Updates (AKA Blog)

10/10/17
Heavy editing on Shiny and Blue in anticipation of publishing three new one-shots on the end. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, fixed Harry's fucking fedora in chapter 30. You're welcome to see Harry's new outfit for yourself:

https: // / originals/d4/8c/31/d48c31c18e27862b56cbc5f8a8494884. jpg

9/26/11
So, I'm going through Pottermore and occasionally swearing loudly whenever there's new canon that contradicts something I put in Shiny and Blue. AGH. Damn it, JKR.

8/24/11
Hey bros and babes, I JUST FINISHED SHINY AND BLUE. Hellyes. Anyway. That's done. I may add the occasional oneshot short story that goes chronologically between chapter 71 and the epilogue, but they will be few and far between--just written if I need something familiar with which to procrastinate a final.
SO. That's that, folks. Maybe I'll put some silly survey up or something. So. If you see one, take it.

8/19/11
Hey. So. I'm in the American Southwest, Colorado to be specific on a family vacation. We're touring old Native American ruins and stuff. It's pretty sweet. it's a roatrip so I'm getting a lot of time to write/publish, and I have my computer which makes it so much easier. Last year we went to Costa Rica and I had to use the computers in the lobbies of hotels. The trip was cool, but that was lame.
Anyway! 68's up, and 69's up. For those of you who asked whether the slashy scene was in chapter number 69 on purpose, the answer is yes. Yes, I am that immature. Yes, I am that obsessed with numbers. Yes. It was also on purpose that the score was 6-9. I believe I've been planning both of those since the beginning. I'm shocked that it actually worked, though.
Anyway, chapter 70's on its way. Back to PLOT. Yay. Um. That should be up...tomorrow? Or something?

8/15/11
67's been up. 68's almost done. Seriously. This fic is maybe within...15k words of the end. That's like...5 chapters.

8/11/11
66 is up. I'm going to finish this fic this summer if it kills me. If it kills you, even. MOAHAHAHA.
But seriously. This thing's got to end. It's driving me insane, and I've got an original novel to finish. Start. Whatever. =P. 67 will be up in a day or two.

8/8/11
Heh...So, the reason I wasn't posting for a while was because my lovely boyfriend was visiting me from out of state, and then I was "recovering" from having a houseguest, and now I really have no excuse, so I sat down to write and ended up editing the same three paragraphs I have written of chapter 66 and finding myself unable to move forward and really not sure why...
Until I realized that I can't write chapter 66 because I have no idea how to proceed with the upcoming plot. So I need to find a time to talk to myself a bit and figure it out. Might be another week or so cause I'm working this week. Hang in there.

7/20/11
Chapter 65's up. Overall, I did enjoy the 8th Harry Potter movie. I was pretty miffed by a few of the things they skipped, like the Percy thing (where he apologizes for being a git), and the part where he SNAPS THE ELDER WAND without repairing his own wand made me REALLY mad. But I liked the whole Gringotts thing and Snape's death scene was good. Yeah. So. Maybe I'll make a poll. Hmm.

7/15/11
Ahhh I waited in line for 14 hours yesterday for HP 7.2 after forgetting my phone at home. Yesterday was the first time I've ever met somebody, in person, who'd read my fic. YAY. That was super exciting. Anyway, I've got about half of a new chapter written...should be up within a day or two.

6/25/11
So, I promised I'd post really often, and I'm only posting sort of often. I have a big life-project I'm working on right now and limited internet, so I'll get back to posting when I get home in a few days. Wish me luck on my project. See y'all soon. Ooh! And I'm also working on a trilogy of one shots for the new X Men movie for Xavier/Erik. I'm enjoying it, but I don't know when it's going to be up. Have you all bought your tickets for the new Harry Potter movie yet? I have. I had a nightmare about not getting to the theater before 11AM and I wasn't first in line. I've been second in line every single time for these midnight showings, but I've gotten a TV interview and my picture in the front page of a newspaper, so I'm doing something right...I think it's because I bring my hot friends. Anyway. See y'all in a bit.

