Author Interview: duskwatcher

Jmeyer Recommendation: A Matter of Time By duskwatcher

1. Tell me the story of how you got into the bizarre, yet interesting world that is the Twilight fandom.

Well, it was last December and I’d read the whole series three times over, the DVD wasn’t out yet and I was having a serious Twilight jones. So I was just basically googling Twilight and came across this website Twilighted. I’d always harbored a lot of resentment that SM never included the infamous Missing Moments in Breaking Dawn, so I when I read Vixen1836’s Isle Esme, I was hooked. I’d never even heard of fanfiction, and this whole incredible world just opened up. I like to tell people I came for the smut and stayed for the stories.

2. You choose a rather unconventional story route by featuring Renesmee and Jacob as the main couple. What interested you about these characters that made you want to tell their story?

I started writing A Matter of Time because I wanted to see where else the Saga could go. All the elements of my story, Caius’s and Jane’s insurrection as a result of their bitterness at the Volturi stand-off in Forks, a gang of unhappy werewolves because there’s this large group of very young men with immense powers and no place to use them, the love story between Jacob and Renesmee, were there as seeds in Breaking Dawn. It was just a matter of extrapolating what was in Breaking Dawn and going forward a few years.

Once I got into it, I realized there were so many elements to the JxR couple. There’s Renesmee’s early maturation and sexual awakening, and there’s how Jacob can handle the transition of Renesmee from child to lover. Also, there’s a very Romero and Juliet kind of vibe in their eventual love story, because their families are centuries-old enemies.

3. A Matter of Time has this added government/secret agent aspect that is something I’ve never seen in the fandom before. How did you come up with this idea?

Too much science fiction! I see conspiracies everywhere!

4. One of the things I love about your story, which I typically hate in other stories, is that you bounce back and forth between many different POVs. Why did you decide to go this route for your story?

I don’t know whether I consciously decided to write a multiple POV story. I just started writing and the story had enough different plot elements in it, that any one character wouldn’t be able to see everything, so it just evolved. I didn’t even know that Jane and Leah would be making an appearance until I was well into writing and then it was like they demanded to be heard. I just complied. But I do love writing the multiple POV’s. It’s like performing a play in your head. I find that my attitude, even the way I sit in the chair in front of the computer, changes with whom I am writing.

5. What is the writing process like for you?

Well, it’s definitely character driven. I don’t work from an outline, but I know what the general conflict will be and I know where I am ending. I knew where the ending chapter for this story was going to take place from the get-go. I did plot out the fight at the Denali coven because I had to remember where everyone was at any given time and it helped me visualize the action in my own mind. About mid-way through this story, I also did a huge timeline chart, again to remember who was where and when, and to make sure the times meshed. I learned this the hard way because I had a character speak up in an early conversation I was writing, only to realize later that character was supposed to be halfway across the world at the time!

6. Published novels. Do you read them? Who are your favorite authors?

Hell yeah! Oh course, there’s Anne Rice. Sigh, if only Lestat had a sex life. I am a big sci-fi fan, especially of the small slice of feminist scifi (which is almost an oxymoron) that is out there, so Sherri Tepper, Nicola Griffith and Ursula LeGuin are favorites. Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow is an astounding work. Can I keep going?

7. If you could change one thing about the Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse or Breaking Dawn, what would it be and why?

This might be strange, because I just wrote a whole story about her, but could we please get rid of Renesmee? I’d have been much happier seeing Edward and Bella ride off into the sunset without the weird baby. I really pity the poor scriptwriter who gets the unenviable assignment of bringing Breaking Dawn to the big screen.