Skylar Hamilton Burris's Blog, page 3
September 30, 2010
Austen Authors blog
I am part of the Austen Authors blog, which launched September 6th. Check it out.
http://www.austenauthors.com/2010/09/...
http://www.austenauthors.com/2010/09/...
April 21, 2010
Author Interview & Book Giveaway!
I've been interviewed on Austensque Reviews. The blog offers an opportunity to enter to win a free, autographed copy of my novel Conviction.
http://janeaustenreviews.blogspot.com...
http://janeaustenreviews.blogspot.com...
April 3, 2010
Fanfiction: Can a Hobby Earn Respect?
A new hobby has taken wing this past decade, and it has come to roost on the internet: fanfiction. Fanfiction is a generic label used to group together a variety of stories based on movies, television shows, and books--stories written by fans. The phenomenon is so pervasive that students have even written papers on this new genre of literature, and it is a subtopic of study in Popular Fiction courses.
Although the characters who come to life in these stories--such as Mulder and Scully of the X-Files--are often the property of others, movie and T.V. moguls have largely been willing to turn a blind eye to the intellectual property infringement: after all, it promotes their shows and films. But if writers want to turn a hobby into a vocation and actually publish their fanfiction in print, then the easiest course is to choose characters who reside in the public domain. This may account for the predominance of published sequels to the books of Regency era authoress Jane Austen.
But it is sheer devotion that explains Austen's undying presence on the internet. Site after site exists, at least in part, to continue Austen's classic novels: The Derbyshire Writer's Guild at austen.com, Bits of Ivory on pemberley.com, and the spicier Hyacinth Gardens, to name but a few. Fans of Austen's subtle writing hunger to see their favorite characters continue their relationships.
When I stumbled across a website for Jane Austen fanfiction some years ago, I never thought I would one day be publishing my own sequel to Pride and Prejudice. But my little hobby of turning out short stories in a dull moment took on a life of its own. I was waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking into the study to pound out my ideas. And in May of 2004, Conviction hit online bookstore shelves.
Had my hobby become a vocation? Not exactly. I wrote the work because I could not help but write it--because the scenes playing in my mind would not allow me to sleep. I published the novel myself with little expectation of doing more than breaking even and possibly turning a small profit. I really only wanted to share my work with fans of Austen sequels--in a form that would not require staring at a bright screen for hours on end. When Conviction first appeared on Amazon.com, its sales rank was an unimpressive 2,640,913. But in just two weeks, that rank had risen to 3,310, and Conviction was soon picked up and republished in a second edition by a small press publisher, who later published my second novel, another Pride and Prejudice sequel titled An Unlikely Missionary. Both are now also available as Kindle editions, as is my third (and lighter) Pride and Prejudice spin-off, The Strange Marriage of Anne de Bourgh.
When hobbies do become vocations, however, respect is often difficult to earn. When pastimes give birth to professions, people will inevitably doubt the value of the calling. Fanfiction certainly lacks literary respectability. One problem with fanfiction is that it is, in one respect at least, wholly unoriginal. The author inevitably rides on the coattails of another writer. Of course, original plots, new characters, and unique ideas can be introduced in these continuations, but fanfiction will be slow to gain respectability precisely because of its initial act of robbery.
Yet the novel was once considered a low-brow genre too, and any respectable writer wished to be known for his or her poetry. Fanfiction now bears the same stigma the novel once endured. Will it, too, one day emerge as a respected and major form? Only time can provide the answer to that question; so, while you're waiting, why not read a resolution to one of your favorite tales, or write one of your own?
Although the characters who come to life in these stories--such as Mulder and Scully of the X-Files--are often the property of others, movie and T.V. moguls have largely been willing to turn a blind eye to the intellectual property infringement: after all, it promotes their shows and films. But if writers want to turn a hobby into a vocation and actually publish their fanfiction in print, then the easiest course is to choose characters who reside in the public domain. This may account for the predominance of published sequels to the books of Regency era authoress Jane Austen.
But it is sheer devotion that explains Austen's undying presence on the internet. Site after site exists, at least in part, to continue Austen's classic novels: The Derbyshire Writer's Guild at austen.com, Bits of Ivory on pemberley.com, and the spicier Hyacinth Gardens, to name but a few. Fans of Austen's subtle writing hunger to see their favorite characters continue their relationships.
When I stumbled across a website for Jane Austen fanfiction some years ago, I never thought I would one day be publishing my own sequel to Pride and Prejudice. But my little hobby of turning out short stories in a dull moment took on a life of its own. I was waking up in the middle of the night and sneaking into the study to pound out my ideas. And in May of 2004, Conviction hit online bookstore shelves.
Had my hobby become a vocation? Not exactly. I wrote the work because I could not help but write it--because the scenes playing in my mind would not allow me to sleep. I published the novel myself with little expectation of doing more than breaking even and possibly turning a small profit. I really only wanted to share my work with fans of Austen sequels--in a form that would not require staring at a bright screen for hours on end. When Conviction first appeared on Amazon.com, its sales rank was an unimpressive 2,640,913. But in just two weeks, that rank had risen to 3,310, and Conviction was soon picked up and republished in a second edition by a small press publisher, who later published my second novel, another Pride and Prejudice sequel titled An Unlikely Missionary. Both are now also available as Kindle editions, as is my third (and lighter) Pride and Prejudice spin-off, The Strange Marriage of Anne de Bourgh.
When hobbies do become vocations, however, respect is often difficult to earn. When pastimes give birth to professions, people will inevitably doubt the value of the calling. Fanfiction certainly lacks literary respectability. One problem with fanfiction is that it is, in one respect at least, wholly unoriginal. The author inevitably rides on the coattails of another writer. Of course, original plots, new characters, and unique ideas can be introduced in these continuations, but fanfiction will be slow to gain respectability precisely because of its initial act of robbery.
Yet the novel was once considered a low-brow genre too, and any respectable writer wished to be known for his or her poetry. Fanfiction now bears the same stigma the novel once endured. Will it, too, one day emerge as a respected and major form? Only time can provide the answer to that question; so, while you're waiting, why not read a resolution to one of your favorite tales, or write one of your own?
