Fanfiction.net

For the most part, I consider the FF.net stories better than what's on Livejournal. I think my best LJ work is the multi-part stuff, along with All of My Memories for the oneshot stuff. (Well, technically oneshot; now it's a lead-in for one of the multi-part Livejournal stories.)

Fanfiction.net is also where I first started posting Perry stories, so I'm quite fond of it for that reason. There's a lot of wonderful people on both sites, but FF.net is definitely where they're most likely to review. And I do love reviews!

I was very surprised at the positive reception I've received everywhere for The Broken Ties especially, since it's so supernatural in nature. Nevertheless, I do try to keep a lot of the supernatural stuff off of FF.net. Of course, I've broken that unspoken rule with my new Halloween story, and there will be another supernatural FF.net mystery, but overall I usually try to keep to other topics there.

Fanfiction.net stories are generally quite polished. Livejournal, by contrast, feels much more personal and hence, is where I put a lot of experimental and hurt/comforty and supernatural stuff. Some of it is polished too, but I sort of "let my hair down" there, you might say. I feel more comfortable posting all kinds of assorted things on Livejournal, whereas I wouldn't so much on FF.net.

FF.net stories are almost always, if not always, considered the "main timeline". Livejournal stories may either supplement the main timeline or be completely independent and hence, not have "really happened" according to said timeline.

Multi-part Stories

The Case of the Persecuted Prosecutor I still find it interesting that instead of starting with little oneshots, I really jumped right in and started this multi-chapter mystery right off, after only one FF.net oneshot (The Case of the Captain's Ghost). It's the sort of character study I'd been hankering to see for years, with Hamilton thought dead and the other members of the original Core Five reacting. After watching and hoping that some of the fans would realize and want to write about Perry and Hamilton's intriguing friendship, I finally determined that I would have to start the ball rolling myself. The story took off in an incredible way, flowing, and I found how much I love writing for characters that had been beloved to me for years. And even though I kept not planning to continue my mystery series, I kept (and still keep) to get ideas for it.

The Case of the Memento Mori Murderer This might be my most popular of the mystery stories. If so, it's probably because Perry and Della are the main focus. But, knowing me, of course it isn't in a romantic way. I actually sometimes have trouble writing them having very deep conversations, partially because I just don't connect with them the same way I do some of the other characters, but I really try to have them converse whenever possible, because I know a large part of the fanbase wants that. (Although sometimes I think some of them don't appreciate it when I try to do it, just because it isn't romantic in nature. That irks me.)

Anyway, the plot of this concerns Perry being abducted by a madman and Della and the rest of the Core Five searching in increasing panic. It also marks the first appearance of Andy, albeit in a small role. Originally I had vowed to ignore his existence, because I was purist and didn't like the original Core Five becoming the Core Six (or Seven, or Eight). But once I saw the emotional and multi-faceted Amory Fallon and realized how much I loved Wesley, and by extension, Andy, all of that changed.

The Case of the Macabre Mansion This is a different story in several ways. The focus is more directly on Hamilton than Perry; it's Hamilton the person in distress goes to, and Hamilton who starts investigating first. And Mignon Germaine is the person wanting help, thus beginning her role as a highly important character in the stories. I just love seeing Hamilton's oneshot friends on the series, and Mignon is my favorite of them.

It also features Andy in a much more prominent role and introduces Steve. And even though Hamilton is thought dead in The Persecuted Prosecutor, it's Andy, not Hamilton, who ends up dying for real in this story. He has an extensive out-of-body experience and interacts with his deceased friend Otto Norden (seen in The Hateful Hero episode), thus also introducing the idea of the supernatural being real for the first time. And when a spectral Andy warns Hamilton out of the way of a bullet, and later describes the whole evening in detail once he's back in his body, Hamilton is shaken for the first time on his stand against the paranormal. This is something that continues to disturb him in the stories, although I think it's only in the Livejournal story Lux Aeterna that he fully reveals why.

