When I attended the SFWA Writing Date with Valerie Valdes, rather than having participants introduce themselves, we played a game of “never ever” where she provided prompts and asked us to respond in chat with whether we had ever done that kind of writing. I played along: short fiction, yes. Horror, no. But then she asked about fan fiction. I said, “No” at first. But then I started thinking. And I realized there *is* a kind of fan fiction I like to write: I like to write fan fiction of my own stories and characters.

My first work, Revin’s Heart, has been serialized by Water Dragon Publishing and is being released as seven novelettes. But while I was writing the second one, I realized there was a story that would be fun to tell, but I couldn’t be part of the series because the protagonist wasn’t there, so the story would need to be told from a different point of view. Then, as I was writing the third one, I had another story emerge.

“It’s Curtains!” Will said. 

“What?” Grip said, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Curtains! That’s what they called him back when…” Will said, then broke off when he caught the Baron’s expression. “I’ll… I’ll tell you sometime later.

—from Storm Clouds Gather

After I finished writing the series, I decided to write these side stories and they were a blast. Especially Curtains Rise which really needed to be told in first person. And after that I *still* didn’t want to quit inhabiting these characters, so I wrote one more that was perhaps the trickiest of all.

I decided to tell the origin story for Revin. In the series, we meet him already trans. But it was clear that there must be a story there and I set out to tell it. It was both challenging and very satisfying and provided me with a variety of new insights about the character. (And a bunch of new characters whom I truly love.)

And after all that, I still didn’t want to stop, so I’ve been telling another story using VSS tweets, one tweet at a time.

Then I did finally switch and I wrote a novel about complete different characters in a complete different setting. But, no sooner had I finished the book, but there was another side story I wanted to write that, once again, couldn’t be told from the point of view of the protagonist.

So it turns out that I love fan faction: I just only write it about my own stories.