Anna-Maria Jennings

Ann and I form, in her words, a "mutual admiration society". Her story, "Four Speeches and a Funeral", was the first fan story I ever fell in love with, and after reading it and rereading it and rerereading it, I sent her an embarrassingly gushy email under my real name in December of 2000. Three weeks later, after I had finished my first piece of fanfiction ("Turning Myself Into You") and sent it out to the lists under my new pseudonym, I was elated to find that the first piece of extensive feedback I got was from her. This kicked off an email discussion about writing that kept me inspired for months to come, a mutually satisfying editorial relationship in which I always read her epics in pieces as they come to her and she reads the finished products I churn out once a month, and a terrific friendship with the most fascinating person I've met in a very, very long time. Like me, she writes first and foremost because she has stories to tell, and this alone makes us compatible in so many ways.

It's hard to overestimate the impact Ann has had on my writing. She was my first editor -- the first person who really made suggestions about things that would make my writing (and even my stories) better. When I didn't know how to write description to save my soul, she asked me questions about the scenes in my head that got the ball rolling; when I painted myself into a doozy of a plot corner in a story early on, all I had to do was contact Ann and she helped me chip my way back out; and she's sat through all of my neuroses and quirks with an incredible, very Ann-like humor and diplomacy. She's obviously a glutton for punishment, 'cause even though she's no longer writing West Wing fanfiction herself, she's still around: picking at my politics, helping me embroider detail onto the edges of the tales I tell, and telling me point-blank when a plot point too strongly resembles a device. She's been working with me since January of 2001, and at this point, doing this without her would only be half as much fun.

Minna Leigh

Minna and I knew each other in real life first, and each knew about the other's West Wing obsessions, but each had no idea the other was interested in fanfiction. When I checked my web log one morning and found that the last person to have visited this website had done so from a domain which gave away that the visitor had to be either Minna or one of about forty very boring people, I figured the jig was up. I then asked her to come over that evening and probed at her with nervous questions like: "So, were you, uh, surfing the web at all today?" ... but she didn't bite! I'd almost reached the point where I was ready to reevaluate the notion that one of the forty very boring people might not be so boring at all, when a look of recognition crossed her face, and she said: "I did come across a website today that belonged to a person who I thought you might get along with." In response, I said: "And what was this website, uh, like?", to which she answered: "Well, it had a lizard on it ..." At this point, the jig really was up, because it suddenly had become painfully obvious that she hadn't been checking up on me at all, but had her own completely separate interest in fanfiction and had stumbled across my site all by her little lonesome. In retrospect, it was one of the funniest things that happened to me that year, and I have that fabulous coincidence to thank for many, many wonderful things in my life, only one of which is Minna's presence on my beta team.

Minna was a friend before she was an editor, but boy, has she ever found her niche in that. She's marvelous with detail -- she wades through and decodes my messy sentence structure before it gets released to the outside world, she slaps me upside the head for unnecessary adverbs, and she notices inconsistencies between the beginnings and the ends of epics and between stories in my series. She joined my beta team in April of 2001.

Adina

Adina and I have known each other since we were both barely adults. (I'll just gloss over how long ago that was and move on, here, okay?) We'd stayed somewhat in touch but hadn't seen each other for years when we met up at a convention (much to our mutual surprise and delight), and my secret was out as soon as she saw me wearing a badge bearing the name of Jae Gecko. We spent the entire con catching up, and have been close again ever since. Fandom unites.

Every fan writer should have an Adina: a born editor, who respects me but knows me too well to gush even when she thinks something is good, and who knows the ins and outs of fanfiction (she started with Deep Space Nine and Sentinel and is writing Lord of the Rings these days) but doesn't watch the show, so any references that are too obscure to be enjoyed by people not in the know can be caught and changed. She also has an incredibly intuitive sense about my writing, and a tendency to suggest things that make me want to say: "Oh, my God, why didn't I think of that myself!" She joined my beta team in May of 2001.

Elizabeth Collins

At the point when I took Elizabeth aside in the middle of an already confession-rich night and told her what the hobby had been that had eaten my life for the first half of 2001, she turned up her nose at fanfiction so far that I didn't think I'd ever see her face again (though admittedly, she tried really hard to be nice about it at the time). She adores the show, though, so when I gave her my URL, she decided to give it a try ... and promptly devoured first everything I'd written up to that point, and then everything on my recommendations page, in two days. When I talked to her the next day, a bleary Elizabeth reported to me: "Let me just say this once: Good fanfiction is like crack!" Well.

The ego-boo was intense, but short-lived. This chick is tough on me, and I love her for it. She slaps me down with witty, barbed comments that have me laughing as I pick myself back up ("concrete sidewalk? as opposed to one made of monkey fur? sphagnum moss?"). She picks on everything from word choice to characterization to sentence structure to choice of metaphor, and we have delightful arguments over my original characters (some of which she even loses). She's brilliant and passionate and an accomplished wordsmith in her own right, and she likes my narrative voice enough to help me make it the best it can be without altering it beyond recognition. I still have to pinch myself at the thought that I've got her on board. She joined my beta team in June of 2001.

Luna

I met Luna through a writers' mailing list we're both on, and despite a rather rocky start (I cornered her in AIM and demanded that she tell me why she'd made particular choices in one of her stories, which doesn't bode well for any future relationship, working or otherwise), we've long since bonded over our fanatical devotion to this show. If Luna doesn't remember a detail from onscreen canon, no matter how small, it probably didn't happen. She is also one of the funniest people I've ever known; I don't think I've ever had a single conversation with her that didn't have me convulsing with hysterics.

She'd betaed my mood vignettes, but I admit it; I was scared to let Luna edit a Turning-universe story. Not because I knew she'd be tough on me -- although that's also true -- but because it would be difficult to find two stylistically more different fanwriters than me and Luna. I knew from her own writing that she excels at all the things that are difficult for me, like vivid description and always, always picking just the right metaphor, but the prospect of being edited by someone so drastically different scared the crap out of me. Eventually, though, I managed to get over myself and convince her to guest-beta on "The Decay of Lying", and after that I never wanted to do without her again. Anyone who noticed a sharp upturn in quality with that story should give a good portion of the credit to Luna. She's been working with me since March of 2002, and I'm ever so grateful. She teaches me so much. And now we're even co-writing together, which just goes to show what a good beta relationship can bring.

Rivka W.

Poor Rivka. When she stumbled into a discussion about West Wing slash on an unrelated Usenet newsgroup right there where her old friend Jae could see it, she had no idea what she was getting into. But when she said things about having to go "wash off her brain" at the very idea that her beloved characters might be so "clumsily misused," I felt obligated to set her, um, straight. After a brief confession about my latest hobby, she decided to read "Turning Myself Into You," and ... well, let's just say she gracefully ate her words. I was absolutely insufferable (I am God! I can convince anyone! I could convince Sorkin himself!) for quite some time before finally coming down. There's nothing better than convincing a skeptic, except maybe convincing a skeptic you've always harbored a secret crush on.