6/18/11
800 words of chapter 60 written. This story isn't over, guys, so stop telling me you liked the ending. =P

6/5/11
1000 reviews on Shiny and Blue! Yaaay!

6/4/11
59's up. It's what you've been waiting for. Enjoy it. More soon.

6/3/11
Haha, so, I was looking through the HPL. It turns out, according to the Black family tree, Sirius Black is actually James Potter's first cousin once removed. This means that Sirius Black is actually Harry Potter's second cousin. Also, Draco's Harry's second cousin once removed. Harry and Bellatrix are second cousins. Ha. Ha. Ha. Oh, pairings.

5/26/11
58's up. I'm starting 59 and it'll be up when I've got it ready...readiness is sped up by reviews. I'm in Chicago visiting my manly man friend ("Hey, can I refer to you on my fanfiction profile as my manly man friend?" "...do what you wish."), so the writing may be sporadic until I get home. June 1st officially starts my summer, which means I'll be updating faast. I sort of hope to finish Shiny and Blue this summer. I don't know if that'll happen. I have about...100k words more plot to write. Anyway. Right. Back to writing.

5/8/11
56 is up. 57 is in progress.
Agh. When stuff like this exists, I have to watch myself to make sure I get every detail right... http:///cj_whitehound/Fanfic/map_of_Hogwarts.htm

5/4/11
I just got the following error message in my master microsoft word document of all of Shiny and Blue: “There are too many spelling or grammatical errors in “ADHP Master” to continue displaying them. To check the spelling and grammar of this document, choose Spelling and Grammar from the Review tab.”

5/2/11
54 and 55 have been up. 56 is about half way done and should be up within the week.

4/2/11
So, I'm a practicing hypnotist. Tonight I met with my hypnotism group and hypnotized several people to be Harry Potter characters...Ladies and gents, I just made real-life, unscripted fanfiction. Also, chapter 53's up.

11/18/10
Guess where I am. I'm sitting in line for HARRY POTTER 7 PART I. Yeah. That's right. I'm also writing chapter 48. I'm about...500 words in.

9/5/10
Ok. So. I'm still half way through 47. I just started college and orientation is a lot busier than I thought it would be. I think things are going to calm down soon, though. Do not fear; I have not abandoned the project.

8/29/10
Yeah...haven't updated this thing in a few days...Chapter 46 has been up for a while and about half of 47 has been written. I'm near my new school getting ready to move into my dorm, so I'm busy running around and buying things and hanging with my neurotic family. When I get back from shopping and hanging, I'm usually tired so I haven't been writing. That being said, I do have a lot of downtime and am bound to finish 47 soonish.

8/somwhere between 14 and 18/10
Chapter 2's fixed, and 43's up. 44 should be up today or tomorrow.

8/13/10
Ok. Not done with 43 or 2, though both are partially written. 2 will probably come first. I'm thinking...Sunday for 43, now. We'll see. This week was busy.

8/10/10
Today I completely re-wrote and uploaded chapter 1 of Shiny and Blue. It's sooo much better. It's completely different, but if you don't want to re-read, you won't miss anything plot-wise. I'll be starting on chapter 2 soon. That...could be some work.

8/9/10
Chapter 42's up. I thought it would be cruel to leave a cliff hanger at the end of chapter 41 and then put a special in for the number 42 rather than continue the story. Face of Boe's Child says I should do a special for 50 or something. I'll think about it. I'm not really sure what that would look like. Anyway, I haven't started 43 yet. It's semi-planned, but I've got a busy week. I have to do online traffic school (what do you mean it's illegal to do 81 in a 55 zone?) and introduce friends who are going to school together next year blah blah. I'm thinking...Friday? At least it will be of decent length. No more of this 2200 word chapter500 word author note crap. =D

8/8/10
I got a very interesting review today on chapter 41 of Shiny and Blue about "review-whoring" (my words, not their's). This review has inspired me to write a short story about Hermione teaching Harry and Ron how to write a review, and, in turn, Hermione complaining about authors who put up irritating authors notes. With this, I hope to foster better reader/author relations.
I will also be putting an author's note about review-whoring in my next chapter, and I hope that will clear some things up.
Meanwhile, there's...still...a good bit of 42 written. I should have it up in a day or two, though I'm a little busy.

