Fandom 4 LLS: New Story!

Coming soon... MARS ONE!

The Fandom 4 LLS fundraiser is back for the fifth year, and I'm hoping we can make this the best year ever. This is a cause near-and-dear to my heart, and I've been so proud to participate in this fundraiser in years past.

“You knew it was a one-way ticket.” That’s what she told herself again and again as she stared out the tiny portal at the rust-brown desert that stretched as far as her eye could see. Bella believes she's the final survivor of the Mars One mission, but there's a sound of footsteps in the corridor...

“Bella, it’s me, it’s Edward.”

He was lying. It was lying.

“Edward is dead. I buried him.”

“Bella, please. I’m not dead. I don’t know what happened, or why you think I am. But I’m not. I’m here. I’m alive. Open the door. You can check my pulse.”

“You’re dead!” Bella’s foot lashed out and stomped against the door with a loud bang.

“Dead!”

She heard Edward – no, the thing in the hallway give a sigh. Pain sliced through her, because it was his sigh, something she had heard a thousand times over the last decade as they trained beside one another, lived in the artic habitat, and traveled through space to land on this hostile planet.

“I saw you,” she whispered. “You were choking. You gasped—” She couldn’t finish because she remembered the helpless agony she’d felt, how his body jerked beneath her hands as he fought, the dots of sweat mixing with the blood that spattered his skin as he coughed. “You died. I was there. I don’t know if you’re a ghost, or a demon, or an alien wearing his skin, but you’re not Edward. Or maybe my mind has broken under the strain and I’m imagining this whole thing, but YOU ARE NOT EDWARD!” she screamed the last four words with every ounce of her strength, and her ears rang in the piercing silence that followed. He was quiet for so long, she started to hope the delusion had passed and she’d open the door to find the habitat empty.

“Bella,” he said, shattering that hope.

“No.”

“Bella, please,” she heard a soft thump against the door, like the side of a fist being dropped against it in frustration. “I’m begging you, just listen to me.”

Dear God, it sounded so much like him, and the pleading sound of his voice was enough to cause physical pain. She curled upon the bed as though to protect her aching heart. She pressed one ear against the bed and one hand over the other, but she could still hear him. It.

The only way you can get a copy of MARS ONE is by donating to the Fandom 4 LLS fundraiser. This story will not be posted on fanfiction.net. Please consider donating to this wonderful charity and help fight leukemia and lymphoma.

"WITS" Voted All-Time Favorite Fanfic

It would be an understatement of epic proportion to say that I was stunned by this award. Stunned, humbled, grateful, amazed ... words really don't cover the gamut of emotions I experienced when I saw this banner. It's an honor I never expected. Thank you all so much.

Written in the Stars also won in the Favorite Sci-Fi Fanfic category. It's an honor to have such wonderful readers. I love you guys!

The Selkie Wife got second place in the Favorite Supernatural Fanfic category. Thank you so much! I have the best readers in the world. I really do!

"Written in the Stars" Awards!

I'm just awed and so grateful. Thank you to everyone who voted for me. I'm just speechless, I really am. You guys are the best.

Amazing New "Selkie Wife" Video!

You have to watch this amazing video trailer made for The Selkie Wife by miamor416 of the Twilight Russia forum.



Thank you so much to the creator!

Will I Publish "Written in the Stars?"

It's a question I get asked frequently. Tonight, I conversed with a reader via PM on fanfiction.net, and the question of whether I'd publish Written in the Stars came up. The following is the reply I gave. I think it best encapsulates my feelings on the subject.

I've always said "Written in the Stars" is the best story I'll ever write. I don't think I'll ever top it. I've learned a lot since I wrote it, and if I were writing it today, it might be a little cleaner, a little tighter, but I think even as it is, it will stand as my best work. Sometimes, when I'm feeling blue, I go back and read the attack on Volterra. Those three chapters are my finest accomplishment.

I wrote "WITS" as a gift to the world of fiction, which has given me such pleasure over the years. And, truthfully, I like the idea of it remaining fanfiction. More people have read it on the website than ever would have read it if it was a book. I like the idea of it floating around in cyberspace, finding its way to new readers.

I know my publisher would probably accept it if I were to re-work it and remove all of the Twilight references. Heck, with the way things are going, I might even be able to sell it to one of the Big Six, 'cause they're eagerly snapping up Twilight fanfics. But I just don't want to do it. I want it to stay as-is.

Don't get me wrong... I'm strongly tempted just because I love that story so much and working on it again would be a sheer delight. But even stronger is my feeling I should leave it where it is, because this is where it belongs. I planted it here. And I could dig it up, re-pot it and prune it into something different, but it belongs "in the wild."

This is the story that changed my life, that led to my first publishing contract. The FF community gave that to me, and in that respect, the story is "theirs" as much as it is mine. Without their support, I never would have had these opportunities.

