The Mainstreaming of Fanfic?

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at fanfic writers who have made the leap to the mainstream.

Fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about characters from their
favorite books, movies and television shows, was once mainly a fringe
pursuit. Now, it’s changing the world of fiction, as Internet exposure
helps unknown authors find mainstream success. Some Web sites are
attracting unprecedented numbers of readers and, in some cases, leading
to book deals…

There’s a librarian in Rathdrum, Idaho, who spent 10 years posting her
writings about a character from Jane Austen’s "Pride and Prejudice"
online; Simon & Schuster paid her a $150,000 advance to publish the
works as a three-novel trilogy. In Brooklyn, N.Y., a free-lance copy
editor has become one of the Web’s best-known "Lord of the Rings" and
"Harry Potter" fan-fiction writers, and has landed a three-book
publishing deal for a young-adult fantasy series.

Fanficcers are changing the world of fiction? This I had to read. Unfortunately, the reporter relies more on hyperbole than fact. To support his pronouncement, he chronicles two writers in specific, a Potter-ficcer who has sold a book to "Frank Fradella, an author running his own small independent
book-publishing company, New Babel Books" and a guy who landed a literary agent thanks to his submissions to an officially-sanction "L Word" fanfic contest. That’s, um, hardly rocking the foundations of publishing and broadcast media. (New Babel Books has published six books to date — four of them written by the publisher himself).

More interesting to me was the reporter’s discussion of FanLib, a company that’s trying to mainstream fanfic for promotional use. They are the one who staged THE L WORD competition and they have a new one coming with Harper Collins.

FanLib recently launched a romance-writing contest
with HarperCollins’s Avon imprint. "We’re looking for ways to reach the
real core readers," says Liate Stehlik, Avon’s senior vice president
and publisher. To avoid copyright problems, they had writers create
chapters of a novel from scratch, instead of basing them on one
particular book.

What I don’t get about this contest is that readers are being asked to write original work, not something based on someone else’s character. So what’s the fanfic connection? From what I can tell, there isn’t any. And in the L WORD contest, writers were given scenarios by a writer/producer on the show…and the winner would be writing with someone on the show… thus site-stepping the fanfic issue altogether. It seems to me that FanLib is only interested in  exploiting fanficcers  under the pretense of supporting fanfic…which, in fact, they aren’t actually doing at all.

Your thoughts?

(Thanks to Kete for the heads-up on the WSJ article!)

I am going to be RICH!

I got this email today:

Dear Goldberg

My name is Charles Kobenan a Banker and
accountant with BIAO BANK Abidjan.I am the personal accounts manager to
Engr Lake Goldberg a National of your country, who used to work with an
oil servicing company here in Cote Ivoire.

My client, his wife,
and their three children were involved in the ill fated Kenya Airways
crash in the coasts of Abidjan in January 2000 in which all passengers
on board died. Since then I have made several inquiries to your embassy
to locate any of my clients extended relatives but thas been
unsuccessful.After several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to trace
his last name over the internet,to see if I could locate any member of
his family hence I contacted you.

Of particular interest is
this huge deposit with our bank here in,where the deceased has an
account valued at about ($16 million US dollars).They have issued me a
notice to pro vide the next of kin or the bank will declare the account
unservisable and thereby send the funds to the bank treasury.Since I
have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for over last 6years
now, I will seek your consent to present you as the next of kin of the
deceased since you have the same last names, so that the proceeds of
this account valued at ($16million US dollars) can be paid to you and
then you and I can share the money.

All
I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this deal
through.I guarantee that this will be executed under all legitimate
arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. In your
reply mail, I want you to give me your full names, address, date of
birth, telephone and fax numbers.If you can handle this with me, reach
me now for more details.

Thanking you for your anticipated cooperation.
Sincerely,

This sounds like a terrific idea idea to me.  I am going to send him whatever he wants, especially my checking account and social security numbers if he asks for them, because this legitimate opportunity to get rich is just too good to pass up. This is my lucky day!

The Writing Chromosome

My brother Tod, while hyping our appearance this coming Sunday at the West Hollywood Book Festival, observes:

Other than Evel and Robbie Knievel, I have to believe the family with
the greatest genetic disposition toward one career must be mine.
Between just the four Goldberg siblings alone, we have something like
30 books. Now, granted, Lee has written about 25 of them, but he is
significantly older.

He’s only scratching the surface. My mother Jan Curran was a feature writer for the Palm Springs Desert Sun (among other newspapers), my father Alan Goldberg was a TV anchorman on KPIX   (which, back in the day, actually involved some newswriting), my Uncle Burl Barer is writes true crime books (as well as the Edgar Award winning ‘The Saint: A Complete History"), my cousin Sam Barer is an auto industry columnist, and my great-cousin (I’m not sure that’s what he is…what would the son of my grandmother’s brother-in-law be??) David Zarkin was a newspaper reporter. I know I’m leaving some writerly family members out (I think that my grandmother’s brother may have written for Look magazine and know I have a distant cousin who writes for the New York Times).  And most of them…at least the ones who are still living…have blogs, many of which you can find listed on the column to the left.

So, yeah, writing is definitely in our blood. Then again, so are the furniture, pelt, and scrap metal businesses…

East of Bizarro

My brother Tod just returned from speaking at  the East of Eden writers conference in Salinas, California where he had some hilarious encounters with aspiring writers. He lists a few of them on his blog. Here’s a sampling:

3. Number of writers who attempted to present me with velobound manuscripts: 9

4. Number of writers who asked me to write their ideas: 4

5. A conversation with a very nice woman who wanted some advice on her short story:

Woman: I think my short story would make a great musical.

Me: Uh, okay.

