Sidana

Is there anyone you base Lise on?

There isn't anyone in particular. That plot bunny started out with one line: "But the test came back negative." That led to me pondering what kind of situation you'd have to be in to totally miss starting to develop any other lycanthropy characteristics before that first full moon. So I tried out a sort of template of a massively overworked and overtired college student putting in impossible work hours during a summer job to help pay her tuition. As for the firefighting, I wanted a character who was both physically and mentally strong, but who wasn't a fighter. It seemed like a good hook for the character, so I ran with it from there.

And college age is a fun age to write about because there's just so much going on in a person's life- figuring out your future, not only realizing you're turning into an adult, but also having your family realize that you are as well, getting more serious about relationships... It's an age where a lot starts to seem more real.

What about Caleb draws you?

Amanda. I never really paid much attention to him in the books, and just kind of wrote him off as another annoying pretty boy. But she had a WIP fic where she actually made me not only pay attention to him, but even like him. And then she never finished the fic.

So it was like if I wanted to see more of the guy, I was going to have to write my own story about him. And since I don't like to go for the obvious, I ended up sketching him out as a guy who actually does have his life together more than most of the other people in the pard - steady white collar job, plans for the future, and all that, for all that his frat boy tendencies annoy the crap out of Anita. I find it a fun challenge to find a different perspective on characters since what we see of them in the books all filters through Anita's rather opinionated take on everything.

What is your inspiration?

It's not something I can trace to any one thing. I've always been a person who has stories in my head. When I was little and I'd play Barbies with my friends, I was the one they'd ask to come up with the plot for that day's play. (As far as I was concerned, Barbie was a secret agent who regularly fought space aliens, the Russians, and evil time travelers in order to save the world. That rock band thing was totally her cover.)

How much time do you devote to writing?

Not as much as I'd like to. I tend to get easily distracted, and end up doing five other things during the time block I'd allegedly set aside for writing.

What is your favorite place to do it, and do you work in longhand or only compose on the computer?

I'm plunked down on the couch typing away on my laptop. I can't listen to music while writing because it ends up being too distracting for me. If I need some sort of background noise, I'll turn on the Weather Channel.

Your vision of Anita as seen through Lise's eyes as a concerned alpha is a lot more balanced than most- how do you put aside all the "Anita-stupid-stuff" (for lack of better term) to get that?

I see becoming a lycanthrope as something that can be extremely traumatic in a person's life, even if it was something they chose for themselves. Forget any sort of metaphysical bonds, you're going to connect at a base emotional level with the people who helped you through those first couple of very scary weeks. Anita's one of the people who was there for Lise from the beginning, and that kind of support means enough to her that she's willing to overlook a lot of Anita's moodiness.

For all that she's jaded in a lot of ways at this point, Anita would really rather not go straight into the pissing contest the first time she meets someone, and I see Lise as someone who was Raised Right and is trying to be an easy house guest for the people who were willing to take in a total stranger. So even though Caleb's friction between them, I see them as two characters who are honestly trying to get along with each other.

There's an Anita bit from a story that may or may not get written someday that I'll throw in here:

"I wasn't happy to see Lise there. It wasn't because I didn't think she was tough enough. She was the person who had been going up in helicopters to fight mountain wildfires, so you couldn't really argue about her toughness. But she was one of the few people in my life right now that no one had ever tried to break. I wanted her to be able to hang onto that last little bit of innocence, both for her sake, and my own."

You have three really great story lines going, will they eventually merge or intersect?

No plans to merge the story lines at this point. I feel like everyone's on their own different journey, and to try to force them together would seem too much like a gimmick.

If you could have dinner with any writer, who would it be and what would you ask them?

Hunter S. Thompson. I figure I wouldn't had to have to asked much in the way of questions since he was such an opinionated writer. I just would have been able to enjoy the insane genius of the person and event.

Which story (by another writer) on PDS/SDS holds a special place in your heart, and why?

Inevitable by Mhalachai. Because it actually made me care about Harry Potter when I never have made it beyond the first book of the series. And because the writing is brilliant.

What do you feel is important to remember when writing an original character?

