Mog is the latest victim...interviewee...to enter the Clarion's doors and she's also the brain behind the Magnificent Seven ATF AU.
Here's her interview.
Me: Well, Let's start with a little of your background. What does Mog do outside the fandom?
Mog: Mog (sounds like Vogue) a.k.a. Maria Mogavero, one year shy of 30; 10 years shy of maturity. Married almost seven years and my idea of children are the 2 dogs & 1 cat we have.
Lived in Seattle for 20 years, and thoroughly embrace the unnatural hair colorin'/body piercin'/ tattoo gettin'/"be sure to use the recycle bin"/'Umbrellas are for wimps' subculture that makes this city cool. (and it's true what the man says - "We have 7 kinds of rain and 42 ways of ordering coffee".)
Was a military brat before that. (Join The Navy - See Iceland and Tennesesee...or something like that.) I believe that laughing at one's self is the best medicine. Would probably shrivel up and becoming boring if I couldn't listen to music. (why haven't The Stones been knighted yet?) Early 20th century blues & jazz, world music, reggae, New Wave, classical & opera, and I'll send a candy bar to the first person who has anything by Green River. Still can't get into the country & western thing, though. (Although, alternative country is way cool. Blue Rodeo, that kind of sound)
Hobbies: Acting (fringe theatre) (that's where they pay you, but just enough to cover gas)
World Domination (though that one is turning out to be alot tougher than I thought it would be)
Writing (or was till of late, I believe my Muse has skipped town - she was last seen heading for Las Vegas in a stolen Cadillac convertible)
Reading (From Jack Kerouac to Robert Aspirin)
Me: How'd you stumble into the Magnificent Seven and how you did you managed to get hooked?
Mog:The oh-so-familiar stepping stone method. About a year ago I started watching ShowTime's 'Stargate SG-1'. Finally looked it up on the 'net (I *never* surfed before then) and around April of this year I found a fanfic link and stumbled into the glorious 'Katie's Smarm Zone'. Out of curiousity read her other stuff, which included M7.
That led me to other sites and through the great interpretations of the writers, fell in love with the M7 characters. Wrote a couple of 1/1 pieces before I was finally able to get my hands on videos (CBS had already dropped the show).
Me: What in your mind are some of the show's big strengths and likewise, its weaknesses?
Mog:
Obviously, the men fall into the 'strenghts' category. ;-) The chemistry of the actors and the development we got to see of the characters getting to know each other is something that I enjoy. The writers blend humor and drama well.Weaknesses that bug me are production-type things. Firing weapons unrealistically, weak crowd voiceovers (I'll be estatic if I never see another scene where a man in a crowd is heard doing the "yeah, let's get 'em" ad-libs but his mouth isn't moving.)
Me:Where do you get your ideas? How does your muse strike?
Mog:
Usually a scene pops into my head or a string of dialogue and if it doesn't leave me alone then I'm forced to build a story around it.Right now my Muse is *on* strike. Which is *very* scary because writing has always come very naturally & easily to me and now all of a sudden I *really* want to write but nothing is flowing. But when she is behaving, she usually comes to me when I'm in the car.
The theatre company I work with is an hour away so when I'm in rehearsal I have alot of driving time; it's like meditation - one part of my brain in concentrating on traffic so it frees up the other part to have fun.
Me:
How'd you get into writing fanfic? Mag Seven in particular?Mog: Until I hit 'Katie's Smarm Zone' I had no idea that other people wrote stuff for their favorite tv/movie characters. I remember doing it as a teen, 'Buckaroo Banzai' was a big influence. I think it started with writing out already established scenes. Seeing something on tv or in a movie and wanting to elaborate on the characters emotions and inner monologues.
I did a couple of SG-1 1/1's then got sucked into the M7 universe and my first piece was a response to one of Maggie Smith's war stories (Those are comedy pieces that involve the boys in an ongoing love/hate relationship with the fic writers. They like the attention we lavish upon them but they're more than a little leery of how much we whomp on them.)
Me:Who's your favorite character to work with?
Mog:Ezra. I would love to be able to write Nathan or Josiah but they don't speak to me much.
Me:Do you use beta-readers? if so what do you appreciate most?
Mog: I use them to kill spiders and keep my feet from getting wet when I take the garbage out...oh wait, those are slippers.
I use beta only for my long pieces. I go over the 1/1 stuff myself, I guess I don't think it's serious enough to warrant proofreading. I look to a beta not only for typos but for sentence flow. Does it make sense to the reader?
I would rather have a beta give me too many notes than too few. But I shy away from beta-ing for others, I always feel the urge to change things, goes back to that world domination thing, I guess.
Me:
If you could change anything about the show what would it be?Mog:You mean besides having it be back on and myself hired on as a script writer...
Rick Worthy once mentioned something about liking to see an ep involving the Buffalo Soldiers, I thought that was a great idea. I'd like to see more history based eps or ones that had a 'whodunnit' edge.
Me: How well or bad do you think the show's handled its female characters?
Mog: I think they do a good job with the females. They don't come across as being weak & helpless and it's been nice to see the casting offering the occasional 'non stick chick'.
