When I look back at my first blog post here, I’m really amused. I really wanted to turn this blog into a place for my creative writing. And it took me 7 years to actually do it!

As I said back then, I’ve always invented stories in my head. They just never “downloaded” onto the page, which meant I could never share them with anyone. Inventing stories is fun, but sharing them is even better.

First time, I’ve actually written something, so I could share them, was for a fandom challenge. We were given a fandom (and/or a pairing, I think?) and write a drabble (~ 100 words) for it. Mine ended up being ficlets of 200 to 400 words. This was in 2009.

• Lost (Jack, Sawyer, Boone): Irresistibly Sexy
• Doctor Who (The Doctor, The Master): Drums
• Supernatural (Sam and Dean Winchester): Too Much
• Torchwood (Captain Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones): Good-byes

Out of these my favourite is Good-byes (written in 2010). Not only because it is one of my favourite ships (Janto) but also because it contains some very personal experiences I’ve made with grief myself. I tried to write with Jack’s voice but I also tried to get in deep with a character who’s grieving someone very close to them. So some of Jack’s lines come directly from me actually.

I also wrote Fix Me (Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones) for this challenge, but then the concept (writing “missing” additional scenes, giving a different perspective) that intrigued me and I decided to turn it into a multi-chapter fic. This is when my perfectionism got in the way. The scenes that actually happened on the show, where I’d only add Ianto’s thoughts, had to be absolutely 100% as they were presented on screen. Word perfect, every glance, every step, 100%. If it’s not perfect, it’s not worth writing, and I just didn’t have the time to watch the episodes over and over again to make notes. I was also still very much grieving the loss of one of my all-time favourite characters on screen, Ianto Jones, and watching his scenes was just painful. To this day, Fix Me remains unfinished.

So after this first dabble in writing and publishing fan fics (and my first failure to complete one), the idea of becoming a writer was put to rest. Failure to complete something is a bit of a trauma of mine. I always worry about not being able to finish something that I started which sometimes stopps me from starting it at all. Weird I know.

Jump to 2020 and the release of Miss Scarlet & The Duke. A TV series featuring my favourite actor (and favourite person) Andrew Gower. One night, I thought about what a fan group for this TV series could be called and came up with the name “Scarleteers”. Imagine the thrill everytime I get when I see official pages or newspaper articles refer to the fans of the show as Scarleteers. In the fanbase were a lot of fan fic writers, and they asked me if we could do a fan fic challenge for ScarLull (the time between seasons) and I said yes.

The support for fan fic surprised some of the fans, but I explained I’m open to the idea and think it’s a cool thing. Not all fan fics are porn, and I’ve read really really bad ones but also really really good ones. I also mentioned my dabbles and the other fan fic writers egged me on to write my own story.

I knew if I were to write a Miss Scarlet fic, it would center around my favourite character Rupert (played by Andrew, of course) but again Little Miss Perfect was afraid not to do his performance justice. Then on a long drive to the Baltic Sea for my Christmas holiday, I had an idea: What if it’s set at a time when Rupert is still a teenager. Any inconsitencies could be explained by that. The challenge said (I think) that the fic was supposed to be set around Christmas and involve a first kiss. So why not combine it with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (one of my favourite Christmas stories of all time and I just have to see the fabulous production of it at the Old Vic in London every year)?

So, the idea for A Kissmas Carol was born. Unfortunately, I was behind the wheel of a car, so the ideas that started to spring in my head, couldn’t be written down. I finally managed to write a first chapter (close to 700 words) and I proudly showed it to one of the other writers in the group. They told me it’s much too short to be a chapter and when I asked if they liked it so far, they said: “Hmm, you’re very descriptive.” Which I took as a bad thing. Some of the other fic I read were only dialoguem, sometimes not even with the “he said, she said” part. Only direct speech after direct speech.

I was discouraged to go on. I was also discouraged to post the first “chapter”. Maybe if I had, I would have received positive feedback (which I did when I did publish it) and maybe that would have given me the confidence to go on. But I was told you cannot publish unless you’ve completed your story, and then you must publish in fixed intervalls (like a chapter a week, always at the same time, because your readers will expect it).

I also had a problem with the setting. I didn’t know where the Parkers would live, how far it would be from there to the river. Could Rupert actually walk/run there? Could he run somewhere else and get lost until the Morans find him and Bash helps him to get home? I didn’t know how to research this or who to ask for advice, I didn’t want to invent something, so I gave up. Funnily enough, everytime I’m at the Baltic Sea, my memory is triggered and A Kissmas Carol just won’t let me go.

So it might be a failure so far, but maybe one that will find its happy ending.

I did write another chapter last month after finding a way to fix my problem (I’m not ashamed to admit I used AI) and I thought I would finish A Kissmas Carol first and put another story on hold but that damned cat wouldn’t let me.

That damned cat is Barney, an original character I created for my multi-chapter fic for Interview with the Vampire.

In January 2023, I started watching the new adaption of Interview with the Vampire. I was really sceptical at first about the changes, but I really shouldn’t have been. To this day, I’m simply blown away by the quality of this production in every aspect. Also: #Loustat forever!

In the show, at a very crucial point, Sam Reid/Lestat sings a song called “Come to Me” and some of the lyrics just manifested in my brain and would not leave. They needed to be used in a fan fic.