Don't let them warp space and time around them. When I'm writing, I feel like I've got to be more of a canon ho with original characters than I do with LKH's characters. One of the nicest things someone's ever said about Lise was that they kept expecting to see her to show up in DM. If she can slide that well into a canon story, then I feel like I've gotten her right.

What advice would give the newer writers here?

There are no impossible stories or plot lines. It's just that you've got to work a lot harder to make some stories believable.

What are your ultimate goals for your writing?

I haven't really thought so much about ultimate goals. A lot of my writing is more about the journey than a specific destination. The biggest thing I'd like to do right now is get a better grip finishing stories I've started. I'm horrible about that because once I know how something ends, I tend to get bored with writing it, never mind that I actually have 2-3 chapters more to write out at that point.

How important are your moods to your writing? Do you tune them out (write happy scenes while sad), or do you use your moods to focus more emotion into your writing (writing sad scenes while sad)?

I tend not to write much when I'm sad, but beyond that, there really isn't much connection. It's more about what story is stuck in my head at a given time, which can easily be a mega-angsty story when I'm in an otherwise very happy mood.

Who is your favorite character?

It's like that old potato chip commercial. I can't pick just one.

Who is your least favorite character?

Other than the villains, I'd say Jean-Claude. I strongly dislike manipulators, and he's a big time manipulator. Thing is, he's got very good reasons for acting like he does, and I can't really hate him for the decisions he's made to protect himself and his people. He's the kind of person I'd say that I respect, but that I'd never consider to be a friend.

Who is the hardest to write?

I really don't get Asher. He's the one character where I feel like I can't get inside of his brain, no matter how much I try.

How much time do you spend writing or thinking about it?

Quite a lot. I've always daydreamed, and so often those daydreams turn into stories on me.

How do most of your fic ideas come to you?

I've plotted out a lot of stories over the years while I was out running or swimming. It's what I do when I'm exercising since I've never been into listening to music while I'm sweating.

Sometimes an online conversation will send me off onto some really strange tangent. Sometimes it's reading someone else's story, and finding a little bit of something in that story to take on some weird and unexpected tangent. Sometimes, it's an experiment to see if I can take something that shouldn't work and make it work.

Do you write in any other fandoms or anything original?

Fandom- Highlander was my original fandom. I've also written Forever Knight, X-Men, The Sentinel, Babylon 5, Buffy, a bunch of shows crossed over with Buffy, old school Doctor Who, Farscape, and there are probably a couple I'm forgetting here.

If anyone's curious, I've got some Buffy stuff here:
http://www.tthfanfic.com/Author-3680/selkie.htm
And because I'm actually kind of proud how the Lube Fairy one turned out, here are a couple of old Sentinel stories:
http://852prospect.org/archive/cgi-bin/search.cgi?ShortResults=0&Title=&Author=selkie&Summary=&Date=0&SortBy=0&SortOrder=0&NumToList=0&FastSearch=0

I've tried to write original fiction, but I tend to freeze up after a chapter or two. If I finished something I'd feel like I'd have to try to get it published, and the idea of spending months writing a story only to have it rejected at every turn terrifies me.

What is your favorite style (length, POV) of fic to write?

I don't know if I'd say I've got a favorite style. It's all about what seems to be the best way to approach a given plot bunny.

Did you lurk for a while on PDS and were there any fics that inspired you to write yourself?

I've got a tendency to jump right into a new place because the darn plot bunnies don't shut up with nice! shiny! new! fandom! involved. One nice thing about PDS is how accepting it is of original characters when a lot of other fandoms see OCs as icky.

Amanda's Caleb story got me thinking about trying a different take on him, and there have been many plot bunnies that come from discussions on the message boards. Mhalachai did an Anita/Firefly crossover that got me wondering if there was some other way to send Anita and friends into space and involve a show I was more familiar with, and I ended up writing Anita/Babylon 5. The Xander & Narcissus story I'm working on right now came from reading one too many stories where Narcissus was a two dimensional bad guy, when later AB canon has him working with the rest of the Coalition.

There are probably others, but those are off the top of my head.

What is your writing/creative process?

