In The Spotlight

Talking with Mimm83

My next brave interviewee is Mimm83 the author of Once Bitten, Young and Dance with the Devil. She is a superb writer who focuses on writing fantasies. Her stories are flawless and detailed; much like her answers. I would recomend her works to all lovers of romance and fantasy.

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1. What is the first story you have ever written?

Oh jeeze, you’re asking a tough question there, asking me to remember something like that as generally I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, lol. Not counting anything in elementary school, the first “real” story I wrote I must’ve been twelve or thirteen. It never had a title, but it was a very in depth fantasy story that I never completed even if I was over a hundred pages in. In theory it was pretty basic, it was based in a world where it was always light on one side and always night on the other (I know, there are other stories out there like that, but c’mon, I was twelve and it seemed original to me) it had your standard warring families from both sides of the world, princes and princess forced to fight the war of their father’s, some reluctantly and some with gusto. Of course there was some magic involved, battles for the thrones, struggles within their own realms and I’m sure a wrong-side-of-the-tracks love story or two…but in all that I got lost and couldn’t figure my way out. Honestly, I was in over my head. Maybe if I was a little better with taking notes, or at least plotting out characters and whatnot I might have made it through but at the time I was naïve to how easily a story can take on a life of its own and drown you. I often think of trying to revisit it as it is still to this day my only attempt at epic fantasy and not the urban fantasy I do today, but this time around I would make sure to sit down and draw out the family trees, maybe even a map of the land so I wouldn’t confuse myself. I had a fellow writer offer to give me a hand with it but I couldn’t pull her into something I myself wasn’t sure I could commit to. As it stands it sits in my “Random Ideas” folder waiting for its time in the sun…or on the page as it may be.

2. How did you come up with the plot line for Once Bitten?

Um…I didn’t. I had absolutely no foresight to that novel when I got started. From moment one I was pulling that out of my ass, I never plotted out a thing. Even if I thought I had an idea of the story’s

direction, Anya would show me something that would change the story’s path so eventually I gave up trying. Looking back on it and seeing how it evolved (along with the sequels) there are some places I’d like to go back and tweak just for consistency reasons, nothing story-line altering, just bits where I said one thing only to change my mind later on and contradict myself.

3. Do you plan to make writing your full time occupation or is it more of a hobby?

Plan or hope, because I certainly hope to make writing a full-time occupation. Thing is, I need some help. Somewhere along the way I’ve lost sight of the basics of writing, so I think before I dare try to

make a living at this I need to go back and take a couple of writing courses just to smooth myself out…either that or win the lottery so I can keep an editor on retainer, ha, ha, ha!

4. How do you fix your writer's block?

You can fix writers block? I’ve always been under the assumption you couldn’t alter forces of nature…

Writers block is a funny thing though. I’ve never understood how your muse can go from being generous enough to give you pages of material one day, to absolutely nothing the day after that…or the day after that, or the day after that. I’m not sure how I “fix” it though. Sometimes I just push through it, others I give in and play Plants vs. Zombies for days on end instead. I’m very distractible though, Squirrel Syndrome to the nth degree here, so I think most of the time I just kind of…forget