I would prefer. The block-at-a-time style does have the advantage that it gives immediate feedback, but I think the whole thing is less than it could be.

Desertion of Reason: Written 2009. I stopped "Youngest Channeler" long enough to write this story. It chases a strange psychological idea that I wanted to explore after reading some Philip K. Dick which I decided was uniquely possible within the WOT universe. This story is pretty dark and uninviting, but it is the first fanfic in recent history that I've written to completion prior to beginning to post it. There is an old theme of familial tragedy in here that I've explored in some of my other work and somehow it matched with the feelings of loss and loneliness existent in my life while I was writing it. I have a proclivity for insane characters and this story followed with that. I have no idea whether people will like reading it or not, but I guess that didn't matter while I was working on it.

Newcomers to the Wheel:

This is a C2 community I made a while ago with the intent of collecting every effort by someone to make a newcomer character in the WOT universe. This includes all the attempts, both good and bad, when someone had the courage to write a story (including self-inserts and the like) surrounding a novel character in Robert Jordan's world rather than co-opting characters that RJ created and wrote. Writing new characters is poorly recognized and demands a greater level of skill than simply repackaging old characters, especially in Fanfic, which thrives because it repackages old, beloved characters.

(3-10-09): I'm trying to update the Newcomers. If you've got a newcomer that I've missed, please send me a personal message and I'll include it.