I always seem to have somewhere between five and ten different plot bunnies stuck in my brain. Of those ideas, there will be a couple that just won't go away until I write them out, a couple more that seem to have real promise that I'll keep trying to work with, and a bunch more ideas that I end up discarding before they turn into much.

It's an odd sort of survival of the fittest. The bunny's got to be strong in order to hold my attention long enough to want to write everything out, and there tends to be a lot of mental revision that goes on before I even start writing a story.

Once I actually start to write, I normally end up with a story that's pretty much a slightly polished version of my first draft. The heavy lifting got take care of when it was all still between my ears.

What is your best writing/creative environment?

Sitting someplace alone and comfy. I can't write when there are other people around. I find it horribly distracting.

Are original characters based off anyone real, and which one is your favorite and why?

I don't consciously base my original characters on anyone real. I tend to see original characters as a sort of writing exercise, with the challenge there being to develop someone who isn't real into someone that the readers find believable.

How much advance plotting, planning and outlining do you do for your longer stories?

It depends on the story. Line of Duty was supposed to be a one-shot story, and it's been a surprise to me that Luke's story has turned out to be as long as it has. On the flip side, I once had a Highlander/Forever Knight/Dr. Who/Babylon 5 crossover where the outline ran something like 6,000 words because that was what it took to keep everyone in the right place at the right time. And then I never finished that one because it turned out it was going to horribly clash with new canon from the end of B5 season 3. Grrr.

But most of the time, I know how the story begins, I know how the story ends, and I know three to five key events that are going to happen along the way. I've learned the hard way to not start stories when I don't know the ending. Once the original sparkle wears off, it can be a hard slog.

Do you do full character sketches of your original characters and the minor ones that you develop beyond LKH’s definition?

It's not something I actively write down, but I tend to end up with a lot more back story on a character than what ends up being used in the story. I usually start out with 'I need a character to perform Action X, and none of the usual suspects work in that role' and go from there. Even with the stories that end up being pretty character-driven it starts out with that first action by the character.

One thing that's odd to me is that I don't really know what Luke Bates looks like beyond he's a big but not fat guy and he has a buzz cut. The story is through his eyes, and since he's not the type to stare at himself in mirrors, it didn't seem important.

Do the characters ever make unexpected deviations from your plans?

I generally don't get huge unexpected deviations from the plan since I tend to have gone over the plot eleventy-billion times before something gets to the written out stage. But there tend to be places where things wander a bit in a different direction before returning to course, or times when it turns out that something else has to happen in order to have it make sense to get from Point A to Point B.

For some reason, the Lise stories usually end up with one or two more sex scenes than my original rough outline had planned for. But they end up seeming necessary for the plot, and a big part of her character development involves how she approaches sex, so those bits end up getting written in.

How important is reader feedback to you and where you go with a developing story?

I feel like I've got to start off apologizing for being awful about responding to story feedback. A lot of times I just don't know what to say.

If something gets written, it's because I've got a very strong idea of how the story's going to go, and how it's going to turn out. I'm just not the kind of writer to ask for a public vote on who a character is going to get paired up with. But I really really want to know if I screw something up, and always appreciate constructive criticism. Sometimes I'll throw a story out there that I'm not quite sure myself if it really works, and it's good to hear if other people think I succeeded or failed.

And of course it's great to hear that people enjoy what I'm writing.

What impact, if any, does ‘real life’ have on your writing?

Not all that much. Sometimes something in real life will serve as an inspiration for a drabble. I see part of the fun challenge of writing is to come up with something that's as far from my real life as I can get, and figure out how to write something that foreign to me as believable.

Do you do any beta work for other writers?

One or two. I don't do too much of it because I'm never really sure what kind of turnaround time I can manage, and I feel like it's not really fair to the writer to have to wait more than 48 hours for a response from me.

What do you think is the best thing a beta provides to you as a writer?

I guess it's time to confess I've never had a proper beta reader. When I got started writing fanfic, they weren't really part of the process unless you were trying to get in one of the big name paper zines. By the time they became common, i was set enough in my ways that I just kept moving merrily along solo.

What I will do if I'm writing a subject unfamiliar to me is to find someone who knows it, and pick their brains about whether what I want to do with a part of a story really works.