Getting to know Haldoor.
Meet haldoor, slash writer extraordinaire and AU Crossover Queen. Read on and find out what gets her in the mood.
1. Can you tell us a little about the person behind the fic?
I'm a New Zealander, married with three kids and living in beautiful West Auckland, the 'green' part of my city. I've been writing online for about three years or so, though I've always had a vivid imagination, and written for myself either in my head or on paper since I was about 10 years old. No-one ever saw it until recently though. I've been interested in all things m/m for about... uh... most of my life, and you could say it's an obsession, I guess.
2. What inspires you to write fic?
Situations, mostly. Usually something pops into my head and there's no shaking it. Sometimes it's a prompt, a song, or just something I've seen, and sometimes it just appears magically all by itself, like someone handed it to me. I usually wonder how a particular pairing would handle something like that, and then go forth and explore.
3. What five adjectives would you use to describe your writing style?
Oh wow, that's hard. Let's go with: instinctive, porny, emotional, thought-filled, wordy.
4.What was the best of feedback you ever received? The worst?
I've got quite a lot of really positive feedback on a lot of things, but I guess what I felt most happy about was the really fantastic comments I got for Never Was, one of my favourite of my own fics; something I worked really hard on to make right. I was really proud of the fic, and very gratified that people really enjoyed it and saw so much in it that I hadn't even fully realised was there. That they also thought the OC's in it were good also thrilled me!
The worst? Hmm, I've never really received 'bad' feedback as such, but certainly some of my fics must have missed the mark as they didn't get so read. I think people tend to not comment if they don't like my stuff, on the whole, which I'd much prefer to someone insulting me or what I wrote. That's the polite way to react.
5. Do you have any writing rituals?
No. Unless you count opening up a doc and just typing and letting it go where it will.
6. What are your strengths as a writer? Are there any aspects you would like to improve?
Strengths? I don't even know. Perhaps the fact that I just tend to write and not worry where the story is going until I re-read. I re-read and edit a lot, and then always get someone to beta read unless it's a very short piece. Then I go over it again!
I would love to be more lyrical, I guess. I read stories where people really seem to get the whole visual right and wish I could manage to express in a better, more imaginative way what I'm seeing as my story unfolds. I feel like I have what I call 'moments of brilliance', but rarely do I feel my whole story is so well-done like some that I read.
I'd also like to work on being more concise. Sometimes I feel like I beat around the bushes way too much. Some people have a real talent with this and I admire that.
7. Who is your favourite Lost character to write about and why?
Sawyer. Without a doubt he's the most intriguing to me. I'm not usually a fan of the bad boy (or even the main hero, generally), and in fact it took me all the way to when he was standing in the rain after killing that guy in Aussie to even fall for the guy! But then I saw something vulnerable in him that I hadn't really clicked to before and I guess it made me like him a whole lot more, and want to know more about him. (We won't mention it's also when I decided he was HOT!)
I like to imagine that he's one of the most likely characters to have been with men before too. And anyone slightly gay has my interest! My reasoning on that is simply that he's a con-man... chances are he hustled at some point, or maybe even had to con a gay guy (probably someone closeted), and we all know men pay for sex more than women do. How could he have avoided screwing a guy at some point? And he's been in prison - how would he cope without sex for long? I don't know about anyone else, but I can't believe he hasn't sucked cock at least once. Ha!
8. Okay, that character just travelled forward in time to 2008. Write a short scene that describes his or her thoughts or reactions.
No, this loses me, sorry. It's not exactly futuristic for me right now and I have no idea. I'll have to skip this for now (my muses have taken a bit of a bashing this week).
9. Do you suffer from writer’s block? If so, how do you handle it?
I'm a pretty busy person so I really don't get as much time to write as I'd like. Writer's block doesn't really happen to me all that often (although as above, the last question didn't give me any inspiration, so obviously it does happen!), and if I do get stuck I tend to just leave the fic and come back to it later. I can usually recover at some point. I don't stress about it anyway, cos I have too much going on with work, kids, chores and all the RL crap that tears me away from my imaginary life that it rarely seems to be an issue. I'd like more time for writing, in reality! Oh, and I am a 'mood' writer, so I can really only write when I'm in the mood. When I am in the mood, it's hard to drag me away!
