New Recs

Here's a non-fiction site rec: The Starsky and Hutch Picture Gallery, home to what seem to be a million pictures, plus facilities for discussions, private messages and webmail, news, etc. for registered members.

Jen Hall has another chunk of the Seidhrman story, called Erebus--the whole series is recommended below.
--She's also got a science-fiction AU called Arrows of Desire, which is so rich and strange that I think I won't spoil it by telling you anything else.
--*AND* she has a beautiful first-time story called All Thy Love

This isn't actually new, but one of the Virtual Season stories has really stuck with me, and that's the PWP with camera by Keri T, Fantasy Shots, an alternate ending to her episode When Looks Could Kill

Another rec I should have put here months ago is Liz's fabulous Christmas story, but unfortunately that link has worked maybe once for me --so I've been rereading it on the Advent Calendar site: I Dream of Thee

Okay! (rubbing hands) Now for the slash archive update.

• Flamingo herself has the whole novel If Love Is Real: Addiction (The link is to the first of five parts.) This, of course, is part of the whole "If Love Is Real" series, which I find I haven't recommended before--I can't think why (bad me). The rest of them are
  • Colby, set when Colby quit the Police Academy;
  • Vanessa, dealing with Hutch's and Starsky's reactions to Hutch's ex (the link is to part 1 of 2);
  • Helen, unique for its use of Helen's point of view (again, link is to the first of two parts);
  • and Starsky, set at the end of the pilot movie.

  Rosemary! Please come back and write a lot more S/H! The older stories that us netheads can now read include

  • After Resurgences, with a really, really neat view of Starsky's past...and as always, fully realized secondary characters, both canonical and original. It's the sequel to Resurgences, also new on the archive.
  In Home Front, Hutch goes back to Minnesota, Starsky goes with him, and not much seems to happen...but really, the trip lays the basis for what happens back home in California.
  • Oh, and another nifty AU: Eclipse, which is, like Jen's, so careful in the way it sets up its surprises that I don't want to give it away. But go read it, it's--it's *neat*.

  Two authors I already knew from the archive have new/old stories there:

  • Sylvia Bond's oft-mentioned-onlist The Velveteen Hutch tells how Hutch became Real.
  • Pamela Rose, who wrote Alternate, added a sequel later, called The Other End of the Line--if you liked the original character in Alternate, you can see what happened to him--and Starsky and Hutch, of course--afterward.

  *sigh*...I love this story. I loved it from the moment I read the description of them at work, right at the beginning, that almost made me hear the background music, it was so evocative of the show: Dana Austin Marsh's One Bite of the Apple is also a fabulous, heart-wrenching slash story.

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Zine Stories Archived Online

