sarcasticsciencefictionwriter asked:

Never have I ever written an apocalypse story and/or AU!

Hey thanks for the ask! ❤️

Kinda? I mean there’s the little oneshot at the end of the world Life Without Purpose from Sanctuary Pavor Nocturnus.

The Timeless post season 2 fic Friends in Time had Lucy and Wyatt time travel back from an apocalyptic future. It’s talked about in flashback but isn’t the primary focus of the story.

I have never written a full story in an apocalypse and I’m not sure I would want to? I’m a “happy ending” type person and any ending in an apocalypse could only be bittersweet or perhaps hopeful but still there’s such an underscore of tragedy. I mean I get the point of finding light in the darkness, that even in the darkest of times people find a way to live. There’s a lot of good stories to be told.

I mean I do tell stories of times of hardship. My current novel is alien invasion – entire cities have been wiped out. However they are still fighting. An apocalypse implies that they lose. Maybe they rebuild but there’s a total loss / end of fighting / giving up / lack of hope first. That just isn’t my thing. I want to keep hope, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat if necessary.

I enjoy playing Horizon Zero Dawn / Forbidden West. I think that’s as close as I get 😛

magicmumu2 asked:

Never have I ever written a coffee shop AU

Oh thank you!

I was going to say yes I have but then I thought about it, and I don’t think so…

Cassandra and Lamia (Librarians) did meet for the first time in a coffee shop in my little missing moments fic and the Outsiders. But they could just as easily have had that conversation in a park, or bus stop etc.

I can’t remember now for my sci-fi thriller series. I had two ideas for how the main characters met and one of them was kinda a coffee shop AU. The mercenary went to the coffee shop everyday while she scoped out her target (office building nearby) and obviously flirted with the waitress. Then when it came time to do the actual job the waitress saw them and followed (perhaps to say hey, now I’m not at work do you want my number). Anyway they blew the job and then some kind of exciting chase or something. I forget. I didn’t write it and this was only one option for their ‘meet cute’.

Anyway, something like that maybe!

bookwormchocaholic asked:

For the Never Have I Ever ask: have you ever written anything during WWI or WWII?

Nope.

Oh! wait… well, it doesn’t really count. I was 11 and it was a page of a story that I never finished about a spy entering some kind of secret code cracking bunker.

I can’t see that I would write that era in original fiction. While there are many stories that could be told, none call to my soul. If I still wrote fanfic I think there would be a rich seam there of adventures for the Five (Sanctuary).

We had one flashback episode to WW2 on the show where Helen, James and Nigel teamed up and went behind enemy lines to stop an abnormal from wrecking D-day (where they ran into John). Tesla was back at HQ ostensibly because he was too brilliant to risk, but sadly we didn’t get to see him do any inventing.

So yeah, if I still wrote fanfic, some kind of adventure for the Five would be the best bet for that era.

Thank you for the ask!

tinknevertalks asked:

For the Never Have I Ever, have you ever written a murder mystery? (Going for the big tropes today because brain hurts. 😂🙈😊)

Ooooh yay thanks for the ask 🙂 🙂

I have!

More than one. Well… I suppose hmm.

For fanfics let’s check AO3 first.
– I have Conspiracy Afloat, which is basically a Rumbelle murder mystery. Belle witnesses a murder but the body vanishes, and so nobody believes he’s dead. Thus she starts to investigate herself.
– Then there’s James Watson and the Curious Case of the Jarnul which was less of a mystery really because it was just a short oneshot. A mystery feels like it should take a while and have red herrings and stuff, but they were investigating a murder so it kinda counts.

Then back in the day there was fanfic.net

I never ported that stuff over. I think I had one fic I wrote at 19 but everything else was from when I was younger, 13 or earlier, and I figured I’d leave it in the past. Anyway, back then I wrote for Without a Trace (among other fandoms). Without a Trace is a show about finding missing persons, and I did write case fic. So each fic was a new mystery. Somebody had vanished and the team had to find them and sometimes they’d been murdered. Is that strictly a murder mystery? No. But it was a mystery, and sometimes murder.

Ok and finally original novels!

My sci-fi thriller has a lot going on. I wouldn’t call it a murder mystery exactly. However the MC has been framed for murder, and they do need to find the real culprit before they go down for it.

What is more pure murder mystery than a cozy mystery? Yes I have one of those in quasi-development. I planned Book One and have a few words. Not many right now but one day ™. My MC is renovating their board game cafe and a body falls out one of the walls. In true cozy fashion despite not being an investigator of any kind she gets sucked into looking into the murder anyway.

I think that’s it. Told you, there’s a few of them 😂

bookwormchocaholic asked:

Fanfic Witing Emoji Ask Game: 🦉, 🚿, 🤷‍♀️, 🙂

Yay thank you!

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write?
Answered here 🙂

🚿 Where do your best ideas seem to strike?
Lol I love that the emoji for this is the shower because that is the classic isn’t it? For me it’s probably not that. To be honest my best ideas seem to strike when I’m actively hunting them. Sometimes I need to let them percolate a bit and I’ll do some cleaning, or build some lego, or go make a hot drink, do other chores etc. (percolating time is important). But otherwise it’s when I’m at my desk working. Before I can think of the answers, I need to ask the questions (percolating doesn’t work otherwise).

