I'm intirgued. I love the title, I've been fighting that all day with Best Friends! 

I did, that confused me even more!  Nice story you have going and yes it is all about the coffee!!

Matt 

I try to focus on one at a time, but I'm working Best Friends and Lines of Communications concurenntly. I've also outlined Silver Star as it runs along with The Man Who Came Back. And of course I'm still doing final edit on Soul Mates, only two chapters left! 

Lots of stuff going on and that's not counting reading and reviews! 

I keep telling myself this is fun! 

It's only two years overdue, but here is my author's notes on Writer's Block:

Behind the Scenes of
Writer’s Block
by Denise Felt 2012

Dedication: this story really was all Dragon’s fault!  She wrote a short short about her as an author meeting Straker after an alien encounter (where, incidentally, she kicked some ass!)  Well, once all us other UFO fanfic writers read it, we couldn’t just leave it there.  We all wanted to write a story where we meet our heroes from UFO!  So we did.  One note: I changed my first name for this story.  I really don’t like my given name, so it felt much more comfortable to give myself the name I would have chosen if my mom had ever asked me.

Chapter 1: I began this story very tongue-in-cheek, although I did resist the urge to write “it was a dark and stormy night.”  However, I wonder how many readers caught on that I was having a bit of fun here by using a cliched beginning to my story.  Once in HQ, we see Straker being almost playful with the colonel (which only occurred in the last few episodes of the series) when he asks her if her fingers are crossed.  But my storm comes in handy by keeping the cloud cover too thick for Capt. Carlin to get visual contact before shooting the UFO down.  If you’ve read any of my other stories, that alone should give you a hint that this UFO is going to be different.

Matt is the reason I have Ginny so relaxed and fun in this story.  Rewatching the episodes again, I can pick up that she did her best to develop her character more than what the script ever allowed, but without Matt’s championing of her cause, I might never have paid much attention to it and given her the credit she was due.  So she is sympathetic to Ford and even willing to brave the commander’s ire to help him out.  The conversation she has with the commander in his office is one of my favorite scenes I’ve ever written between them.

Chapter 2: Okay, so I changed my middle name too.  But since I was giving myself a golden tan, bare feet, and a sexy dress, I thought I might as well go all the way and give myself a sexy name too.  I’ve always admired Sophia Loren and thought her one of the most beautiful women of all time, regardless of how bad the movies she was in were.  So I changed the humble Marie to Sophia and instantly I was a sultry vixen.  Well, on paper anyway. 

Again we get a playful scene between the commander and Ginny, then a hilarious one between the commander and Alec (and turtles!)  I had fun researching different types of turtles till I found one that would fit for my story.  I think turtles are wonderful creatures, but I had no idea there were so many kinds of them out there.  The hawksbill is an endangered species, and it was rather alarming to find out how dependent our coral reefs are on their continued existence.   

Paul never gets his boss, so I have him be confused on the jet when he sees Straker reading one of Anne’s novels.  What Straker tells him is true.  You really can tell a great deal about a writer by their writing; what they choose to write about and how they write it.  And since this story focuses on me as a writer, I wanted to give the reader an idea of how much trouble Straker expected me to be before he actually met me.

Chapter 3: I tried to be as honest as I could when describing me, keeping in mind that I’m not boring Denise Marie who lives in the Midwest anymore, but sexy Anna Sophia who owns her own island in the Atlantic.  Of course, give me a tan and a coral halter dress and I could prove how close my description comes to reality, but that’s not really the important thing here.  What’s important is that I have an impact on the commander.  Woo-hoo!  (And Paul too, but who really cares about him?)

I enjoyed keeping the sexual pressure on during their contract meeting by having her remain in the dress that had elicited such a response from the commander.  After all, she/I had no idea he was so affected, did I?

Chapter 4: The party on the lawn is my kind of party, relaxed with lots of local island music.  You get to see many glimpses into the way Straker views the world around him in this story.  His comments about the villagers and Anne’s relationship to each other is just one of those.  And it’s not that he’s a snob himself; it’s just that he’s exposed to that type of sensibility so much at the studio that it would come as a surprise to him when someone wasn’t that way.

Paul – used to his wild parties in London – would surely find Anne’s party dull, but I do give him some fun later on when he takes a walk on the beach.  You don’t find out just who Leona is yet, but you can be sure she will figure somewhere in this story.  I had fun contrasting Paul’s steamy scene with Straker’s and Anne’s when he too takes a walk on the beach.  Here again we get to see into his thoughts as he considers whether he’ll make it to retirement.  A note about that.  I made him slightly older in this story, since I didn’t want to be older than him.  I liked having him just a few years older than in the show.  He seemed a little more intriguing that way, more Jethro Gibbs-ish, if you know what I mean.