• **cheering in the background** Flamingo's Total Eclipse of the Heart is now an ezine! See the Suzan Lovett artwork! Read the story! Understand the case plot! (Really. Good revisions, and I loved the story already.) This useless rec--'cause the multitudes have already read it--is just homage. I admit it: I'm one of those S/H fans who imprinted on this story. But hey, you might not have seen the art yet! Go see it on the S/H Archive!
• I like pretty much everything of Flamingo's, but actually Keep on Truckin' is my favorite of hers. Pushes all my buttons.
• Rosemary's The Last Charade is another story that besides being plain well-written, shows the guys pretty much exactly as I like to imagine them. I loved the food sharing (no, not best, but if I summarize what I liked best, you'll know too much before you start).
• Sylvia Bond's Hour of Separation is straight-boy slash, but I love it anyway. This link is to Part 1; there are four parts. Starsky and Hutch are repartnered while Dobey is away--that's the "separation" of the title.
• C. Davis and M. Decker's Labyrinth shows us a mind-blowing vacation and how it produces the oft-noted fourth-season distance between the guys. Also in four parts. It used to be at their own site too, but I guess they don't live on that virtual corner any more.
• Dargelos' The Fighter Still Remains is not to everyone's taste, fine as the writing is. By paragraph four you will know why, and if this isn't your thing by all means BAIL OUT. But the depriction of emotion in it is so strong and true that I'd be remiss not to recommend it.
• Morgan Dawn's Snapshots bears the following warning: "This story involves intense emotional conflicts and deals with drugs and their after effects." It's here on my recs page because it's powerful and marvelously written.
• Pamela Rose's Alternate is a short piece I can't summarize--I tried, and it was either too much or too little. It's good. Read it.
• Everybody recommends Suzan Lovett's A Fine Storm...but I have to too, because they're right, darn it. The story's tender and truthful, angsty and lovely. It's also in 5 parts; the link is to part 1.
• Alexis Rogers' Cost of Love seems to be a story that fans either like a lot or don't like at all. I'm on the "like a lot" team. The link is to part 1 of 2. Actually, Alexis has a whole page of stories on the S/H archive.
• Here's another Alexis Rogers story I just got a ... a yen to reread, one day, and I can't even remember exactly what set me off. A pay phone? One of those dumb phone-sex ads? A glimpse of the Greyhound station sign? Never mind. Fifty Five Cents is the kind of story that really deserves the label "erotic character study" --with emphasis on "erotic."
• I love a twisty kind of story that makes me think while it's also being erotic. This is one: Constance Collins' Pick Up.
• Another Collins story: completely unexpectedly in the middle of the day, I found myself thinking of the conversation that takes place in the Torino. I have lunch all the time too. Also I love episode-related slash fiction. Constance Collins' Decked Out is related to Deckwatch.
• I enjoyed Terri Beckett and Chris Power's One More Mountain on the gen archive, but I liked One More River, the slash sequel, more. If you want to catch up on the prequel, there's a link to it from the first page of One More River.
• My favorite Charlotte Frost story, because I loved the opening dialog: Sexperts. The link is to part 1; there's a second part.
• Syn Ferguson now has a webpage designed and hosted by Killashandra. One of the stories there is Heatwave, a first-time story with a lot of familiar elements--but when the story was written they were a lot less familiar, and the writing makes them new again.
• I had previously misplaced Jameswalkswithwind's stories on this page, as both the ones I'd previously recommended had been zine-published first. They are
  • Swear to Thee has a drag queen who isn't Sugar, a Hutch who has every reason not to talk, and that very Starsky from Hutch's car in Death in a Different Place--you know, the conflicted, sulky boy? The one who said he didn't know how he would have reacted if he'd known John Blaine was gay? That one. And James gives the story an ending I really admired for its, well, *gutsiness*. I wouldn't have been able to stop there.
  • Down Roads Long Passed is a complex and sometimes harrowing story. I think what I like best about it is the Starsky POV parts; I love his moment of realization.

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Netfic

Me and Thee Archive stories:

• Jen Hall is only archived in one place, as far as I know; her author page is here. The Mountains of the Moon series are lyrical, mystical, lovely stories:
  • Mountains of the Moon,
  • The Inferno,
  • The Tempest,
  • The Gift of the Magi,
  • This Ae Nighte,
  • Bending the Bow,
  • In the Dark,
  • Romance Somambulo,
  • Romance de la luna, luna,
  • Romance de la pena negra.
  • Do You Know What Night Is?.
  • Jen also has a couple of AU series. The first is basically a novel in story-size chunks, and a darn interesting one. Five of this series are finished and on the Me and Thee archive. So far, you can read
    • Seidhrman, in which Hutch, a Norwegian shaman, meets Starsky, a Roman officer of the Vigil Militarius in a world in which the Roman Empire never fell.
    • Veneficus, in which Hutch and Starsky (now married) pursue an evil sorceror into the spirit world.
    • Phantasma, in which Starsky and Hutch return to Rome. They deal with assassins, and Starsky changes jobs.
    • Leprosus 1: Carnifex and Leprosus 2: Arac, in which Starsky and Hutch begin their work as Guardians, including encounters with spirits, an evil sorceror, and a violent cult.
    • Erebus, in which the sorceror and the cult both continue to threaten them.

  • For humor and sexual heat--and for making even me love the Torino (its steamed-up windows, anyway)--I enjoyed Lilith Faire's Parking. It's got sequels, too, on this page.