Other important introductions are Andy's cousin Jimmy, their surrogate mother Erna Norden, and several characters I created: the villains Vivalene and Flo, twin sisters who torment the cast in several more ventures, and the Peterson family. Mignon is the godmother to the young boy, Howie, and it's their house referred to in the story's title. (It's also there where Andy is fatally shot and pushed over the balcony.) Hamilton interacts extensively with Howie, because I was inspired by Perry's interaction with the kid in The Shifty Shoe-Box and wanted to see how Hamilton would talk to a young boy. At the end of the story, Hamilton is asked to be Howie's godfather. He is bowled over, and doubts his ability to do a good job, but accepts. Hamilton and Howie have recurring interaction from this point on.

I think this story is when I finally began to really find my wings. The first two, and especially the first, were very much "testing the waters". Then, comfortable at last, I started to branch out with this one. And the positive response was enough to make me decide that perhaps reaching even further into the supernatural would be accepted.

The Case of the Broken Ties I was still very hesitant about the thought of this story, which involved a concept both partially inspired by television's Once Upon a Time and partially by two unfinished stories of mine with a similar premise that I had started long before Once Upon a Time ever came out. I asked the people in the Della-Perry Yahoo Group how they would feel if such a story appeared. I pitched the idea to them a bit and I was very surprised that all who answered were unanimous in their enthusiasm for the very different concept for a Perry story. That's what finally pushed me to write it.

I admit, this story has kind of been my baby. I wanted it to really be Hamilton's chance to shine and be a hero. And I wanted to explore his and Paul's interaction too, which was something I hadn't really gotten to yet.

The plot involves Vivalene and her cronies using the dark magic of the Forbidden Box for the first time, to wreak havoc on all of the people of Los Angeles County. She gets a crooked judge out of trouble with the law and places herself in a key position, that of Perry's secretary. She sends Della off to the San Fernando Valley and warps hers and everyone else's memories, making them think that she's been Perry's secretary all this time and that she isn't the bad girl in trouble with the law that she really is. She also feeds false information into their memory banks on their relationships with the other characters. In particular, she makes everyone think Hamilton has done horrible things to them, because she wants her revenge on him for the last case.

She wasn't counting on the spell not working on Hamilton. Or Paul. And these two good people must somehow work around their normally rocky relationship and try to get everyone else to remember the real truth.

The story is very character-driven and also quite Once Upon a Time-influenced. I didn't even realize how much so until I made a comparison chart on my Livejournal some time back. I'm displaying that chart on this story's page here.

I'll admit I focused more on Hamilton's side of things than Paul's, for several reasons. I can always relate better to Hamilton than Paul, so he's easier to write for. Vivalene wanted revenge on Hamilton, not Paul, so Hamilton had the most difficult, and hence, the most interesting, time trying to get people to listen. And, as I mentioned, I really wanted it to be Hamilton's story. Paul got his turn a couple of stories later.

There were some threads of plot that I wanted to follow up on more but that really didn't seem to fit without derailing the flow of the story. That was one reason why I decided that someday I would write lost scenes. And even with the lost scenes I eventually did write, on Livejournal, there are probably still others I could insert. But then again, maybe they would just be rehashing other scenes and conversations already there, so it might be just as well to consider the tale finished with the FF.net version and the extended, "lost" scenes at Livejournal.

I'm very proud of it overall, but I think it needs more Steve. He doesn't come in until the last chapters, due to me still not being very familiar with him at the time and wondering how to tackle his voice. It became immensely easy for me later on, once I began to realize what a fascinating and multi-faceted character Steve is. Now I can write all of the main police with ease and with their varied speech patterns.

The Case of the Spectral Stalker You know, the funny thing about this one is that I'd had the basic premise in my mind almost from the very beginning of writing Perry stories. But I kept pushing it away, feeling that it was just too strange and I didn't dare put it out there. After the response to The Broken Ties, I felt confident enough to actually write this one.

