Gabrielle Lawson

Fan
Name:	Gabrielle Lawson
Alias(es):	Ainaechoiriel, Philippe de la Matraque
Type:	fanfiction writer, awards organiser
Fandoms:	Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, The Lord of the Rings, Buffyverse
Communities:
Other:
URL:	The Portal (personal website)
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Gabrielle Lawson is best known as a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine gen writer, particularly known for her portrayal of Julian Bashir. Under the name Ainaechoiriel, she was also active in the The Lord of the Rings fandom, where she was one of the founders & early organisers of the Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards. In the Buffyverse, she wrote Doyle-centric fanfiction and maintains a Doyle fansite, This Side of the Nether.

Comments by Lawson

Unknown Date

I posted my first story in 1996 to alt.startrek.creative and have gone on to write for several other fandoms as well. I've won awards for my Deep Space Nine fanfiction. I founded the Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards for Lord of the Rings Fanfiction in 2004 as Ainaechoiriel. Also in 2004, I began writing an Enterprise fanfic, under the penname Philippe de la Matraque

2000

My very first fanfic was If It's Not One Thing.... a DS9 piece featuring Bashir, five or so plot lines and a new species I made up. It had, I think, adventure, mystery (my first) and good angst. I also hope it had humor. It had those Gidari (spooky new species) that turned out to be quite popular.

My latest was Pain of Memory (First Consideration was written earlier, though not released for a year due to fanzine obligations). It's about 2/3 the size of If It's Not (though I've also written longer than If It's Not). It's still about Bashir, but it only has one plot line with a subplot that's actually closely tied to the main plot. It had a bit of humor, I think. But mostly it had angst. No Gidari. That will have to wait a story or two.

How do they differ? I think of If It's Not as my fun story. It's entertaining. It was fun to write, fun to read. I always have fun writing, but this is entertaining fun not just writing fun. It's not really exploring anything. Well, I think it could be said to be exploring some bad family issues, but that wasn't why I wrote it.

Pain of Memory is an exploration. Of losing one's mind. Two of my grandparents had diseases which affected their minds. My grandmother died of Alzheimer’s and my grandfather of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. I asked myself which would be worse: to lose one's mind slowly and thus retain part, but know that it's happening, or to lose it quickly, all at once, and not know that it's gone. I always go for extremes, so I knew I'd write whichever I decided was hardest. I chose the slow version. And I didn't mean sanity when I meant mind. It's more of losing one's intelligence and brain function. I explored it. I wrote it. That's what I do now. I don't just write for entertainment (at least not as much).

I write to explore things. Even the short stories hit on something:

Healer explored Julian's feelings (subtly, but it did) for Ekoria. The Doctor (shortest of all) explored the issue of rich versus poor in the allocation of medical care. First Consideration explored Bashir's dedication to the point of sacrificing himself for his patients. Oswiecim explored something I've needed to explore since I was fourteen: the Holocaust (or suffering in general).

I'm currently writing one (well, after I finish an Angel story I'm working on) that explores the loss of faith, something I can't imagine for myself. So I explore it in writing. The one after that, I'll admit, is a little more on the entertainment side, but I do get to explore the Gidari homeworld.

I like my first attempt still. I reread If It's Not after a couple of years of writing it. It was fun! But I'm most proud of Oswiecim. I'm proud of First Consideration and The Doctor and Healer, too. I feel good about all my stories. I think I've gotten better as I go along (though Oswiecim still ranks the highest for me). I hope I'll continue to get better with what I'm writing now.

(Oh, and sorry if this is too long. I have a tendency to do that. Oswiecim was over 600 pages.)

2001

I have always loved stories--of just about any kind. Which is why, I suppose, I love TV and movies so much. But believe it or not, I didn't always write Star Trek. Actually, my first Star Trek story was my first science fiction piece--and my first mystery. And my first completed novel-length story.

I started out writing historical fiction and will probably get back to that someday. You won't find those stories here because I'm actually attempting to get them published. Cross your fingers for me.

So how did I get into fan fiction? Actually, I didn't know it existed when I started writing my first Star Trek story. I began by thinking that two years had gone by since DS9 started and we still hadn't gotten a background for Doctor Bashir. So I thought up one that I thought fit him and had enough angst to carry a story. But after 10 pages, "Melora" aired. In that episode, Dr. Bashir tells a little story about being 10 years old and on a planet with his father. It's a touching little story, but it contradicted what I wrote. So I put the story away. Then, when I decided to go away to Europe (to teach English in the Czech Republic), I also decided to write that story anyway. At the very least it would be a writing exercise. So to fix the contradiction, I made Bashir adopted (This has since also been negated on TV, but hey, I wrote this one way before we every heard about Julian's parents on the show.) I wrote 40 pages before leaving for Europe. But I hadn't thought of a B-story. All the episodes and books had B-stories. So I left blank spots for them and kept writing. I maybe wrote 100 pages before I found a B-story. Then a C-story found its way in there, then a D-story. ...

I've still got at least one more Bashir story in me, and I started it in 1997! Yes, I was sitting in the airport waiting to come home from a Weekend on the Promenade where I handed Sid a fresh copy of the original finished draft of Oswiecim. I was waiting for my plane when it hit me: What if I killed Bahsir and Kira? In the first part of a story they star in? It's called The Honored and I've only written 2 chapters. Why? Because other stories get in the way. The one that's in the way right now is not even mine...exactly.

Regarding Pen Names

A 1998 comment:

I'm writing under a penname. Sure, I do that as Ainaechoiriel for LOTR stories, but this is a secret penname. Why? Because it stretches the boundaries, maybe even crosses them, of what Gabrielle Lawson writes. So I created someone else to do the writing. The story is on ff.net, under that penname's profile. You may try to guess my secret penname at^{[Dead link]}. Use the username as Secret. The password will be my secret penname's first name. Get it right, and his (oops, a hint!) will be show up here!

Fan Comments

Gabrielle is one of those authors that keeps you waiting by your newsfeed, hoping that she'll be posting a story. Although they are far and few between, they are definitely worth the wait. She definitely knows what's she's doing. Every one of her stories pulls you in from the beginning and keeps you hanging on for dear life until the end. And with Faith, she doesn't give you an ending, so you're left hanging for months or more. She knows that characters better than TPTB does. A true professional.

Lawson is a very strong writer in terms of her narrative gift and the pacing, description, style, and characterizations are all nicely in place in her stories; as is a solid plot with an interesting sci-fi based mystery at its center in "Faith: Forgiveness." Her Bashir is very interesting.

Gabrielle and I have our own points of view about out favorite characters, but I like they way she puts them through great traumas but still maintains their strengths. She doesn't paint her characters and her worlds as perfect, but keeps them true to what they believe in.

Some Fanworks

Buffyverse

• Close To Home... So Far Away

DS9

• If It's Not One Thing... (1996)
• Oswiecim. Bashir time travels to Auschwitz. Probably her best-known story (1998)
• Pain of Memory (1998)
• A Clever Plan. Bashir & Section 31 (2001)