Index Interviews with Authors // May 10th, 2011: Jade_eyes!

Welcome to the Non-Star Wars Fan Fiction Author Interview thread! Much like its companion thread in Fan Fiction Resource (located here), this is the place to come to get a little familiar with your favourite authors and discover all sorts of interesting tidbits. This thread is currently hosted by Idrelle_Miocovani.

First off, many thanks to our gracious mods, NYCitygurl and Miana Kenobi, for letting this thread come into existance. It?s going to be a wonderful and fun addition to the NSWFF community!

We?re hoping to have interviews done on a regular basis. If you have a suggestion for an author to be interviewed, please PM it to the sock. If you would like to conduct interviews, that?s cool, too! Any help you?d like to offer is always welcome; we?re always looking for new members of the Interview Team. Send either Idrelle or the sock a friendly PM and we?ll get everything organized.

As this is the NSWFF version of the Author Interview thread, we are starting everything fresh, with a focus on specific non-Star Wars related things. Any author who has been interviewed for the Fan Fiction Resource interview thread is more than welcome to be interviewed here as well.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the thread or PM them to the sock.

Below is an index of all interviewed authors. If you have an author suggestion, please check the index to make sure that author hasn?t already been interviewed.

We hope you enjoy, and most important of all ? have fun!

~*~

Coming Soon!

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Index of Interviewed Authors

MasterGhandalf
Mira_Jade
Jade_eyes

 

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The thread is now open! If you have any suggestions for authors or if you want to interview someone ( ), please let me know!

 

Awesome!!!! I would like to see one from Master Gandalf!!

 

I nominate Idrelle_Miocovani.

 

Anyone want to act as an interviewer and give me a hand?

 

As another possible person to be interviewed, Master_Jaina1011.

 

Oooh! Me! Me!

 

Okay - YAY! Suggestions! Yay new interviewers!

I'll send volunteers some PMs shortly; I just realised that I have to get the sock's post count up to 20 before I can use it for anything (i.e. responding to the PMs in its inbox ).

 

These are some great suggestions!! I can't wait to read them

I recommend this thread to solve the PM problem

 

I already volunteered!!! Yay!!! I am excited for this!

and awww Thanks Fels!

 

I was wondering when this was going to happen for NSWFF.

 

I did not know about that thread, Nat. Thank you.

mrjop2 - that's what I was thinking. And then I decided, "what the hell, I'll start one". Community stuff, community stuff! Yay NSWFF!

*ahem*

On to official NSWFF Interviews sock stuff:

Thanks to all the volunteers so far! I am really excited to get this started!

~Idri

 

I'm happy this is getting off the ground! Even if there isn't an underscore in my name.

 

You're welcome! Hanging around in WNU has gained me much knowledge (I think the 20 posts thing will be lowered once we move.)

 

MasterGhandalf is best known on the NSWFF board as a writer of Avatar: The Last Airbender epics. FelsGoddess caught up with him for an interview, and we are very pleased to present NSWFF?s very first author interview!

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[b]Tell us a little about yourself, please. What fandoms do you like? How did you get into them? [/b]

In general, I'm a huge fan of Fantasy fiction, and to a lesser extent sci-fi and superhero stories. I love to both read and write in my free time; while I write some original fiction and hope to be published someday, at the moment I'm doing a fair bit of fanfiction, which gives me the chance to really practice in an established setting with a built-in audience. Most of the fics I write are for Avatar: the Last Airbender - while I can't put my finger on a single reason why, it's just a setting and story that really excites me with possibilities to delve into both for canon and AU stories. I also have a Star Wars fic in Beyond the Saga centered around a character I loved in the NJO-era but I feel the current EU has seriously mishandled- namely, Tahiri. It's currently stalled, however, owing to my being sidetracked by other concerns - I hope to return to and finish it someday. Things I'm a fan of but don't write fic for include Lord of the Rings (which you probably guessed from the name), Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Dresden Files, and Brandon Sanderson's multiverse.


[b]How did you first become interested in fan fiction? When did you start writing? [/b]

Well, I've been writing fiction in general since about third grade:). I've been *reading* fanfiction for a while (starting on this very site in fact- I've been a fan of YodaKenobi's ongoing series in Beyond the Saga since autumn of '04), and I started writing my own a few years ago. I first began toying with the idea that would become my Avatar trilogy shortly after the show's finale aired in the summer of '08, initially just as fun speculation as to where the plot might go from there. The idea gradually came to center more around Azula, since the heroes' character arcs felt largely wrapped up, but I felt she could still have a lot of potential for growth under the right circumstances. I started work on it that winter, and began posting it here in late '09/early '10.


[b]Can you tell us a little about you Avatar: the Last Airbender trilogy? [/b]

My A:TLA trilogy (which I think of as the Azula Trilogy, after the canon character it most centers on), is a fic series I'm currently posting to these boards and really represents my first attempt to do a sustained fanfic epic (Fall of the Fire Empire was begun later, though I began posting it *here* first, if that makes sense). I had several ideas that I wanted to do with it, but a big one was writing a redemption fic for Azula, my favorite villain from the show. While the events of the finale left me convinced she was redeemable, I was determined to avoid making it easy- all too often, fic writers either fall victim to the Draco in Leather Pants syndrome (whereing a villain who is "cool" or "attractive" is completely lionized and exonerated from all their evil deeds purely because the author likes them) or seem to assume that giving the character a love interest automatically makes everything better. Azula is a complex, fascinating, but *deeply* screwed up person; I felt that if I could give her a redemption arc that kept her recognizably in character and without letting her get off too easily, it would be a major triumph for my characterization skills. Since the fic is set post-finale, I also wanted to touch on the fates of other characters, to greater or lesser degrees as their fates intersect with Azula's- particularly Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, Ursa, Aang, and Iroh.

A:TLA always had, I felt, a very strong and memorable villain cast, and I wanted to reflect that in my own fics- with the added bonus that most of the villains reflect aspects of Azula's own shattered, disturbed psyche. General Azun the Fire Nation nationalist; the Governor of Janxing and Long Feng the cold blo

 

1. Brandon Sanderson FTW

2. Soul of Fire (and Fall of the Fire Empire) updates = the only good thing about Mondays.

3. TVTROPES!!!!

4. More. Avatar. Stories. Now

This was a great interview!! MG is one of my favorite NSWFF authors, and it was great to get a look into his writing process and thoughts?it felt like getting to know him better.

Great job, interviewer and interviewee!!

 

You cited TVTropes.org.

And a shark pit of insanity is definitely a great way to describe that!

 

Awesome interview! Good job!

 

Great interview.

 

Great advice to writers.