Fan Fiction

A lot of authors start in fan fiction, and I’m no exception to that. In fact, it’s because I wrote fan fiction that I met my wife, who then encouraged me to write and publish my books and now runs the business part of Pyland Publishing.

I wanted to write a blog about my time spent writing fan fiction. Why did I write it? What were the ships and shows I wrote about? And how did that lead me to later publishing my own original novels? I spoke very briefly about this in another blog, but I go into more detail in this one.

Years and years ago, there was a little show called Glee. You might have heard about it. ;) I watched the show weekly, like a lot of people, and since I had already watched Popular, Ryan Murphy’s precursor to Glee from years before, I was already familiar with his “unorthodox” approach to telling stories about kids in high school. I downloaded the music, and even had Glee karaoke on my Wii. I was just as bad as you probably imagine at that game.

Anyway, we all fell in love with Santana. And while some of us wanted her to be with Brittany, others saw potential for her to be with Quinn. Thus, a ship battle of epic proportions was born. I wanted her with Quinn. (Brittana fans, please don’t come for me.) When they actually hooked up in “I Do,” I wished that Dianna Agron was sticking around because I really wanted to see those two work out. That didn’t happen, and we got a gay double-wedding between Santana & Brittany and Kurt & Blaine. Anyway... This is about fan fiction.

Not long after “I Do,” I got an idea in my head for a story. Having only recently gone down my very first fan fiction reading rabbit hole over a weekend, and getting no sleep, I decided to write it. So, I wrote the story the following weekend and didn’t stop typing until I had an entire novel. I don’t remember sleeping or eating much, but I’m sure I did at some point. I titled the story Navigating After, and after formatting and editing it (while at work) the next week, I somehow got up enough courage to post chapter 1. I thought that I’d post that and see if I got any views or feedback on it, and if it was bad, I could always pull the chapter down and forget the story ever existed. That didn’t happen, though. I got not only views, but reviews, and they were good. People wanted to know what would happen next. So, I decided to post the next chapter.

This was the start of my fan fiction journey. I would wait to see what people thought and post the next chapter. I was posting one chapter a day at first, since I’d already finished the story. Then, I was posting two chapters a day just because I wan