10. Can you discuss your inspiration to write multi-universe crossovers?
Blimey. You're talking about price_o_love, I assume! It's something I hold very dear. I'm such an instinctive person that I've never really put a lot of thought to 'my inspiration' before! I can say that one of my friends, kitty_trio, and I decided we'd like to write something together, and so we had a lot of discussions on what that something should be.
I had this germ of an idea about a male brothel, and somehow we agreed on setting it in 1890's San Francisco. I think the idea there was that SF was a multi-cultural place full of people and ideas from many places around the world, and such a time and place would allow for many possibilities in terms of people and situations. There was no thought of condoms or diseases (except in as far as 'the pox' might affect them!), and the 'hidden' nature of the 'male brothel' also made for thoughts of interesting storylines.
It kind of got bigger than we expected... but we knew we'd need a large cast to make it work the way we wanted. We both liked LOTR, Lost and CSI, and the characters from those shows became the basis of most of our 'house' characters. We use their real names because of the LOTRips thing (I mean who's gonna think Legolas would be in a brothel???) but the characters themselves are more based on the 'show' characters (for most of them) than on the real people (we don't know them for a start!).
Anyway, we had another friend join us to help out with a few characters - my dear friend lozateazer - and a couple of others who do specific characters, and on it went. And ON AND ON! The ideas are still rolling it and we've all become really invested in our characters. Anyone who hasn't tried the story shouldn't be put off by the RPS aspect, we hope, because of what I've already said, and if you prefer not to cross your shows... well, generally our main pairings are within their own show, although naturally there's some screwing around!
Basically, it's a love story (a soap opera one, perhaps!), or in truth, a set of love stories, and we hope that eventually everyone will get their own 'happy ending', but so far, it's all up in the air!
11. What do you look for in a fic as a reader?
Firstly, the situation and pairings kind of have to make sense, although I love humour too! I want sexy and IC and hot, but most of all I love great imagery and atmosphere. It doesn't have to end happily (in fact, I look more for 'hope' than 'happy' at the end), but I certainly don't mind if it does.
I hope the men will seem like 'real men', and I don't read het at all. I'm a complete slasher so I only want men with men sexually or love-wise. I do read gen, and the slash doesn't have to be graphic to be good, but I definitely have my moments of needing porn! (One of my things about het is I find it most unsatisfying generally, sex-wise - the girls get off in ways I don't, and it leaves me cold, whereas I have no expectation of how guys can get off, cos I can't feel that for myself, so anything's possible!) Het love too is so 'normal' and we're surrounded by it (ho-hum), whereas a beautiful gay love story is harder to find.
I also like the grammar, spelling and punctuation to be pretty good and won't even read on if it's obviously crap. The odd typo or something isn't going to kill it, but if it's obviously un-beta'd, I might leave off reading.
I also have difficulty reading non-English writers unless they are very good, particularly ones who's (hopefully English-speaking) beta doesn't point out how to correct certain English phrasings that just read 'wrong'. It's weird how a wrong word from a character's mouth can put you off! I know I'm picky, but sometimes it's too much. Having said that, I can see when a person has a good style and a fantastic story to tell, so sometimes I grit my teeth and bear it, though I may find commenting too hard.
12. To conclude, please post an extract of your writing (a sentence, a paragraph or a short exchange of dialogue) that you really love and provide a brief commentary on it.
Sultry green eyes gazed up, and Jack felt like a deer caught in the headlights; the inevitable right in front of him. If he moved now he’d be safe, but the only thing he could wrap his thoughts around was naming the muscles of the chest and abdomen as he lowered his ass slowly and let his hands fall back to the warm skin under him. He couldn't stop the heated feeling in his cheeks any more than he could stop the heated look on Sawyer's face.
"Touch me," Sawyer instructed, and Jack's eyes flew to meet his, confusion filling his senses.
"I'm already touching you."
"Then keep touching me."
Jack felt his lips twitch, and pressed them together tightly as his hands trailed down Sawyer's body, his fingers making patterns with the light and shade dancing over the golden skin. He was acutely aware of the hardness tenting the sheet between their bodies, and his own growing arousal, but he ignored them for now, reciting muscle names in his mind still.
