Before we move on to our guest today, I'd like to take a moment to send my heartfelt prayers and thoughts out to a blogging friend, Natalie Aguirre, and her family. Natalie lost her husband, Rudy, this past weekend. There are no words of comfort I can give to take away the pain of such a loss. Know that if there were, I'd gladly offer them. May peace and love hold you close, Natalie. ~Sia~
Our guest today is Saralee Etter. Although she's a published romance author, her not-so-secret crush is on Thorin Oakenshield, a dwarf in the Hobbit books (actually, it's on Richard Armitage!) She's also a fanfiction author.
Some of the biggest attractions of the Hobbit are the “hot
dwarves.” These fellows aren’t the squat, hairy, cantankerous little miners of
Snow White. They’re badass warriors with rough charm to spare. There are three main objects of fan
adoration: the majestic leader of the company, Thorin Oakenshield, played by
British actor Richard Armitage, and his two nephews, Fili and Kili, played by
Dean O’Gorman and Aidan Turner respectively.
One of the ways fans have shown their appreciation is by
writing fanfiction – stories that take these characters and send them on new
adventures, exploring who they are and what could have been.
If you’ve ever finished a story and wished it hadn’t ended,
fanfiction is the answer to your wish. People who write fanfiction are your
fellow yearners, those who wanted to know what happened next, or what might
have been. They are writers with fire in their bellies and an unquenchable
desire to share their story with the world, and they do it for no other reason
than that they are in love with a story.
This means that fanfiction works, in my opinion, tend to
have an enthusiasm and vitality that’s sometimes lacking in works created by
professional writers. Fanfic writers may not always have the technical
expertise but they’ve got excitement to spare.
Fanfiction has been around longer than you might
think, according to this post from Tumblr, written by someone who identifies
themselves as a professor of literature:
Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else. Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.” He was the original Gary Stu). ….
Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic. Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school. And Spenser! Don’t even get me started on Spenser.
(Note: RPF stands for “Real People Fiction,” which is just
what it says on the tin. Tom Clancy added a bit of RPF to his novel Patriot Games when he had Jack Ryan give
marital advice to the Prince of Wales.)
Now, two years after the first installment of the
trilogy came out, The Hobbit has inspired more than 10,000 works of fanfiction
on An Archive of Our Own (AO3) and 6,400 fanfiction works on Fanfiction.net (ff.net).
And impressive as the numbers of Hobbit-related stories is, there
are other fandoms with more: The Harry Potter series has inspired 678,000
stories and the Twilight saga has spawned 216,000 fanfiction works on ff.net. The
TV show Supernatural has given rise to 66,000 fanfics on AO3.
Those are some of the big fandoms, but there are fan-written
stories that celebrate and explore a wide variety of works, from Arthurian
legends to Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes to video games, anime and
manga, Pride and Prejudice, A Song of Ice and Fire, Gone With The Wind, and
many more. Browsing the fandoms on both sites can provide you with an idea of
what is out there for your reading pleasure.
If you’re looking for new stories to read, why not explore
the world of fanfiction? You might find some delightful new tales that feature
your favorite characters!
Let's chat: Have you ever read fanfiction? Written it? What book or movie might inspire you to read or write fanfiction?
Miranda Luce expected to make her debut at Almack’s, but
when her father’s death leaves her penniless, she becomes an actress. But when
her brother-in-law is wrongly arrested, it’s up to Miranda to help him. Lord Justin Devereux is desperate
for a fiancée in order to take control of his inheritance. Hiring an actress as
a faux fiancée seems like a good
plan. But neither Miranda nor Justin expected their pretend engagement to lead
to true love…Saralee Etter loves to read and always knew writing was the only career for her. Her lighthearted, fun, Regency romances are the perfect way for her to combine her love of history, romance, and adventure! She also writes fanfiction.
Dan Brown: Love him or hate him, he sells millions of action thrillers and never fails to engender a strong reaction. Put me in the "fan" camp.
David Sedaris: Non-fiction, some of the best humor I've ever read. Holidays On Ice is a favorite.
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: A wizard for the grown ups. The audio versions are great!
Damon Runyon: The book Guys and Dolls is nothing like the movie, but the toe-tapping, syncopated rhythm of his writing will throw your speech patterns off for days!
Images courtesy of http://thorinoakenshield.net
