Ask the Author: Maygra

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Ask the Author: Maygra
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	Maygra
Date(s):	October 8, 2007
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Supernatural
External Links:	interview and commnts are here, Archived version
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Maygra was interviewed for Supernatural Roundtable.

Some Excerpts

So, something about me; to give you background. I've been writing steadily since I was very young, which is a lot of years as I'll be 48 on my next birthday. I was a comics and sci-fi/fantasy fan in my teen and early twenties, mostly X-men and Superboy & The Legion of Superheroes (old school), and first read Elfquest when it was coming out in its first printing. I worked conventions in the Atlanta area, including the precursor to Dragon*con, mostly as security, before they got humongous. I'm an action/adventure junkie in television and movies and rarely met a buddy cop show I didn't like.

I didn't get involved in media fandom until I got online and was a little late to the party, getting online late in 1995 and posting my first story in 1996. I started writing fanfiction in Highlander: the series, and Supernatural is my current mad crush. There's a good decade in-between where I've written and hopefully honed my writing skills somewhat in fandoms like Star Wars: The Phantom Menance, Mag 7 (TV), and The Fast and the Furious. Mostly I tell stories I want to hear and I've been lucky in that other people want to hear them too.

My real name is Valerie or Val, I've pretty much always written and been known as Maygra and answer to that in fandom and real life alike, mostly because I'm a wee bit flaky about pseudonyms and the only other pseudonym I write under that has stuck is leila_sharpe Which I used in Mag7 and once in SPN, and managed a record of keeping it secret for about 10 minutes. I do have other pseuds but they aren't necessarily fannish ones (used for political forums, or other areas of interest outside of fandom, which means I have more email addresses than is probably healthy or sane). My fannish activities aren't a secret to anyone in my family or in most of my real life, not flaunted but not hidden because fandom is a huge, important part of my life as are the people in it with me, and I'm both not willing and kind of sucktastic at compartmentalizing my life.

I'm almost always more involved with the characters, more interested in the character than the plot. Which isn't to say I don't have favorite plot structures, or even scenarios (And equally as many as I'm really not interested in, hence the reason why a lot of television and movies and books that appeal to tons of people appeal to me not at all. Harry Potter is an excellent example.)

When I meet characters that intrigue or delight me, I immediately want to know more about them. Sometimes that means just watching with no compulsion to put my own spin on things, but sometimes I want to know more beyond what the source gives me and that's what hooks me into a fandom.

And pretty much, when the characters no longer interest me, when either the source, or I or other people have said or told me all I want to know, I'm done. I rarely ever go back to prior fandoms, though they remain like favored books I no longer feel the need to read but keep on hand anyway. Just in case. *g*