Dear Yule Goat

I hope 2010 has treated you with the tin cans and old rubber tires you deserve. I really enjoyed what you brought me last year and I have the greatest expectation of the same again. That being said, dear Yule Goat, these are just the merest of mere pointers for your 2010 avatar, who, I already know, is a person of taste and discretion. After all, look at what ze offered to write!
Here follows a brief description/shameless advertisement of the canon, followed by my heartfelt wishes for a story from you.

Blossom Culp - Richard Peck
Requested Character: Blossom Culp

Blossom Culp is a tough, smart, scrappy kid growing up on the very wrong side of the tracks in Bluff City, Iowa, pre-WWI. Thanks to a inconvenient streak of clairvoyance (courtesy of her Gypsy mama), she's tangled with the ghosts of suicides, princesses, unlucky Titanic passengers, and more. In real life, she's saddled with Alexander Armsworth, her unwilling sidekick from Bluff City's stuffy upper crust, and a whole host of wicked send-ups of middle America's stock characters- schoolmarms, spinsters, con artists and more. Richard Peck writes this brilliant YA series, of which the two I most recommend are 'Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death' and 'The Ghost Belonged to Me'.

If you offered this:
Holy hell, Blossom Culp. How great was that series? So great, is the answer I know you're thinking now, perhaps nodding your head for extra emphasis. Write whatever you like, but I do insist that Miss Culp be present. You can elaborate on one of her adventures, her life after Bluff City (if she does make it out), or whatever strikes your fancy. Blossom vs. the Armsworths and the Shambaughs is always enjoyable. If you want to go serious, I can see that too- the Great Depression, the Great War, and more are all lurking on the horizon; what happens when they hit? My adolescent heart beats fast for odd-couple romances, too, so don't be shy if you've always thought Alexander and Blossom were bound for a romantic embrace (or collision).


A Night in the Lonesome October- Roger Zelazny

This book is a quick read and an absolute scream. A dog named Snuff accompanies his master Jack on his rounds in Victorian London, gathering certain...materials and sussing out the other players in a once-in-a-blue-moon occult game with cosmic consequences. Snuff is a great narrator with a lot on his plate- in addition to finding out which side everybody is on in the upcoming contest, he has to guard the Things in the Attic, work out the site of the final round, and hide a body (Jack and his Knife got in one of their Moods again...) It would all be a lot easier if that Great Detective weren't sniffing around, too. Stoker, Shelley, Conan Doyle and Lovecraft all come out to play in this clever pastiche.

If this is what you chose:
Friend, the possibilities are endless. Stories of an earlier (or future!) Lonesome October, Snuff and Greymalkin in their dream-worlds, any character from any fandom you think might take a side in a past or future Game- I will be delighted to read your story. Feel free to mix it up with the narrator, time period, setting, characters, what-have-you. This is a very flexible canon- make it work for you!


Fables- Bruce Willingham

Fables, a graphic novel series, reclaims the fairy tale from Disney with serious style. Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Rose Red, and Little Boy Blue are all among the Fables exiled by a sinister Adversary from the Homelands- the otherworlds where fairy tale characters make their homes. Having entered our world as refugees, the exiles try to rescue their compatriots and mount a counter-offensive to reclaim the Homelands. Touching on murder, political espionage, segregation, and Zionism, these books both amplify and subvert the mythic strata of Western culture in a way reminiscent of Sandman or American Gods.


If you chose this:
Another wide-open canon- anything and everything is fair game here, so write the story you want to write. If there's a myth you'd like to see get the Fables treatment, I'm all for it; likewise, if you want to pick up or problematize the Israel themes Willingham has acknowledged or open up some of the Non-Western Homelands, I wish you would. The Literals are a blast, I couldn't love the Genres more, you get the idea. This canon is boiling with ideas and relationships- I really just want to see you have fun.



Lyonnesse Series- Jack Vance
Requested Characters: Murgen, Shimrod


Since this canon is not, shall we say, widely available, I'm not going to try the hard sell, here- this is for you, my Jack Vance-loving compatriot, with seriously exceptional taste. I always like knowing what other people love about Vance, so let that out to play here- is it the complicated throwaway notes on belief systems, the constant sense of amusement at the world's tumult and idiocy, the invariably lovingly detailed descriptions of a) food and b)avaricious innkeepers? The sorcerer folded up into an iron pole and used to pin the axis of the several parallel worlds, or the fair that's held around it? I've included Shimrod and Murgen as requested characters purely because I enjoy their interactions (Murgen seems more bemused that his avatar gained independence more than anything else) and because they could fit in the widest variety of settings. An incidental appearance is just fine with me.

And don't forget:THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Can't wait for Christmas,

Your Yuletide Recipient.