Currently Featured: 3rd June, 2006
General & Dr Sheppard

I'm currently writing a prequel to this story so I thought it would be a good idea to do a feature on it, to refresh people's memories!

General & Dr Sheppard (GADS) is my big SGA BDSM epic. It basically tells the story of how an alternate John and Rodney are sucked into our universe - only they come from a universe where everyone is bisexual and BDSM relationships are the norm. General John Sheppard is Rodney's husband and his top and they are devoted to one another. As the story progresses, we see glimpses of how their universe works, and, of course, there are lots of loving, consensual, gay BDSM sex scenes! Needless to say, having this John and Rodney around really freaks out *our* John and Rodney, but as time goes on, and they see how happy the other John and Rodney are, they start admitting feelings that they've been suppressing. Can they make it work though, and what kind of a relationship do they want to have?

I had great fun with this story but it grew like a monster and ended up 120,000 odd words long. Having written stories like 24/7, which dealt with just about every aspect of BDSM sex, I was so used to writing quite graphic scenes that I wasn't prepared for the reaction to G&DS in the SGA fandom. It got an amazing response and tons of feedback, the vast majority of it positive. However...this was essentially a pretty vanilla fandom up to this point, and I had written a story featuring not just BDSM sex but *lifestyle* BDSM sex and it soon became clear that some people were uncomfortable with that. Some Big Name Fans hated the fic. Partly they were outraged that I'd made *their* Rodney sexually submissive, but they also hated the characterisation and I detected more than a hint of irritation at the fact the story got so much positive public feedback when I posted it on Livejournal. They panned the story and launched a pretty vicious personal assault on me. Now I've had my share of flames in my time, but I've never been attacked publicly by well known authors so I was shocked and upset. I got lots of great support from good friends, including some people who happen to be pretty Big Name Fans (and well known authors) in XF, which helped. I was new to SGA as a fandom, and I definitely wasn't feeling any lurve from the old hands. I can't thank my friends enough - and all those readers who sent feedback and told me how much they loved the story. That meant a lot to me.

None-deterred (they don't bloody well own the fandom and I can write what I damn well like!) I started work on a prequel to GADS, with the encouragement and support of my fabulous beta Bluespirit, and the endless enthusiasm of my friend Flying North. In the prequel, I deal with how the AU John and Rodney got together in their wonderful but completely bonkers BDSM universe. I'm working on this story at the moment. I take the universe entirely seriously when I'm writing it, but I'm very aware of how insane it is. That's one of the great things about fandom - that you can write something like this, that could never be conceived of or expressed in mainstream literature. It's all about exploring those extreme possibilities and I don't want to shy away from where the imagination takes me - and I know my readers don't want me to either. I have to say that I love this storyverse. I love the whole idea that there's a universe where BDSM is the norm, and where you don't have to explain things or have people unsure about their sexuality. In this universe it's normal to be gay and to identify as top or bottom - there's no angst about it - which paves the way for some great BDSM sex <g>. I love the freedom of that - and I expect I'll play in this particular sandbox quite a bit. I can already think of a few other ideas for it...

I'm delighted GADS got such a great reception and so much attention (it's been nominated for the Stargate Awards), and I'm equally delighted that Mysti from Agent With Style, contacted me about turning it into a zine. If you'd like a zine copy it's available from Mysti at her site: http://www.agentwithstyle.com/

Read General & Dr Sheppard

Previously featured: April 22nd, 2006
Back from the Well

Back from the Well was only the second story I wrote in the SG:A fandom and it was one of *those* stories, like June 17th, The Adversary and A Man of Two Truths that just flowed. I always enjoy writing all my stories, but some flow better than others, and I fall in love with some of them more than others - and sometimes not always for obvious reasons.

I lived, breathed, ate and drank Back from the Well and wrote it, this 50,000 odd word story, in just over a week. It was all I could think about at the time and I barely slept for that week as it took up residence in my head so that even when I wasn't writing it I was dreaming about it. And the writing experience was so intense and so enjoyable. The first day I sat down to write, I did 12,000 words, which is a record for me and I still find it faintly implausible.

I had been in a hurt/comfort mood ever since I discovered the SG:A fandom. I knew I loved Rodney as a character, and I knew that I loved him when paired equally with either John or Carson. I wanted a write a threesome from the outset with this fic - I knew Rodney was going to suffer horribly and I had an intuitive feeling that with these two lovers there would be two reactions to that - one of comfort and support and one of anger and guilt. Carson, the ever-nurturing doctor, took the first role primarily, with John helping out initially and John took on the second role more and more as time went on, unable to come to terms with his own guilt about what had happened to Rodney. This created a lovely dynamic whereby you could *have* comfort and healing sex while at the same time still having relationship conflict that needed to be resolved. I didn't want this story to just be about Rodney either. Carson and John both have their own stories and their own emotional journeys within this fic, just as Rodney does, and both suffer very much in their own way.

I found it hard to write those scenes where Rodney is suffering at the beginning. I think the reason I wrote those first 12,000 words so quickly to start with was that I was so desperate to get onto the part where he is comforted! And it was important to me to deal with the whole spectrum of the comfort - not just the initial "there, there, it's all over" because it takes longer for people to recover and because it's more complex than that. Also, recovery isn't linear - you can feel better one day and then worse the next, and sometimes it's only when the immediate crisis is over that you let go, and stop being strong, and that's when the worst of it can kick in. Rodney's recovery went back and forth, generally going in the right direction because I think essentially he's a pragmatic man, but he also encountered a few emotional obstacles along the way. I was very pleased with the role the city played in this story - I always enjoy writing about Atlantis itself and how she reacts with the people who live there.

I loved writing this story. I think it's one of my best, and that's why I've chosen it to be my first featured story. When I initially posted it, it wasn't very widely read, and I'll admit I was disappointed by the response, but it remains one of my favourites of my own stories, and, unusually for me as I don't often revisit my own work, I still re-read little bits of it, mainly the comfort parts.

Read Back from the Well