Interviews with Authors version 4.0 - interview with JediMara77!!

Err.. is it okay if I ask to be interviewed? Or do you have to be asked?

 

I'm an xray technologist by day

I didn't know that! Yay for another fellow medical professional.

Great interview, Nat and CJM! And I agree completely with your first piece of advice - well, both of them, but the first in particular. Just do it.

 

That was a wonderful interview! Some really awesome insight into The Reluctant Princess. I love reading background stuff about my favourite stories.

Psst... Cyn, you do me too much honour. Thank you for your kind compliments!

Nat, I think I've told you before that I'm interested in helping out. You need to PM me, girlie!

 

I do have a vague recollection of that . . .

 

Good advice And a nice interview

 

Interviewing Cyn was so much fun - she's a great author and a wonderful person to talk to

 

After a long an unintended vacation this thread is back!! Many thanks to THE_PIED_PIPER for interviewing our own fanfic mod Jedi Trace!

Kick Today we?re sitting down with an accomplished writer and veteran of the TheForce.net. She?s a great person and a whole lot of fun to talk to. Everyone please welcome JediTrace!

Trace: Hey, Kick! Good TN morning to ?ya. I?m totally excited about the interview ? thank you so much for volunteering! - and I?ll try not to talk your ear off.

Kick: No problem, my dear ? I?m happy to do it. Good Tennessee morning back at you. It is quite an adjustment getting used to the weather here in Appalachia, it?s very different from Texas.

First, let?s talk about your early writing and what it was like around here? way back when.

Trace: Early stuff ? I had to go back and look to remember, lol. Mara Jade is the character that got me into the EU and fan fic, so most of my early stuff is Mara-centric.

My first story Stronger Than Night was in 2000 and there?s not really a lot to say about it, except that the culture of the fan fic board (there was only one) was vastly different back then.

2004-2006 was my Luke/Mara phase and pretty much everything I wrote involved one or both of them and Darth Vader. Weird combo, I know, lol. I guess the works I?m most proud of from that era are ?Accession? and ?Journal of a Mother?s Heart.?

Unfortunately, what I consider to be my ?best? L/M fics are adult-rated works and can?t be discussed here, but I don?t call them my best because of the rating but because my beta for those fics, kayladie97, taught me a LOT ? I do mean a LOT - and really helped me to improve and grow as a writer. ?One Night on Endor? is a PG version of one of the stories from that series.

Kick: Oh boy, how I know that a good beta makes all the difference in the world. The three I have are some of the best in the business on top of being great human beings and fantastic friends. What was it about her style that helped you grow as an author?

Trace: Seriously. A good beta is the best thing in the world, isn?t it?

Well, first of all kayladie fixed my atrocious dialogue formatting ? something that Gabri_Jade still has to pop me on when she betas for me. I just suck at it, LOL. Technically, she helped me learn to spot and fix things like POV switches, verb tense changes and gaping plot holes.

She also pushed me out of my comfort zone. I?d gotten complacent and more than a little smug, and she constantly challenged me with: Yeah, that?s good, but it could be better. I think I re-wrote the first story she beta?d for me three or four times before we were both happy with it.

Most importantly, she really helped me to grow in confidence and to realize that it?s okay to take risks and step out of the box, so to speak. One story got a huge reader outcry and not in a good way. Readers were MAD. I had no idea that people would react like they did and reading their responses felt like getting kicked in the gut. Kathy stood behind me, though, and not only held my hand but taught me to believe in myself and my story, even if no one else liked it.

I think part of that experience is what eventually gave me the courage to move away from writing mainstream characters and to try writing lesser known characters (such as Legacy and KOTOR comics) knowing that they wouldn't be 'popular' or widely-read on the boards.

Kathy and I have been lucky enough to have met up several times in real life and, even though we?re not working together anymore, we still email and talk on the phone. I feel very blessed that I can call her my friend.

Kick: What about Mara drew you to her as a character?

Trace: I?ve always been drawn to strong female characters. As a child of the 70?s, Princess Leia and Wonder Woman were my heroes and Mara Jade was a

 

Thank you, Kick and Nat! That was fun.

(And I fixed a few broken mark-ups. )

 

Terrific interview! Thank you both!

 

Awesome interview!
I loved looking a little more into the mind of Trace!!

 

Oh stellar interview!!!!! Trace was one of the first uber!awesome authors to reel me in over here LOL along with Vadey... then I just had to stick around

Great interview Nat and Piper--with your own very talented selves.


