1. who is the hardest character for you to write? These days I think it’s Severus Snape.
2. who is the easiest character for you to write? These days – no doubt about it – Reaper.
I’ll bet your wondering – what the hell Zee? But I’ve pulled 2 old old fics out of the wood chipper before anymore damage could be done and they a) a LOTR/HP cross over and a Doom fic. And Reaper’s voice just jumped up!
3. How do you know if your writing is “in character”? I have to hear their voice in my head. I don’t mean repeat of movie or series, they need to be talking to me in their voice. Also, someone familiar with the series or movie tends to read it before I even send it to the beta!
4. Where do your story ideas come from? Numerous places. Music, pictures, drugs, conversations. I had a Rohirrim series (His, Mine, Ours, Hers, Us, and Theirs) that evolved out of a conversation on a Yahoo Group – What if Eomer had someone he loved before the war? Several fics came out of it from the group. I decided to do a first person POV simply as a study – not post it. I sent it to 3 friends when I finished it all all three came back – you better post this. Who am I to argue?
5. Do you tell the people in your life that you write fics? No
6. What has been the hardest fic for you to write? Probably that nasty little crossover I’ve pulled out of the mothballs! So many voices.
7. What fic of yours makes you the most emotional? His. I cried through the last 2 or 3 chapters writing it and I still cry when I reread it.
8. What is a scene you wrote that you are most proud of? There is a scene from my Cross over from hell.
Severus sighed in resignation. He stared into the crackling warmth of the fire and held her closer. “If he is employing dark magic, he very well might.”
Bronwyn spun in anger, her face contorted in fury. “He killed Haldir! He haunts my very footsteps, my dreams. If what Elrond’s sons say is true – and I have no reason to doubt them – he has successfully been maneuvering my bow into his own possession for close to twenty years. You should damn well know he is using Dark Magic! The question is,” she gritted between clenched teeth, “is the one Wizard I know that is versed in the Dark Arts willing to use them in order to stop him?”
“Bronwyn,” it was hissed, the glow of the fire casting an eerie light on the Wizard’s face, “You know not what you ask.”
“I know exactly what I ask.”
“No,” it was velvet, soft, caressing to the ear. Severus pulled her to him, his lips gently brushing the rim of flesh. An observer would think they had interrupted an intimate moment. “You do not know what you ask. The Dark calls, beckons, its power, seductive. It sucks you in, body, your soul. You do not mind falling into the abyss as once you step from the edge, there is no return, only the welcoming cold of evil. It lies to you, Bronwyn. You feel warmth, heat, power, yet you are left bereft, alone; and when you hit the rocky bottom, you do not see it coming. The end is swift, violent, and no one recognizes the dregs of humanity you have become. It is worse than death, oh Fiery One, and one does not lightly walk away from it.”
She cowered in his arms, listening, absorbing every word. “You walked away before-“
“Aye, I did. At great cost to me.”
9. Is there one character that you refuse to write? why? No. If I ‘hear’ their voice speaking to me, I write them.
10. When you write fics, how much of canon are you willing to ignore/skip over? For some odd reason, I will twist for Tolkien. He walked all over his ‘laws’ all the time, so I don’t have much problem either, although I will try hard to stick to canon (An example would be that Tolkien never mentions a wife for Thorin. He was not married at the time he took his group to Erebor. I twisted things to give him a wife in Loving Gin. I didn’t abandon/skip/ignore canon, I just wrote in between the lines, so to speak.
11. Do you prefer to be cold or hot when you write? Neither. I’m like Goldilocks; I like things just right!
12. What is your ideal writing area? Somewhere where no one will bother me.
13. How do you come up with your titles? Honestly, I don’t know!
14. How do you come up with chapter titles? Usually, they are song lyrics, or something that goes along with the chapter. Sometimes, I just number them.
15. At what point in writing a fic, do you decide to quit? Never. You finish a fic, no matter what. Yes, I’ve allowed a fic to linger for a while. Sometimes, the muses go to the beach. In Rider of the Mark, the muses went to the beach for 5 years. I picked it back up after I had written Love! Rohirrim Style and finished it (because it came before) and the biggest issue I had was to make sure where I picked it back up was seamless.