8/6/10
I've got... 2100 words of 41 written. I think that's about half. Maybe. Anyway, so I have a facebook profile for Der Mondstrahl, cause I used to use that name to leave cryptic notes before I started writing fanfiction. Anyway, some German lady friended me and sent me a message...it turns out "coolen namen" actually does mean "cool name" in German...Heh.

7/19/10
I just published the first chapter of a new story called Chickens in Venice. It's based off Doctor Who, mostly. Watch the show. It's excellent. I've written all of...12 words of chapter 37 of Shiny and Blue. 10, depending on your views of hyphens. I'll...get that out soon. :-)

7/16/10
I'm starting chapter 37 of Shiny and Blue today. I...Really want to write a Doctor Who fic. I just watched all of the new show...That's...um...why I haven't written anything in a bit. So, I would write a Doctor Who fic...but that fanbase just isn't as big as Harry Potter. I'm a little spoiled on the largeness of my audience. Even a silly pairing like HPAD has a bigger audience than anything on the Doctor Who page, I'd guess. Well, I'll write a chapter for S&B and see how I feel after...Opinions? Shoot me a message. Allons-y!

7/11/10
I saw the Paul McCartney concert last night. I can now die happy.

7/3/10
Ok, so today I looked at the IMDB page for the upcoming Harry Potter movie, and there's someone cast for Young Dumbledore. He's suuper hot. I am now taking guesses for how much my readership for Shiny and Blue goes up after that movie comes out. The poll will be up soon.

7/1/10
So far the (non-cheating) guesses for my location are Brazil and Moscow (which I'd love to hear an explanation for...). I had some serious cicada induced insomnia last night and actually wrote some original fiction...what is the world coming to...?

6/27/10
Despite the fact that I'm in the middle of a rainforest, I managed to post chapter 36 of Shiny and Blue last night (whilst being bitten by misquotes). A lot of the computers I've been working on (in hotel lobbies) have Spanish keyboards and no Microsoft Word, so I've been working out of a Gmail email draft. There've been computers with those huge brick monitors...but I think this is the worst one so far...the Macbook Pro...God, I don't know how I managed. =D (I just lost of my readers...).

6/7/10
I published chapter 35 last night. Then I worked until 3 in the morning on a massive final project. After sleeping three hours, I got up at six, when to school, and got into the class this morning and asked why there was no dropbox online for the assignment. Apparently, the assignment's actually due Wednesday (three days later) and we have three periods in class to work on it until then. FML.

6/2/10
So, today my friend told me he hopes to write a slash fiction for a class assignment. He's going to make it a cliche graphic HP/DM oneshot, and he asked me if I could help him add fanfiction convention and cliche. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...HA. HA!

5/14/10
It may be noted for the record that I strongly dislike the song "Building a Mystery" by Sarah Mclachlan (in reference to the title of chapter 34 of Shiny and Blue). I always imagine old people exercising to it. That being said, I still thought it was more appropriate a title than "Magical Mystery Tour." We're not quite there yet.

5/13/10
100,000 words in Shiny and Blue! YES.
Beaspaz, that was an interesting review. You are the fifth person to tell me my writing style is like that of Douglas Adams, but I've actually never read any of his books. I assure you, I'm neither trying nor failing to imitate him. I would love to hear more from you, and I'm sure I would benefit from more specific comments. Some of your comments were a little vague...

2/11/10
Chapter 28's up...Heh, I may have Jumped the NukeFridgeShark and turned this into a real fanfiction.

About Me

Hello! I'm Moonlight.

