Kelly is one of the most lyrical authors in Voyager fandom today. Her stories are hot, compelling, intriguing and always thought-provoking. Kelly's fics focus mostly on Janeway and Janeway's complex relationships with her crew - and did I mention her fic is *hot*? Kelly was kind enough to talk to me about pushing her favorite character, Kathryn Janeway, to the limits as well as sharing her thoughts on smut in fanfiction.

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Seema: Thanks so much for agreeing to a zenzine interview :-D

Kelly: I'm really pleased to do it. I love to talk fanfic.

Seema: And I wanted to congratulate you on Best of Trek as well. I love to see people who deserve recognition get it.

Kelly: Oh, thank you. That was fun to do -- I had heard that they were closing down Best of Trek, so I was pleased to be included. The current owners of the site are transferring it to someone else; I was their

final profile.

I hate to see so many people leaving Trek fandom for others. I know it's only natural, but I'm not finished with Trek and Janeway yet! And I selfishly don't want others to be.

Seema: I'm so glad to hear that! I'm getting concerned about the exodus as well. Of course, I'm selfish. I've been hooked on your fic since "Courses."

Kelly: I'm so glad you liked "Courses." I felt a little drunk the whole time I was writing it.

Seema: That was the first fic I read by you and one of the things that attracted me was your take on smut. You tend to do so much with so little - unlike other people who seem to detail every aspect of a smut scene.

Kelly: Smut is so very difficult to write well.

Seema: I agree, but you make it look easy. How do you do it?

Kelly: When I started writing, I never thought I'd be able to write an explicit sex scene. I hadn't read all that many, and those I had read made me nervous. Not because they were explicit, but because they seemed so lacking.

Seema: Lacking in what way?

Kelly: As you say, some people try to include every little detail, which can be distracting rather than erotic. Plus, so few writers seemed to have strong control over their language. For instance, they would often sound far too clinical, so that the scene would read like something out a gynecology textbook or they would go to the other extreme, using romantic euphemisms that became just laughable. Or they would seem to believe that writing about sex had to be daring and shocking, peppering their writing with words like "cunt" and "pussy" regardless of whether this diction made any sense with the characters and the situation.

Seema: I wonder if that wouldn't be a result of the discomfort in writing sex scenes in general. As you said, it can be very nerve-wracking to even try.

Kelly: Oh, yes, there's a lot of discomfort in writing about sex. Using sex words is such a taboo for people. And most readers/writers have so few models to work from. It's actually rather difficult to get access to explicit sex writing. You either have to buy it furtively at magazine stands, in which case you get mostly Penthouse-level porn, or, if you go to mainstream stores such as Borders, you find it only in specially-labeled "erotica" sections, which many people are embarrassed to go to or ask about.

Seema: So then that same style of writing gets transferred to fanfic.

Kelly: Yes, exactly -- if all you've ever had is illicit glances into Penthouse or stuff like that, that's the only way you know to write.

Seema: So how did you avoid falling into that trap?

Kelly: I'm not sure I *have* avoided it, but I try. I use only those details that are absolutely necessary; generally, I end up cutting at least a half or more out of my first drafts. And what determines "necessity" is theme, character, and (for lack of a better word) "atmosphere" -- the sense or feeling or attitude I want to convey.

Another difficult act is posting the explicit scenes after I've written them. I feel awkward, vulnerable-- I'm always afraid that people are going to assume that my sex scenes represent my personal fantasies (which they don't.) It's odd -- I never think that if I write a story about a male alcoholic teenager, people will assume that that person is me. But sex -- so much baggage goes along with it. I heard a lecture by Barbara Kingsolver once. Someone asked her if she wrote with a particular audience in mind. She said yes, although not specific people. "I mean, I can't worry about what might happen if my mother or my high school gym teacher read a sex scene I've written."

Seema: I've heard that more than once - that sex in fanfic is nothing but the author's fantasies. And in some cases, I agree - depending on the story.

