I’ve been reading fanfiction since middle school where I stumbled upon the fanfiction of a certain children’s book series that Shall Not Be Named via a now defunct website called Quizilla. At least I think it was from there. The site also had other stories on there as well, despite the fact that the site’s intended purpose was to make quizzes. One particular favorite was called “Ebony Rose.” Written in second person it followed “your” adventures with a vampire that kidnaps you (or something) and initiates you into a supernatural world. Angels, demons, vampires, etc, all make an appearance. You go to hell at some point and you even go to heaven and kill god. Though that may have been part 2. I also vaguely remember something about a King Arthur-related angel character who was cursed or something and could only enter spaces via windows. The last thing I will say about Quizilla stories is that they often had the label “for girls” on these stories. Maybe to indicate the “fanfic-yness” of the story or an element of self-insert. I’m not sure, though now I’m interested in an examination of it through a fandom historian lens. Keep your eyes peeled for that particular essay!

Anyway. This first memorable fanfic got me the “Your Heart’s Seeker” closing that a friend and I still use to this day in written communications.

And then nothing for a while. Then around 2008 my brother introduced me to a video game called Mass Effect and my life was forever changed. I liked the game but after my first playthrough I set it aside and didn’t think much of it. But then it came time for the release of Mass Effect 2 and I got back into it with much more enthusiasm! A couple of years later the last game of the series came out and I discovered the wonderful and wacky world of tumblr.com. I might write a separate post that goes into more detail, but the relevant bit of this history is the fact that I officially discovered fandom and fandom fueled my love for particular video games, movies, and TV shows (books to a considerably smaller extent).

I had been reading fanfiction for a few years before I actually decided to start writing my own. I had been interested in writing for a while (possibly inspired by an unexpected “best writing” award for a “book” I wrote and illustrated as part of a class project in the sixth grade) but I didn’t really consider writing my own fanfiction when I started off on my fandom journey.

I was deep in the Mass Effect fandom at this point and unlike the Dragon Age (fantasy game also made by Bioware) fandom, which had a million coffee shop AU’s, long and short, there were only two one shots for Mass Effect. So, I became the Mass Effect coffee shop AU I wished to see in the world. And thus Normandy Coffee was born.

I wrote the first seven chapters at a pretty fast clip and then… I didn’t touch it for three years.

I’m not sure what made me stop or what made me interested in picking it back up now, but this past summer I started working on it again. Step one was to reread the fic because it had been so long that I had forgotten everything that had happened. And unlike reading all of my other writing, I was absolutely delighted to reread my work!

I had chapter eight mostly written already, so I edited it pretty quickly and made the first update in three years. I was completely surprised by the fact that people read it! I had assumed that after so long people would have forgotten about it and it would remain unread for some time, but some lovely people even wrote comments expressing how happy they were that I had started updating again. And I have to say, that was one of the greatest feelings. Now, I’m not saying I write fanfic for ego-stroking, but it sure does help keep up the motivation.

I did a lot of planning out of the story. In previous attempts at writing anything longer than a short story, I always ran into trouble because I didn’t have a story framework. I decided to outline the entire story before I continued writing it so that I’d know where the story was going. Since then I have also written and posted chapter nine (back in July). My interest sort of waned and writing fanfiction was no longer my top creative priority so I haven’t posted another chapter yet.

There are some other steps in the middle there, but I’ll save that for another post that’s specifically dedicated to writing and my process thereof.

Chapter nine ended on the promise of a possibly sexy little encounter so I’ve been having a lot of fun (and trepidation!) writing the next chapter. I’ve written a little over half of chapter ten and I’m hoping to finish writing and editing it in the next few days.

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