Non Canon couple review

Along with the interviews, they did a review of Coffee and Cigarettes. This is it.

Coffee and Cigarettes by TwilightsGrace23

In the lonely town of Capeside, the heartbroken come to rebuild their lives and for some….their hearts. Leah finds Capeside after a horrible split from her boyfriend, Sam. Just as she is getting settled and starting to accept that all men suck, the moving truck arrives at the house next door, complete with giant dog and hot man.
This AH fic is a work in progress but updates regularly and hooks you from the beginning. While most people don’t think of Leah/Paul as a good pairing…I can tell you right now that it is. I wasn’t sure either, but knowing TwilightGrace23′s other work, I had to give it a try. I am glad I did and you will be too. Go on…click the link…I dare you to try a new pairing!

Author Interview with Sparking Citrus

Last month Rosalynn, who runs Sparkling Citrus asked me if I'd like to do an author interview and a character interview. She also did a rec of Coffee and Cigarettes. I said sure, why not. Yeah, it's shameless self promotion, but whatever, you have to put yourself out there sometimes.

So, anyways, that being said, this is the interview.


1. I saw in the A/N of chapter 1 that this started as a one shot as original fiction? Why did you decide to continue it?
It did start as an original story, and with each chapter has continued to be an original story. I post two versions of it. One with my original characters and one with Paul and Leah. I decided to continue because I felt like there was more there, a story that needed to be explored and told. On the original side, there was a lot of feedback and people wanted to know what happened next, so I kept going.

2. Do you have any desired to be published?

I do want to be published, but I don’t feel like the stories I have to tell are very good, or original. I’m a big scaredy cat and will probably never even attempt it.

3. How did you find Twilight?

Back when Myspace was cool, they had lists of the top 100 hottest books at the moment. Twilight was one of them. I saw the cover and read the short description they had, and I wanted to read it. Little did I know how irrevocably it would change my life.

4. How did you get into Fanfiction?

It started with the ever popular fic by Psymom, Stranger Than Fiction. Everybody was talking about it; raving about it. I jumped aboard the band wagon and read along. After I finished reading it, I read a few more and thought, Hey, I can do that. At the time, I was going through some stuff and feeling downright depressed about my own writing. I figured, I’d write one story and see how it turned out. I never expected anyone to read it, but they did. And as they say, it was all downhill from there. Lol.

5. What made you decide to be on the pro-wolf side of the fandom?

When I started writing, it felt like the fandom was flooded with Edward and Bella or Jasper and Bella stories. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t really something I wanted to read. I wanted to read about Jake and Bella. When I decided what to write, I wrote what I wanted to read, what I wished more people (at the time) wrote.

6.  What is your favorite canon fic?

It’s a tie between Wide Awake and Master of the Universe.

7.  What is your favorite non-canon fic?

Second Chances by AugustBlack.

8. Is Capeside a real town or molded after a real town?

Capeside is a fictional town modeled after the very real town of Seaside, Oregon. Some real places of Seaside are in Coffee and Cigarettes.

9. What made you decide to have be the town for the heartbroken?

It seems like whenever you have a broken heart, everyone around you is happy and all too ready to tell you that everything will be okay, that it will work out, that one day you’ll be happy again. No one wants to hear that when they’re suffering. They want someone to sympathize, or even empathize with what they’re going through, to tell them, “You know, that really freaking sucks. Want me to kick the bastard in the nuts for you next time I see him?” After my ex and I split, my sister didn’t tell me it would be okay, that I would be fine. She offered to drag his stuff into the street, set it on fire, then mail it to him with a note that said, “Happy anniversary, shit head.” That made me feel so much better than hearing that I would be fine. In a way, a town for the heartbroken was what Leah needed because it brought her to Paul.

10. How would you deal with a broken heart?

Get really, really drunk, watch sappy chick flicks and cry until I was numb. It sounds pathetic, but it’s what I did, last time I had my heart broken. Then I tossed out everything that reminded me of him and left town. Then one day I found that it didn’t hurt so bad, and eventually it didn’t hurt at all.