Kelly: Well, fantasies by definition are so personal and we're taught to keep them secret. So unlike other fiction, people aren't surrounded by models of sex stories that are clearly separate from the person who wrote them.

Seema: That is true, especially in fanfic, where all you know about an author in most cases is what they put up on the screen for you to read. For the most part, you never get to know another author any better than her stories.

Kelly: Yes, that's true. And on-line lives are so partial and so much more subject to our individual control than our "real" lives. We can determine what and how much we show the web-world. Back to the question of avoiding "bad-smut traps. On one level, knowing what's bad tells you what NOT to do -- but knowing what to DO is much harder. For me, it's a matter of revision, revision, revision. You can't imagine the discarded trash that litters my hard drive.

Seema: Does it get easier the more you write?

Kelly: Yes, it does get easier. Once I got over the initial hump -- *I* am going to write a sex scene??? ME? -- and actually did one, I felt less anxious, less stupid. I think a lot of people have the idea that if you are *really* going to write sex scenes, you have to be someone who is never embarrassed by sex, who would never have any problem saying certain words out loud and in public, who has no personal anxieties about themselves or their writing.

Seema: Now that's interesting - haven't heard that before.

Kelly: But this is nonsense. I haven't talked to too many people about explicit writing, but the ones I HAVE talked to -- Boadicea, august, monkee-- say similar things -- that they worry that they will write something that will suggest they don't really know anything about sex, or that their mothers will search the web and find them, or that people might think they are perverted or something. But, like Barbara Kingsolver, a good writer has to get past that. The truth of the material has to be more important. That last sentence sounds pompous and pretentious, no doubt . It's not that I think I have some monopoly on "truth" or that I am some major significant writer with profound things to say.

Seema: But you do have some very intelligent things to say. Writing about sex or 'uncomfortable' topics in general is something every writer struggles with.

Kelly: But ultimately, the writing, although part of me, is independent of me. It's like acting (which I do a lot of, on an amateur basis). If you are too self-conscious, if you are always aware of how you look or what people might think, you will never be able to inhabit a different character. And if, as a writer, you can't get past your own anxieties, you will never really BE a writer.

Seema: That's a good point. Sometimes, you have to be the character you're writing about to really get into their heads.

Kelly: Now, of course, some sex writing and fanfic probably IS just people's fantasies written out. But usually, that's not the sort of fanfic that I think is any good.

Seema: What intrigues me about your fic is the atmosphere you convey through dialogue and setting. You manage to get into character's heads. So in "Stimulation," suddenly you have a Janeway who is drawn to a holodeck program and she has "anonymous" sex with two other women. This isn't a typical characterization of Janeway, but it's one that you set up beautifully so that it works.

Kelly: Oh, thanks! That is one of the few stories that I wrote according to others' stipulations. The pairing was chosen for me, as part of the Femme Fuh-Q Fest. We were assigned a female Trek character and had to pair her with Janeway, Kira, Uhura, or Crusher. Plus, the beginning of that story had been written by Boadicea as part of a challenge that she, august, monkee and I undertook -- each one of us was to write a beginning that the others were to finish. I just thought to myself, "what would it take to make Janeway believable in this situation"? I'd long been interested in the idea of what it would be like to be closeted with the same few people year after year. What would be the psychological effects, particularly on someone who was forced by circumstance to bear most of the responsibility for the group?

It always put me in mind of an abbot at a monastery or a Mother Superior at a convent. Unlike people in, say, prison, the religious people and the Starfleet people voluntarily agreed to this situation. I thought about how it would be the day-to-day things, not the occasional battle or holiday or whatever, that would loom largest, that would have the greatest chance to eat away at one. So I thought it would be interesting to see where Janeway might go if the restrictions were lifted, if she could briefly be free and act without consequence or identity.

