Karmen Ghia: What are you working on these days?

Laura Jacquez Valentine: Lots of things. Some weird requests from friends. My main focusses in Trek fanfic right now are "De Re Vulcania IV" and the next story in the _Tears in Rain_ series, which is (horror of horrors!) Spock/T'Pring.

KG: Okay, I'm sorry for the mundane questions but how long have you been in the Star Trek fan community?

LJV: Within the community, only since about 1995, though I've been a Trek fan since I was a small child. I only *really* got into the community when I started writing slash in, I think, 1997.

KG: Have you stayed mainly in TOS or do you do other genres?

LJV: Within Trek, I tend to stay in TOS. I did just post a DS9/Star Wars crossover story, though, "The Force Shimmy".

KG: What was your earliest story?

LJV: The first Star Trek story I posted was a Spock/female piece called "Lonely Words". That was in the summer of 1996. I'd written some fanfic before that, mostly TOS and "Beauty and the Beast", but I'd never shown it to anyone except a few friends. I remember one of those was an original-character story about a young Vulcan, and another was a complete Mary Sue that I'm ashamed to admit to. I was twelve years old, so maybe that excuses it.

My first slash story was "First Light", a Spock/female, Spock/male, Spock/Pike story. It was rated NC-17, and it was a very long time before I would write another NC-17 story.

KG: Why so long?

LJV: Because I hate writing NC-17 fiction--or, at least, NC-17-for-sex fiction. I don't even enjoy reading it much, unless it's very well written. Most of it isn't. A lot of writers create these wonderful, wonderful stories, and then the sex comes along and it's just an interruption in the tale. And sometimes it's a pretty crude interruption, and I don't see the point.

A lot of sex scenes just bore me. I've read stories that I loved where I skipped whole chunks of them just to avoid the sex. I did a recent tally of my own work, and found that, of all the stories I've written in Star Trek, Star Wars, and X-Files fandom, less than 2% are NC-17. Most of them are PG-13 or below. I write adult stories, and I write erotic stories, but I don't write NC-17 stories, for the most part.

Recently, Mercutio wrote a long Star Wars slash story called "Walk Softly and Carry a Big Lightsaber". The UST in that tale was...incredible. The sexual resolution was drawn out over several chapters. And I was never bored. Not once. I loved every word of it--because the sex was there for a reason, and it was necessary. It wasn't an interruption at all, it was simply part of the story. That kind of NC-17 I like--and I wish I had the skill to write it.

"First Light" was a learning experience. It taught me that I could write believable slash, and that I could write NC-17 fiction. It also taught me that I hated writing NC-17 fiction except under very specific circumstances. And those circumstances don't come up too often, partially because so many stories aren't primarily about sex, and also because I don't quite have the skill or talent to handle it.

Would "The Meditation of Blood" be improved by writing it into an NC-17 or R-rated story? Would Chekov's actions in "Wintergreen" have more impact if the sex was explicit? I think a lot of my stories would suffer if they were more explicit. They'd lose a lot of what makes them emotionally and erotically charged. That's where my strengths lie, and I want to make use of them, not try to add things that don't belong.

Really, when you get feedback telling you that the sex in a PG-13 story was "hot", is there any need to write NC-17?

KG: How did you decide to start writing what was in your head? What was your motivation?

LJV: My motivations are murky. They always are. If I ever had a pure motivation, I think it would herald the Second Coming. Mostly, I write to explore ideas that I have for non-fanfic stories. I'll be writing something, and come up against an idea that won't go anywhere, and I'll see what Spock would do with it. That sometimes takes me to very interesting places, and I enjoy it.

Other times, I write what I write because it's simply begging to be written, and the characters feel like they have something to say. I sometimes get story ideas from those. For example, my X-Files slash story "Faraway, So Close" has inspired a ghost story I'm writing.

What caused me to write down that first story? I can't remember. The first slash story? Again, I don't know.

KG: How did your first story come about? Can you recall the decision to write it or did you just wake up one day, face down on the keyboard, and there was the first 3,000 words? (This happened to me, that's why I'm asking.)

LJV: I wrote "Lonely Words" during a boring summer. I just felt like writing something. "First Light" was a conscious decision. I didn't want to write Kirk/Spock right then--I wanted to write something different, and interesting, and I wanted to introduce an idea I'd had about Vulcan sexuality. "First Light" contains the now-infamous "little-bonding", which is a major part of my construction of Vulcan society.

KG: I've been reading your S/Cs on Little Russian Bedtime Stories (http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/heinlein/80/title.htm) and I find your assertive Chekov fascinating. I would never have cast Chekov as a top but it's so right in these stories. Although, I seem to recall that in _Mentor_, Chekov was more the passive partner, I realize also that he is asleep all during the narration, however, he was passive but later becomes active. How did that metamorphosis come about with you, Spock and Chekov?