A little about me: I live in San Francisco, California and my current occupation is student. I love to learn, but I much prefer writing fanfiction to doing my homework. My hobbies include playing tennis, acting, singing, playing piano, writing things, and building things. I love math and physics. My favorite books include Harry Potter, The Golden Compass (etc.), Good Omens, you know. Those... I watch(d) Doctor Who, Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly, Trueblood, House, Scrubs, Avatar, Korra, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Star Trek TNG and TOS, Battlestar Galactica, Glee, and...I'm sure I'm missing a few.

I ship pairings that aren't cannon but are either hinted at enough that it works or have enough material that I can work with.

By the way, for all of you who asked, "Der Mondstrahl" means "The Moonbeam" in German. I don't speak German, but "Der Mondstrahl" sounded cool, and Dancing in the Moonlight is my favorite song.

About My Fics:

Shiny and Blue
My current fanfic project is Shiny and Blue, my Harry/Dumbledore fic. This started out as a joke between my forth grade teacher and myself. I called him up after watching the 6th Harry Potter movie in the summer of 2009. I told him about how, in the theater on opening night, I laughed really loudly during the really upsetting flash back at the beginning where Dumbledore puts his arm around Harry's shoulder in the Ministry of Magic. He laughed and told me he'd just read an article about how odd the relationship between Harry and Dumbledore was, and that the article speculated that there was something more going on there. I laughed and, being always on the lookout for good slash pairings, wondered if there was any good HP/AD fanfiction. While I was on the phone (camped out in a dingy hotel room on a family road trip), I pulled out my laptop and pirated the internet (something like "Rednecknet") and went onto fanfiction.net. I filtered to Harry and Albus fics of all ratings and looked...there's some *really* creepy stuff. A lot of it's like...Harry as a twelve year old getting raped by evil Dumbledore. That was NOT what I was looking for. Then I saw Toki Mirage's fic called Lemon Drops and Blood Pops (which is really good--I would highly recommend it, and her other fics as well) with the summary saying something like "Ever wondered if there was a realistic Harry/Albus fic? Well, so did I and I was sadly disappointed with the selection, so I wrote one." I realized that I wanted to challenge myself to write my own HP/AD to see if it would work. I told my forth grade teacher that and could almost hear him facepalming over the phone.
So I wrote it. I was posting ridiculously frequently (I wrote 30 thousand words in 14 days) during the summer of 2009, and slowed down when school year's started to a slightly-faster-than-normal pace. I was super psyched to be getting so many reviews--I love the reviews. They make it worth my time. And sometimes I get really long reviews that end with things like "I'll stop taking up your review space"--well, I love long reviews, so keep it up. I'm really having a lot of fun writing this one. I don't foresee a time when I'll stop writing it. At this rate I could plan years and years of plot =D.
So, around January, I told my forth grade teacher that I was still writing the fic. He was surprised and asked if he could read it. Of course, by then, I'd incorporated a lot of innuendo, so I was reluctant to send it to him. I censored the first two chapters and sent them to him in a word document, but then he used the word doc to find it online and had read ten chapters before I knew it. I then freaked out and deleted the whole fic (then 26 chapters long). With the fic, I deleted about 500 reviews, 400 favorites, and 500 alerts. You can imagine how irritated I was with myself. Reviews are the currency of this work.
I decided to take the opportunity to edit the whole fic and re-post it without censoring. Of course, a 70k word fanfic with no reviews does not really attract readers. Thanks to some very nice readers who re-discovered my fic, the review count was back up to 250 by the time I got to 100k words, and 400 by the time I got to 125k. Thanks, guys. It means a lot. --And it makes me really happy when people review every chapter. Really, it does. Writing is super time-consuming, and it's nice to get the appreciation of a review. Anyway, my forth grade teacher read the whole thing and said something along the lines of "I'm obligated to tell you this makes me feel uncomfortable. Let me know when the next chapter's up."