Seema: In that context, it makes perfect sense for Janeway to break free. Obviously, she doesn't have the same freedoms as the rest of the crew. She can't "hang out" with the rest of the crew, and she doesn't have the luxury of forming a stable romantic relationship with a subordinate.

Kelly: Yes. Fun as it is to pair Janeway with people and let her have sex, I think TPTB made the right decision not to pair Janeway with Chakotay. They made this decision for all the wrong reasons , but it still worked.

Seema: You like to use Kashyk as a romantic interest for Janeway. Is the attraction that he is not a subordinate? Or that it's someone new to add to the dynamic?

Kelly: Lots of reasons there. In fact, he puts me in mind of something that I heard someone say at an academic conference panel about fanfic last year -- that despite being an m/f pairing, Janeway/Kashyk was "slashy."

Seema: "Slashy"? In what way? This is interesting because we recently had a conversation on zendom regarding hetfic also being referred to as slash by some people.

Kelly: I don't think that it makes any sense to expand the term "slash" to cover m/f relationships, but I do understand what the speaker meant. Though there are many reasons to account for people's interest in slash, I think a common denominator is that slash represents something subversive, something outside the usual comfort zone, something that challenges cultural definitions and expectations.

To me, Janeway/Kashyk offered a lot of these possibilities. He is, as my fanfic friends used to say, an MMX -- a "mass-murdering xenophobe." And yet -- Janeway clearly had some sexual tension with him. It was that paradox that so compelled me about the pairing and that fueled a lot of "Needs" -- that she could want someone who, on so many levels, repulsed, disgusted, and horrified her. And also the irony that, really, they were closer together than she might have liked to think. Like her, he believed he was doing what he did for important reasons. He was an MMX, yes -- but one motivated by what he thought of as ethical reasons. And Janeway, too, did these things -- she was willing to make moral compromises for the sake of larger moral issues.

Seema: I was going to comment on "Needs," that Janeway was so obviously being "used" (for the lack of a better word) in front of Tuvok, Chakotay and Paris, yet she allowed it. Janeway isn't someone who lets herself get pushed around, so obviously there had to be more to her relationship with Kashyk than initially meets the eye. In other words, the motivation depends on the perspective?

Kelly: Yes, and no. Because Janeway clearly isn't someone who unilaterally thinks that the ends justify the means. But at times, she's willing to take that position. It's a fascinating moral paradox, one that faces anyone in a public position, one that they have to wrestle with, often in anguish, and that there is no good answer to.

Trek explored this problem beautifully in the DS9 episode, "In the Pale Moonlight," where Sisko agrees to trick and lie to the Romulans in order to solicit their support in the Dominion War. The recent LBJ tapes that came to light, in which he admits, agonizingly, that the Vietnam War is unwinnable and that he is knowingly sending soldiers to meaningless deaths, is a similar issue. He knows it's an immoral war, yet he fears the consequences of looking weak before the Communists so much more that he's willing to pay what he sees as the lesser price. Yet it's still a staggeringly horrific price, and he knows it.

Seema: Is that what interests you most about Janeway? This paradox of sort? Because most of your stories, in some way, have Janeway rebelling against the constraints of her life and then turning away in the end, almost coolly. "Courses" is like that. Janeway and Paris engage in a secret affair and then she's the one who calls it off, and apparently, with very little emotion. As if, despite her personal loss, it's the "right thing to do."

Kelly: Yes, it's the paradoxes of Janeway that I love. I think the "coolness" is a facade, mostly, though -- a defense mechanism. To be in Janeway's (or Sisko's or LBJ's, etc) position -- to be a thinking, aware, moral individual who is daily called upon to make compromises, to recognize that we rarely face the luxury of choosing between clear good or evil. How painful that would be, how difficult.

Seema: Is Janeway the first character that inspired you to write? You seem to enjoy "torturing" (if that's the right word) Janeway into lowering those defenses, whether it be with Kashyk, Seven, Chakotay or Paris.

