WRITER'S CHOICE! Yes it's Saturday Illya...

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

               

Writer's Choice:"Anything for a friend" by mrua7

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Lately I've been having trouble finding a particular story of mine that comes to mind, (to create a link)  partly due to the fact that I now have over 300+ published stories, and that doesn't include SNAPSHOTS, and the Randomness of life which each have over 100+ short and unrelated stories for chapters.

I need to sit and reaorganize myself one of these days...yeah, right.

So here is one I couldn't find the link to, Christmas related and how guilt can cause a change of plans for Napoleon Solo.  Enjoy! Comments are most welcome as always!

The wind-chill brought down the temperature to a frigid -10 degrees and Napoleon Solo walked from his silver convertible parked across the street from the entrance to Del Flolria’s, flapping his arms against himself to keep warm. He pulled up the collar to his overcoat, tucking one leather-gloved hand into his pocket as he turned the doorknob to the shop, hearing the welcoming tinkle of the brass bell.

Saluting his hello to the agent at the press, he removed his gloves and unbuttoned his coat as it was nicely warm inside, most likely because of the steam.

Napoleon turned as he heard the bell ring again, seeing his partner walk in just behind him.

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Merry Christmas to all from the cousins at Section VII

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

This is the Section VII Christmas tree that we did last year with lots of cousins making up the ornaments for it. Special thanks again to inji for cleaning it up last year and making it nice and sparkly!

                                         

For Writer's Choice - Merry Christmas, Illya by Solo's Girl

[lindafishes8.livejournal.com]

This Christmas at headquarters tale inspired me to write my own story about a balalaika.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9920433/1/Merry-Christmas-Illya

Writer's Choice

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

Now it's Christmas, and Nutcracker season. So that some of its cast can come in from the cold, and because I like the ficlet a lot, I'm reccing:

spikesgirl58 's The Rat Race Affair
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8958723/1/The-Rat-Race-Affair

Writer's Choice! - A Simple Gift by Alynwa

[jantojones.livejournal.com]

This is a shot fic, but it's lovely and sweet. You can't beat a little bit of seasonal fluff.

The link takes you to ff.net
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7619858/1/A-Simple-Gift

Christmas Wishes

[pactnmmt.livejournal.com]

2014

Merry Christmas to all of my LJ friends!
May this season find you in good health and spirits.

Writer's Choice: A Hard Frost by St. Crispins

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

A Hard Frost

A frost came in the night and stole my world, and left this changeling for it...
--- Cecil Day Lewis

Cambridge University, early December, 1962.

The day was bitter, bitter cold — colder than any I’d remembered from my years spent at Cambridge. Not surprising at all looking back, since this was the year of The Great Freeze. In two weeks time, Arctic winds would blow in from Iceland. By Boxing Day, flakes would be falling as far south as London, leaving a ground cover of snow nearly everywhere until March. At the university itself, the River Cam would freeze solid and students would walk it between colleges as a short-cut to classes all throughout the Lent term.

Of course, this was only early in December, and so the sun still shone in a cloudless blue sky that morning, bright but impotent, offering little comfort in the face of a fierce, biting wind. As I crossed the Front Court of King’s College, the remains of the previous night’s hard frost crunched under my heels like broken glass.

Unlike the American Ivy League schools, which attempt to mimic the architecture of their British predecessors, Cambridge and Oxford are truly built like medieval castles. At Cambridge, each of the individual colleges is a square, thick-walled fortress built to withstand, both literally and metaphorically, the forces of vulgarity and ignorance. To me, even when I lived there as a student, it always felt otherworldly, out of place and out of time, like something that belonged in a fairytale. When I saw Disneyland for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Disney had been an Oxbridge man.

That day, I was on a mission of sorts, one of those discreet, off-the-books assignments that came along, not often, but now and again. There would be several during the decade of the 1960s; this was my first. My instructions, delivered by Waverly himself in a one-on-one briefing, was to track down Dr. Miles Pembroke, a senior lecturer at King’s, and to convince him, by any peaceful means necessary, to take back his latest novel, a spy thriller, scheduled for release the following spring. The publisher was a small press in Boston and the senior editor, apparently a boyhood chum of my superior, had caught the manuscript before it went to galleys.

Delicate negotiation is usually Napoleon’s department, but in this case, for reasons that will become clear, I was not only the preferred, but necessary, choice. Indeed, Waverly warned me that not only should Napoleon not be present at my meeting with Pembroke, but he must never know the specific details. Again, when you hear what transpired, you will understand. And so, I left Napoleon awake but groggy in our room at the inn, with plans to meet at a nearby pub for lunch.

The aforementioned manuscript was now wrapped in brown paper tied with cord, and tucked safely inside the briefcase I carried with me that morning. I only needed to browse a chapter or two myself to understand why the editor had been alarmed enough to contact the Old Man.

I did not know Pembroke personally, but I had attended a brilliant lecture he delivered on Paradise Lost while I was still at university. From his dossier, I also learned that he’d been a teaching fellow at Cambridge in the 1930s, then left to work for the SOE and eventually, had been part of the cryptography group at Bletchley Park during the war. He later moved to MI6 when remnants of the SOE were absorbed, but then abruptly left Intelligence work altogether sometime around 1952. The reason given at the time, transcribed from his exit interview which the British reluctantly shared with U.N.C.L.E., was a new marriage, — a marriage that not only ended childless, but apparently lasted less than a year.

After that, Pembroke returned to Cambridge once more to teach 17th century English literature. Over the next decade or so, he’d written two well-received noncommercial books on Milton and a baker’s dozen of potboiler mysteries under a pseudonym. The Milton books had provided him, at least for a time, with a minor reputation in academic circles, while the potboilers paid the bills.

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