Ex-teacher, current journalist, future (if the gods are merciful and kind) something completely different.

Community: http://www.fanfiction.net/community/Stranger_Than_Canon/82860/

FORMAT PROBLEMS:

As occasionally happens here, the FF-format monster ate my lesser page breaks. I've begun the process of restoring them (it took me hours to find a workable solution!), but the project will take many, many months to complete. In the mean time, longer stories like Once and Future, Entanglement and Don't Lose Your Compass will likely be difficult to read. Even some of the shorter fics, like Playing With Toys might pose a challenge. Please bear with me until I've gone through each. I'll post a message here when I'm through.

Notes on the World(s) of My Fics

You may have noticed that while some of my fics are clearly related, others are only vaguely linked and still more are pretty ambiguous. I thought it might be helpful to post a hierarchy of stores.

First Grouping: I consider this world to be my "true" S/U 'verse. Most of my Trek fics (posted and not) take place here.
-- Don't Lose Your Compass (complete)
-- Ladies Night (a reader-requested Compass interlude, complete)
-- Foxy Spocky (an M-rated Compass interlude, complete)
-- Beneath the New Vulcan Moon (a G-rated outtake from the final chapter of Compass, complete)
-- Familiar Faces (a adult story featuring Ambassador Spock and a mystery woman. Begins two days after the final scene of Compass. One more chapter TK.)
-- Then Comes Spock (Spock and Uhura have to go to the Vulcan colony after she gets unexpectedly pregnant with twins, complete)
-- Baby Gifts (a fluff piece detailing the gifts Uhura and Spock received after the twins were born. Most gifts came from reader suggestions. not quite complete)
-- Bourbon in which Bones (finally) gets a girl of his own, and the mystery of the twins' heritage is revealed. (Prologue and six of ten chapters posted.)
-- growing up half-Vulcan miracles/meet the S'chn T'gai family, not posted.

Second Grouping: Just a bit of fun that was never supposed to be more than a series of oneshots. Oops.
-- The Hand That Feeds You (complete)
-- Playing With Toys (complete)
-- Playing With Toys: End Game (the last two -- M-rated -- chapters of PWT, complete)
-- Living Among People -- because the idea came and smacked me in the face out of nowhere. And because Aphrodite420 won't leave me alone until I finish writing it (nine out of ten chapters posted)

Third Grouping: Not everything is sunshine and roses between Uhura and Spock.
-- Once and Future (complete)
-- Entanglement (complete)
-- Va'ashaya: A coda to Entanglement and Once and Future. T'Khio'ri has another story to share before Uhura returns to the Enterprise. (complete)
-- untitled story about Spock's and T'Khio'ri's last hurrahs as singles.

Fourth Grouping: Secret fics, written under a secret name.
-- secret revenge fic 1 (complete)
-- secret snarky fic 1 (complete)

Fifth Grouping: (mostly) unrelated TOS fics
-- Blame It On Gados -- What happened on Gados has repercussions on the Enterprise. (complete)
-- The Pie -- Spock likes pie. Too bad everybody else does, too. (complete)
-- The search for PI -- a sequel to The Pie
-- The Fires Within -- Spock sets the record straight. (six chapters posted)
-- The Origin of the Species -- Uhura asks a question; Spock answers as best he can. (oneshot, complete.)
-- Something To Remember -- While the Enterprise is docked at Starbase 47 for resupply and repairs, Uhura convinces Number One to visit the Enterprise. Things change. Inspired, in part, by the Madonna song of the same name. (On hold due to lack of reader interest.)

Sixth Grouping(?): Nothing to do with anything else at all.
-- Community Blues (protest!fic; three chapters posted)
-- The Kish'tel (another origin fic. six of ten chapters posted. pertinent lyrics & videos included with the livejournal posts. Rewrite of Chapter 7 is [finally] nearing completion.)
-- Therapy -- After the Enterprise returns to Earth, Christopher Pike must learn a new way to use his body. Features an original character created by Aphrodite420 (Six chapters posted. Posting on hold until Aphrodite can to beta the next few chapters.)
-- Finding Destiny -- an all-Spock-all-the-time journey through our favorite Vulcan's emotional development. Written as a gift to ejectingthecore. (complete)
-- Dvel A'ri -- Spock and Uhura must decide how best to go on with their lives -- and how they will raise their son -- after she's been de-aged. (complete)

Seventh Grouping: "sorta" independent fics
-- 1C13:11 -- What, Spock and Uhura knew each other throughout most of her life?! -- characters and elements from other fics, but not related to any of them (not quite related to O&F and Entanglement but sharing many elements with those. Complete.)
-- Riding in Spacecraft With Mothers-In-Law -- Amanda takes her future daughter-in-law on a wild (and, sometimes, embarrassing) ride as she tries to explain Pon farr from a human woman's perspective. Cut from Chapter 10 of 1C13:11 for ratings (and length) purposes. (Complete.)

