Thoughts on Fan Fiction and My Change of Heart and More Nonsense
This week has been a good week for me.
Finished a brand new short story, worked on a second one, and found (much to my relief) my two zombie novels. I searched high and low for them and finally discovered where they were on my flash drives.
I would have been quite angry if both had been lost due to error or stupidity… then again I have always been careful to make multiple backups of anything I write, just in case one of the backups ends up becoming misplaced or lost somewhere.
The work on the compilation book continues as well, with quite a few new rules and a pair of new weapon systems added to it.
As usual on Monday two new mutants were posted. Nothing really special, but who knows – maybe my readers will disagree with my assessment! Then again if they are fans of H.P. Lovecraft, they might love them. I wrote up the stats for Deep Ones and Albino Penguins. I know the latter does not seem like something Mr. Lovecraft would have written about, but he did.
Two more will go up tomorrow morning.
I blame Fallout 4 for not having written up as many conversions as I would have liked this week. I did manage to write up three – one based on the creature in the movie I watched with my lady last night. This creature is called ‘Thale’ from the movie Thale. A bit confusing and I really can’t recommend it, but hey, at least I got a conversion out of it!
The other is the Carnivorous vine from ‘The Ruins’. I thought I had written this up long ago, but I never did. It’s about time I got around to doing the conversion. I’ll try to get a couple more written up this week, more that were suggested by my readers.
The final conversion is one that is close to my heart... since I have to deal with people I call Sheeple all the time. It is from the movie called 'Black Sheep' and this conversion is kind of... no lets be honest, VERY disturbing. Heheh....
There is one creature that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I ended up converting, and yet I can’t find it anywhere. The Mansquito from the movie of the same name. Piss me off, I have no idea what happened to it. Well, got to go back to the drawing board and rewrite it now and get it posted.
Since Michael Varhola is still off on his trip, there were no new releases this week, although we did have a new podcast, all about the Cthulhu game Delta Green.
Oh yeah, I mentioned finishing Buck Who? last week. Chapter 46, the second to last chapter, went up as usual on Friday. Chapter 47 will go up this coming Friday and then the Epilogue on the 18th.
It’s funny, I posted the word count on Jonathan Maberry’s Facebook page, and he thought, at least that was the impression I got, that it might have been a typo when I posted it was 395,188 words. I sent him the link to the posted chapters so that he would see I was not mistaken.
Of course he won’t have the time to read it, considering how busy a man he is, which is fine, but at least I proved that I could do it!
The edit and re-write of my two zombie novels will begin soon. I just want to finish that half complete short story I was working on and forgot about.
Oh and all these extra stories I have been writing? I’ll be posting them online eventually!
Since I’m discussing my writing, as it turns out I’ve had a bit of a chance of heart. I started my career as a writer many years ago, dabbling in fan fiction. I wrote a lot of fan fiction based on Deathlands and Outlanders. I even wrote a 40K story based on Aliens.
I eventually grew out of writing fan fiction, long ago having decided I would much rather create my own characters and shape their destiny by my mind and my craft. Sure, it was kind of nice to work in another’s sandbox and play with their toys, but it was not fulfilling to me.
I had vowed I would never write fan fiction again.
As it turns out over the past year I have written three! The first was a gift to my Nephew, set in the Mass Effect universe. This will not be posted online as it was a personalized gift to him. The second was a challenge to myself, as well as a gift. My best friend and I had our photo taken together at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo in April. He was dressed as a middle management Darth Vader and I was wearing my colonial marine armor.
So I write a cross-over fan fiction for Star Wars and Aliens. The challenge was to write it so that it would be as funny as possible, and I fully believe that I succeeded. It was funny! At least to several people who read it. I joined a writers group back in May and let them critique it.
Holy hell… both critiques did not get the fact it was supposed to be a satire and funny. Seriously, both!
I haven’t been back since, although that’s due to my commitment to training the Kung Fu classes every Monday and Thursday.
And the last fan fiction I wrote was for Jonathan Maberry, although odds are he’ll never read it, this one called Second Encounter.
Anyhow, I’ll get to the point of this topic. I have decided that occasionally I will write a fan fiction, but it certainly won’t be what I write all the time. I have one more Fan Fiction I am going to write in the near future. This is a Star Wars fan fiction about a Tie Interceptor pilot. Short, sweet and from the empire’s point of view.
I also might consider contributing to a project that has yet to be announced, but I have a little insider info about, and it’ll be writing shorter novels for a series. So I’ll be writing fan fiction, but I’ll get paid to do it.
When it comes to books, I finished two this week. Kevin J. Anderson’s The Dark Between the Stars, and The Arisen Omnibus by Glynn James. The Dark Between the Stars is the return to the universe created in Mr. Anderson’s Saga of the Seven suns, and deals with mainly the children of the main characters who survived that epic series. It was returning to an old friend, a series that I really enjoyed and felt supremely comfortable with. I already have the second book in the new series and I will read it in a few months.
The Arisen series is a zombie series, which is pretty good, with tons of military action, although I did find the author used a few terms incorrectly – such as strong as obsidian. Well… it’s sharp, but damned brittle! Still, it wasn’t a bad book, believe me.
And that’s it. This blog is complete and about the same length as it always is. Oh and please like my Facebook Author page, and follow me on Twitter.
So, until next Sunday, Merry Christmas folks!
