This month's featured author is Your Cruise Director (aka YCD). YCD writes Voyager/DS9 fanfic and six of her stories are featured on this page.

If you're a fanfic writer and would liked to be featured on this page, please drop us a note at [email protected] We'll also gladly take recommendations for writers whom you think deserve to be "in the spotlight."

Name: Your Cruise Director

Websites: http://www.dc.net/tigger/

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm a journalist, a dropout from a literature Ph.D. program, and have published a little legit fiction in between bouts of fanfic and slash.My husband and I met in college and will be married ten years this summer.We have two sons.

How long have you been a writer?

Since I learned to hold a pencil.

How long have you been a Trek fan?

�Since birth - I was raised by Trek fans. I'm worse than them though.

What is your favorite series to watch? To write for? To watch?

ITo watch, it's a toss-up between Classic Trek and Deep Space Nine depending on my mood. I think Deep Space Nine is in many ways the superior series, but the idealism and sense of fun of the original series is unmatched, so I never get tired of it. Most of my writing has been for Voyager, but I now find the show nearly unwatchable and have no desire at all to write for it.

What is your favorite episode?

I think the best episode Trek ever did was DS9's "Duet." The one which made the greatest lasting impression on me in my youth was "The Enterprise Incident." But if I have to pick a favorite, an episode which made me smile for days after watching it, I must admit that it was Voyager's "The Cloud."

What type of fanfic do you like to write?

Drippy, sappy romance...oh wait, you asked what I LIKE to write, no twhat I end up writing most of the time. I guess I prefer relationship stories set within the bounds of canon that elaborate and build on the plots and devices already present in the shows - I don't tend to concoct major science fiction stories or new characters for fan fiction. I wrote my Kai Winn stories because we never saw enough of her and I missed her.

Have you done any other type of writing?

I'm a published poet, have a couple of short stories out in ancient anthologies, and have written news features, interviews, and film, book, and television reviews for a wide variety of publications.

How did you get started writing fanfic?

Accidentally - I thought I had invented K/S along with my best friend in junior high school. Imagine our shock when we discovered other people had beaten us to it a decade earlier. I wrote some terrible fan fiction in high school, then wrote none for years until dared to write a Kira/Odo story by a good friend. Then when Voyager came on the air, someone posted a dare to get Janeway in bed with someone before the end of "Caretaker." Who could resist such a challenge?

What is your favorite fanfic?

I am a great fan of early, optimistic J/C like L.R. Bowen's "Cardassian Mask," Laura Williams' stories, Melissa's stories, Claire Gabriel's alternate second season (which are posted on my web site), the operatic romance of my erstwhile writing partner Becca O, irreverent stuff like Sr. Mary Kathryn's, and a very long list of people I know from JetC and alt.startrek.creative.

I'm also a longtime reader of K/S, some of which is divine and some of which is godawful. I think many fans did better by Kira and Odo than did the series, and Dukat fic is occasionally a guilty pleasure, though some o fit I find deeply disturbing.

Is there someone who inspires your writing, be it a famous person, one of the actors or another fic writer?

Just about all the fan writers named above, plus the people published in Marshak and Culbreath's New Voyages and several of the pro Trek novelists, have inspired my fan fiction. I have occasionally written non-genre fiction borrowing the faces of actors for the starring roles. My fantasy is to write as well as Nancy Kress or Octavia Butler, in which case I would probably remove myself entirely from the Trek universe because they touch upon a lot of the same themes in extremely skillful fashion.

What is your favorite book? Why?

I don't know whether I can choose between The Tempest and Hamlet, though I prefer to see them staged so I guess those really don't count as books despite the beauty of the language. Being a rabid poetry fan, the books I come back to over and over again are poetry - Paradise Lost, Idylls of the King, certain books of the King James Bible (for language, not necessarily spiritual enlightenment), Pattiann Rogers' poems.

Do you have any advice for other fanfic authors?

Write what you enjoy writing, when the muse strikes. Don't worry about fitting the constraints of any Pocket Books contest of anonymous fan review page or the demands of your readers. Don't get too hung up on people telling you that fan fiction can or should be a learning ground for other formsof fiction; if you want it to, fine, but there's nothing wrong with writing PWPs or ten-line episode additions or rambling alternate universe epics if that's the direction in which you feel compelled to go.

The more you write, the more your writing will improve and the more ideas you'll have whether or not you're putting conscious effort into it. I've always thought fanfiction should be for fun and to create a sense of shared community; if you're not getting either of those things out of it, you're probably not really going to grow as a writer from it.

Note: Stories will open in a separate window.

AfterlifeA story from Now Voyager 15 about the captain's mental state near the end of the second season. Features two Janeways and one animal guide, plus a Chakotay I really like. Rated PG

Denial My favorite state to live in, so I projected it onto Chakotay. This is an outrageously optimistic view of the main characters. I'm afraid I'm rather attached to it. Rated PG

Drowning People consistently tell me that this is their favorite of my stories. It's certainly my favorite, but it's quite dated at this point--the characters are pretty hard to recognize. Nonetheless there is a great deal of feeling in this story, and I think the best-written of any of my fan fiction. Rated R

Hiding Pairing Kira and Odo long before the series did, this is set during the second season, when it was written. But it has many parallels with what we learned about Odo when canon caught up. Rated R

Leavetaking The only real tearjerker I've tried to write. I don't know whether it's so far out of canon now that it won't have impact anymore. Early on it was nominated for a.s.c. awards. Rated PG

New Robes What if Winn escaped from the Fire-Caves on Bajor, yet managed not to learn a thing? Rated R

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