I'll freely confess that I wrote it mainly for myself. Not that the same isn't the case for all of my mysteries, but this one in particular was written to satisfy a dissatisfaction that had never left me alone. I was heartbroken by Captain Caldwell's pointless death in The Misguided Missile, and writing The Case of the Captain's Ghost really didn't help much. What I really wanted was to bring him back to life, but considering his gruesome injuries (the left side of his head was bashed in), I didn't know how. Later on, the only thing I could think of was experimentation by a mad scientist and a cutting-edge neurologist. Which is getting pretty weird and sci-fi for Perry. But when I decided to be bold and write it, I was glad I did.

Perry's friend Major Jerry Reynolds calls him for help, desperate because he keeps thinking he's seeing Caldwell's ghost and feels he's going out of his mind. (This story has no connection with The Case of the Captain's Ghost, by the way.) Jerry has come to Los Angeles for a break, but the spectre has followed him. Perry and the others try to unravel the bizarre mystery and end up befuddled and bowled over as it becomes increasingly clear that the stalker is actually Captain Caldwell himself, alive though not well, fighting against a mind-controlling chip implanted in his brain.

During the writing of it, I still had my doubts. I wondered if I should have it be that it was all a trick and that Caldwell hadn't really been brought back to life. I wrote a depressing blurb and put it on my personal Livejournal, examining a story ending with that as the premise. But I knew what I really wanted was the happy ending, that it really was Caldwell alive again and that in the end he could triumph over the mad scientist and have a real life once more. I eventually decided to do what I wanted most. I haven't regretted it. And I'm going to take some elements of that darker, unused story ending and apply them to a different project, although at this point I won't say how or which project.

In both this story and the previous Captain's Ghost, I always maintained the idea of What if Caldwell hadn't been lying when he said he didn't receive Jerry's order to him during the war? The episode itself honestly never says one way or the other. And Caldwell really doesn't seem like a bad guy, to me. His grudge against Jerry could very well have been at least partially justified, too, if he was telling the truth and no one, not even Jerry, believed him. I give a different explanation for the unreceived message in each story, but both times, it isn't Caldwell's fault.

I wanted to repair his grudge with Jerry, too, and if they had ever been friends, I wanted them to renew their friendship. I really enjoyed working with them in the story and writing their interaction.

A sub-plot in the story was trying to tidy up some of the loose ends left over from The Broken Ties. A month later, some of the characters still aren't recovering well. Tragg is upset over how Vivalene used him, placing him under an additional spell that made him think she was his deceased wife, and then draining his life energy to power the Forbidden Box. Howie Peterson is having nightmares about the battle against Vivalene, particularly how Hamilton was nearly killed. Hamilton himself is waking up some nights, distressed over similar recreations of his "death" in his sleep.

There's no concrete solution to the problems, no "wave a magic wand and everything is better". By the end of the story, the nightmares are still there, but there is the hope that they are lessening with the passage of time. Tragg, after talking with Caldwell, is able to face his problems and try to reach out to the friends he hurt while under Vivalene's spell.

Tragg's niece Lucy, mentioned in several previous stories, is finally seen for the first time here. She worries over Tragg at the beginning and wishes she could help him. At the end, she is overjoyed that he is at last starting to mend.

The Case of the Denying Detective This is Paul's spotlight story. And my mind seems to have blanked out on a good deal of the background information concerning it. What I do remember is that the scene of Hamilton and Mignon in the garden cemetery was originally supposed to be a scene in Lux Aeterna. I think that was when I was still considering that story to be next at FF.net. When I abandoned that idea, and wasn't sure if I would write the story at all, I still loved that scene and found it so striking that I knew I had to use it for something. The opportunity presented itself with this installment. I tweaked it around and stuck it in.

It concerns Paul disappearing for several months after suddenly and seemingly without warning, attacking Hamilton. Everyone, especially Hamilton, knows that something has to be terribly wrong. When Hamilton stumbles across Paul again, Paul is certain he killed Hamilton and can't accept that Hamilton is really alive. It's quite some time before he gets over his denial. And even when he does, there's still a mental block preventing him from remembering the full truth behind what happened that night.

