Interview with Bellamarie117

So we talked about her fic Take the Ice last hour so lets get a look into the brain of the author :-)

Nickname or pen-name:

bellamarie117

Favorite color:

peacock blue/teal

Favorite song:

This changes so often for me and it all depends on my mood. I love to rock out in the car to Katy Perry's Firework, David Cook's cover of Billie Jean, and Florence & the Machine's cover of Addicted to Love. On the slow side I love Ingrid Michaelson, Light Catches Your Face by Bell X1, Always Midnight by Pat Monahan, and right now I'm listening to True Companion by Marc Cohn on repeat for reasons included below. :)

Favorite ice cream flavor:

Vanilla. Don't mess with a good thing.

Favorite drink:

Diet Coke

Favorite curse word:

I don't curse much unless I'm alone in the car. That's where I vent all my anger/frustration. In that case I go for broke with the f-bomb and all its wonderful variety.

Good guy or Bad Boy?

Good guys all the way

Wolf or Vamp?

Vamp. Wolves do not have any place in my version of Twilight. I skip over their existence. Cosmogirl7481 can tell you all about my disdain for Jacob.

Emmett or Jasper?

This is tough because I love them for different things. When I was writing TTI, Emmett because he's a total blast. Right now I'm enjoying my exploration of Jasper.

Alice or Rose?

Alice

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Honestly, I love Minnesota! I'd like to visit other places and maybe have a vacation home somewhere warm to escape when I get tired of winter but I'd always want to come back here.

What do you look for in a fic? Is it characters or plot that matter more?

It has to be E/B and it has to have a happy ending (aka Edward and Bella are together, in love, and happy). Other than that, I'll try a lot of things, usually based on summary. I steer clear of drugs and heavy angst.

Do you have any current favorite fics that you have to read every time they update?

I'm not reading as many WIPs as I used to but I pre-read Giofogach by ltlerthqak and I Never Knew by Nerac. Other than that my current favs that are still updating are Dear Mr. Masen, First & Ten, A Room With a View, The Cullen Campaign and I Thee Wed. I'm still mourning the end of The Art Teacher and holding out hope for an EPOV of Ladder to the Sun. Completed ones that I will and do re-read over and over are Faking It, My Escort, Do Over and This is Not My Life.

If you had the chance to meet any fanfiction author who would it be and why?

I already met Ltlerthqak and she's a total sweetheart! Next would be Nerac, because she's my other fic soulmate. Non-soulmate encounter, I'd have to go with Spanglemaker9 because I'm kind of a (huge) fangirl of hers.

How did you get into Fanfiction?

I read FanFic for another fandom back in high school so I've been aware of its existance for a long time. With Twilight, I don't remember exactly how I stumbled into it. I read the books and wanted more. I know I looked around SM's website and found her outtakes so that probably led me to some searching. The first story I found was an AH with all the gang in college together and I've been hooked ever since. I very rarely stray from AH.

Why did you decide to write a story about an ice skating Bella? Are you a skater yourself? If not did you have to do any research to describe the moves so beautifully?

I've had the idea to write a romance between a figure skater and a hockey player for a LONG time. Like Pre-Twilight if you can remember that barren time. :) I used to read a lot of romance novels and that's one pairing I never came across. I started reading fic, became more active in the community, and finally decided, why not? Having a connection to the characters already in place helped me explore that idea more fully than I probably ever would have. I am NOT a skater. At all. I love watching and always have. I put SO much time into researching for TTI-books, websites, videos. I'm a very visual person so it helped a lot that there was so much material out there. I started writing back around the Vancouver Olympics and there was a ton of fun behind-the-scenes information, though it did take some digging to sort it all out.

I remember a good many clips you linked readers to being of Sasha Cohen. Was that because you modeled Bella after her? If not did you model Bella after any other skaters?

I did take a lot of inspiration from Sasha Cohen. She's been my favorite skater since she first showed up at the Salt Lake City Olympics and just so much fun to watch. She was around the right age, had a similar look to canon Bella, and is just a beautiful skater. She participated in a lot of the competitions that were mentioned in the story and that made it a lot easier to research and find information that I might not have otherwise.

You also include some Hockey in your fic, after all the boys are all on the Wild, did you have to research the sport or were you already familiar with it?

I was pretty familiar already. Growing up in the State of Hockey, it's tough not to be a fan. I've been going to games since I was little, I dated a hockey player in high school, I'm a huge fan of the Wild, so a lot of what I needed was already there. I did a little additional research just to get that extra insider aspect that a team member might have, otherwise Bella didn't need to know that much.

Usually in fanfiction the villains/characters we hate are usually characters like James, Victoria, Tanya and even the occasional Mike, what made you want to make that character Renee? (because I know I honestly did HATE her)

It made sense with the premise and the position Bella was in. She didn't start out quite so horrible in my head but boy did she go downhill. In any sort of competitive atmosphere, you're going to find stage moms in varying degrees. Bella just happened to have a pretty extreme case on her hands. One of the wonderful things about fic is that there are SO many characters and SO many possibilities to play with. It's really fun to shake things up and explore an option you haven't seen before.

I know it's like picking your favorite child, but if you had to choose...which of your characters is your favorite and why? If you can't choose just one, tell us about two or three and why they are your favorites.

Honestly, I always love Bella, no matter what I'm writing. In TTI, I spent so much time with her that if she wasn't my favorite, I would have gone crazy. Obviously I love Edward, but the core of pretty much everything I read and write is Bella. If I don't like her, I don't stick with it. In TTI I loved her journey, her humor, her strength. It was so much fun watching her grow over the course of the story.

What is it that you want your readers to come away with after reading your stories?

I'd like them to feel uplifted. I don't write anything intending to actually influence everyone but I'd like anyone who reads my stories to get to the end with a big smile on their face and walk away thinking, 'that was nice.'

Do you have any current fics you'd like to tell us about? If not do you have any future fics thought out already, and can you tell us a little about them?

If you'd asked me this two weeks ago, I'd have told you no. Since finishing the epilogue I've been burnt out on writing and dealing with a lot of stuff in real life. Finally, I got hit by a plot bunny, and with a little encouragement I've been developing it into a short story. It'll be about 6 short chapters and is titled True Companion after the song by Marc Cohn. I'm writing the whole thing before I post but I'm aiming for April/May.

If you had to give advice to a new writer what would it be?

First and foremost, you've got to write for yourself. Don't write just to please other people or to gain popularity. Not everyone's going to like your writing or what you do with your characters. Write what makes you happy and what you'd want to read. Every writer in this fandom has such a different style and if you're going to write, embrace your style, don't try to fight it and do what someone else is doing. My chapters got enormous and I didn't have an update schedule, but in the end I wrote exactly the story I wanted to write and that's incredibly satisfying.