Of fans and fiction

This is going to seem a little dumb, but I kinda stumbled into something that made me a bit guilty. As if my NaNoWriMo list wasn't already packed, another bit of fiction has fallen back on my desk. Fan fiction.

So... before I got really serious about writing, before I started The Paladin, and before I had any real, serious ambitions to get anything published, I started up an account on Fanfiction.net. Now, fan fiction doesn't get looked at particularly kindly by published authors. You don't invent your own characters or your own world, so why take it seriously? I can certainly see that. But at the same time, I think it takes a certain kind of person to write another person's characters well enough that others enjoy them. In that way, I guess it's not all that different from doing a spec script.

Enough stalling, here's the point. After, I'm not sure... maybe ten years... I still have an unfinished fan fiction sitting on that website. While I love The Paladin, it has no fanbase yet. This story, however, does. I wrote it, then stopped. Then people gave it good reviews and asked if I would consider continuing it. So I did. Then I stopped. Then I started The Paladin. Then it happened. 

Yesterday, I was minding my own business, researching what Theodore Roosevelt's favorite food was (fried chicken smothered in white gravy) when an email came from fanfiction.net. I sighed. Opening it, there was a brand new review of my Inu Yasha / Lupin III crossover fan fiction. A new reader discovered it and asked me, very politely, if I planned on continuing it because they liked it. 

So what do you do? I've got a serious novel I'm trying to get out there, a short story on the side, and increasingly less time to do it all in. At the same time, I can't abandon a fan. Well... any longer than a decade or so. So... I guess I'm going to edit The Paladin, write a side story about werewolves, and... yeah... looks like I need to delve back into the adventure of a Thief and a Well. 

Be Excellent to Each Other.