If the apocalypse comes, beep me.

Whedon and Buffy wound up forever changing how I wrote my stories and my characters. I'd started writing when I was five, way back in 1986, and really the only female heroes I liked came from She-Ra and shows of that ilk - women with unusual and incredible abilities thrust into extraordinary situations. Every single story I wrote from 1986 to 1997 featured superpowered characters -- but it wasn't until the Buffy series happened that I started seeing my characters in a new light. Self-possessed, self-aware, self-sacrificing, deeply flawed, extremely human. No more cartoon superwomen, but everyday women with true human power beyond psionics and magic. As Anya told Buffy in season seven, being chosen didn't make them better, it just made them lucky.

But beyond all that, Buffy and Willow changed me as a person. As a disabled girl trying to fit into a society that didn't know what to do with me. My parents did everything they could to make me feel loved, desired, intellectual, respected, understood. But there was still that part of me that wanted... not to be normal, not to be like everybody else, but to be something more, something beyond. My body didn't work too well, so my fantasy was to have a mind that did everything. Telekinesis, for example, that was a big wish. When Willow began experimenting with telekinesis early on in the show, I was so thrilled. Willow became my favorite character on television, because I identified with her so well. Shy, mousy, quiet, unnoticed, withdrawn, reserved. Blazingly smart, intellectual, bookish, soaking up knowledge everywhere, silently observing how everything happened. I began to infuse those traits into my fictional characters, female and male. Later, when I realized I was bisexual, I turned to Willow and Tara to understand what that meant for me. Right now, one of my main female characters is bisexual and her current lover is male. In my next couple of books, I'll have bisexual women and men in same-sex relationships. And I will always look at Willow and Tara for inspiration.

I often used to say that my husband, when we were dating, was a male version of Buffy and Willow combined.