"Don't do that," Sawyer smirked, studying his eyes.
"What?"
"You're thinkin' some medical thing, like this ain't happening, right?"
Jack blinked at Sawyer's astuteness, the names of the last 'muscle' he could think of filling his head in graphic detail, though most of the words wouldn't be found in any medical textbook. He held Sawyer's gaze as his smile grew. Although this was the last thing he'd expected, it seemed inevitable, and far from wrong.
This is from Healing Hands. What I was trying to do with this was capture something I thought was probably true of Jack; that caught out in something sexual he hadn't expected he would try not to think about it even while it was obviously happening. He appeals to me as the sort of guy who would fall back on his medicine in that situation, and I think this explores that quite well.
I also think that Sawyer probably has him pegged well enough to 'get' that. In his job as a con-man, he'd have to be good at observing people, reading their faces and 'knowing' stuff to help him in his cons. I doubt he'd care about being caught out in a sexual situation with another man, anyway, so my feeling is he'd just go for it and enjoy the moment.
Catching Jack out, I'd like to think, might make the guy realise it's okay and perhaps he'd relax, just for a while, even if he eventually went back to whatever had closed him off before as a protection.
I'm also quite pleased with what I hope are good word pictures:
Jack felt like a deer caught in the headlights; the inevitable right in front of him.
his hands trailed down Sawyer's body, his fingers making patterns with the light and shade dancing over the golden skin.
the names of the last 'muscle' he could think of filling his head in graphic detail, though most of the words wouldn't be found in any medical textbook.
I'm not often confident with the visuals I want to create, and I thought I did okay here.
13. What is the one question haldoor would like to ask her fellow authors?
This is a tricky one too. I haven't had the best week, so my brain isn't functioning very well. I'm sure there are things I would like to ask, but I'm a bit introspective right now, so I guess I'm wondering about commenting more than writing at the moment.
What, in a fic, makes you comment on it? What puts you off commenting? Do you have times when you are unable to comment because of your mood, or feel happier to comment because of it?
1. Can you tell us a little about the person behind the fic?
I'm a New Zealander, married with three kids and living in beautiful West Auckland, the 'green' part of my city. I've been writing online for about three years or so, though I've always had a vivid imagination, and written for myself either in my head or on paper since I was about 10 years old. No-one ever saw it until recently though. I've been interested in all things m/m for about... uh... most of my life, and you could say it's an obsession, I guess.
2. What inspires you to write fic?
Situations, mostly. Usually something pops into my head and there's no shaking it. Sometimes it's a prompt, a song, or just something I've seen, and sometimes it just appears magically all by itself, like someone handed it to me. I usually wonder how a particular pairing would handle something like that, and then go forth and explore.
3. What five adjectives would you use to describe your writing style?
Oh wow, that's hard. Let's go with: instinctive, porny, emotional, thought-filled, wordy.
4.What was the best of feedback you ever received? The worst?
I've got quite a lot of really positive feedback on a lot of things, but I guess what I felt most happy about was the really fantastic comments I got for Never Was, one of my favourite of my own fics; something I worked really hard on to make right. I was really proud of the fic, and very gratified that people really enjoyed it and saw so much in it that I hadn't even fully realised was there. That they also thought the OC's in it were good also thrilled me!
The worst? Hmm, I've never really received 'bad' feedback as such, but certainly some of my fics must have missed the mark as they didn't get so read. I think people tend to not comment if they don't like my stuff, on the whole, which I'd much prefer to someone insulting me or what I wrote. That's the polite way to react.
5. Do you have any writing rituals?
No. Unless you count opening up a doc and just typing and letting it go where it will.
6. What are your strengths as a writer? Are there any aspects you would like to improve?
Strengths? I don't even know. Perhaps the fact that I just tend to write and not worry where the story is going until I re-read. I re-read and edit a lot, and then always get someone to beta read unless it's a very short piece. Then I go over it again!
