User:Bantrim

.

Name/s:	bren antrim, glacis, seeker, sue castle
Fandom/s:	The Mentalist, Angel, Highlander, Obi-Wan Kenobi (star wars movies), Sentinel, Smallville, Stargate SG-1, X-Files, X-Men (movies), Harry Potter, Kyle XY, Robin Hood (BBC), Peter Pan (the Movie), Without a Trace, NCIS, the Chief, Eye of the Beholder, Queen of Swords, Relic Hunter, Shallow Grave, Forever Knight, Once a Thief, Due South, General Hospital /Port Charles, Lord of the Rings (movies), Professionals (classic), Deep Space 9, Voyager, Andromeda, Chasing Amy, Dawson's Creek, Dogma, From Eroica with Love, Homicide, The Island, Man from UNCLE, Moulin Rouge, Mummy Returns, Queen of Swords, Rat Patrol, The Watcher, Wiseguy, Wolf Lake
You can find me at:	http://www.castleskeep.net/Keep.htm, http://glacis.livejournal.com/
On Fanlore:	My contributions / email me

I've been a published fan writer since 1992, and discovered other people wrote about TV characters too sometime in 1994. Since then I've discovered the fascination and joy of fandom, including my closest friends. I have written in over 50 fandoms over the past couple decades, and continue to find new infatuations every season; sometimes in new shows, sometimes on DVDs. My motto: Reality exists to twist!

I use the pseudonym ‘glacis’ for current stories, ‘seeker’ for Potter universe stories, and ‘sue castle’ for inactive fandoms. Older web archives may still have my stories under my mundane name, bren antrim. I began as a Bashir fan (DS9), then added Krycek to my stable of fascinations, then discovered too many to list (and wrote for all of them). My stories have been translated on the web (with permission) into several languages, and published in print in English and Japanese. I have won some awards, and been published in several zines (listed for the curious on the Glacis page).

I’m drawn to characters, and will often follow particular actors from one character to another, sometimes slashing their characters; I am intent on possibilities for the fictional character, and neither write nor read RPS. I always outline, often writing out bits of dialog in the outline, then write the story from beginning to ending, without skipping scenes.

I don’t publish unfinished stories. I don’t use a beta reader but have used editors when publishing in print zines. I tend to write a story, let it rest for a few days, then go back, re-read, edit and proofread it. This cycle may happen once or several times, depending on the story. I write a lot, much more than I publish, then carve the story out of the mass of words on the page. I discovered early on that I am too easily swayed by others’ opinions during the writing process, and have not been satisfied with my collaborative stories. I work best when I stay in my corner, ignore the world, and write until my brain is drained.

I like publishing to my own archive because I can format and illustrate it to my liking, but I also participate in other online archives (like Area 52 for SG-1) and fan fests (such as the Snape fest or the Small Fandoms Fest). In 2005 I began to post on LJ (http://glacis.livejournal.com/) but still prefer to have some control over presentation, so continue with my home archive (http://www.castleskeep.net/).

Two favorite moments as a fan writer were: when Alexander Siddig (then Siddig el Fadil, Bashir on DS9) signed the cover art for Flashback, and wrote “Everything would be great if I really looked like this” (fifteen years later it still cracks me up); and when Donna Barr created a Rat Patrol/Desert Peach comic back cover to go along with my crossover story in Flanking Maneuvers 4 (The Under the Crescent Moon Raid). Such positive feedback from the originating artists is an incomparable thrill for a fan writer.