Woman: I’ve already written all the lyrics and am adapting it for a movie musical.

Me: What was the last musical you saw?

Woman: Oh, I can’t remember the last time I saw a great musical. They don’t make great musicals anymore.

Me: Then why do you think a movie studio would want to make a musical out of your short story?

Woman: It’s a universal story, I write wonderful songs, it would be
just a great musical. My screenwriting teacher at the junior college
thinks so, too.

Me: What kind of movies does your screenwriting teacher make?

Woman: Documentaries and technical films for businesses.

I was a keynote speaker at the same conference a few years ago, shortly after one of the surgeries on my arm. Just before I went on stage, I spilled an entire slice of chocolate cake in my lap. I tried to wash it off and only made myself look like someone with both a severe bladder control problem and irritable bowels. Nothing earns you respect and admiration when you’re standing in front of hundreds of people like a pair of soiled pants.

Dangerous if Combined

This Sunday, in a cosmic convergence of such magnitude that it could
create a rip in the space-time continuum right in the center of West
Hollywood, my brother Tod, my sisters Karen Dinino, Linda
Woods
and I will be on stage at the West Hollywood Book
Festival.

All four of us are published authors and, as fate would have it, we all
have new books out. We’ll be offering advice about writing, publishing,
and creating searingly hot erotic fiction (which none of us do, but it
seems livelier than talking about what we do write, which are literary
short stories, art books, and novels with 80-year-old TV actors on the
cover).

Hanging with the Sistahs

Today, I headed out to the South Pasadena Public Library for the monthly meeting of Sisters-in-Crime, where I read from MR. MONK GOES TO HAWAII and was "in conversation" with author Denise Hamilton. We talked a lot about our different approaches to writing, plotting and constructing scenes. We also discussed how to write dialogue that reveals character, the merits of "standalones" vs "series," and how we go about rewriting work. I enjoyed myself, met a lot of friendly people, and only saw three women in the audience fighting sleep, so I consider it a success.

In the Driver’s Seat

Yet another writer in my family is blogging. Sam Barer, auto-writer extraordinaire,  launched FOUR WHEEL DRIFT with some new slogans for today’s automakers. Here’s a sampling from the top of the list:

Acura – Buy an Acura, your local car thief will thank you.

Aston Martin – See yourself like James Bond, even if women don’t

Audi –  Because all the people you hate drive BMWs

Bentley –  Phat cars for people with fat wallets

BMW – Even Chris Bangle and I-Drive can’t stop our cars from selling

Buick – Buy a Buick, so we don’t end up like Oldsmobile

Cadillac – Really, you don’t have to be black or Jewish to own one!

Chevrolet – The best vehicles that cost-cutting can create.

But my personal favorite comes towards the end:

Volvo – Safety: you can’t get killed in a car that’s always being serviced at the dealership

 

Alive Again

It’s amazing what ten hours of sleep will do for you. I don’t feel like one of the living dead any more, though I did chew off my daughter’s left arm this morning for breakfast.  Afterwards, I caught up with the season finale of DEADWOOD (or, perhaps, the series finale). Damn, what a great show this is. I still can’t figure out, though, what David Milch had in mind for that theatre troop storyline…seems like a complete waste to me. I would have preferred to spend more time this season with the DEADWOOD regulars, like the doctor and Tolliver, than the troop. Gerald McRaney was a revelation as Hearst…it will be interesting to see if he brings any of that newfound gravitas to his work on the new CBS series JERICHO.

I’ve started catching up on my email and snail-mail and discovered that it’s been officially announced by the Mystery Writers of American that I am going to be the chair of the Edgar Awards for 2008.  It basically means that I have to start begging, extorting and blackmailing writers I know to serve as judges. Consider this fair warning, my author-friends…

I’ve also taken a few moments to skim the fanfic debates that raged on my back-blog here while I was away and have, much to my delight and surprise, found far more comments of substance than vitriol (on both sides of the debate).

I have a ton of work to do today…but I think I’m going to follow my brother Tod’s advice and take a day off instead to recharge my completely depleted physical and creative batteries. Deadlines are mounting, but a man needs his rest.

Home on the Range

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I’ve just returned from another whirlwind trip to Cologne, Munich, and Berlin, where I met with the network honchos at ProSieben, RTL and Sat 1 with my good friends at Action Concept, the production company behind the long-running, hit German series ALARM FOR COBRA 11 (among others). I had a great time, though I am exhausted and suffering from a major case of jet lag that started over a week ago and hasn’t let up. My Tivo is bulging with shows I missed while I was away (including the DEADWOOD finale) but I am too tired to sit in front of a TV. In fact, I am fighting sleep as I type these very words….

Fistful of Laughs

I absolutely love my brother Tod’s "Letters to Parade" feature on his blog. I never miss it … even now, while I’m toiling in Berlin (he really has to gather them all together  into a book).  Today’s edition was so funny, I almost wet myself:

Exhibit B: Dan Travers of Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Travers,
you insipid fucktard, I ask you:  When was the last time you saw a bunch
of 65 year olds performing A Chorus Line?

When A Chorus Line returns to Broadway next month, will it feature any members of the original 1975 cast?

Yes,
Dan, they are all returning. Even though they are collectively 1239
years old, the entire original cast is planning on stuffing their
sagging appendages into the leotards once again to reprise their roles
from THIRTY ONE FUCKING YEARS AGO. What is wrong with you, Dan? I mean,
really? Where’s the disconnect between reality and whatever it is
you’re living in? Is there anything you did especially well in 1975
that you’d want people to see you doing today? Even the writer of A
Chorus Line, James Kirkwood, is dead. Do you want him to reprise his
role, too?

And that’s just a sample of the fun and frolic awaiting you at Tod’s blog today.