Eighth Grouping: sheer crack!fic
-- In The End It Was the Ears That Did It -- Even human ears can be influential. (complete)
-- 1X They Weren't, 1X They Were & 2X They Weren't -- four fics about underwear (complete)
-- Ten-khrasaya -- A response to a request from TheeB_1973 for smutty crack. (complete)
-- Can't Cant -- Spock clears up a common misconception about Vulcans. (oneshot. complete)
-- In Your Days of Yore -- Spock just can't admit he's wrong without coming back with a little snark. (oneshot, though related to Can't Cant. complete.)

Notes on the History of Nyota Uhura as I Envision Her

First off a note about the woman, herself: Her name is "Uhura." Nyota to Spock, to her family and to (some of) her friends. But she's Uhura to everyone else. Always has been, always will be in all of my 'verses. (Just a personal pet peeve of mine. Had to get it out of the way.)

Her parents call her their "Little Star" because sometimes parents give their kids cutesie nicknames. Her siblings sometimes call her "Ennie" because I've been told that the correct Kiswahili pronunciation for "Nyota" is en-Yoh-tah, or more accurately (as one speaker pointed out to me) n-Yoh-tah. Gaila, other female friends and, once in a while, Bones, sometimes call her "Ny" but mostly, it's "Uhura." And that's the way Uhura likes it.

Mother: M'Umbha Uhura (nee Wakufunzi) was formerly an under-ambassador of the Federation Diplomatic Corps, is currently a professor of linguistics who comes from a long line of people dedicated to studying and preserving various languages. She is warm and extremely extroverted. Although she is devoted to her career, she loves being a mother and has a tendency to "go mommy" on unsuspecting young people who wander into her sphere of influence.

Most Wakufunzis work in academe or in the diplomatic corps. The family began their defining work around the time lands of Africa united to form a revolution and was reinvigorated as Federation Standard proliferated to the exclusion of all other tongues. The family name, Wakufunzi, is a Kiswahili word that means "instructors" or “senior-level students” and was chosen in honor of their family’s long-standing commitment to learning and preserving endangered languages. (There are several other words in the language that translate to “students”, but I thought this one was most appropriate because of the alternate translation. Please note, though, I’m learning all my Kiswahili from CDs and online, so the word may not be entirely accurate.)

Father: Benjamin Uhura is a prominent xenopsychiatrist renowned for his pioneering studies into non-human psyches. Gardening is a particular hobby of his, made all the more challenging by his decision to live among the Wakufunzis in the dry Garissa District of north eastern Kenya. He was named after 20th Century pediatrician, Benjamin Spock, in the hopes that he would follow in the man's footsteps. Benjamin, much like his youngest child, was fiercely independent and chose to follow his own path. In spite of his quiet demeanor, he is still prone to doing the unexpected.

The Uhura family were famous freedom fighters during the conflicts that eventually led to the creation of the United States of Africa. They adopted their surname, taken from the Kiswahili word uhuru (freedom) in recognition of work to build a free African state.

Sister: Upenda Uhura is Benjamin's and M'Umbha's eldest child. She is four years older than Nyota, a doctor and known for throwing a good party. She lives, and practices medicine, in New York City.

Brother: Muta Uhura is named for the father of Wangari Maathai. He is two years older than Nyota and is a researcher for the Mombasa Language Institute (who were very happy to snare a member of the Wakufunzi clan). He is a talented musician and songwriter. He and Upenda are very close. Though they both tried to make sure that their little sister rarely felt excluded from their play while all three were children, sometimes life didn't allow them to succeed.

Uncle: Tabansi Wakufunzi is a communications specialist with Starfleet. He gave up life in academe after his fiancee, Estella Libertad y Dominguez was killed while serving on the USS Kelvin. He joined Starfleet in her honor. He is very close to his niece, Nyota, who shares Estella's birthday, and is named for her. (see TCS, chapter 6)

Homeland: Garissa is a district in the North Eastern Province of Kenya, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia. The area is now arid to semi-arid and very hot. Right after the African Revolution, the building of the Tana River Dam severly altered the desert ecology. In Nyota Uhura's lifetime, the climate is vastly drier and its residents and scientists have become famous for their hydration research. In our time of the population of the province are predominantly ethnic Somalis. By 2113, when the Wakufunzi family settled there, the area had become much more diverse.

A Note on Human/Vulcan Pregnancy:

As is often the case when trying to take everything every authority considers to be canon, some things just don’t add up. So I take a fanfic writer’s prerogative and pick and choose among examples. In this case, normal Vulcan gestation = 13 months, normal human gestation = approximately 280 days. Hybrid pregnancies fall somewhere in between the two.

GENERAL TREK RESOURCES

Stardate Calculator

Memory Alpha

Memory Beta

Vulcan Language Dictionary

The Vulcan Language Institute Reclamation Project

The folks at StarTrek Online Geekipedia rushed into the breach to save content from the missing Vulcan Language Institute. Using cached or saved pages, they reposted what they could find into their wiki.

African Languages Dictionary