Twenty-Seven Grilled Bards and One Reviewer: B.L. Miller

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Twenty-Seven Grilled Bards and One Reviewer: B.L. Miller
Interviewer:
Interviewee:	B.L. Miller
Date(s):	July 14, 1998
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Xena: Warrior Princess
External Links:	full interview is here, Archived version
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Twenty-Seven Grilled Bards and One Reviewer: B.L. Miller is a 1998 Xena: Warrior Princess fan interview at Whoosh!.

Series

For others in this series, see Whoosh! Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

I guess more than anything the inspiration to continue to write fanfiction has been the fans. Every email I get about my stories encourages me to write more. I have a million stories in my head and every time someone tells me that they can't wait for my next story, it pushes me to open up my word processor and start plugging away. As for the specific characters of Xena and Gabrielle... their mythological world gives me great creative freedom to do what I want with the characters. I love the Amazons and Goddesses and my mind is constantly swimming with stories about them. The hardest part is sitting down and actually getting the ideas onto cyberpaper.

I've written and completed four Star Trek alt stories, all done before I discovered Xena. Since the quality of those stories is not what I expect from myself now, I've pulled them from the web. The responses for those stories was different from the X/G fanfic, but then again, those stories were more erotica than fanfiction. I wasn't as careful about the details then.

["A Queen's Sacrifice" was the first alt story on the web to deal with rape and the character of Gabrielle. It is now recommended reading by a women's sexual abuse survivor's mailing list. Did this surprise you?]: Yes it did. I knew it was the first alt story to deal with Gabrielle being raped, but it was a complete surprise to have the survivor's mailing list ask to post it. I've received letters over the last year from women who have discovered the story to be cathartic for them or a catalyst to dealing with their own abuse. Those letters always amaze me the most. I never would have believed that a simple story written by me could affect another human being so much. I would have to say that I'm most proud of this story.

Overall, I believe "The Cabin" and "A Queen's Sacrifice" have garnered the most emails. Due to the volume, I no longer store the emails or keep track of them in any statistical sense. "Charon's Troubles", "Hostage", and "About Artemis" tend to run about the middle, and "Mothers" and "Ulysses Revisited" tend to receive the least number of emails.