I’ve always viewed the art of Fanfiction as the red-headed stepchild or black sheep of the literary community, at once spit upon, maligned and disregarded as little more than the concerted actions of an infinite number of chimpanzees typing away in the hopes of producing something approaching coherent speech, all the while ignoring the fact that underneath the veneer of public perception lies a community of writers, editors, and content creators, who have gone on to make their marks on the world and hone their literary craft in what is most definitely a different way.

My initial experience with fan fiction started after reading the middle book in the Silverwing trilogy by Kenneth Oppel, and itching to recapture the magic of those first hours where the author blew the doors off my mental mansion and I ended up being bitten with the writing bug. I spent many months reading stories that were found in that section on FF.net, and as I started digging deeper into the cavernous pit of literature that focuses on anthropomorphic animals, I transitioned to Star Fox- where I met Kit, and Redwall, and the Guardians of Gahoole series, each of which had their quirks and idiosyncrasies. I spent time reading the works displayed there, and quickly learned how to weed out the chaff, and select the best stories, because it was from exhaustive study of those stories that I learned some of the tricks I use in prosial crafting today.


Kit Karamack was one of the first to look at one of my earliest stories- The Edge of a Razor- and run it, and a subsequent piece through the gauntlet- and the criticism I received from him was exactly what I needed, as it forced me to take a long hard look at what I’d been producing, and attempt to make