Monday Meet & Greet with La Vie Pastiche

with

LaViePastiche

Hello, Lambchops!                                                                           

While I was ficster diving for Jasper/Bella fics one day, I found a oneshot entitled Nobody Sleeps When I'm Awake. That was the very first time I came across LaViePastiche. Soon after, she and ElleCC created the For the Love of Jasper contest. She's written multiple oneshots, and her most popular multi-chapter fic is Son of a Preacher Man. It's an Edward/Bella story, but it starts out with Jasper/Bella, which broke my heart immensely but it was beautifully written nonetheless. Plus, Soapsper is just one hot mofo.

She's one of the nicest, most down-to-earth people I've ever met in the fandom. She and ElleCC have an awesome dynamic. Sometimes I like to think of them as two peas in a pod. I have so much respect and admiration for the two of them, and this is why I am very humbled to introduce her as this week's Meet and Greet.

MissMaj

Tell us about yourself. Married? Single? Kids, age, ..whatever you'd like to share.

I’m not married, and luckily for the world I have no kids although I do love babbies. (do not edit that, it’s not a typo).

Um… I’m not that interesting, I basically work a boring full-time office job, I’m always poor, I eat too much pizza, I drink too much, indulge too much in other bad things. If I’m not partying, I’m usually sitting around doing absolutely nothing or watching DVDs of Friday Night Lights and chatting with Elle.

God, I’m sounding more and more pathetic… um, what I meant to say is that I volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, I paint, compose music and write Haikus in my free time, and I also run a successful business selling neat things to important people.

Tell us about Twilight. How did you first get into the Saga, when was the first time you read it, and which book is your favorite?

I read it last January I think after being badgered by a lot of people. Funny thing was all those people who badgered me read it liked it, and then promptly moved on to other things, whereas I read it, made fun of it incessantly, and am still writing fan fiction about it a year later. Ugh.

I think Eclipse is my fav because of all the Jasper – but I really liked the first book too… I think it probably could have stopped there – it was a really fun read but I think my groans got louder and louder with each book. Seemed like she was trying too hard to stretch things out, and in turn, it just got crazier and crazier.

What got you to start reading Twilight Fanfiction? Do you remember the first fic you read?

Like many adults reading this book, I burned rapidly through the whole series basically skimming and going “are they gonna do it, are they gonna do it?” By the end I was completely exasperated and yet hungry for more. I’d remembered hearing something about fan fiction a long time ago and I thought “hmm, do they do that for Twilight?” so I looked it up and lo and behold, they did the hell out of it for Twilight. I also had some ideas in my head about what I would have liked to have written, and so I kind of wanted to see if there was a place for me to write those. That’s never happened with another book before, and it STILL weirds me out that it happened with Twilight.

And lastly (omg Madi, shut up already), I really liked Jasper in the books but not Alice, and I kind of wanted to see if people wrote Jasper with someone else…*coughBellacough* At first I felt like that was against the rules or something so I read a lot of E/B and a lot of AU or Alt-BD. I completely didn’t understand why anyone would want to read AH – but when I gave it a shot, I flipped to that almost completely for a while – and the close-minded fic world could not keep me from my J/B any longer.

I don’t really remember the first, but an early fic that I read was “Let Your Light Shine” by LolaShoes and it set the bar pretty damn high. Yes, she writes great lemons but she’s a wonderful storyteller/character developer on top of that. She’s just got a beautiful, easy flow to her writing, and wonderful taste in music. I read a lot of really bad fic in the beginning too, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to discover the good stuff.

Which are your favorite stories?

I love pretty much anything I’ve read by jandco but my most favorite is Mutually Assured Destruction. Of course, I also love her collabs with withthevampsofcourse. Scotch was great, but Dear Isabella is blowing my mind. So well done and so heart-wrenchingly sad. Those two really knock my socks off.

Of course, I love Elle’s “A Murmur of Fire in the Vein” – one of the first J/Bs I read that was truly of the calibre of a lot of the E/B fic out there… I was completely bewitched by it. And I don’t care what anyone says, firesper is my husband.

Um…Someone Else’s Memoirs by a certain slant of light might be my all time favorite fic ever. It is so goddamn beautiful, and J/B to boot. Minisinoo also writes all kinds of fabulous Jasper-centric fic and I fangirl her writing pretty hard.

Oh, Cascade and Cyanide by americnxidiot – another great writer – and Afterlife by thatisastory. I guess I could go on and on about good fics…

Who are your favorite characters, from who you like the most to er...who you would like to kill right off the bat?

