Cascade Library Interview with Fluterbev
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| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Cascade Library Interview with Fluterbev |
| Interviewer: | Cascade Library |
| Interviewee: | Fluterbev |
| Date(s): | May 4, 2009 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | The Sentinel |
| External Links: | interview is here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In 2009, Fluterbev was interviewed for Cascade Library.
Some Excerpts
When I posted my very first story, back in 2003 on the Sentinel Angst list, I decided to go by the Yahoo username I'd recently acquired when I set up my new email account. I picked 'Fluterbev' because I am a flute player, and my real name is Beverley. It's the pseudonym I've stuck with ever since, and the one I always use for my fanfic writing.
The Sentinel characters possess, for me, uniquely perfect qualities. I've always loved an older/younger, mentor/student, soldier/scholar dynamic, especially where there is hurt/comfort and mutual caring combined with oodles of angst. Quite simply, Jim and Blair push all my buttons! In the beginning, I was overwhelmingly a reader of TS fic rather than a writer of it. Because I like to write, though, I inevitably began to dabble, but my scribblings were never meant to be something to share with others; I did it purely for my own amusement. I only started to post my stories online because I wanted to join the Sentinel Angst list, which has a dues requirement. That led to me writing more stories and posting more stories, and it all really snowballed from there. I'd first discovered fanfiction on the internet several years earlier (X-Files and Robin of Sherwood, both shows that I loved and still love), although I never got truly hooked on it until I discovered TS fanfic. Once I got hooked, well, there was no turning back!
It is a lifelong compulsion, and something I can't imagine not doing; I've always written stories, ever since I was a child. I mostly did it in splendid isolation; endless snippets of fantasy and sci-fi, filling a vast number of notebooks which still lurk under my bed (a cliché I know, but absolutely true in my case!). A school friend and I used to write fanfic as long ago as the late 1970s (for Doctor Who and Star Wars), but neither of us knew at that time it was called fanfic, or that others did it as well.
The one [story] I feel least positive about (and which I have taken permanently offline) is one I wrote as a request for an online auction. Basically I ended up having to tackle a topic I found personally upsetting, because I had blithely promised that I would write anything. I am still more than happy to offer my stories up for a good cause, and have done so several times since, but I'm always explicit now about what I am in a position to write (or not write), which is better both for me and for whoever wins my stories. I do definitely think that my writing has improved as time has gone on, and that my earliest stories are definitely not my best. I've moved website a couple of times, and each time I have revised and edited my stories, so the earlier ones especially are not currently presented in exactly the same form they were originally. I still see room for improvement, and will probably dabble with them some more as time goes on. However, the basic shape of them, flaws and all, will remain the same; my edits this long after they were written are always pretty superficial, and mostly restricted to cleaning up the grammar and basic language use.
I write purely for my own amusement, and post online simply because I want to share my love of the characters with others of like mind. I hope people will engage with my stories in whichever way they feel most comfortable; whether that means never commenting at all, sending a brief one-line note, or writing detailed concrit, it's all good, as far as I'm concerned! I see feedback of any kind very much as a gift, not in any way an obligation.