I admit, I considered it at one point. It is, after all, my best story. But when I started considering the changes I'd have to make and the fact I'd have to pull the story from its home, I decided against it. Because maybe my best should be here, in the community that launched my writing career.

#IWSG I Joined the Insecure Writers Support Group

My first thought upon finding this was, There's a support group? And then I thought, Finally!

Writers are a peculiar breed. (I've always been peculiar, but now that I've figured out I'm a writer, I have a reason for it.) Writing is, after all, a lonely profession. It's just you and the keyboard, and that little voice inside you.

Some days, that voice is kind and encouraging. Other days ... Well ...

I talk with other writers frequently and I've discovered that a lot of us suffer from the same  issues that stem from insecurity.

We're our own harshest critics. Half-way through the manuscript for Ghostwriter, I wanted to scrap it. I can remember sitting there at the keyboard, chastising myself:"This sucks. No one i ever going to want to read this crap. What made you think you could write a book, anyway?"

One of my fanfiction stories has six thousand reviews. Five of them were mean. Guess which ones I have memorized? My friends and family have praised my writing, but that little voice says to me they're just "being nice." And so were those 5,595 reviewers.

This is why it's helpful to put your writing aside for a while and then go back and read it like a stranger would, not looking for flaws, but just enjoying the story. I've gone back to some of my stories and said, "Hey, this isn't bad!" That's a good feeling. I've also gone back and said, "Oh, lord, what was I thinking?" but this is good, too. It shows how far I've come, how much I've learned.

And there's another aspect of being your own harshest critic that's positive: it makes you want to work harder to improve. The key is giving yourself credit when you do.

Writing is part of our souls. Even if our work is fictional, there's tiny bits of ourselves stirred within. I don't think a writer can help it. We get our inspiration from life experiences and that makes it personal in a way that's difficult for a non-writer to understand. Though I don't do it personally, many people write as a form of therapy, exorcising their demons with paper and ink. Whatever the reason, it sometimes feels like cracking open your head and inviting people to root around in your brain.

It ties in with the fear of failure. Because if our writing is from the heart and people think it's terrible, they think we're terrible. That's why it's often so difficult to take that first step in sharing what we've written.

But we have to find that courage. That's what art is all about, after all. It's human emotion and thought translated into a visual or audio medium. It's that personal aspect which makes it art instead of just a consumer product. And like all art, your words will not speak to everyone.  Accepting that sounds so simple, but it can be very difficult.

"Dark Goddess" Now Complete

Both versions of Dark Goddess are now complete. The E/B version was hosted on FanFiction and the E/B/J version was over on TWCS. You can download them from my downloads page.

A while back, i wrote a post about why I did two different versions, but when I split the site between my OF and FF, the post seems to have gotten lost somewhere in the shuffle. Anyway, I'm too lazy to hunt it down and re-telling you is easier.

I originally "wrote" two different versions of it in my head. This is not uncommon. I may re-write a story half a dozen times with new characters, new pairings, new plot twists, etc. I liked both versions, though I preferred the E/B/J version slightly more. I decided that was the one I'd post.

When I was discussing the story with SoapyMayhem, she who made the lovely banner above, she warned me I might face some negative reactions from it. I figured I was cool with it. If people didn't like it, they didn't have to read it, I reasoned. No hard feelings. After all, not every story is right for everyone.

Love triangles are a seriously under-utilized plot line.

However, once I started posting, I encountered a lot of people who were confused by the pairings. They thought it would be another Edward-and-Jacob-fight-over-Bella story, or a threesome story, in the sense of all three of them sharing the same bed. I was composing long emails several times a day to try to explain where the story was going, romance-wise.

At the same time, I was finishing up edits on my second novel The End of All Things, and trying to start my third. It got overwhelming, trying to keep up with the correspondence and with juggling my other stuff. So, I decided it'd just be easier to write two versions of it.

In all, I'd estimate only about 20% to 25% of the text is different. The stories are identical up to about chapter four. Later, a chapter is omitted completely from the Original Version. And the last chapter contains only a few snippets which are the same.

They see me rollin'. They hatin'.

It was a really interesting experience, writing two versions at the same time. I usually did the E/B version first, because I tend to write my FF on FanFiction's word processing screen, a habit I retained from the days of Compulsion when I found that uploading my chapters after writing them on my computer made chunks of text disappear  I have a new computer now and FanFiction has updated its software, but it's just how I roll. I'm a creature of habit. What can I say?

Anyhoo, it was a great learning experience because it made me concentrate on how romance plots are built. Little gestures which might build toward tension or emotion... I had to look at each of them and decide whether to discard it for the alternate version. And then build the alternative romance plot line for Jacob.

I keep trying different things in my writing and so far, I've enjoyed every moment of it.

Tell me, which was your favorite version and why?