And it took me some time before I figured out the intricacies of what actually happened to Paul and why he attacked Hamilton. In the end, it was a two-part episode of Hawaii 5-O that sparked the idea and made everything else click together at last. And it's a critical spoiler that I won't reveal, but it ended up being very twisted and heartbreaking, and hopefully unexpected. Paul was certainly bowled over.

It's shorter compared to some of the stories, but I do quite like it. The characterization of everyone highly pleases me, and Steve comes more into things starting here. I've noticed that Paul is more comfortable around him than he is around Tragg or even Andy, and this canonical friendship absolutely fascinates me.

The Case of the Malevolent Mugging As of August 2015, this story is DONE! Once again Andy has a large part of the spotlight, which he shares this time with his double Amory Fallon. Since it was Amory, and not Andy, who made me fully realize how nuts I am about Wesley Lau, of course Amory would have to turn up sooner or later. Prior to this, and highly anticipating its beginning, I wrote for Amory in one segment of Lux Aeterna, and for his wife Edith in another one. When The Denying Detective ended, I jotted off two chapters of this story almost immediately.

Considering Amory and Andy's amazing resemblance to each other, confusion abounds. Amory is the victim of the titular misfortune, but his identification is stolen and everyone believes him to be Andy until he regains consciousness. Andy, meanwhile, has been abducted. There are enemies of both men at work here, and Amory's past with his deceased business partner Ned Thompson comes back to bite him in ways he never could have imagined.

This is a very fun and different story in the series. The police all take center stage here, along with the Fallons, and it's been very enjoyable for me to further explore their personalities.

But it's been very odd when Hamilton doesn't appear in some of the chapters. Even when Perry hasn't made it into some, in other stories, Hamilton was almost always there. In this story, however, sometimes he just hasn't fit into some of what's going on. But that should change later.

Also unique is the inclusion of Deputy D.A. Sampson. He actually plays a key part in the whole thing, due to a case he's handling that directly ties in with everything else. I gave him a first name, Gregory, and have him and Hamilton interact in some of the chapters. I have plans to keep using Sampson as an important supporting player in future mysteries.

The Case of the Man-Eating House For Halloween 2012, I wrote what was to be a long oneshot, an ensemble piece of all the main cast becoming entrapped in a bizarre and disturbing house (inspired by my dreams and with a title inspired by The Wild Wild West). But it got too long to be a long oneshot. Hence, I split it up into four pieces for posting on Fanfiction.net.

I have plans for the house to return in at least one other story, a scene of which is on Livejournal.

The Case of the Spiteful Spirit Another Halloween story, this one a sequel to season 5's The Meddling Medium. For quite some time, I have wanted to explore the idea that perhaps Philip actually ended up in contact with the spirit world during his trances, even though at first they were faked. This story follows that idea, and shows what happens to the Walker family following the episode. It seems that restless spirits are not leaving them alone even now.

The Case of the Throwback Thursday Meant to be a long oneshot, but it grew so long I split it into three parts. Inspired by, of all things, the Ellery Queen theme song, this is a parody of detective books and films with Lieutenant Drumm at the helm. As the most hardboiled of the Perry police, he was the natural choice. Sergeant Brice is also present and there is a lot of interaction between them. I had a lot of fun fitting detective cliches into this!

The Case of the Nefarious Necklace My first big Perry project since The Malevolent Mugging. This story has a very long history, having originated as an idea by Harry2 and brought to me three years ago. I wanted to do it, but I wanted to finish Mugging first. That didn't happen until a month ago, so now it's finally time to tell Harry2's story.

It involves a mysterious and possessed necklace that was passed to Gene Torg and then given to Perry Mason for safekeeping after Pearl tries it on and ends up behaving violently. Della feels drawn to it for some reason, although she continually tries to resist.

Meanwhile, Perry is asked by Aaron Stuart to help with a new problem: Manzana Valley Prep School appears to be haunted. Aaron believes a living person is behind it. When Tobin Wade's cabin appears haunted as well, and someone is found dead nearby, Perry definitely believes that they are in the middle of complex and twisted plot. Gene Torg and Pearl Chute being brought in for questioning after being seen near the cabin only further complicates matters. The last thing Perry needs is for Della to start acting strange, but that begins to happen as well.