🤷‍♀️What’s a fic you didn’t expect to be popular, but really took off?
Answered here 🙂

🐎 Would you ever do a medieval or pirate au?
For fic? No because I’m not writing fanfic anymore BUT please allow me to ramble for a minute. My current novel is in a lot of ways a portal fantasy and the world they fall into is the typical cliché medieval magical kingdom. I have another novel as a WIP which is a Camelot retelling (so also medieval in a lot of ways). Then we come to pirates – I’m going to say no, not in the traditional sense but I do have a Steampunk WIP which has airships so… maybe something? And I think space pirates will have to be a thing in something at some point. So maybe some kind of AU’s with those aesthetics eventually.

🟥How long do you spend in edits?
This is a funny question because I’m deep in edits at the moment for my novel. Over 42 hours and counting and I’ve not even finished my first edit pass yet (I’m thinking there will be 3 passes, plus one final check). I don’t think edits have ever taken this long before and I’m thinking maybe that means I’m finally doing them properly?

These are actual edits (so about how I’m saying it, not about what I’m saying). I’m not talking about revision. This book has already been revised and redrafted multiple times. No I’m purely talking edits, so execution not content. I’m starting to be afraid the edits will take as long as the draft did (110 hours for this one), but we’ll see I guess.

Back when I was writing fanfic I didn’t tend to do much more than a proof read. So the amount of time editing, was really the length of time it took me to re-read it carefully and make a few tweaks. So not that long at all.

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.

ladyelysandra asked:

I also have questions^^ For the emoji ask game: 🤩, 🦉 and 🏡 🙂

Yay thanks for the ask!

🤩 What’s the most meaningful comment you’ve ever received?
Honestly the comments I have got on Time Will Tell (the Sanctuary soulmate AU) have meant so much. They’ve been so complimentary and have legit made me tear up. That fic seems to work for people and I’m humbled by the kind words people have commented.

🦉Is there another author that helped inspire you to write?
Honestly not really. I’ve been writing in some form or another since I started to read (so probably when I was about 3). Story is just part of me. There have been times in my life when my mental health has meant I haven’t been writing, but I can’t credit another author for bringing me out of it. Season of life I guess. I write because I have stories to tell.

🏡What is your perfect writing environment?
The one I have I guess. My office with the ultrawide monitor, NovelPad and Plottr open. Hot drink to hand. Music in the background. When I moved house I separated my gaming from the writing, making a dedicated space for both. At least now I have to be honest about what I’m doing. No more sneaky “I’ll just login for 2 minutes” because I’d have to be in a completely different room haha.

Although… this is for drafting ^^ or planning I guess. When I revise or edit (for novels) I do that on paper and sit at the dining table. I have 3 fountain pens for different colours, a stack of highlighters and a metric ton of lined paper. I mark up the draft, I take lots of notes etc. Only when I can see the big picture and it’s a matter of pulling it together do I go back to the PC.

xviruserrorx asked:

1, 2 & 20 for the ask game 😁❤️

Oooooh thank you 🙂 🙂 🙂

1) Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi-chaptered fics?
On one hand my answer to this is “how long is a piece of string?” because a story is only as long as it needs to be. I have written novel-length fics, I have written oneshots. A few years back I wrote a handful of shorter Librarians fics and I like those, but they were just one moment in time, one particular plot point. It all depends on the story I’m telling.

However, on the other hand it’s asking what I prefer and in which case I’m a multi-chapter plotty shenanigans type writer. I like multiple POV’s and conflicting agendas, character arcs and themes, subplots and genre mash-ups. I suppose to put it another way when I fall in love with a TV show, it’s not just with one episode – it’s with how all the episodes string together. When I get a spark of inspiration for a story, it’s not usually just for one moment, it’s for a lot of moments all strung together into a greater whole. I’m not creating one story, I’m creating a universe – in some cases literally.

2) Do you plan each chapter ahead or write as you go?
I’m a planner. For my fanfics how deep the planning goes depends on the length of the story. I always have the broadstrokes, even if it’s just a handful of bullet points. For my novels I do a complete scene by scene outline BUT I don’t plan either of them by ‘chapter’. I don’t know how long scenes will be and I try and break my chapters so they are all around the same length (unless story-wise it works better for a chapter to be ultra short or long). So I tend to break into chapters by feel/word count, as I write, rather than as part of the planning process.

20) Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?
Oh definitely. No words/expressions are immediately coming to mind but that will be something I look out for when I do revision. I don’t want my ‘voice’ to overpower the characters.

However, something that I always, always come back to is the notion of masks and acceptance. My characters always seem to want to be seen, for someone to know them as they are and accept them. It doesn’t have to be romantic (though that’s often an easy way to write it). But yeah if we’re talking what a character needs vs what they think they want, then almost always what they need is true acceptance. I think this is probably a theme in every story I ever write.

It’s probably not the only repeating theme but it’s the first one that comes to mind.