Who the %$&^%@ is Saff Bailey? Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) explained his professional use of both his psuedonym and his real name (more or less) like this: whether you like it or not, you're going to get stereotyped and typecast. It's better to create separate identities so that each persona can have its own reputation and rise and fall on its own merits. I don't think I'm good enough to become a bestseller under one name, let alone more than one, but that's the reason behind having two separate pseudonyms. Were I to do it over again, I would have stuck with the one pen name, but for better or worse, Saffron Bailey is me.
I don't remember when I fell in love with Homicide, but I did. Hard. I've always been a fan of police procedurals, be they Ed McBain's brilliant 87th Precinct novels or television shows. It's a taste I picked up from my mother and some of my earliest television memories are of being allowed to watch "Hill Street Blues" with her. The two of us were probably the only people who saw "Crime Story" from the beginning to the end of its original run.
If you missed Homicide when it ran on NBC (1993-99), you missed much. It was a spectacularly unglamorous look at a police squad. The dead bodies stank, not every killer had a neat motive, and not every case got solved by the end of the hour. The detectives, for the most part, weren't crusaders. They were stiffs working long shifts in sometimes miserable conditions. They had bad habits, varying work ethics, and oh so many quirks.
For fanfic writers, those quirks were manna from heaven. Tom Fontana created each character as a three-dimensional person and as a result, the fic that Homicide spawned tends to be very character-driven. From a slash perspective, Season Six brought an actual homosexual situation -- "Closet Cases", the episode that spawned a hundred thousand slash stories.
What you'll find below is just what I've written. For the rest of my cadre's work, head over to Schism. It's more than worth the while.
Probably because this was my first foray into fanfic, almost everything I wrote is a challenge response fic. I've explained where best I could.
Man Bites Dog: Not a challenge fic. The 'zine story that wasn't. Set after "The Gas Man," Bolander returns to the squad to find himself and Munch on a dog of a case. A study in partnership. My last - and best - H:LotS story.
Fells Point Fromage
Many, if not most, Homicide fans are also fans of Law & Order. Almost all are fans of OZ, Tom Fontana's other series. As such, when a brand-new spinoff of L&O was announced, we were happy. When we found out it was going to have Richard Belzer reprising his role as Detective Munch, we were gleeful that the recently-cancelled Homicide would live on. We were even more gleeful to know that Dean Winters and Christopher Meloni, regulars on OZ who had also done memorable guest spots on Homicide were also to be featured. Then we watched the debut of Law and Order: SVU and cried. It was terrible. Beyond bad. A waste of characters and scenery.
A challenge was issued: rescue Munch and Detective Brian Cassidy (Winters) from the evil clutches of SVU and put them in Baltimore. The challenge title came from one of the only bright spots in the pilot, a goofy moment when poor Detective Cassidy doesn't remember what the formal word for fondling is (frottage) and says "fromage" instead.
I was the only one who answered this challenge. Seven stories later, it's my most well-known work. There is a rough chronology -- later stories make references to earlier goings-on -- but it's not imperative to read them all.
Diary
First Date
Sofa of Truth
The beauty of the episode "Stakeout" is that the actual apprehension of the criminal -- a hideous serial killer-rapist -- is the most anticlimatic part of the hour. The best time is spent with the detectives pairing off to sit shifts and watch. The conversation is riveting.
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
Post-Series