I know people will abandon a fic when they become interested in something else – or they aren’t getting enough feedback or what not. Nothing pisses me off more than to start reading a fic and then getting to drop off and you realize it’s been abandoned. That just unfair to the reader.
16. How much of your personal life do you put into fics? A little. A lot. In my first fic, I wrote about my main characters trying to get their three children in bed and asleep on Christmas so Santa Claus could come. They were having NONE of it and a friend of theirs actually got on the roof in the snow with bells. This was based on a true story in my home. I was 7 and I had 2 younger siblings, the youngest being 14 months old. We lived outside of Washington DC and it was snowing cold. It was midnight, we were excited awake still and my dad took the kettle bells out on the porch and was ringing them and mom was telling us – you gotta go to bed! We were too excited and my dad was whispering – Jane! Can I come in? It’s cold out here!!!! In The Shepherd, when Guy is taking Genevieve to the hospital and the over chatty nurse comes out with wheelchair, THAT was based on moi’s experience with the pending birth of Spawn!
17. What is the most supportive comment you have gotten? Someone reviewed Manna from Heaven. I didn’t see it for a while and I think someone sent me a link. It was on Tumblr.
100% the best Guy Of Gisborne fanfiction I’ve read so far. Grisly and gorgeous with vivid language and beautiful descriptions. Full of fantastic historical accuracies as well as legitimate biblical references. Well thought out and realistic in the manners of the heart, Manna From Heaven is a story about a woman lost in a time that is not her own, with a man who is lost in the matters of his own heart. Beyond sexy and fascinating, this fanfic is an absolute must read, and to die for.
18. What is the most negative comment you have gotten? You know I’ve been flamed at some of the biggest flamer sites ever. Ugly shit. Shocking it’s so ugly. I had one woman chase me all over creation to let me know how awful a writer she thought I was. Then she changed her mind when I wrote Rider and tried to make nice. I didn’t buy it a bit.
And then there was the guy on ffnet who simply flamed people. His bio read that he had other bios so if we did complain and he was deleted, well he had more. Also, if you respond to my ‘critique’ I will go through your favorite and flame them as well. He went after Rider, which was one of the most positively reviewed fic I had. I had like 15 chapters up and his review (which started, so you fucking think you can write…) and it was the first chapter. So I knew he was just going to the newly published list.
I had some numbnut decide that people in Middle Earth didn’t run around having sex, so she flamed ‘His’. She through Eomer was a ‘cad’ Wudurose was a whore and I needed to stop this right now. We had many words. By the third round, she asked me to at uprate the fic to NC17 because she had that filtered and it wouldn’t show up in the new arrivals feed. I told her to go fuck herself. The fic was teen and no way was I going to rate it adult! At that point, seeing how she was getting NO support on the review board, she created a sockpuppet and supported and applauded herself. My response to her was extremely unkind.
The most recent flame was also for Rider. Basically, A little over a year after I finished it, someone decided to go through and critique it chapter by chapter. And by critique, I mean tear it apart. What this successfully did push the huge number of great reviews down and her bad reviews on top. I said nothing for 14 chapters until she posted – My God this is such a train wreck. You want to look away, but you can’t! I PM’d her and told her where the x button was at. It had been finished for over a year, With the exception of the professional flamer, I’d not had a bad review for it anywhere and I didn’t appreciate her squashing down the great reviews. Someone new would come along and see her whining and move on. At that point, I was accused of wanting smoke blown up my ass…
19. How do you handle negative comments? As time has gone on, I ignore them. After being flamed at deletrius and gawd awful fan fiction, I’ve developed a pretty thick skin. Not everyone is going to love my stuff. Most of them just move on. Some people though, just have to tell you about it.
20. What story that you have written makes you the happiest to re-read? Manna from Heaven and Love! Rohirrim Style.
zee's muse 