For this installment we're bringing you an article on Sal R (also known in fandom as Sally Reeve and to the rest of the world as published author Sally Malcolm) - an institution in the Sam/Jack fandom.
Sal R hails from London, England, where she's been shipping Sam and Jack since Solitudes, way back, as she puts it, at the start of the century.
Like many, she was pulled into the 'ship by the characters. She cites their "devotion to duty, their competence, intelligence and integrity" as reasons to love Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill. Because the ship comes pre-loaded with the regulations that keep them apart, there's no need to manufacture obstacles. And because the ship was never resolved on screen, a lot of room is left for speculation, interpretation and imagination. It might be for some of those reasons that despite coming from other fandoms and moving on since, Sam and Jack remain her first ship love.
She's been mostly out of fandom for ten years, so The Sam and Jack Multimedia Awards came as a surprise to her, though she loves what they're doing. And even though she's won fan awards for her Sam/Jack work a decade ago, she's thrilled that people are enjoying her work enough to nominate it. "Thank you," she says, "whoever you are! I love fan awards, they're really the highest praise you can get."
Like many, Sal R has been involved in several fandoms including Sherlock, The West Wing, and Star Trek: Voyager. These days you can find a handful of her Stargate and Sherlock works at AO3 but her older stuff - including The West Wing and Voyager Fics - went the way of her old website. Overall, she estimates she's written more than 150 stories of various lengths.
While she was very involved in the Stargate fandom for around five years (1999-2003/4), she did eventually take a step back to focus on writing professionally. Sal R is better known to non-ship folks as Sally Malcolm author of many licensed Stargate novels. And even though she doesn't have a lot of spare time these days, she says she still enjoys reading fanfiction by writers such as mrspollifax and missparker.
When asked if she's a plotter or a pantser, she tells us she's no good at following outlines. She knows where she wants a story to end and she may have a couple of scenes she can picture in her mind's eye, but for the most part she prefers to sit down and see where the muse takes her. For that reason, she prefers to write a fic all the way through before she begins posting it. Because she flies by the seat of her pants, there's inevitably something near the beginning of the story that will need to be changed to make everything work.
And to make everything work, well, sometimes that can be a lengthy process. For a 10,000 word fic - "shortish" by her definition - it might take her a month to write it and then ready it to be posted. She's been working on a longer fic, currently over 70,000 words, since February. She's just about ready to share that with us, so stay tuned!
If there's one thing Sal R has, it's experience and she's willing to share some of her wisdom with other writers. Her first piece of advice to writers just starting out is: "write. Write a lot. The more you write, the better you'll get." She reminds us that like anything else, writing well is all about practice. She also says to read a lot. She encourages writers to find out what works in stories and to find out what doesn't work.
"Be passionate about the characters and the story you're telling. If you really want to tell the story, it will come through in your narrative and readers will want to keep reading." Moreover, write a story that you want to read. Don't write for kudos or comments; enjoy the process and your characters.
She advises writers to avoid self-editing. Getting through to the end is important - even if you're not happy with what you've written along the way - because once it's on paper you can go back and edit it until it reads just the way you want. As the old saying goes, "you can't edit a blank page." Get a good beta reader. This person may not be your biggest fan, but this is a person who can read your work with an objective eye and point out issues along the way. One that can pick up spelling and grammar issues is, as she points out, "invaluable." But read through your own work several times, too. It's close to impossible to catch every typo, but it's tough to hold on to readers if your first paragraph is full of mistakes.
Above all, be confident about your story. Don't begin with a disclaimer about the story not being any good. That sort of start will put many potential readers off your work right away.
For this year's crop of stories and nominees, though, she says "so far, so good!" and wishes good luck to everyone involved.
At the moment of writing this blog post, SalR has been nominated in the following categories:
- Alternate Timeline - 2001
- Angst - Retrospective
- Author
- Characterization of Sam - Retrospective
- Drama - A Second Chance
Keep an eye on our website for an overview of all accepted nominations, or follow us on our social media accounts to be kept up to date. As for the blog, we'll have more posts in the coming days, including highlights of various nomination categories, other interviews and more fun stuff!
While she was very involved in the Stargate fandom for around five years (1999-2003/4), she did eventually take a step back to focus on writing professionally. Sal R is better known to non-ship folks as Sally Malcolm author of many licensed Stargate novels. And even though she doesn't have a lot of spare time these days, she says she still enjoys reading fanfiction by writers such as mrspollifax and missparker.
When asked if she's a plotter or a pantser, she tells us she's no good at following outlines. She knows where she wants a story to end and she may have a couple of scenes she can picture in her mind's eye, but for the most part she prefers to sit down and see where the muse takes her. For that reason, she prefers to write a fic all the way through before she begins posting it. Because she flies by the seat of her pants, there's inevitably something near the beginning of the story that will need to be changed to make everything work.
And to make everything work, well, sometimes that can be a lengthy process. For a 10,000 word fic - "shortish" by her definition - it might take her a month to write it and then ready it to be posted. She's been working on a longer fic, currently over 70,000 words, since February. She's just about ready to share that with us, so stay tuned!
If there's one thing Sal R has, it's experience and she's willing to share some of her wisdom with other writers. Her first piece of advice to writers just starting out is: "write. Write a lot. The more you write, the better you'll get." She reminds us that like anything else, writing well is all about practice. She also says to read a lot. She encourages writers to find out what works in stories and to find out what doesn't work.
"Be passionate about the characters and the story you're telling. If you really want to tell the story, it will come through in your narrative and readers will want to keep reading." Moreover, write a story that you want to read. Don't write for kudos or comments; enjoy the process and your characters.
She advises writers to avoid self-editing. Getting through to the end is important - even if you're not happy with what you've written along the way - because once it's on paper you can go back and edit it until it reads just the way you want. As the old saying goes, "you can't edit a blank page." Get a good beta reader. This person may not be your biggest fan, but this is a person who can read your work with an objective eye and point out issues along the way. One that can pick up spelling and grammar issues is, as she points out, "invaluable." But read through your own work several times, too. It's close to impossible to catch every typo, but it's tough to hold on to readers if your first paragraph is full of mistakes.
Above all, be confident about your story. Don't begin with a disclaimer about the story not being any good. That sort of start will put many potential readers off your work right away.
For this year's crop of stories and nominees, though, she says "so far, so good!" and wishes good luck to everyone involved.
At the moment of writing this blog post, SalR has been nominated in the following categories:
- Alternate Timeline - 2001
- Angst - Retrospective
- Author
- Characterization of Sam - Retrospective
- Drama - A Second Chance
Keep an eye on our website for an overview of all accepted nominations, or follow us on our social media accounts to be kept up to date. As for the blog, we'll have more posts in the coming days, including highlights of various nomination categories, other interviews and more fun stuff!
She is amazing, start to finish. I love her ff and her SG novels. I long to be as good as she is one day. Okay, off to take her advice and WRITE!
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