Adventures with the Strawberry Leopard
Feb. 20th, 2026 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseWell. I did not expect I was going to need to introduce you to the Strawberry Leopard, but it turns out I am.
I met her in person, very briefly, at the Crown Tournament in November. She was one of the fighters. Her SCA name is Alessandra di Riario Falkenstein, and I know what her mundane name is but obviously I'm not going to say. She's shortish, roundish, and enthusiastic, and rather to my surprise she's also not so very much younger than I am; and something went wrong with her original Discord account (I don't know if it was hacked or what), so after a bit of a gap she created a new one and started popping up on a majority of the SCA-related servers where I spend time.
We've been getting on pretty well online; we have a fair bit in common, but oddly one thing I didn't know we had in common till yesterday was writing. Our Leopard not only writes, but she also publishes; she very much knows the ropes, as her recently deceased husband was a regular writer for Dr Who. And the thing that sparked off the whole business was that she typed - or at least appeared to type - the phrase "verbal equinox".
I was amused, and I pointed out that Titivillius had got into her phone; I was pretty sure she actually typed "vernal equinox", as it should have been. So we got into a conversation about not only Titivillius, but his friend the book demon (whose name I forget off the top of my head) and their arch-rival Raziel the Library Angel. It was probably about five minutes before we both realised that there was a book in here; and the Leopard said she preferred a collaboration for longer works, and was I interested?
Silly question. Obviously I'm interested. (I'm a sucker for angels-and-demons fiction anyway; I've written some of it before.) I had to tell her not till May, by which time both the book and the readthrough play will be out of the way and I will have finished my course module; I already have far too much on without a book collaboration. But this is going to be a whole ton of fun, and I've already fleshed out one of the main human characters to some extent (he now has a name and some back story).
Watch out, Titivillius. The Leopard and the Mongoose are coming to get you!
I met her in person, very briefly, at the Crown Tournament in November. She was one of the fighters. Her SCA name is Alessandra di Riario Falkenstein, and I know what her mundane name is but obviously I'm not going to say. She's shortish, roundish, and enthusiastic, and rather to my surprise she's also not so very much younger than I am; and something went wrong with her original Discord account (I don't know if it was hacked or what), so after a bit of a gap she created a new one and started popping up on a majority of the SCA-related servers where I spend time.
We've been getting on pretty well online; we have a fair bit in common, but oddly one thing I didn't know we had in common till yesterday was writing. Our Leopard not only writes, but she also publishes; she very much knows the ropes, as her recently deceased husband was a regular writer for Dr Who. And the thing that sparked off the whole business was that she typed - or at least appeared to type - the phrase "verbal equinox".
I was amused, and I pointed out that Titivillius had got into her phone; I was pretty sure she actually typed "vernal equinox", as it should have been. So we got into a conversation about not only Titivillius, but his friend the book demon (whose name I forget off the top of my head) and their arch-rival Raziel the Library Angel. It was probably about five minutes before we both realised that there was a book in here; and the Leopard said she preferred a collaboration for longer works, and was I interested?
Silly question. Obviously I'm interested. (I'm a sucker for angels-and-demons fiction anyway; I've written some of it before.) I had to tell her not till May, by which time both the book and the readthrough play will be out of the way and I will have finished my course module; I already have far too much on without a book collaboration. But this is going to be a whole ton of fun, and I've already fleshed out one of the main human characters to some extent (he now has a name and some back story).
Watch out, Titivillius. The Leopard and the Mongoose are coming to get you!
