Real name: Karen

Looking back on it, I suppose I was always writing fan fiction; I just didn’t know that’s what it was back then. The first story I can remember writing, when I was seven, was a Captain Scarlet-Doctor Who crossover. In my teens I wrote supernatural AU RPS based on my favourite pop group – a band of brothers – and the characters in all my later stories evolved from those.

But then I went to college and learned about literature. I was intimidated by the great authors I was reading, and for decades I stopped writing altogether. All my stories stayed in my head, where I watched them play out like TV shows or movies, and they never saw the light of day.

I learned a lot in those years, though, about genre and narrative and POV, and I learned about Epic Romance . . . but TV drama was always my first love and I applied what I’d learned to everything I watched. I drove my husband nuts, analysing all our favourite shows and movies to death, but I realized that the things I loved most - Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Xena and Hercules, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter – all had common themes: they were about heroes and the supernatural, they were mythic and epic, they were funny and self mocking but they were also dramatic and angsty . . . and sometimes they were a bit gay.

In the Summer of 2011 I was anticipating the end of the Harry Potter franchise and wondering what I was going to do with myself when it was finished . . . so I hired the first season of Supernatural.

How had I missed this show before? It had everything!It was mythic, it was epic, it had the supernatural (of course) and the humour and the drama and all the angst, and . . . it was about brothers. It was like I’d come full circle (as epic romances are apt to do) and half way through the second season my first SPN fanfic came out of me like a punch. I’d found my muses, and now I had to write about this show, even though I was convinced no one else would be interested in reading my efforts. But then a friend suggested I post it on line, and I finally discovered the world of fandom writing! So much talent out there! So many wonderful writers and stories! I learned so much from them.

In those early months I dashed off several one shots based on the show, but I suppose it was inevitable that I’d eventually want to write my own epic. There is something in me that, when it sees a ‘natural order’ immediately wants to upset it, so I started imagining an alternate story. I saw a world where Dean hadn’t become the bad-ass we all know so well. He’d had an ordinary life that had allowed some of the softer traits we’ve sometimes glimpsed to develop more fully. Meanwhile Sam had grown up in the hunting life alone, unprotected, not knowing Dean until they are thrown together for the first time at the start of season one. What would this Sam be like? How would this Dean cope with being suddenly thrust into a supernatural world he never knew existed? An AU serial was born.

The Song Remains the Same is up to its sixth episode now. I’ve posted it on FF, LJ, Sinful Desires and the Sam/Dean Archive and now I’m introducing it to AO3, and it’s also being translated by a Russian reader who has posted up to episode four on LJ and Diary ru.

The past two years have been a journey of discovery for me as well as my boys. I’ve been amazed and thrilled with the enthusiasm, support and encouragement I’ve received from readers and I can never adequately express how much that means to me. I’ve met some wonderful, interesting people and made new friends in the process. And I have Supernatural to thank for all this, and especially Eric Kripke and other members of his creative team who have been my inspiration. As for all those other shows and movies and authors (and pop musicians) I’ve admired . . . well, they’re in the mix as well :)

I just learned this morning that Supernatural has been renewed for a tenth season. I have mixed feelings about that, but it leads me to hope that if the show still goes on, so will the Song.

My thanks to you all.

I also post as fanspired on Live Journal, AO3, Sinful Desires, and the Sam/Dean Slash Archive.