Fanfic Writer Ditches the "Fan" Part
Not to step all over Cathy Young's beat, but a 23-year old fanfic writer has turned online success into a book deal, of which the first installment is hitting shelves.
La Septima M—The Seventh M—is the first of three books that 23-year-old Chilean journalism student Francisca Solar was contracted to write by publishers Random House, following the online success of her unofficial sixth Harry Potter story, Harry Potter and the Decline of the High Elves.
Launched at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair, La Septima M centres on a mysterious series of suicides amongst young people in the fictional community of Puerto Fake.
"All the things I know about literature, about writing, I learned in the fan fiction world," Solar told BBC World Service's The Word programme.
"I owe it everything."
This is sort of a dog-bites-man story (if not a "dog bites man and then watches Spock and Kirk do the nasty" story). Of course someone who writes book-length stories involving other peoples' fictional characters can write books involving her own fictional characters. Cathy Young proves that (and more) in the new issue of Reason.