Kelly: Yes, she is, although I used to write "fanfic" as a kid without realizing it, making up stories about my favorite TV and book characters. And yes, I do like "torturing" poor Janeway. How perverse . Somehow I feel that it's only in extremes that she will lower the defenses.

Seema: That makes sense. And part of me was wondering how if one could love a character so much, how is it possible to "hurt" that character? The way you explain it here makes perfect sense.

Kelly: The Janeway paradoxes get played out in other writers' fanfic, too, but too often, they get translated into melodrama or silliness. I've read stories in which Janeway is so tortured by guilt that she gets hysterical paralysis, or gets raped by Kashyk and goes into a catatonic decline, or where her vulnerabilities are turned into such weakness that she is constantly sobbing or begging Chakotay/Tom [fill in the blank with strong male] to rescue her, etc. But to my mind, she would never break into pieces in this way. She would retreat into herself, perhaps -- she might take up bondage, etc, or find ways to punish herself, but she would remain highly functional and even, odd as this may sound, relatively well-adjusted, however much mental and physical pain she would bear.

Seema: Is it just projection then, that the authors envision that Janeway can only be happy with Chakotay (or man of your choice) by her side?

Kelly: I'm not sure it's *just* projection, although no doubt that accounts for some of those many stories in which Janeway either a) needs a man, or b) is blamed for refusing to take a man. Some of it is probably current cultural models -- our society *still* doesn't know quite how to deal with a woman who a) says she doesn't need a man and really means it, b) is not repressed or miserable w/o one, c) is not a lesbian or a man-hater, and d) seems actually HAPPY.

Seema: I don't think this is confined to just Janeway, but cross-fandom, you get many stories about ostensibly strong women falling apart when "their" man leaves. Scully, for instance. So many stories as of late have her in utter pieces after Mulder vanishes (though, the show's Weepy!Scully didn't help there).

Kelly: Yes, Scully is another fascinating character. And the whole man thing is one of the issues that bugged me about another of my favorite TV characters, Cagney from Cagney and Lacey. They were so determined not to let there be any suggestion that she might be a lesbian that they ended up turning her into a sort of crabby nympho.

Seema: With a drinking problem ;-)

Kelly: The usual thing is to portray such women as unnatural, unsexed, or at the very least, unhappy. I don't think TPTB or Jeri Taylor or Mulgrew herself really quite knew how to generate any conflict or interest for the KJ character in any other way. And the same seems true of many fanfic writers. Not that I'm saying that all writers have to be radical feminists, or that any woman who writes about a woman who *does* want a man is unenlightened. But as I get older, I realize just how much of what we think of as our individual, considered opinions is really tremendously culturally-conditioned.

Seema: Not to mention, as one gets older, it's possible to look at a character in a completely different light than you might have previously. What might have been incomprehensible 10 years earlier makes perfect sense now.

Kelly: And you're right about the perspectives of time. As an undergrad, I had a professor who said that no one under 40 could understand "King Lear." I was insulted. I had read KL, and had understood it, and had written a pretty damned good paper about it. So what was he talking about? Only now, at 46, do I "get" it. Life just looks different when you are 46 than when you are 20. And I guess we ought to be glad it does!

Seema: I agree. I know that what I wrote when I was 20 is very different than what I write today. It's amazing how things change and how your take on fanfic evolves with that. At first, it's all about romance, and then it becomes something more than just that. More about character, more about atmosphere, concern about getting the details exactly right. If you had to recommend your own fic, what would you pick?

Kelly: Oh, dear. I think of Penny Proctor's response on the Best of Trek site -- that's like a parent trying to pick a favorite child

Seema: I agree, but it's always fun to see what authors come up with.

Kelly: For J/Ka, I'd recommend "Needs" -- I feel most satisfied about the presentation of the "Janeway paradox" here, and I am also satisfied with the voices of the other characters. For J/7, I'd have to go with "Baby Demon."