11 Do you have plans for more fics?

I always have plans for more fics. Whether they work out or not is a different story. But I do have a few ideas rolling around in my noggin.

12 Of all your fics, which is your favorite?

Full Circle. Writing that fic took soo much out of me, emotionally, but it was worth it. Taking the characters from teenagers in Disenchanted and throwing them into the situations they went through was challenging, but so worth it.

13. If you could give one piece of advice to new authors, what would it be?

Write what you know and be yourself. Don’t give in to what other people want. There are going to be people out there who don’t like what you are doing and they’re going to tell you. Take it with a grain of salt and keep on trucking. For every one person who wants to break you down, there will be ten more willing to build you back up. Don’t forget that this is your story. You imagined it, you own it. Don’t be afraid of that.

I'm so glad I didn't give this up...

Around this time last year I was working on a story called Between You and I. It was the tale of a girl with a drug addiction and her best friend who'd been in love with her all his life. Well I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it, but it was a mess...just page after page of writing, no chapters, no definition..just garbage.

So I decided to stop the story. I couldn't fix it - well I could have but at the time I didn't think I could. So I stopped writing it, put it in my folder with all the other failed attempts and forgot about it. I decided that I would no longer writer, that I would just stop being who I was. I am a writer, plain and simple. It's what I do when I'm bored or stressed, upset or happy. Writing is my therapy and I just gave it up.

Then I found out about this stuff called fan fiction. You write stories based off of other writer's characters. I have an unnatural obsession with the Twilight Saga so I figured I would give fan fiction a shot. If no one read the story I wrote then I would quit writing for real. I would put down the pen and find a new hobby, one that I was better at.

My first fan fiction story was a story titled OneohEightpointNine and it was based off of the characters Jacob Black and Bella Swan from the Twilight books. It was, if I'm being honest, lame. But people read it. Not a lot, but enough to give me the kick in the ego I so desperately needed.

I finished the story, wondering, "What now?" Should I write another one, maybe something more original, more me, (basically meaning, writing my own story, just using the characters names.) I debated over it, considered it, but thought about all my previous failed attempts. My first story was more like a short story. It only had 30,000 words, but it was the first thing I'd ever started and finished that had more than one chapter.

Well, I was listening to the radio a few afternoons later and they played Your Song by Elton John. Lucky for me I have paper stashed around the house. I sat down and quickly started writing, thinking, "oh here we go again, another story I'll never finish."

Boy was I wrong. 108.9 was like the gateway drug. Ideas started coming to me from all over. I would jot them down, but I kept going with the story I was writing. I titled it Pictures of You. It's the story of a model who goes to sit for a painter with a past he's not proud of. There's cheating and infidelity and that sounds bad but its really not. Well, not really. The story was nominated for two awards, something called a Sparkle Award and something called a Moonlight award. It won third place in the Sparkle Awards and heaven only knows what with the Moonlight awards because the site never posted the winners. (mental note to self, stalk the site runner...lol..jk).

I finished Pictures of You then started and completed two more stories. Now currently on my fourth story I wonder why I ever wanted to give this up. I've written three novels (I call them that because on my computer they have original character names, and places that have nothing to do with the twilight novels.) and am eight chapters away from finishing the fourth.

Then this morning I get an email from one of my readers who says she's nominated my fourth story and me for an award. To me, that makes writing worth it. To know that I have touched these lives with my words...it's...insane...I mean, most days I look at it and I can't believe it. Two nods for one story, another nod for Full Circle, now a nod for Unattached and a nod for best author of the year...I mean I know it's just fan fiction and no one outside of that community really cares about it...but its a huge community and its an honor to be nominated regardless...

and to think I almost gave it all up..I almost stopped doing what I love because I didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything.

Even if I was never nominated I wouldn't stop now. I have met some really great people, made some really great friends and have this sense of accomplishment that I have written this and people have liked it, some have loved it. I have made people cry with my words, they have cried along with me when a character becomes ill and dies, or when a character reveals a traumatic past. These people have touched my life in ways they probably won't ever understand because in a way they saved me.