And the chapter ends with a conversation between Anne and a friend of hers – who turns out to be the Leona we met earlier!  I made Anne a little more unaware of men than I am, but I felt it was in keeping with her character, since for this story I don’t have her twice divorced as I am.  So she is just a bit more idealistic than I am, although still no fool.

Chapter 5: From Straker’s thoughts the next morning you can see part of Anne’s attraction in his eyes.  They are both trying to save the world in their own way, and it has to be a rare thing for him to be around a civilian so concerned with such a monumental task.

Anne and Leona argue, with the housekeeper playing referee.  And hopefully (if you’re paying attention) you get a bit more information on just who Leona is.

I loved having Shikila follow Straker around!  There’s just something about the image it brings up that makes me smile.  Because of course he would be patient with her and kind.  Then he sees Anne talking to the AD.  About Hudson.  To me, the most annoying part of writing any story is coming up with names for all the incidental characters.  When they’re secondary characters and important to the storyline (like Shikila and Yasif) then their names are fun to research and decide upon.  But when they only figure in one scene and are never heard of again, I find it a pain to have to spend time giving them a name.  So sometimes I have a bit of fun with it, as I did in this story.  All the incidental characters in this story use names from the team of soldiers sent to debug the settled planet in Aliens.  It’s one of my favorite movies with a host of interesting characters in it, so I ‘borrowed’ them for my tale.

I really don’t photograph well, and I am extremely self-conscious when asked to perform for an audience (which is why I don’t do community theater.)  So these traits of Anne’s are accurate.  But I would sacrifice myself to protect those I care about, so that part is also true.  I don’t know how clearly the scene came across to the reader, but I hope no one was too surprised when Straker began to suspect something was odd about the villagers.

Chapter 6: And now we learn more about the local shaman and his family as Anne tells him that she thinks she screwed up.  I really love her soul-searching here, because it echoes what any woman in love wonders: is she wrong to trust her heart?  And when you have people depending on you for their very survival, the question can really eat you up.  Yasif gives her a very wise answer, even though it’s not one I believe 100% of the time.

Spunkmeyer’s name was my favorite from the Aliens movie, even though you don’t ever see much of him.  It’s just such a cool name that it stuck with me, so of course I had to give him a scene.  And Hicks was played by the charming Michael Biehn, so he gets to shine here too as he captures Leona spying on them.

And now that Anne looks at the situation objectively, she easily sees that nothing about the film crew is as it seems.  And I think any sharp-eyed person would be able to notice those small details that would betray the fact that this is a military squad, not just a film crew.  They would be there; things like the instinctive deference to the commander, the precision in teamwork, the unspoken adherence to the chain of command, etc.  So she risks everything in a face-to-face talk with Straker – who has put together his own pieces of the puzzle and gotten a fairly clear picture.  She challenges his military point of view, and he starts to answer her – but Paul interrupts, so we never find out what he would have said. 

We find out the truth about Leona and Yasif’s family: they’re aliens.  Not the baddies Earth is fighting, but fugitives from a planet that’s been overtaken by hostiles.  And Straker refuses to judge them harshly, no doubt realizing that Earth might someday be in that position too.

Epilogue: No matter what story, saga, or series I’m working on for UFO, I always have the aliens remain the same race.  I hope it doesn’t confuse my readers, but I do it to keep them clear in my own mind.  No matter what else changes in the UFO universe I’m writing about, the bad guys are always Thoelians.  And Leona gives Straker a piece of news that might help SHADO fight their enemy – the Thoelians have managed to get themselves on everyone else’s hit list in the quadrant.  So we end the tale with hope for tomorrow . . . and a move on the commander’s part toward the woman who’s been driving him mad for days.  I have to say, that scene was sooo thrilling to write! *sigh*

I have a sequel in mind.  I even have the title for it.  Someday soon I hope to get the chance to tell it.  Stay tuned!

I loved this story Denise, it is good to read your thoughts about it. It sounds like you had just as much fun with this as I did with Matters of the Heart.

I'm glad I was able to change your perception of Ginny, she is truly an underrated character and you have made her really shine in several of your stories. I'm glad that you are thinking of a follow on.

My ash blonde muse is still chasing some blonde guy around in Tahiti, but I did receive a telegram from her telling me how to fix the "Writer's Block" with The Omega Conundrum.

Again, Denise, two thumbs, way up!