Jasper. I love him the most of anyone ever. I also love Peter in fic, bc you can do a lot with him and he’s gaining popularity and he’s got a great characterization in most of the fics about him. I like Kate and Garrett too, and though I don’t read a lot of fics centered around him, I love me some good Emmett. I have a growing appreciation for Rosalie too – I mostly just like her with Em – I think they are one of the best matched couples, but I’ve enjoyed some good Rosaward too…

I hate Alice. I didn’t like her in the books much, and I pretty much never like her in fic. Especially if she is with Jasper. I’m not sure I could ever like her and I don’t know why. Just one of those things. I also have almost zero interest in the wolfpack, except for some interesting Leah fics I guess…

Which fics are you reading right now, and which ones have your complete attention whenever they pop with an update?

Oh lawdy…

Times New Roman – Kathyrindhoops – e/b - I fangirl the shit out of this story – it’s like reading a real book, not Twific – smart, funny, kind of sad and sweet.

Clocks – thiscolony – j/b - she just started this – only two chapters in on her LJ but I know it’ll be one I drop everything for. I love her writing so much – Salacious Behavior and Earnest Speaking is another one of my all-time favs, but I’m not sure if she’s going to continue updating it, so now I’ve latched on to this one. I have no idea what is going on yet, but it’s AU and insanely intriguing and she writes good Jasper.

The Long Way Home – TheHeartofLifeisGood – this is a Rosalie story and she’s in love with Edward, who is one of her best friends since childhood, and has been since she was young… it’s fantastic – so realistic, relatable, well written and makes me emo as hell. It’s one of the few I’ll click on and read/review right away. I just love it, even if it tears me up inside.

Forgiven – this was a J/B written for the For the Love of Jasper contest that Elle and I hosted. It was so good and won first place in the judges’ selection round and now she’s continued it – and damn it’s just fantastic. So sad and sweet at the same time and incredibly well written. I told Elle it was like happy/sad crack.

There are lots more I am sure, but I am gonna try not to blab on endlessly, like I have been for this whole damn interview.

What made you finally decide to start writing your own?

I was kind of a writer before I was a reader which was a big mistake, in my opinion. I skimmed a few fics when I first signed up on FF – mostly bc I had to wait to post… but I had an idea in my head before I ever started reading FF, and so I started writing right away. I didn’t take it that seriously and didn’t spend a lot of time considering character development, canon facts, the ramifications of making characters OOC in a mostly canon story, etc. I really wish I had read more to see what was out there before I posted. I did a multi chap and a sequel and though it got better over time, I never really liked those two stories and eventually pulled them.

I did have a group of people who reviewed regularly, and my response was okay (700 something revs for 22 chaps on the first story) but I just wasn’t pleased and didn’t want something up on FF that I wasn’t happy about. But I have some readers now who have been with me since that first story and I secretly love them the most for that :)

What's the atmosphere like when you're writing? Music.. quiet..kids screaming and ripping each other apart, or husband bitching in the background? Do you drink and/or smoke?

I am really ADD and really easily distracted so I try to keep it mostly quiet. If I’m at Starbucks (where I probably get the most writing done) I put on headphones and listen to music. I have no husband/kids thank god but I do often have a friend or two hanging around who I ignore and tell them that I am “doing work” so they all think I am really smart and a workaholic or something. LOL – I am a bad person.

Yes I drink and smoke. I smoke often while writing – mostly as an excuse to take breaks – and I don’t really drink that often while writing because when I drink, I usually drink a whole hell of a lot and quickly find myself in no position to write…

What else do you like to read besides Twilight?

Hmm. I love Vice magazine and the writers that came from it and similar publications – like Lesley Arfin and Chris Nieratko (Big Brother magazine), Suroosh Alvi, Gavin McInness… etc.

I have a huge hard-on for Dave Eggers (including McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern), David Sedaris, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Nick Flynn, Stephen Chbosky… I like to read books about addicts, awkward adolescents, and social deviants. I also have a thing for serial killers and have read lots of books about them.

I’m having a small panic attack over how many books/authors I am forgetting here, but this gives you the gist and, really, I could go on FOREVER. (Surprised?)

What else do you like to do?

This is another question to showcase how boring and lame I am. I don’t really have hobbies. I play some guitar, when I’m not being lazy I take drum lessons with a friend because I want to learn to play the drums even though I’m really uncoordinated and have no rhythm. I like watching movies and I really like just hanging out – going to bars, going to coffee shops and reading magazines, talking and smoking a lot. Oh and I like to shop a lot, even though I am broke as a joke.

Tell us a secret.

I write Twilight fanfic.

Sorry – that’s a secret to everybody in my real life, so shhh.