I really like "Equation,"

too, but "Baby Demon" -- I just saw the images so clearly as I wrote, heard the characters. It was a fabulous writing experience. Then "Stimulation" -- it was such a challenge to make that believable, and I like to think I did.

Seema: Most certainly - that is a story that took me aback the first time I read it and then I've had to read it over multiple times because it really does hit all the right notes.

Kelly: Thanks! I'm also very fond of "Courses" and of "Alma Mater." I loved imagining Janeway's mother. I'd been so annoyed by the picture of her in Taylor's "Mosaic" -- this brownie-baking, wise, Mother-Knows-Best. Ugh. I wanted her to be a real person.

Seema: Do you have any fic in the pipeline we can look forward to?

Kelly: Boadicea and I have been working for ages on a Janeway/Neelix/Seven. A long series of drabbles. We're really going to finish it some day! I also have the half-finished Janeway-in-Section-31 that might go somewhere. There is a long Janeway/Kashyk that I wrote over two years ago, and keep meaning to revise. And I've long toyed with an idea involving Janeway and Lessing, the guy she tortured in Equinox. Not a sexual pairing. But angsty.

Seema: The last idea is definitely intriguing! So much to be said between the two of them - especially given how close Janeway came to killing Lessing. And Janeway/Neelix/Seven? Now there's an interesting combination...

Kelly: Oh, yeah. The Janeway/Lessing situation has not gotten nearly its due. Ever since Boadicea wrote her Janeway/Neelix, "Diplomacy," I saw possibilities in him that I hadn't seen before. It helps that you don't actually have to look at him when you read/write about him

Seema: I think a passion for the character is definitely a necessity in order to write her well. That's the one thing the really good Janeway writers have in common - a genuine respect and devotion to the character. It shows in the stories and is what sets the stories apart from the rest.

Kelly: Yes, I think so. Even those writers with whose depiction of Janeway I disagree have considered her as an adult, complex character. (Those writers whose work I like, I mean.) I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the differences between writing fanfic and writing one's original fiction. So far, while I've written some stories I like, I haven't become passionate about my characters. They remain constructions to me; they haven't taken on life.

Of course, Janeway was pretty fully constructed before I wrote about her -- the "life" was already there, as was the backstory, the entire universe, in fact. As a writer, I was starting out much further along the creative road than one does on one's own. There are limitations, though, of course -- with an existing character, a writer is limited by choices made by others. Even in a/u, even in non-canon stories, there has to be a recognizable core that is "Janeway."

And being a fanfic writer means that one doesn't get to create that "core." But I'm realizing how difficult it is to create one's fictional universe from scratch so that it will make sense to and will compel readers. It's an interesting challenge. But I want to be able to publish some of my work. Posting to the net is nice -- but it would be nice to be able to write without "disclaimers," too

Seema: Oh I agree. One day... Do you have anything else to add?

Kelly: I've just been wracking my brains -- because I keep thinking that I'm leaving out something central, something that will wake me up in the middle of the night, and have me saying, "Why didn't I talk about THAT? It's so important." But at the moment, of course, I can't think of anything

Seema: Thank you so much for talking to me. It's been a pleasure.

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Kelly's author recommendations (in alphabetical order):

august

Boadicea

Christine CGB

The Emu

Liz Barr

monkee

Penny Proctor

Rocky

Sasscat Bu-to-y

Seema

the stylus

Suz Voy

Kelly's fic recommendations (in alphabetical order):

"Acid Truths" by Margaret Berger

"Blanket of Stars" by Hafital

"Broken Things" (Firecracker -- just posted recently).

"Bronze Statues" by YCD

"Deeds Done in Darkness" by Emma Woodhouse

"Dusk at Sandrine's" by Jenn

"Irreversible" by Kim Brotherton

"Life's Challenges" by Bridget Cochran

"A Kiss on the Body Electric" by Jane St. Clair

"Winner Takes All" by Julie Russo

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Seema is fan girl extraodinaire who admits to spending hours and hours camping out on Kelly's site.