(no subject)

3:30PM Central Afghan Time

Well, let’s see. Recent events.

1. sroni2004 (to whom I have previously alluded) joined the LJ community, and surprised and pleased me with 1,800 new words on her sequel to “God Save the Queen”. If she continues at this rate, I’ll be starting my part of it by the end of the year.


2. News from WriterCon indicates that they might be ready to do a new convention by summer 2006. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’d love to see WriterCon II, but there’s a possibility that I might get extended in Afghanistan. I’d hate for it to take place at a time when I couldn’t attend.


3. I recently acquired — by PX purchase and from Amazon.com — DVDs for the only seasons of Kolchak: the Night Stalker and Firefly, plus the first season of Veronica Mars; and just today I got Afghan bootlegs of five movies, including Serenity. I have enough unwatched DVDs to keep me occupied for some time to come … but, if I want to continue turning out decent, consistent story copy, I have to carefully limit my indulgence. So it may be weeks before I see Serenity (being as I’ll want to go through the complete Firefly first) … and I’m due to get Season 4 of 24 in the next month or so.


4. Sometime in the next few days, I’ll look to begin a story I’m calling “Glass Ceiling”. This is the one I’ve had in the back of my mind for a couple of years now. Plus, it will lay groundwork for another big idea I’ve had lurking for about as long.

Oh, and I volunteered for one of the five-question interviews that ludditerobot is currently running. (He, and the other people taking part in it, call it a “meme”. What’s a meme? For that matter, what — in fanfic/television context — is meant by “meta”? I’m always needing to have terms and rules explained to me.)

Five Questions

8:00PM Central Afghan Time

I followed ludditerobot into this meme. Rules as follows, then the questions I was asked and answered.

1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.


2. I’ll reply and give you five questions to answer.


3. You’ll update your LJ with the five questions answered.


4. You’ll include this explanation.


5. You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed. And it just keeps going, and going, and going.

1) You’ve been to Iraq. You’re in Afghanistan. How do you think we’re doing?

My Iraq experience is from two years ago, and so may not be fully pertinent now. But when I compare my experience here with the reports I hear from there, I think things are going quite well in both places. Afghanistan just finished its parliamentary elections; Iraq just finished national voting on a constitution. These are the only two functioning Muslim democracies in the world, and you’d better believe the Al Jazeera target audience is paying close attention to how things are going in those countries. However much these people may dislike the notion of American forces on Arab soil, they’re also not crazy about being ruled by military despots, corrupt royal families, and 12th century theocracies.

As long as we’re here, there will be people fighting us. But both countries truly are coming along well enough that we won’t have to stay here.

2) You’ve been to Iraq. You’re in Afghanistan. Personally, I imagine Riley bouncing around all over there. Have you seen anything that might inspire Buffyverse fic?

Nope. I’ve seen one pretty effective story (“While the Women Came and Went”, by Mosca), but have had no ideas of my own. I hadn’t personally considered Riley in this venue, and would expect him to be active in the Middle East only if there were a supernatural threat requiring response. If I were doing a story about a Slayer over here … well, the American military females who can’t hack it are an embarrassment and give the rest a bad name, but the ones who do have what it takes are totally freaking awesome; I’d have our theoretical guest Slayer taking inspiration from these tough, unflinching, non-superhuman but indomitable women.

3) You’re a Reservist. What do you do when you aren’t using your language skills for Uncle Sam?

I fell into the military life almost by accident, and discovered that I loved it. I’m a Reservist because of age (only in the Reserves can I stay in long enough for retirement), but I do my best to stay on active duty orders of one kind or another. I got a Master’s in Health Information Systems in August of 2001, and watched the WTC towers come down a month later; I raised my right hand and took the oath on September 18th, and I’ve never looked back.

4) Which Buffyverse character do you find hardest to write? Which do you find easiest to write?

That’s not easy for me to answer, because I suspect that the hardest characters would be the ones it’s never occurred to me to tackle. Basically, whether or not I write about a particular character depends mostly on whether or not I have a story to tell about him/her. I’ve dealt relatively little with Buffy herself (it used to be a standing joke with my kids that I was a Buffyfic writer who avoided the title character), but over the last couple of years she’s found her way into this and that. Of the main core, I’ve probably used Willow the least; she was one of an ensemble in “In Ev’ry Angle Greet”, and I had a hard time capturing her vocal rhythm. I’ve had several characters express opinions about her, but she herself hasn’t really featured heavily in any of my stories. On the other hand, I’ve never used Angel at all (unless you count Angelus’ appearance in “All Ye Who Enter”).

Probably the biggest and most obvious absence would be Spike. I don’t actually dislike the character, but I got heartily sick of the monomaniacal focus on Spike in fanfiction. He’s made minor appearances (he was seen in my very first story, “Point of Focus”, and had a bit role in “Each Proud Division”), but nothing substantial. That might change, but I’m offering no guarantees.

Easiest … hmm. I find Buffy easiest to write if it’s action, because I love to do fight scenes, and there Buffy rules. Giles and Wesley are most natural for me in terms of dialogue, because they have a precision of language that I can easily reproduce. I probably identify most closely with Joyce, and have used her several times. Ethan Rayne, though — and my own independent development of Sheila — are the characters with whom I most enjoy working.

5) I am musically oriented and tend to think of characters in terms of what they listen to. When I visit someone, I'm bound to scan their CD racks first thing. What do you use to define characters?

I define characters by my best understanding of them from canon, and sometimes by the writing of my favorite fanfic authors. (But never the “authorized” writings. Every single authorized Buffy book I’ve ever read was competent and flat; none of them captured the least tinge of what I saw as the real essence of the people or situation.) In general, I follow the development of a character through the series, and use that as my benchmark.

On the other hand, though I never thought of using it to define characters, music has played a substantial part in my stories. No less than six — “Come to My Window”, “Twilight’s Last Gleaming”, “Morning’s Echo”, “Solitaire Till Dawn”, “Each Proud Division”, and “the Human Touch” — derive their titles from song titles or lyrics, and sometimes I’ll have a sense of tune or lyrics in the background to give me the mood of a scene. (For instance, the song Xander and Buffy were dancing to at the end of “Dusk Over Pompeii” — though I didn’t say so — was “Nights Are Forever Without You” by England Dan and John Ford Coley, released around 1977.)


That’s it. Thanks.