I would love to be more lyrical, I guess. I read stories where people really seem to get the whole visual right and wish I could manage to express in a better, more imaginative way what I'm seeing as my story unfolds. I feel like I have what I call 'moments of brilliance', but rarely do I feel my whole story is so well-done like some that I read.
I'd also like to work on being more concise. Sometimes I feel like I beat around the bushes way too much. Some people have a real talent with this and I admire that.
7. Who is your favourite Lost character to write about and why?
Sawyer. Without a doubt he's the most intriguing to me. I'm not usually a fan of the bad boy (or even the main hero, generally), and in fact it took me all the way to when he was standing in the rain after killing that guy in Aussie to even fall for the guy! But then I saw something vulnerable in him that I hadn't really clicked to before and I guess it made me like him a whole lot more, and want to know more about him. (We won't mention it's also when I decided he was HOT!)
I like to imagine that he's one of the most likely characters to have been with men before too. And anyone slightly gay has my interest! My reasoning on that is simply that he's a con-man... chances are he hustled at some point, or maybe even had to con a gay guy (probably someone closeted), and we all know men pay for sex more than women do. How could he have avoided screwing a guy at some point? And he's been in prison - how would he cope without sex for long? I don't know about anyone else, but I can't believe he hasn't sucked cock at least once. Ha!
8. Okay, that character just travelled forward in time to 2008. Write a short scene that describes his or her thoughts or reactions.
No, this loses me, sorry. It's not exactly futuristic for me right now and I have no idea. I'll have to skip this for now (my muses have taken a bit of a bashing this week).
9. Do you suffer from writer’s block? If so, how do you handle it?
I'm a pretty busy person so I really don't get as much time to write as I'd like. Writer's block doesn't really happen to me all that often (although as above, the last question didn't give me any inspiration, so obviously it does happen!), and if I do get stuck I tend to just leave the fic and come back to it later. I can usually recover at some point. I don't stress about it anyway, cos I have too much going on with work, kids, chores and all the RL crap that tears me away from my imaginary life that it rarely seems to be an issue. I'd like more time for writing, in reality! Oh, and I am a 'mood' writer, so I can really only write when I'm in the mood. When I am in the mood, it's hard to drag me away!
10. Can you discuss your inspiration to write multi-universe crossovers?
Blimey. You're talking about price_o_love, I assume! It's something I hold very dear. I'm such an instinctive person that I've never really put a lot of thought to 'my inspiration' before! I can say that one of my friends, kitty_trio, and I decided we'd like to write something together, and so we had a lot of discussions on what that something should be.
I had this germ of an idea about a male brothel, and somehow we agreed on setting it in 1890's San Francisco. I think the idea there was that SF was a multi-cultural place full of people and ideas from many places around the world, and such a time and place would allow for many possibilities in terms of people and situations. There was no thought of condoms or diseases (except in as far as 'the pox' might affect them!), and the 'hidden' nature of the 'male brothel' also made for thoughts of interesting storylines.
It kind of got bigger than we expected... but we knew we'd need a large cast to make it work the way we wanted. We both liked LOTR, Lost and CSI, and the characters from those shows became the basis of most of our 'house' characters. We use their real names because of the LOTRips thing (I mean who's gonna think Legolas would be in a brothel???) but the characters themselves are more based on the 'show' characters (for most of them) than on the real people (we don't know them for a start!).
Anyway, we had another friend join us to help out with a few characters - my dear friend lozateazer - and a couple of others who do specific characters, and on it went. And ON AND ON! The ideas are still rolling it and we've all become really invested in our characters. Anyone who hasn't tried the story shouldn't be put off by the RPS aspect, we hope, because of what I've already said, and if you prefer not to cross your shows... well, generally our main pairings are within their own show, although naturally there's some screwing around!
Basically, it's a love story (a soap opera one, perhaps!), or in truth, a set of love stories, and we hope that eventually everyone will get their own 'happy ending', but so far, it's all up in the air!
11. What do you look for in a fic as a reader?
Firstly, the situation and pairings kind of have to make sense, although I love humour too! I want sexy and IC and hot, but most of all I love great imagery and atmosphere. It doesn't have to end happily (in fact, I look more for 'hope' than 'happy' at the end), but I certainly don't mind if it does.
