sarcasticsciencefictionwriter asked:

For the fic emoji game: 💖, 🤷‍♀️, 🎬, and ⏳, please! 🙂

Oh yay thank you for the ask! 😍

💖Which of your fics is your pride and joy?
Oh wow! This is such a good question, I love it! Erm… also hard haha, let me think.

I’m tempted to say Time Will Tell because that started as a thought experiment. Can I take a trope I don’t really like and make it work for me? The answer was yes so it was a really cool exercise. However, I feel like I might be being overly swayed by the kind comments I’ve had on it. I have legit teared up reading them. They are frame-worthy. I have the best readers honestly.

Also it does occur to me that time plays tricks. It’s easier to remember the stuff I wrote most recently, and not how I felt when I wrote things in the past. At different times, you’d get a different answer. I have more nostalgia for my older fics these days. I’m in a very different place in my life.

Honestly I think I have to go for one of the crossovers. I questioned my life choices while writing both of them because they were such an investment of time and effort. I also knew they were both niche and I could well be writing for an audience of one. However, I still wrote them and that says a lot I think.

So ultimately I’m going to say and the Sins of Atlantis. The Sanctuary/Librarians crossover. I unironically really enjoy it and I have read it more than once. Is that egotistical? Probably. But it’s just so much fun.

🤷‍♀️What’s a fic you didn’t expect to be popular, but really took off?
and the Brighter Side of Life. It’s a little Librarians oneshot where Eve takes Flynn home to meet her parents. The comments and kudos just poured in (comparatively). I remember being stunned at the time. It was one of half a dozen oneshots I wrote for the Librarians Prompt Month the first year I really took part. That one just went whoosh.

🎬One of your fics gets turned into a TV series. Which one is it and what network is it on?
Ooooh. Hmm… interesting. Well this goes back to what I said earlier about time. I don’t feel much of a connection anymore beyond “awwww nostalgia” for my older fics. There are some cool details and dynamics, and I feel like taking notes in case I want to incorporate them somehow into a novel in the future. However, that’s about the extent of my feelings.

I haven’t written a true AU really since those days though. I love AU’s, they are a chance to be inventive. When I read back my old fic I’m like “oooh” about the ‘clever’ choices I made in how to bring in various characters (sorry egotistical again). But that’s the fun of AU’s really, how to make it all fit together in this new way.

Anyway it’s kinda hard to say about my more recent fic, being turned into a TV show because it already is a TV show – it’s just missing moments, canon divergence etc.

Also I got to be honest I know nothing about various networks and what they are known for, or what networks are good and what suck. Especially because I mostly watch US TV and I live in England so I never see anything on it’s original network (unless it’s a multi-region streaming thing like Disney+ I guess).

I suppose… I’m picking at writing an original serial which is the closest books get to a TV show I guess. It’s structured very much into episodes and seasons. It’s an artifact chasing type unit ala Warehouse 13/the Librarians but based in England, with worldwide adventures and predominantly queer. The Librarians was TNT and Warehouse 13 SyFy (thanks google). I think the new Librarians is on Prime like the new Leverage? The queer MC’s do make it trickier though. I think all networks suck for that. I don’t know honestly.

⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be?
Another great question!

This is difficult because I have learned so much craft over the years, and it would be amazing to go back and be like “here’s what you need to know” so I could write better stories, much earlier. However, that’s part of learning I guess – it’s a journey. I suppose the emotion here is that I mourn the time I have lost, the stories I didn’t tell, and that has less to do with skill and more to do with mental health.

I suppose ultimately it would boil down to a cliché of “don’t give up” because I did. As a kid I dreamed of being a writer but when I was about 14 I told myself I had to grow up. That I had more chance of winning the lottery than making any money at it, and I had to get serious and pick a real career. I sobbed all night and a few years later had my first complete mental breakdown, but I digress.

Writing is in my soul. I always return to it. That’s why I wish so much that I hadn’t turned away from it. Those ‘lost years’ I mentioned. Back in 2016 I indie published a couple of books. I look at them now and cringe, and wonder how I ever got the nerve as I feel they are so badly written (hey maybe that means my skills have improved?). However, I was finally following my dream. Then… my personal life blew up (I was going to write out what happened but I’ll spare you). In my fear and panic I made some decisions and I didn’t write much for years. I gave up on my dream. It’s only now – 8 years later!!! – that I’m coming back to it and I regret that so much.

So yeah TLDR – don’t give up on the dream. Keep writing.