Fan Fiction Fan

A decade before e-books and self-publishing shook up the publishing industry, an author faced a dilemma: When you've written stories in a genre that is rarely published, what do you do? At the beginning of 2002, Dusk Peterson (a journalist, history writer, and aspiring professional novelist) stumbled across the fan fiction community, where tens of thousands of readers and writers enjoyed gay genre fiction, which publishers rarely published. Peterson's Muse didn't want to write fan fiction. That didn't matter. Gleefully, Peterson began posting male/male stories with original fantasy settings and characters to "slash" fan fiction e-mail lists, at the same time plunging into fanficcers' world of online fiction, "songvids," conventions, celebrations of movie premieres, and endless discussions of literature, history, sexuality, and ethics. In the process, Peterson became part of a community that was taking advantage of the Internet's power in order to distribute stories, art, and videos that couldn't be professionally published. This first volume in the Pixel-Stained series includes reminiscences, stories, and art from yaoi author/artist mdbl; Steve Berman, founder of the gay and lesbian speculative fiction publishing company Lethe Press; J.M. Snyder, founder of the queer fiction press JMS Books; and m/m romance author Emily Veinglory. ABOUT THE SERIES The president of a speculative fiction organization once described writers who post their works on the Internet as "pixel-stained technopeasant wretches." The Pixel-Stained series publishes Peterson's memoirs in the form of e-mail, posts, and other documents. These accounts depict life at several electronic literature communities connected with gay genre fiction, as witnessed from the inside of those communities. Many members of these communities were pioneers in popularizing electronic publication, paving the way for the e-book revolution and the massive wave of self-publishing. Depicting the rise of blogging, soc