Classes:
1st
S Andromeda Black
H Amos Diggory
R Hooch
G Fabian Prewett
G Gideon Prewett
H Ted Tonks
R Sybil Trelawney
S Delores Jane Umbridge

2nd

H Cornelius Fudge
H Edgar Bones

3rd
G Dedalus Diggle
R Xenophilius Lovegood (Luna's father)
R Artemis Arma (Luna's mother)

4th
R Dorcas Meadows
H Pius Thicknesse
H Rosmerta

5th
G Alastor Moody
H Mundungus Fletcher

6th
R Bartemius Crouch (Sr.)
S Alphard Black (Sirius's sympathetic uncle)
G Rufus Scrimgeour

7th
H Pomona Sprout (Herbology Professor by the end of chapter 20)
G Algie Longbottom (Neville's Uncle)
G Tiberius Ogden (Future Wizengamot elder)
R Aiko Edwards (Cho's mother)
R Li Chang (Cho's father)
S Eileen Prince (Snape's mother)

Chickens in Venice
This is a Doctor Who fic. I...Don't have a lot to say about it. I'm writing it because I thought the dynamic between the Doctor and Casanova would be entertaining, especially if I could joke about them looking the same (as they were both played by David Tennant). In the fifth season of Doctor Who, the Doctor (Matt Smith) mentions that he owes Casanova a chicken, so I plan to explain how they met and why the Doctor owes him a chicken. Among other things.

Monopoly
My school has a week every March-April-ish called Intersession week. We get to choose one intersession for the week. There's backpacking ones and photography ones and engineering ones and biking ones...So, that's right, you guessed it, I'm in the fanfiction one. I'm probably the most seasoned writer in the group except for our teacher who is a math teacher who dyes his hair every once in a while and wears his Slytherin tie to formal events. Anyway, I was required to start a new fic for this week so that the other members could...track my progress or something. I guess they didn't want to have to catch up on my 90k word fic...hah. So, I spent the last few weeks trying to figure out what to write. I was thinking about it at dinner and I asked my family. My father, who has worked for toy companies for ages, looked around and said "you should write a Monopoly fanfiction." I immediately decided that it had to be Monopoly and Harry Potter. I talked to my fanfic consult Nessi_of_the_Lake_Called_Ness about which characters to put in, and we decided I needed to kinda AU it. The fic is written under the conditions that Sirius didn't die, and Voldemort did something very stupid at the end of the fifth book instead. He ran off and hasn't been seen for several years. Harry's now 19 and doing some graduate work at Hogwarts with the other four students we care about. I'm not going to show my writing group any slash that I write, but I'm sure I'll write it.--I haven't decided all of the pairings yet. I'm pretty sure I'll do some Remus/Sirius, and I really like Harry/Snape...but I also set it up so that Sirius and Snape have some issues that could be worked out really well in a little green hotel...So, vote.

Angora Wings and Other Things
My first project was a joint project with the lovely and talented Insert_Username_Here. She visited me while I was on vacation with my family in Palm Springs area after not having seen each other for several months and locked ourselves in a really hot room for three days and wrote a fic called "Angora Wings and Other Things" about Sev Snape and Lucy Malfoy. It ended up being pretty spiffy and we both enjoyed writing it a lot, despite being in a 100 degree room (no exaggeration) and not leaving for several days. Every time we came out for meals we'd start snickering about various slashy inside jokes (fruit salad) and my parents were like "WUT's GOING ON." That was fun to explain. We also started to see Slash everywhere...My brother was watching "The Road To El Dorado" on TV and we were having a rare moment outside of the bedroom (no smut intended), and we were watching Miguel and Tulio (one blond, one black haired) and we glanced at each other and burst out laughing...My bro was like "WHAT'S SO FUNNY." If you've never written something with anyone, I highly recommend it. It's lots of fun. --Though the fact that we were writing it together was probably the reason it ended up without a lot of smut. We mutually decided that trying to write sodomy together would be detrimental to our relationship. Of course, she'd probably just say "we didn't write smut because we are respectable individuals and have no interest in dirtying the internet and tarnishing our innocence." It would be one of those moments where we wouldn't be sure if she was kidding.