My Foray into Fan Fiction

The Write Way Café welcomes Tracey Lyons, a best-selling author who shares her thoughts on Fan Fiction.

I have to admit writing fan fiction wasn’t even on my writer’s radar. I’ve never even read a fan fiction book, but when opportunity knocks sometimes you have to open the door to see what’s on the other side. For me the opportunity came after I attended the 2014 Romance Writers of America conference in San Antonio. There I had the chance to hear about a program at Amazon Publishing called Kindle Worlds.  This is not an endorsement one way or the other for this program, this is just my experience venturing into the realm of fandom, as it’s known. I never knew the scope of this phenomenon. I popped on over to the website www.fanfiction.net and found hundreds, if not thousands of subjects where people have added to the worlds created by the original authors. And that was just under the book tab! There are authors who cut their teeth writing fiction this way.

So fan fiction is written by writers who loved a certain setting, all the characters etc. created by an author. Popular are the Sweet Valley Series, Catcher in The Rye, Star Trek and many more. Authors of the original work are never paid by the writers who write in their worlds. In Kindle Worlds all of the “Worlds” in this program are licensed works; meaning the original authors share in all the revenue of all the subsequent works created by other writers in their series. For more information you can check out Kindle Worlds at Amazon.

For me the experience so far has been one book, in one world. And that would be the world created by Lucy Kevin, aka the mega bestselling author Bella Andre. I decided on The Four Weddings and A Fiasco series because I love the San Francisco area and this gave me the opportunity to write a wine themed love story! Lucy Kevin wrote four original stories for the series and set them at a wedding venue called The Rose Chalet. My challenge was to continue to use her setting and some of her characters infusing them into my story. The experience so far has been a positive one. I got to debut my first contemporary novella, The Wedding Toast. Writing short after doing full length novels for the bulk of my career was fun! Working with the Kindle Worlds team has been a pleasure. If you are an author looking to add to you writing portfolio you may want to consider exploring the world of fan fiction. If you are a reader wanting to try new authors and new stories, you should definitely look at fan fiction works.

So I’m curious; have you ever written or read any fan fiction? Is there a particular series that you love?

About Tracey:  An Amazon Top Ten bestselling historical romance author, Tracey sold her first book on 9/9/99! Tracey’s books have been translated into several languages. She has appeared on the award winning Cox Cable Television show, Page One and at the famous Lady Jane’s Salon in NYC. She holds membership in Romance Writers of America, American Christian Fiction Writers and Novelists Inc. Tracey writes small town, sweet historical and sassy contemporary romances. When not busy writing, Tracey enjoys spending time with her family and making her husband crazy with renovation projects on their 1860’s home. Tracey will have an Amazon Publishing Waterfall Press inspirational historical romance release in July 2016. You can learn more about Tracey and her books by visiting her website at www.traceylyons.com.

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