I hope the men will seem like 'real men', and I don't read het at all. I'm a complete slasher so I only want men with men sexually or love-wise. I do read gen, and the slash doesn't have to be graphic to be good, but I definitely have my moments of needing porn! (One of my things about het is I find it most unsatisfying generally, sex-wise - the girls get off in ways I don't, and it leaves me cold, whereas I have no expectation of how guys can get off, cos I can't feel that for myself, so anything's possible!) Het love too is so 'normal' and we're surrounded by it (ho-hum), whereas a beautiful gay love story is harder to find.
I also like the grammar, spelling and punctuation to be pretty good and won't even read on if it's obviously crap. The odd typo or something isn't going to kill it, but if it's obviously un-beta'd, I might leave off reading.
I also have difficulty reading non-English writers unless they are very good, particularly ones who's (hopefully English-speaking) beta doesn't point out how to correct certain English phrasings that just read 'wrong'. It's weird how a wrong word from a character's mouth can put you off! I know I'm picky, but sometimes it's too much. Having said that, I can see when a person has a good style and a fantastic story to tell, so sometimes I grit my teeth and bear it, though I may find commenting too hard.
12. To conclude, please post an extract of your writing (a sentence, a paragraph or a short exchange of dialogue) that you really love and provide a brief commentary on it.
Sultry green eyes gazed up, and Jack felt like a deer caught in the headlights; the inevitable right in front of him. If he moved now he’d be safe, but the only thing he could wrap his thoughts around was naming the muscles of the chest and abdomen as he lowered his ass slowly and let his hands fall back to the warm skin under him. He couldn't stop the heated feeling in his cheeks any more than he could stop the heated look on Sawyer's face.
"Touch me," Sawyer instructed, and Jack's eyes flew to meet his, confusion filling his senses.
"I'm already touching you."
"Then keep touching me."
Jack felt his lips twitch, and pressed them together tightly as his hands trailed down Sawyer's body, his fingers making patterns with the light and shade dancing over the golden skin. He was acutely aware of the hardness tenting the sheet between their bodies, and his own growing arousal, but he ignored them for now, reciting muscle names in his mind still.
"Don't do that," Sawyer smirked, studying his eyes.
"What?"
"You're thinkin' some medical thing, like this ain't happening, right?"
Jack blinked at Sawyer's astuteness, the names of the last 'muscle' he could think of filling his head in graphic detail, though most of the words wouldn't be found in any medical textbook. He held Sawyer's gaze as his smile grew. Although this was the last thing he'd expected, it seemed inevitable, and far from wrong.
This is from Healing Hands. What I was trying to do with this was capture something I thought was probably true of Jack; that caught out in something sexual he hadn't expected he would try not to think about it even while it was obviously happening. He appeals to me as the sort of guy who would fall back on his medicine in that situation, and I think this explores that quite well.
I also think that Sawyer probably has him pegged well enough to 'get' that. In his job as a con-man, he'd have to be good at observing people, reading their faces and 'knowing' stuff to help him in his cons. I doubt he'd care about being caught out in a sexual situation with another man, anyway, so my feeling is he'd just go for it and enjoy the moment.
Catching Jack out, I'd like to think, might make the guy realise it's okay and perhaps he'd relax, just for a while, even if he eventually went back to whatever had closed him off before as a protection.
I'm also quite pleased with what I hope are good word pictures:
Jack felt like a deer caught in the headlights; the inevitable right in front of him.
his hands trailed down Sawyer's body, his fingers making patterns with the light and shade dancing over the golden skin.
the names of the last 'muscle' he could think of filling his head in graphic detail, though most of the words wouldn't be found in any medical textbook.
I'm not often confident with the visuals I want to create, and I thought I did okay here.
13. What is the one question haldoor would like to ask her fellow authors?
This is a tricky one too. I haven't had the best week, so my brain isn't functioning very well. I'm sure there are things I would like to ask, but I'm a bit introspective right now, so I guess I'm wondering about commenting more than writing at the moment.
What, in a fic, makes you comment on it? What puts you off commenting? Do you have times when you are unable to comment because of your mood, or feel happier to comment because of it?