amelia_petkova

Turns out it's a good thing that I read a number of Tumblr blogs despite not having an account, or I never would have heard of this. Ebooks Tree is a website claiming to have free ebooks for download (though it turns out there's some financial skeeviness involved if you try to sign up for a membership). Turns out they've taken a lot of fan fic from AO3 and posted it without the authors' permission, as well as original published fiction.

Thankfully all of the AO3 stuff seems to have been taken down in the past couple of days (they even seem to have had my self-published book on there, the assholes). Still, I thought it would be good to do a post about this in case anybody reads my blog and hasn't seen what happened on Tumblr.

Diane Duane has a very useful post on how to search for your writing online in case it's been pirated elsewhere.

A discussion at FFA.

A post by the OTW/AO3 folks on the situation when it was happening with helpful information on how to fill in a DCMA takedown notice.

I'm struggling with revising an original fiction scene, so it's time to distract myself with LJ. I LOVE writing crossovers. And for some reason, almost every "Bloody Jack" plot bunny I come up with involves a crossover or historical figures. I posted about this a while back, but here's an updated list of the things I want to write. Some are historically plausible; others fall into the "crack fic" category.

Zorro

Brothers Grimm

Louisa May Alcott

Jane Austen/her characters

Mary Shelley

Washington Irving/his characters

Mark Twain

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Montmaray Journals by Michelle Cooper

Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

Johnny Appleseed

Cowboy Bebop

Muppet Treasure Island

Parts of the following make me want to shake my head and other parts make me want to laugh hysterically.

Amazon has decided to create something called Kindle Worlds, which will allow people to publish fan fiction for profit without being sued over copyright violations. (But not porn! No fanfic porn allowed! That's the main part that had me laughing.) I won't get into extreme amounts of detail here about how Kindle Worlds works, as cleolinda has a good write-up and ashkitty has written a post containing links to reactions from several authors.

One of the main reactions I had to this is why the hell would anybody pay money for fan fiction when they can already get it for free at any of thousands of websites online?

My other problem is with copyright issues. My understanding (having looked at the issue only briefly so far) is that Amazon would hold the copyright to anything you published on Kindle Worlds and their company could use it to make money without asking for your permission or providing compensation. I also don't see how they're going to keep up with getting permission from every author/scriptwriter/TV company/whoever who has created something that another person wants to publish fan fiction of. I'm also nervous about Amazon expanding their dragon hold on copyright to works published on regular Kindle. I'm likely to end up self-publishing at least once in my lifetime. I had planned to issue a Kindle edition (among other formats on other companies' websites, such as the Nook) since there are so many Kindle users (a better chance for sales and readership) but I'm definitely not interested in handing over all rights to Amazon forever.

1. OMG there is a full-time library position in my area and it would be perfect and it's a Library Clerk not Librarian but I want this and so help me I have to believe I WILL get this job!!!

2. I'm underemployed, working just a few days each week at my seasonal job and every day I get at least one thing done on my To Do list, I count as a success.

3. I just queried two more literary agents.

4. I went to a Renaissance Faire last weekend. My favorite act is the comedy duo Don Juan and Miguel. There show involves whip tricks, somewhat bawdy comedy, and this year they made 50 Shades of Gray jokes. I died laughing.

I've seen this meme multiple times but most recently it comes from netgirl_y2k

Pick a story I've written, and comment to this post with it. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that fic: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

The change I made is that I'm impatient and didn't feel like waiting for responses, so I went ahead and chose to write about "A Lost Child in a Forgotten Tale", my El laberinto del fauno/Labyrinth crossover. Feel free to pick any other fics for me to do commentary on, if you feel like it.

( thoughts on Ofelia's story, Labryinth, and fairy tales )

Ramblings on story ideas for au_bingo are behind the cut to spare the people on my f-list who aren't into fan fic.

( spoilers for some fandoms within )

Dear Yuletide Santa,

This is my first time doing Yuletide; I'm very excited. I hope my requests were written well enough to start giving you ideas for stories. I’ve never seen any fics for most of the fandoms I requested (and I haven’t yet written any myself), so in general anything in them will make me happy. I haven’t produced much fan fiction but if you click on the tag to the right for “fan fiction” you’ll be able to see what I’ve posted. Somehow most of it ends up being humor. I do love funny fic but the other genres are wonderful, too. I do like some characters more than others (names are given in the following sections) but I am good with stories not involving these characters if you can’t think of anything involving them, or the suggested prompts don’t work for you.

My requests:

( Peter S Beagle - Tamsin )

( Elizabeth Hand - Mortal Love )

( Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood series )

( Elizabeth Kostova - The Historian )

Have fun! I look forward to reading your story.

Have been doing lost of good writing these past few days. Strictly speaking I'm still far behind where I should be but I'm having fun along the way. I'm trying to get as many completed first drafts done as possible, then once this is over I'll get to editing. Still just fan fiction that I've been working on so far. When I get stuck on one project, I jump to another.

The original plan was to participate in NaNoWriMo. Recently I decided to do yuletide for the first time year, which would mean starting a short story at the same time I'm trying to write a novel in one month. Okay, I thought, and changed the idea to writing 50,000 words of fiction on anything during the month of November. Then a couple days ago I got an idea for a story that I'd like to have posted for Halloween. So I'm amending my version of NaNoWriMo even further.

The goal: 50,000 words of writing in 30 days, starting today. Fiction, poetry, creative essays. If I really get stuck near the end I might start including writing in my paper journal. Work on my novel and revisions on previous stories won't be included unless I write giant sections that weren't there before. I very seriously doubt I'll make it, but I need something to get my creative juices flowing. It would make more sense to do this in November proper, when I'm not stressing about classes for the spring and planning a trip this weekend, but I'm doing it anyway. I feel like being ridiculous at the moment. Best-case scenario: you'll have several fics from me in the near future (starting with the one for Halloween. I'd really like to finish that in time). Worst-case scenario: you'll be amused or annoyed by continuous cryptic ramblings of a writer's-blocked mind.

ETA: Wrote over 900 words in longhand this afternoon/evening. Not a bad start.

Aha! 300+ words written tonight on my on-again, off-again novel. (This thing has been going for almost five years now, and I'm not even halfway through. Must finish it.) I think it was all the snow this past weekend that got the Muse moving. Sorry to be a tease for not giving any details because I'm plan to have it published, but I couldn't resist being joyful.