One Night’s Compromise is now available on the Kirk/Spock Fanfiction Archive.

Here’s the premise: Spock has determined that the only way he can save his and Kirk’s friendship is to ask for a transfer. This he does, and of course, Kirk objects, and decides that he and Spock should go out to dinner to discuss what it’s going to take to keep Spock on the Enterprise. What it eventually takes is a surprise to them both. Word count: 12,405

That’s the story. But the story behind the story…yeah, there’s always another story.

This was the first fanfiction I had ever written, except that’s not strictly true. let’s just say this is the first fanfiction I wrote that got published by Robin Hood in her excellent First Time series in December 1992. I was a little nervous about finally writing something I had heretofore only read. My POV’s are all over the place, switching every other paragraph, practically, my use of adverbs is embarassing, and at the time, I still didn’t understand the difference between “that” and “which.” But except for correcting the “that’s” and the “which’s,” (and a few comma errors here and there) I left the story pretty much as is.

In Jr. High I had written a Mary-Sueish story where my best friend Janet and I won a contest to go aboard the Enterprise for the weekend. The character-that-was-me had a crush on Checkov (so I wrote in a “cute meet”), and the character-that-was-Janet had a crush on Scotty (so I wrote in another “cute meet”), and basically the story goes on and on about nothing. Still it’s sweetly innocent; if I ever find it, I might post it. What’s interesting about this story is the diagram I drew for the huge banquet that was given in our honor. I put my character next to Chekov, I put Janet’s character next to Scotty, and I put Kirk and Spock RIGHT by each other at the far end of the table. As if any conversation going on at that point certainly didn’t need to involve them because they had each other. Guess I’d figured out their relationship even way back when.

The other first story I wrote was with some friends right around the same time. It was called Castaways of Andretta, and involved Kirk and Spock crash landing on some planet while testing a new shuttle design. What ensued was pages and pages of survival stuff, a little romance, and lots of angst. I sent the story to one editor, and she lost it twice. I sent the story to Robin, and she was very kind about the parts I had written (which made me feel more comfortable about writing), but said there was too much survival and not enough romance, and told me to try again. Which I did, with One Night’s Compromise.

The funniest part about Castaways was the trap that Spock built (a humane one, of course) so that they could get something else to eat besides grubs and mushrooms. (Kirk is loosing his mind over not having any meat to eat.) The trap consists of sounds from Klingon jazz, which, while it won’t kill you when you listen to it, will, apparently stun you pretty bad. Don’t know which of us wrote that bit, but it always cracked me up, as did the comment about running jokes that Kirk makes. To which Spock asks, in his confusion, how on earth something without form can move about like that? Har, har, har. All in good fun!