But Mary is way too thin, what kinda birthin' hips are those? And what the heck was the make-up artist thinking when they buried her in dark brown eye shadow and mocha lipstick during 'Working Girls'. ::shudder::
Me: Do you get writers block often? If so what's your favorite cure?
Mog: Not until recently, I've never experienced a block like the one I have now.
Before, I could attribute it to being distracted by wanting to write something else. Like hurrying to finish an Old West story so I could go play in the ATF sandbox. But now I think it's because I'm trying to work on too many things at once and it's overloaded my system.
I'm still working on a cure. I think vodka should be involved.
Me: What's the hardest part of writing for you? The easiest?
Mog:Hardest part: Plotting and lately, staying focused. "Okay, I'm going to write now...oooh look, a dog with a poofy tail."
Easiest: Dialogue, I hear the characters' voices in my head (of course, I have to weed them out from the other voices that are already there)I'm lousy at developing plots but I've been told frequently that my dialogue is very true to the characters.
Me:What's your view of Hurt/Comfort stories?
Mog:LOL! Total sucker for 'em. I should write a book about chicks' need for male bonding. M7, SG-1, The Sentinel. Don't understand it, but after reading fanfic - it's definitely there. I'm not into the romance or female character stuff in fic. Just give me the guys gettin' whomped on....but keep them in character.
Me: Do you do much research for your stories? Plan them out?
Mog:I've only done 2 long pieces and did some minor 'net research for one. I actually ordered books for one of the pieces I'm working on now. For the most part, I'm too lazy to do real research.
I have to have an outline before I start. My first experience with writer's block (during 'A Matter of Coincidence')was partially due to the fact that I didn't know where I was going with the story. I get too wigged out if I start posting and have no idea where the tale is going.
Me:
How long does it take you to write your stories?Mog:
Too long. Two - three months for what I consider a long piece, (which, in reality, is only about 40 pages.) I'm too much of a perfectionist. My 1/1 pieces can take a couple of hours, a day or a weekend depending on whether or not I'm hit with a creative rush.Me:What advice would you give new M7 fic writers just starting out?
Mog:Watch the eps. My biggest pet peeve is when writers have the characters say or do something that I *know* they would never do.
Don't rush. Pay attention to detail. Which is more interesting to read?
"Bob looked at the dog and the dog looked at Bob." or "Bob squinted against the afternoon sun and glanced over at the large Labrador, he wasn't sure but he could have sworn the canine was watching him out of the corner of its eye."
Me: Where do you get your inspiration for stories from? Especially the ATF universe; where did that one come from?
Mog:Total flashes. Things just pop into my head, scenes or dialogue.
The ATF/AU came after Cassie Smith posed a birthday challenge for Chris. I was in the car, trying to work up some Old West plots and suddenly I had this mental picture of Vin being pushed out of an ER room while Chris was being worked on. I couldn't shake it. So I thought, okay, why are they there? A shooting. The OW guys are law enforcement, so that would work for modern times but I didn't want to use city police department (too overused) or FBI (that belongs to The X-Files) and my best friend's fiancee is following in the family footsteps and pursuing ATF so I thought, yeah, that agency would work.
If I had had *any* idea that the ATF/AU would take off like it did I would have put alot more thought into 'A Birthday in the Present'.LOL.
Me: Any particularly interesting stories in the near future? That you can share that is.
Mog:I have a v-ep due in November for Maggie & Cassie's F.A.N. network An arson story for the ATF (I'm sure the guy at Amazon.com was wondering why I ordered $75 worth of ATF handbooks) Involved in a couple of round robins, but those probably won't see posting for another couple of months. Oh, and my unfinished manual for world domination, but my beta really slammed me for inconsistencies so it's in the rewrite stage.
Me: What's your favorite method of writing? Computer or good old fashioned pen and paper? or is it a mixture of both?
Mog:Mostly laptop, because you can cut & paste - no messy scratching out.
But I write lyrics also and those come to me in the car, I finally learned to keep paper & pen w/ me in each vehicle. It's scary to think how well I can write while driving.
Me: If the show had continued what plots would you have loved to see develop? Relationships that sort of thing?
Mog:In 'Achilles' Josiah mentions 'there was a bare-knuckle fighter in San Fransisco', I always figured he was talking about himself, I would like to see a story about that time coming back to haunt him.
Would love to see more stuff with Ezra & Buck. The shoving scene in 'Wagon Train' was so fun and there seems to be some great chemistry between Anthony & Dale that was rarely used.
Me: Anything else you'd like to toss out there?
Mog: I'm amazingly flattered that the ATF/AU was so well received. Maybe we should see about getting John Watson to pitch *that* to the networks (since they seem to have an aversion to westerns).
And I bow low to writers like The Travelling Dime Store Novelist, GreenWoman and Linda Backer who inspire me and keep me humble at the same time. p.s. Any contributions to Mog's World Domination Fund may be sent to The Frontier Room, Belltown, Seattle WA. Chocolate accepted in lieu of cash.
Thanks Mog! For braving my little office. Now any of ya'll who wanna read more about the aforementioned ATF Universe...the link's below.
links
Back to the Clarion
Mog's ATF world. (Her Universe, A couple of her stories and a bunch of other guests)
