What is fanfiction?
Perhaps you are already familiar with it. Or, perhaps like me, you were like “fan what?” If you have read the first book in The Medici Warrior Series, The Blood Covenant, then hopefully you took the time to read the Acknowledgements page. I acknowledged the encouragement and collaboration of a close friend named Joanna Morisette. Joanna had been a fanfiction writer in an online group.
Fanfiction is a fictional account of original and fictional work, written by fans about characters or settings, instead of by way of its original creator. Fans may hold the creator’s characters and settings or add their own. The task of fanfic is to communicate with our favorite characters, filling gaps in the narration of the original work. And boy is it popular!
There is great fanfiction for basically whatever you want to read about. Look up any TV show, movie, book, or actor and you’ll probably find something. Many people write fanfiction for the fun of it, creating it online for a group of loyal followers that read their work for free, but some fanfiction writers actually self-publish e-books.
Published writers of fanfiction must tread lightly, due to copyright laws. Copyright gives the author the sole ownership of the source material. This is a pretty straight forward situation; you can’t legally use their characters or settings for fanfiction.
There are exceptions to copyright material, of course. The work can be a parody, you can have the express consent of the original creator, or by way of exceptions granted for ‘fair use’. So, there are undeniable legal complications for work that is produced to be sold, so don’t think you can piggyback off the new book in the Harry Potter series! J. K. Rowling may be impressed with your writing skills, but I doubt she would be amused by your chutzpah!
There is a whole world out there of eager readers of fan fiction, so if you didn’t like how the story ended, create similar characters, in a different setting, and rewrite it.
Vampires and fanfiction
So, I got curious about vampire fanfiction and went browsing. You would not believe the number of fanfiction stories related to vampires! On FanFiction alone, there are over 3,000 entries. And these stories are not horrible reads… they are well-written pieces.
Where to find fanfiction
FanFiction, Archive of Our Own, and Wattpad are some of the top sites to find fanfiction, but there are so many sites out there. Kindle Worlds, however, is the only site where fanfic authors can earn money on what they wrote. Their works are actual eBooks and are sold in the Kindle Store, just like any other Kindle title.
With fanfiction, the opportunities are infinite. Combining characters from two stories and putting them in the setting of another, rewriting love interests, putting yourself in your favorite story… You name it, it can be done.