The Story of
Whoa Nellie
Why the penname Whoa Nellie? To understand the answer to this question you have to go back to when we first started writing fan fiction.
My co-author and I had just graduated from a major university. We were psychology majors, who both worked in a research laboratory. We had also spent the last few years in a good number of literature courses reading works by the likes of Chaucer, Dickens, Flaubert, Hemingway and of course a good deal of Billy Shakespeare. We wanted some summer reading that was a little lighter. My co-author picked up a large box of historical romance novels, a.k.a. 'Bodice-Rippers,' for a dime at a garage sale. After reading half of them, we decided we could do it better. Since the both of us, as well as most of our friends, were Star Trek fans, we also decided that the world had to have a Star Trek bodice-ripper. One afternoon on the way home from an antique sale, I sketched out a story idea to her and she added some ideas to it. When we arrived at my home, she turned on my computer, sat me down and said, "Now, write it!" Lesson number one: Never leave two women with that much education alone with good chocolate and a computer.
Whoa Nellie is a writing team, a creative half [myself] and a co-author who acts as an editor. My co-author is like my own personal BASF company, she takes my ideas and makes them better! I can't tell you how many times I've reread a scene she has edited and crowed - "That's it! That's what I meant!" She makes sure I keep in character and that I follow the laws of common sense (not to mention the laws of physics)- meaning all humans have only two hands - especially in sex scenes - all positions are at least theoretically possible if at least one of them is double-jointed, and that Picard doesn't push Vash up against a wall in the throes of passion when they are plainly standing in the middle of a room. (Yes, I actually did that in the first draft of "Double Entendre.") She sees to it that I spell things correctly and that don't screw up my homonyms - especially your and you're. Damn homonyms, I really hate those pesky Devils! As we began writing our first work, 'Double Entendre,' when either of us went too far (usually me) the other one would call out "Whoa Nellie!" while hitting the delete key. This practice stuck. When we decide to post our stories to the internet 'Whoa Nellie' was a natural choice for us as a pen-name.
We started writing TNG fanfic back in the summer of 1995, several years before we had internet access. We had no idea fanfic online even existed. When we started writing, we relied strictly on TNG series canon to help us cast our leading lady. In TNG canon, Vash, not Beverly Crusher, was Picard's main love interest. The character of Vash was designed specifically to be the perfect woman for Picard after Patrick Stewart's request for more "sex and shooting." Like Picard, Vash is an explorer with an expertise in archaeology. She is an adventurer, a female Indiana Jones. In the episodes where she appears, this beautiful brunette, with her beguiling smile and blue eyes, manages to charm not only the good captain of the Enterprise but the omnipotent Q as well. We're constantly admiring writer Ira Steven Behr who created her for the series. Vash is Bacall to Picard's Bogart. Watch Bogart and Bacall in the classic movie "To Have and Have Not" and then watch "Captain's Holiday." You'll see what we mean. In December of 1998, Patrick Stewart was quoted in the Calgary Sun as saying "I personally like to think Picard and Vash had a very active sex life. I can't believe Picard just read Shakespeare up there in his room all those years." What the captain wants the captain gets. ;-D
The Crusher/ Chakotay pairing was the brainchild of my brilliant co-author. While she was surfing through the Startrek.com website for information to use in one of our Voyager 'Twist of Fate' stories, she noticed that they'd changed the dates of Chakotay's attendance at Starfleet Academy to accommodate a boo-boo that they'd made in Voyager. The change put Chakotay at the Academy at the same time that Beverly was in medical school at Starfleet. In the TNG episode The Price, Beverly references a toe-curling relationship that only lasted a week and was over when she met Jack. We decided that Chakotay, being so intense and sexy, was the perfect man for the job. We wrote a PWP (plot, what plot?) entitled 'Playing Doctor' that told the story of their one week affair during their Academy Days. Later, inspired by feedback and reader requests for more of that pairing, we put them back together for a reunion in the story 'Incendiary' and then subsequently brought Chakotay into our 'Reasons of the Heart' TNG storylines.