December, 2003

Hello to all the nosey parkers who followed this link ;^)

I thought there might be a few folks out there who'd like to know a bit about the person who wrote these things, and how she came to write them.

I came to writing fiction late. I posted my first Stargate story--Disconnected, the first fiction I'd attempted to write since my very early teen years--virtually on my fiftieth birthday.

Before being inexplicably driven to try writing, my primary contribution to the world of fandom had been through my computer wallpapers. I've made more of these than it's healthy to admit LOL! If you'd like to check them out, you'll find them here.

Thanks to my verbose nature, and my wallpapers, I had found for myself possibly the most remarkable nest from which a budding writer could emerge. I'd become part of a wonderful, warm group of very creative people--all of whom other than me were writers. And not just writers. Some of the very finest authors in the world of Stargate fan fiction. People like the amazing Lori Grey (who is also ELG and Circe), Jmas, Phoenix Emrys, Yum@, and my very first good on-line buddy, Brenda Anders. And that's only about half of them. No writer ever had a better bunch of first-time beta readers LOL! And that was before I hooked up with my beloved Poss, who cracks the technical whip with great accuracy. With such support, I actually overcame that horrible fright that comes with posting your first story. Many, many of you will sympathize with that terror ;^)

I honestly figured that first story would be my one and only. It had come from this huge epic of connected tales I carried around in my head, in which all of the characters from my favorite shows happily and highly improbably interacted. "Disconnected" was one small piece of a big Jack/Daniel story. I chose to try writing this bit because it was a kind of turning point in the larger tale--a bit of the story which could be crafted to stand by itself, but was limited enough that I could find the backbone to actually try writing it.

But I made a small tactical error. In my Notes for the story, I confessed that there was a lot of backstory behind this bit, but that I wasn't sure I'd ever feel confident enough to try writing the rest of it.

This led to me learning a very, very significant lesson about being a writer LOL! I recieved some very nice feedback for that story, including a message from someone (whose name I have thankfully forgotten) who praised the story, then mentioned that if I wasn't going to do anything with it, she thought she might.

And so the lesson: Keep Your Hands Off My Babies! LOL! I was shocked by how strongly my head instantly rejected the notion that someone else might take over ownership of this tale.

And so, with the tender and strict guidance of my phalanx of uber-betas, I attacked what became the "Disconnected" story arc. This set of stories also ended up defining my primary Stargate "universe." Many of my other stories connect, in some way or another, to this magnum opus, including the "Private Artist" stories and the "Daniel's Life" stories.

So that's how I came to write, at the beginning of my second half-century LOL! Under my dear friends' tutelage, I learned many invaluable lessons as I fought with the heavy-duty stories in this series. The primary ones? (1) Be bold! (2) Keep Daniel's eyes inside his head. And the most important of all, (3) the comfort is just as important as the hurt.

For a couple of years, I happily played in the Stargate universe. I wrote a few episode tags, a few song-fics (which of us doesn't LOL!), and obsessed over Daniel's background and early years. But things were no longer happy in Stargate-ville. Those naughty Powers That Be were doing some Very Bad Things, and for a while, many of us long-time Stargate fans were very disaffected. The welling of this unpleasantness led to a couple of things for me. First, it led to stories like the "Seaside" stories. As Stargate's fifth season progressed, I found it harder and harder to see how Daniel could possibly be happy as things stood. So these stories grew out of my need to envision a future for Daniel and, eventually, for Jack as well, that could manage to be a happy one.

The second outcome of the growing unhappiness in Stargate fandom was that I found myself having more and more difficulty writing. For nearly a year, I produced almost no stories. I've come to really like writing, and it saddened me to find that I couldn't do it any more.

But something wonderful was happening LOL! As someone once said, when a door closes, somewhere a window opens up.

For me, that window was a new fandom. I haven't abandoned my beloved Stargate--things are looking much better over there these days--but right now I'm expending the bulk of my fannish energy primarily on the delicious Magnificent Seven.

Seven enthralling characters, a wonderful pair of men with an incredible connection between them, and another intriguing man with a past for me to obsess over. What else could I ask for? And then there are the A.U.s. My oh my! I've never seen anything like it.

I resisted--I've got a half-completed Stargate story that I haven't been able to get to finish itself, as well as plans for at least two other significant Stargate stories that I can't even make myself begin--but just a couple of weeks ago I finally gave in and began my first Magnificent Seven story. It's just a little, kind of insignificant story, but I finished it in short order, and I was pleased. And I immediately began working on a much larger story. It feels wonderful to once again be impatient to get to that keyboard in the evening LOL!

And in a kind of cosmic symmetry, Intersection, my first Magnificent Seven story, was posted almost to the day three years after Disconnected. Once again, virtually on my birthday. **happy sigh**

Of course, I've got a severe handicap writing Mag7. None of my lovely group of writer buddies has discovered the wonder of The Seven, so I'm feeing very exposed and unsupported. I was an active member of the Stargate on-line fan community for a couple of years before I posted that first story; I'm much more an outsider in the Magnificent Seven world. But I persuaded my lovely Poss to jump fandoms, at least enough to keep my usage and spelling under control. And I've got a brand new beta reader as a result of "Intersection." So I'm definitely fighting against the bit LOL!

And I'll get back to those Stargate stories I want to tell. That half-finished story is good, gol darn it ;^)

So that's the story of how a fifty-year-old woman finds a new kind of joy in her life.

Oh, that other stuff... In my other life, I don't do computer graphics or write fiction. I'm a biologist and a college professor LOL! But we can all learn to dream in new ways, and writing is just a formal kind of dreaming :^)

Addendum: January 2005

Happily, I am able to report that my fight against writer's block, which actually lasted nearly two years, has been well and truly won :^) And I'm now writing happily in both of my lovely fandoms. That unfinished Stargate story is completed, as well as a long-promised fifth story in the Disconnected arc. I'm cautiously venturing to work on the companion to Wrong Turn (my SG/Profiler crossover), and I'm gradually building up a small offering of M7 fiction. Ah, life is lovely :^)