Squeee!

[machshefa]

 The sshg_exchange  reveals are up!  Woot!  Thank heavens for the reveal because let me tell you, I'm terrible at identifying authors by style and am totally impressed with those of you who can read a story and say, "oh, that sounds just like so and so..."

I want to thank irishredlass69  once again for the fantastic Second Hand Wand.  It was a total coincidence and so fun that it had animagi in the story just like my story did!  Plus, the wandlore was extremely cool.


At long last, I can thank the long suffering team of alpha and beta readers who shepherded my offering for lipasnape , Tree of Life, into being (pdf file for graphics-heavy version found here and for text only, here.)
An ocean of thanks to annietalbot , without whom the story would be a pile of drafts on her floor (or possibly a pile of ash in her hearth). Hugs to juniperus  who sharpened up the journal excerpts (and narrative, too) and to syndicated  who is a magical teacher and generously taught me how to format and upload the image files (which were her idea, too). Thanks to dickgloucester  who first said, "what about using journal excerpts?" and in doing so, opened the door at long last to writing rather than wibbling, to somigliana  who did a last minute beta read for a second pair of eyes, and to ferporcel  who turned the story into pdf format when I heard that some people were having trouble loading the pages because of the image files.  

Thanks to the readers and reviewers for your enthusiasm (which absolutely blew me away) and to the mods for all your support in posting this dragon of a story.  You were a pleasure to work with from beginning to end!

I'm looking forward to catching up on the several stories that I somehow missed along the way -- this was such a rich exchange and such a pleasure!

Comments

[ihkelele.livejournal.com]

Well, this is worth another round of OMG OMG OMG! *glomps*

What an absurd chain of coincidences! You must have taken me for some sort of stalker :D Had I been in your place, my reaction would have been the same :)))

*dances in glee and squishes poor unsuspecting Machshefa*
(no, usually I'm not this bouncy, it's just that I'm very, very happy now)

[machshefa.livejournal.com]

I know! I was so confused. I didn't think you were stalking, I thought you'd guessed that I wrote Tree of Life! LOL It was very disorienting for a minute, there :) But a good surprise once I figured out that you had coincidentally found an archive story at about the same time that you reviewed Tree of Life.

[ihkelele.livejournal.com]

I'm late and slow as usual, but it seems to me that you might like an explanation, so here it is: I had loved In Dreams but had not read your other stories, because OWL refused my membership - months later, reading the FAQ, I found out that it was just an issue with Yahoo, but at the moment, with little to no knowledge of the fandom, I was scared away and spent two days checking my laptop for malware, LOL.
I'm still having problems with OWL as, more often than not, the connection ends abruptly when I try to go to a new chapter or when I hit "Post", and this is a little discouraging.

Anyway, now that I'm more involved with the community I wanted to "do my fangirlish duty" and vote for the Awards, and with some more effort I was able (over a couple of months, mind you!) to scroll for fics fit for nominations, read some of those I hadn't read or didn't remember, nominate etc. That's how I read BtL.
After voting (or when the results were posted, I can't remember exactly) I felt so elated for the "homework done" and the connection being up that it seemed a good idea to leave as many comments as I could before being thrown off again. As a sort of belated thank you, you see. I think I managed 2 or 3 reviews before the usual connection timeout 'ate' the latter one, and that's it ^_^

[machshefa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, cool! I'm so sorry that OWL has given you such trouble, but am thrilled that you've enjoyed my stories so much! It makes sense that because Awards season overlapped the exchange that you would have been exploring stories of the same authors without realizing!

Have you read Mercy of the Elements and the lamentably unfinished King of Swords? (is shamelessly pimping my other stories... *hangs head