Huggles!!!!!
~~~~~

Speaking of young girl crushes, I'm feeling my first one big time--still--again.



And it's wonderful!!!!!

 

Awesome interview! Wow I knew you were in nursing, but wow! 16 yrs is pretty good long time!

Great work on the interview! Thanks for sharing with us Trace!

 

This was a lot of fun to do. Big kudos to Jedi Trace for being patient with me and fixing the mark-up codes.


Kick

 

Dear Lord on high! Don't let Kick near the mark ups!

Awesome interview Trace!

CJM

 

Hey, a Traci interview!

Well, first of all kayladie fixed my atrocious dialogue formatting ? something that Gabri_Jade still has to pop me on when she betas for me. I just suck at it, LOL.

LOL. I think it's a whole lot less that you suck at it and far more that I'm a real stickler in that area, Trace.

I do believe I was one of the Archive reviewers for Ignite the Stars when you guys submitted that. It was an easy accept.

And as someone who's spent years working as non-medical support staff in a hospital environment, I don't know how ER or ICU staff handle it. It's hard enough just to hear the codes called over the intercom; to always work with the hardest-hit patients in the place would do me in. Thanks for doing the hard stuff to help those who need it most, Traci.

 

Isn't she one of the easiest and most fun people to talk to, Kick?

Awesome interview, Kick and Traci! Very casual and informative, and it looked like a lot of fun!

Now, I want to write another story with Trace and I haven't written in so long it would be atrocious.

 

Yes, Roo, she is very easy to talk to, about a lot of things. And, the two of you definately need to start writing together again. Its great therapy that cures a multitude of ills.

 

Aw, thanks so much, Traci, for your kind words! I don't feel like I really did that much...your story was awesome to begin with. I just helped put a bit of spit and polish on it, LOL.

You've always been one of my absolute favorite Luke/Mara writers, and you've been an awesome RL friend, having opened your home to me (and my son, and my cellphone-addicted nephew) several times.

I need to write more SW stories. I need to READ more SW stories, but I can't seem to get away from Clark Kent and Harry Potter, LOL.

Big HUGS to you, sister, and I hope we get to see each other again soon!

 

I'm surprised Traci hasn't been interviewed already! Stellar interview, really appreciated getting to read more about her.

 

Yay, Trace! About time they got an interview with you up here! I loved reading it; it was just like chatting with you! Great interview!

 

That was awesome!!!
Thank you so much, both of you!

 

Boy, was that a lot of fun!

 

Jaina_Solo_15 interviewed by NYCitygurl


Jaina_Solo_15 is an old friend and personal favorite of mine. She's an award-winning J/J author, and though she's not around much anymore, her stories are classic.




Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I'm a girl/woman. I like to read just about anything, as long as it somehow catches my interest. Star Wars was one of my first and probably most major fandom loves. I recently started learning how to knit. Writing fan fiction is fun to exorcise the what-ifs and I'd love to sees in my head. I maintain a community called NCIS_femslash over on LJ. I like to hunt and fish and ride horses. I'm not sure that qualifies as a little, a lot or just way random, but it's something I guess.


When and how did you become a Star Wars fan?

There actually is kind of a funny story behind that. I'd actually seen Star Wars when I was four or five and I hated it. That was still in my sci-fi is terrifying stage. Anyway, I was about seven or eight and my mom was over at our neighbor's house. She tripped going down their stairs and pulled a heavy cabinet down on her head trying to catch herself.

Of course, she had to go to the emergency room after that so they shipped me off to a friend's house for a couple of hours. To distract me they put on Return of the Jedi. I loved it. The fight scenes, Luke and Leia's sibling relationship, and of course, Han and Leia's chemistry. And look, I was seven or eight, I thought the Ewoks were hilarious too.

And, uh, after that I was always a big reader so when I saw the Star Wars novels at the library (Bantam Era back in those days) I got introduced to SW by Zahn and after that I was pretty much a gonner.


How long have you been writing Star Wars fanfiction? How did you start?

I started writing Star Wars fan fiction when I was fourteen so that would have been back in '02, not coincidentally just a handful of months before I joined the boards here. Uh, believe it or not, back in those days I was really into Luke/Mara fan fiction. It was right around the time that Vision of the Future had just come out and it seemed like everybody had been waiting for Vision of the Future forever, and once it did there was just so much more to explore.

So I was a big fan of Mara's and I thought it would be really cool for she and Jaina to have some adventures together. (You have no idea how geeked Vector Prime made me.) Anyway, I could not find any fan fiction like what I was wanting at all. It's always hard to find non-romance fics and for two relatively minor (back then) female characters it was even harder, at least for me. I wanted kick-ass girl fic and there wasn't much to be found.

I, of course, got the brilliant idea that if no one was writing what I wanted, I should write the story that I wanted to read myself. To say that it sucked is being very generous. I think it clocked in at 7,000+ words and was formatted into two paragraphs. Not an auspicious beginning, but I actually found this woman writing Star Trek: Voyager fan fiction who agreed to exchange beta'ing with me. I ended up writing this one decently long Voyager fics and learned the bulk of what I picked up about writing from her before I started on Sword of the Jedi. It was either that or Back to Bakura, at this point I can't remember. But from there on out I was really into Star Wars fic for a long time.

What other fandoms have you written in? Can you tell us a little about your work in them and on your NCIS femslash?

Well, I mentioned Star Trek: Voyager earlier. I've also written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and actually while I was writing most of the Jaina/Jag fics that I've posted on here, I was also writing fan fiction for Alias. That was one of my most prolific fandoms at the time. Since then I've written fics for Harry Potter, Farscape, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, Grey's Anatomy, West Wing, Stargate: Atlantis, Women's Murder Club and Fried Green Tomatoes. For the most part, th

 

Great interview.