  • Nightbird's The Red Charade is an inventive look at "Starsky vs. Hutch" plus a few other episodes.
  • Ellis Murdock is in the unusual position of having he same stories archived as gen on The Pits page and as slash in the Love of me and Thee archive. I, um, prefer to think of them as slash (surprise). I liked the imagery in Capella a lot--in this story, the guys go stargazing, and the stars have something to tell them that they already really knew.
  • Starsky and Hutch try to explain an unusually...um, unusual...expense account to Dobey, in Nightbird and Ellis Murdock's C.Y.A. 101. Picture me grinning, then snickering occasionally, then bursting out really laughing. I haven't had this much fun since I saw "Bringing Up Baby" for the umpteenth time.

  • I've written a few stories myself that are mostly dialog, but I don't usually like it when a story is all dialog (or all description, for that matter). But CC's Easy Money made me love its "raunchy pillow-talk," as she puts it in her summary. Funny. Sexy. Yum.

  On the "Late Models" page of Flamingo's archive, my picks are these:

  • Sarah Cameron's Timing is Everything, in which the guys go to the ballet (among other things).
  • Kathie Norris' First Dance. Short. Sweet.
  • Flamingo's Just Another One of Starsky's Dirty Moves (Can't stop recc'ing the Bird--sigh).
  • Sebastyn's My True Love Gave to Me--Christmas story. Quoted out of context, alas, in one of those "isn't slash droll" articles. Still, if they've gotta quote one, might as well be a good one.
  • Lutra Cana's Fools Rush In, my favorite of her "Moments in Time" series.

  From the Pits Archive:

  • I'm not much good at humor recs, but I grinned at Keri Tompkins' Love All. (And it's sexy. Hutch in a jock strap. 'Nuff said.) (Oh, and Keri has won the Best Slash Author in the Pits' first fiction awards! Congratulations!)
  • Shannon O'Shea has two stories on the Pits Archive that I'm fond of: I'll Be There and Persecution--the second is a longer story, so it's on the archive in four parts. The link's to part 1.
  • Elizabeth's Fractured Discipline is long, contains a great case and wonderful tension, and is the only thing she ever posted. Sigh. It's in four parts on this page at the Pits Archive.
  • Reggie had her own SH website but has taken it down; fortunately for the rest of us, she hasn't (yet?) asked for her stories to be taken off the Pits Archive. So you can still read Kryptonite and its sequels So Bad, A Hunger, Blue, and Savior, as well as Still Crazy and the other Negotiations and Love Songs stories...oh, just read everything, okay?
  • Since I rec'd Cheyenne Dancer's Identity Crisis and A Night in the Life, she has posted a snippet on the mailing list Venice Place. So there might be more. Soon. I hope.

  Stories Around the WWW:

  • An itty bitty drabble, the only S/H Arduinna's got online, I guess--such a pity: Look at Him.
  • There aren't many amnesia stories in online S/H, and this one has a fairly interesting setting as well: elaine's Caught in the Crossfire.
  • Shorts has several S/H stories on her site, but this is by far my favorite: Sweeter by Far than Honey.
  • There's a larger collection of Lutra Cana's work at this page at Lark's Starsky and Hutch archive, this page at the Pits Archive and this page on the Me and Thee archive--I particularly recommend Simple Gifts and Run Away Home.
  • Another angst rec: Raven's When the Evening Was Thin. Wow. WOW. The story's also at her page on the Pits Archive, where she has several stories listed. I particularly love the heartrending vignette After and the returning-to-New-York story, Miss You. (Weren't you tired of Saint Rachael Starsky? I was.)
  • Lin P.'s The Weight is an unusual and moody take on the get-them-drunk (or get-him-drunk) scenario. The vignette is compact, funny and poignant at once.
  • The author calling hirself PJ has a page on Lark's archive--inexplicably, PJ's in the gen index, but the page is clear about the stories being slash. Three of them. Very sparely written.
  • James Walkswithwind's stories grow on me slowly. One I hadn't read for a while is missing-scenes from The Specialist--in Hutch's POV, as he's torn between fear and desire. "I can't tell him because it'll ruin the friendship" is such a slash convention, but this one uses details from the ep itself in an unusually affecting way--"Snapshot - The Specialist"
  • Morgan le Fay and Jadis have a short first-time story with a charming premise (which I'm now hosting, as the link to ff.net seems broken): Spinning. The link is to Part 1, but there's a link to part 2 at the end of part 1.

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