Octaves of the Heart Interview with Amy B

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Octaves of the Heart Interview with Amy B
Interviewer:	Octaves of the Heart
Interviewee:	Amy B
Date(s):	2006?
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Buffyverse
External Links:	online here, Archived version
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Octaves of the Heart Interview with Amy B is posted at the Buffy website Octaves.

For others in this series, see Octaves of the Heart Interview Series.

Excerpts

I was a latecomer to the fandom all the way around, really. I started watching the show during my first year of grad school, which was BtVS season 6; I had friends who had a Tuesday night "Buffy Night" get-together every week, and I never went because I didn't know anything about the show. Then one night I was doing laundry and flipping channels and saw that the show was on and thought, "Why not?" My first episode was Smashed; I can remember sitting there with my car keys in my hand from the last commercial break through the credits, absolutely breathless and just waiting for it to be over so I could hop in the car and head out to buy the DVDs. A week of pretty much no sleep and constant Buffy watching followed, and I was at the next Buffy night with metaphorical bells. I didn't really pursue anything about the show on the internet until I decided that spoilers were necessary if I was going to keep watching it with a group of people; even then, however, I stuck to a few of the spoiler sites and let that be it.

The world of fanfiction was really something that I didn’t even know existed until after I finished school and moved to NYC; I was (to phrase it leniently) poor and couldn't afford much of anything, but we had a phone line and my roommate had AOL. Score. I surfed about and found a few sites that I rather methodically read my way through, and then had a few more that got added to the list along the way. The list steadily got longer and longer, and then in February of 2005 I finally decided to go out on a limb and volunteer as a beta as a way to give back a little to the community I'd been enjoying so much. I had no inclination to write at that point, and had never really thought of myself as a creative writer, but I was challenged that very first night by a friend to at least give it a chance. I started my first story, Fear in a Handful of Dust, the next evening, posted once I had a few chapters under my belt, and from there never really looked back.

I started as a Buffy/Spike shipper, and I still am to a fair extent; shortly after I started writing, however, I started experimenting with other characters and other pairings, and those are interests that I happily continue to pursue. Most of my stories are Spike-centric, although I have a growing number of non-Spike stories as well; the first non-Spike-involved story I wrote was a Wes/Lilah PWP called A Smaller God. From the writing of that piece on, I’ve just followed my instincts and my desires in terms of stories I want to tell; if it strikes a chord with me or moves into my head in any small way, it finds its way onto the computer screen. I can honestly say that there’s not a character I don’t love or find interesting or that I’m not willing to explore.