Sheila Clark

Fan
Name:	Sheila Clark
Alias(es):	Bluewolf, Jay Trent, Sara S. Reynolds, Fiona James, Poledra
Type:	fanwriter, zine publisher
Fandoms:	Star Trek, The Sentinel, Professionals
Communities:
Other:
URL:	Star Trek stories by Sheila Clark, on the K/S Archive as Fiona James, non-ST fanfic on her website; additional Sentinel fan fic at the Artifact 3 Storage Room 3 archive
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Sheila Clark has written many Star Trek stories and was one of the founders of ScoTpress.

Fiona James and Sarah B. Reynolds are pseuds she used for K/S slash. She has also written Professionals under the pseud Jay Trent and Sentinel under the pseud Bluewolf.

She was also the vice-president/editor of STAG, Britain.

Fanfiction

• One True Guide
• The Nebulous Crab
• Teeth of the Lynx
• To Serve a Sentinel
• Something Told the Wild Geese
• A Safe Harbor

Some 1999 Comments

In 1999, she wrote this introduction to a story, Avalon, she'd written for the zine Encore:

I've been a Trek fan since 1969, when the series was first shown in Britain, and actively involved in fandom since 1974. It wasn't long alter getting involved it fandom, either, that I first heard about K/S, although at that time not very much had been written, and pretty well AU of that was 'underground'.

By the time K/S zines started to appear, I was already well-known (in Britain at least) as a genzine writer; which was one reason why I used a pen name when I started submitting to K/S zines — Fiona James in America, Sara S Reynolds in Britain. Another reason for using pen names had to do with work; I was a teacher. Government employees have to be careful In what they're seen to be doing!

I was pretty prolific as a writer during the 70s and early 80s, but eventually I began to feel that I was repeating myself; that I'd run out of... not so much new ideas as new ways of developing a story. It wasn't so much writer's block as a total staleness. I wrote something, read it a couple of weeks later, and it bored me. I felt I needed a total break from writing fiction.

I didn't actually stop writing, though; I couldn't. All my life, since I was about 7 or 8, I've scribbled down stories. During the 80s and early 90s I wrote some booklets on local history for the schools in the area where I was working, compiling the material from a number of sources and putting it into a form that children of 10 — 12 could understand and work with. Eventually I realised I was beginning to think fiction' again, and set fingers to computer once more. "Avalon" was originally intended to be a gen story. However, K/S refused to go away; K &S looked at me and said loudly, 'Oy! We need each other...."

And for the future? After nearly 25 years of being very active in Trek fandom, I've taken a step backwards — for tho last two years. I've been sitting back and letting others do the work. Will I be happy to continue sitting back? Doubtful. One of these days another story idea will tap me on the shoulder and say, "Write me!"

Some 2009 Comments

[I wrote] for the pleasure of it and I suppose it *was* the thrill of seeing my work in print... and, later, the knowledge that our zines were going to the British Library - which has the right to up to six copies of anything - one that they get automatically, the others they have to ask for through an agent, and with several titles they asked for all of their statutory copies. In a way, their asking for the additional copies of something I'd written was a kind of very positive feedback... :-) I keep thinking that two hundred years from now, if some student is researching the phenomenon of 20th/21st century fanfiction, *my* stories will be among the examples they can find...

Interviews

• Memories of STAG and Star Trek Fandom by Sheila Clark (1991)
• Sentinel Slash Virtual Season Interview with Bluewolf (2001)
• Legacy Interview with Fiona James (2007)