LJV: "Mentor" was the first Spock/Chekov I wrote, and I didn't really have the relationship well-defined there. It's a little weird to read it now, because in some senses "Wintergreen" (which is set before, but written after) doesn't work with it very well.

On the other hand, Spock isn't as reliable a narrator as he likes to think he is. In "Mentor", we see some of the things he does and thinks that just aren't true. He thinks of Chekov as a child. Some of that occurs in the other Spock/Chekov stories, too--Spock keeps thinking of Chekov as a kid who doesn't know what he wants, and Chekov keeps taking control.

It was something I saw in the series. People were always treating Chekov like a child, and he was obviously annoyed by it, but constrained by rank and circumstance from objecting too much. I wanted to give him somewhere where he could be himself. He's not a little kid, and he's not afraid to go after what he wants, and I love showing that.

The way he treats Spock in "Thief of My Heart" was a lot of fun for me to write, because it's so serious, but strange at the same time. Spock's in one of his I-am-Vulcan-let-me-dance-around-the-bush moods, and Pavel just steps in and does what needs to be done.

KG: For me, your stories have an almost surrealistic feeling to them. Am I just imagining this or is it deliberate?

LJV: They have a very dreamlike quality, which is deliberate. Sometimes it slips into the surreal. I like to write psychological pieces, and the vast majority of my work is first-person. The insides of heads are peculiar places to be, but that's where most of my stories are set--inside someone's head. And the people aren't always reliable, or sane.

KG: What writers do you feel have influenced your slash writing?

LJV: Theodore Sturgeon, mostly. I don't think I've been influenced much by other slash writers. Other than Sturgeon, probably most by Philip K. Dick and Guy de Maupassant. A little Voltaire and a touch of Pauline Reage.

KG: Who is your favorite character in slash to write about? Read about? And why?

LJV: In Trek, it's Spock. In other fandoms, it varies. Walter Skinner from the X-Files. Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. I like reading and writing about characters who are a bit mysterious, characters we don't really know, or who have something going on behind the scenes.

What goes on inside Spock's head? Why does Skinner walk the line he walks? How much of Anakin is still alive, trapped inside Vader? How close to the Dark Side does Luke walk?

KG: Do you have some special technique for writing slash? (For example: I listen to really loud techno music. What do you do?)

LJV: No technique. I just...write. Whatever comes.

KG: What do you feel is the future of K/S?

LJV: Does it have a future? So much of it is formulaic. You have your first-time stories, your Gol stories, your Kirk-dies stories...

I'd like to see more twists on the relationship. More things that change. Or some really interesting AU's. I'm trying to screw with things with the little-bonding, and some bits of De Re Vulcania, but I don't think I'm doing it very well.

KG: I was recently reading an article in diary form about filmmaker Roger Nygard latest project. This 'feels' partly true to me (even I'm sure there's more to K/S than this) but I'm wondering if you have any reaction to this quote from the article: "March 22, 1997, Pasadena: Today we interviewed two writers of underground, homoerotic Kirk/Spock stories at the Pasadena Convention Center. These stories are typically written by and for heterosexual women - women who want to read sexual stories about Kirk and Spock but don't want to imagine them with other women." (LAT Magazine 6/20/99)

LJV: "...don't want to imagine them with other women" rubs me the wrong way. I don't think that's it at all. I do like them with women, and I know other slash writers who like seeing them with women. The trouble is that they don't have many decent female choices within canon, and their relationship to each other is so interesting that K/S is almost the logical conclusion of the whole deal.

The only canon female I can see Spock with is Uhura (unless you buy my explanation of his relationship with T'Pring, which most people don't); there is no one for Kirk. And through it all, they have each other.

KG: What is the motivation to write slash? One can't sell it; one can't even eat it.

LJV: Why does anyone do what they do? Who knows?

KG: Do you have any thoughts on the future of Slash on the Web?

LJV: I'd love to see more like Raku's "The Learning Curve." Hypertext, choose-your-own-path...it was just beautiful, and innovative. Truly original--taking something that's reinterpreting a medium in the first place, and forcing the readers to interpret it again, making it interactive within an already participatory culture.

I also like the Foresmutters Project, even if I'm (frankly) not impressed with the stories I've seen so far. It's nice to see where K/S started.

KG: You're very cool. Would you like to put your website address and/or recommended URLs here?:

LJV: Thanks!

My website is http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~jacquez/writing/fanfic.html

As for recommended sites...my interests are so much all over the spectrum, I'm not sure how many folks would be interested. I'm getting a collection of links together to put on my home page, so when those are up, folks can check there for what I'm into. I already have link collections for my Star Wars and X-Files fic up, but none yet for Trek. I'm lazy.

KG: And one final question - in your opinion, who's bigger? Kirk or Spock?

LJV: Spock's taller. Kirk has broader shoulders. You figure it out.

KG: Thank you, Laura.

LJV: Thank you! This was a lot of fun.

***end***