Come to me
I get intoxicated by the very air of you
Come to me
I′m so infatuated with the grand affair of you

I decided to go with the same concept as Fix Me and write a scene from the series, strictly from Lestat’s POV, something that we haven’t had in the series at all yet. I started, and I liked it, then Little Miss Perfect stroke again and Intoxicated By The Very Air Of You remained unfinished. For about one and a half years, when Season 2 aired and I just missed my boys too much. I just couldn’t stand it to be without them and I’d already watched and rewatched all available episodes an insane amount of times.

So during my summer holidays (Baltic Sea again), I started writing again. Actually went and bought a notepad, so I could write at the beach or on the porch of my hotel in the evenings. I finished Intoxicated at 1145 words, my longest fic to that day. And I’m immensely proud of it.

I spent a lot of time talking all things IwtV with one of my friends. We’ve known (online) for several years but actually really only bonded over our shared love for IwtV when Season 2 aired. We often come up with the strangest ideas like “what is Louis and Lestat are characters in the Harry Potter world?”, “What if Louis met his sister’s descendants in NOLA?”, “What if they adopted a cat?”.

One of these conversations led to Barney. Again I’m weaving my on personal experiences into a fictional story. Barney the cat looks like the cat Ronny, my family had when I was a teenager. Some of Barney’s adventures and characteristics are also based on our family cat, who was my best friend and supporter during my “perpetually misunderstood teenager” years. We also thought Ronny was a girl called Ronja, when we got him. Oops, that was a mistake! The name Barney is borrowed from another friend’s family cat, who was named after the character Barney from How I Met Your Mother.

Barney was supposed to be a one-shot fic. Then the ideas started floating and I thought, okay, maybe four chapters: one with a very sweet tone, one that’s a bit sexy, one that’s a bit silly and one that is mostly sad. I even thought about naming the chapters sweet, sexy, silly and sad (I love alliterations).

I wrote the first chapter last fall (1821 words!) and published it. This was when I learned the downsides of publishing a Work in Progress (WIP). I received positive feedback but then I thought: What if they hate the direction I’m planning on going with this (especially with the silly and the sad chapter). Maybe I should change it?

And some comments said, they’re looking forward to more adventures of Barney, and “oh my, poor Louis is going to struggle”.

The first issue made me understand “real” authors a lot better who face writer’s block once their works are turned into TV series or movies and feel the pressure of the fans’ expectations. But I decided I needed to stay true to my vision and write the story I want to write. If others like, awesome. If they don’t. Well, plenty of other fish in the sea.

The second one made me think, maybe four chapters are a bit short? Maybe I have a few more ideas for Barney? Make Louis suffer a bit before things get better? The ideas just came pouring out of me and – spoiler alert – Barney will probably end up 10 chapters long with not one but two epilogues, the second one turning into something like a backdoor pilot for another fic centered around another original character I invented, Wendell Dupree.

I’m creating a monster. I honestly feel like Frankenstein, who created a monster, that is now developing its own mind.

Barney was supposed to be this light and fluffy fic, just mostly silly fun. Suddenly my characters decide: Nope. We’re going down a dark path first. What?

Wendell Dupree was supposed to be just a means to an end. Louis needed to feed on someone. Maybe he finds a homeless person and pays them. Maybe a prostitute who’s used to selling their body (it only occurred to later that it’s Louis the Pimp all over). Not a female prostitute, a male one. What would he look like, sound like? Why does he live on the street, why is he doing what he’s doing? What would his name be? Question after question popped up in my mind and suddenly there wasn’t a nameless, faceless victim anymore but a fully fleshed-out character with a very sad, heartbreaking and dark backstory. And he demanded that it needs to be written.

Wendell’s story is called The Night I Met The Vampire, it won’t be a one-shot but at least four to five chapters long. Maybe more. Chapter 1 ended up being 2.5k words last night. Chapter 2 and 3 are already written, mostly, on a notepad and will be transferred and edited here soon.

I’ve written six of the ten Barney chapters, some out of sequence, plus both epilogues. I’m positive that Barney and The Night I Met The Vampire will become my first multi-chapter fics I will actually finish. It helps that they provide a much needed escape from reality at these times.

Btw, yes, I did consider naming The Night I Met The Vampire “How I Met The Vampire”, and while typing this very long and wordy exposition about my development as a wanna-be-writer, that it would have been a fun “coming round in a circle” with Barney and the How I Met Your Mother connection, but I decided against it. It would lead to complete wrong expectations. The Night I Met The Vampire is dark and raw, and writing some of the scenes is tearing my heart out, because I’ve become really fond of Wendell and I hate to see him suffer. But it is the backstory of a teenage hustler, so…

I have no idea where this really dark side is coming from. I had no idea I could write something like that until I did. I also have no idea how someone who struggled – really struggled! – to write a first chapter of ~600 words is now suddenly dishing out 2.5k ones in just one go. I wrote maybe one third of Chapter 1 of The Night I Met The Vampire plus Chapters 2 and 3 (a total of about 4.5k words) on a train journey last Sunday in about 3 hours.

How and where will this end? I don’t know yet.

I have the idea for another IwtV fic called Bee. I was asked to write my own original short story for an Advent Calendar type of thing. No idea for that one but I really want to. Christmas is still 10 months away, so plenty of time. I want to finish A Kissmas Carol, because I think it’s a sweet story and there isn’t enough Rupert centric fics our there (or any at all?). And I want to prove to myself that I can! Maybe I’ll even re-visit Fix Me but no promises there.

As always I’m excited to take you on this journey with me.

Yours truly 🙂