I'm also going to use this story to explore Della's friendship with Sergeant Brice. They have an adorable scene in the uncut version of The 12th Wildcat, indicating that they are very good friends.

Wild Cards: Crossovers

Love them or hate them, crossovers with other series are everywhere. Personally, I usually leave them alone. I love enacting role-playing games with characters from many series converging, but in stories it generally becomes too busy and confusing. I absolutely love little cameo appearances by other characters, but I've only written a couple of full-blown crossovers.

Perry has not been immune. While my Perry crossover hasn't been updated in some time, it's a story I'm excited about and hope to continue and finish. Hmm, maybe I can get a chapter out for Halloween. It is a very creepy and disturbing piece. And it is:

Lullaby of Silence, which is crossed with two other series. I realize that if you click it you won't see Perry listed as one of the categories, but characters from it are every bit as important as those from the others. I wish FF.net allowed for more than two series to be selected as crossover categories!

The plot concerns a mysterious group of men in white tuxedos who go about committing murder in complete silence, to the extent that their victims can never be heard screaming, even when they are and people are in the immediate vicinity. They were doing this in Detroit several years ago, when a police detective named Tony Ferano, along with a reporter named Carl Kolchak, were on their tail. Then they disappeared and Tony later quit the police department, becoming part of the Morales gang. The Morales gang, a group of characters in episode #25 of The Monkees, was referenced in The Case of the Macabre Mansion, but not in connection with this case.

Flash-forward several years. The murders are starting up again, in the Los Angeles area. Malibu is hit, involving the Monkees. And Hamilton is investigating. It isn't long before the city of Los Angeles is attacked as well. Carl Kolchak comes from Chicago to investigate and meets up with Tony Ferano, who has been living in Los Angeles too.

So far, the only Perry characters planned to have major roles are Hamilton and the police. But that will likely change as the story goes on. Hamilton will become worried for the safety of Perry, Della, and Paul, and they'll come into things.

And I have to confess, I have been toying with one other crossover idea involving Perry. I keep being terribly amused over the Lucrece Posey gang from an episode of The Wild Wild West, especially the sadistic cowboy played by H.M. Wynant. And I keep wanting to write a story where the gang, along with Secret Service agents Jim West and Artemus Gordon, end up transplanted to the present day. And poor Sampson encounters his double and is lassoed by him. I think Sampson would be more upset that a treacherous criminal looks just like him rather than that he was attacked.

Are crossovers considered part of the main timeline? I would say that's probably a toss-up, and maybe even partially depends on the individual crossover. Lullaby of Silence is most likely not part of the main timeline. This proposed crossover with The Wild Wild West, on the other hand, might be, because even with time-travel, I think it stays closer to the spirit of the series than Lullaby does or will.

And, as of January 2013, this proves true. The story now exists, and while it isn't as much of a crossover as it could be, Perry characters are becoming increasingly important to some of the twists. And the story feels like it would fit right into my timeline. There is even mention of Lux Aeterna, which hasn't been mentioned in the Perry stories.

The Night of the Time Travel is a wild ride, to be sure, and it's finished, but long. If you like The Wild Wild West too, or if you just want to see the Perry characters and how they fit into this, you're welcome to have a look. I should mention, however, that it is a direct follow-up to The Night of the Lazarus, which probably needs to be read first if you plan to read all of Time Travel. And Lazarus is far less of a crossover with Perry (although a character of Wesley Lau's from Cannon is highly important, as is my character Dr. Portman).

And oddly enough, the scene that inspired all of this, Sampson being lassoed by Little Pinto, did not even happen. I've become so fond of Sampson that I didn't want to write the scene if it ends up looking like I'm poking fun at him in any way. I chose instead to have Sampson appear in the third part of the trilogy, The Night of the Deadly Codename, and clash with his other lookalike, Coley Rodman, on their ideas.

Please click the below links to read about the Fanfiction.net oneshot stories and the pages for specific stories!