As you may have noticed, I've been claiming to have found a "secret of the Buffyverse," (see my recent Huffington Post blog) an unfinished story arc of Joss Whedon's which would turn the Buffy the vampire slayer's fictional universe upside down. A bit like the current Doctor Who scenario. I was perfectly happy to reveal it via a published book containing the Drusilla trilogy and the standalone Spike & Dru romance (now virtually complete) but didn't want to publish via a fan-fiction platform as there would then be no motivation for a traditional publisher to look at my offering. I'm not an A-list author and without a hook to arouse public interest, my name alone would not be enough to shift stock.
And yes, I'd like to make a living from my writing.
Up until now, fan-fiction and commercial publishing have pretty much inhabited separate spheres. I may even be one of the few authors with a foot in both worlds, but I have just seen something of a game-changing announcement from Amazon US, namely that they have come to an agreement with Warner Bros' TV division legally to publish fan-fiction from three TV series on Kindle.
Of course, it's never that simple. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not one of the three series.
However, Buffyis mentioned in the BBC article (link above), and I know from recent, updated research that (so far as I am aware) Buffy inspires more fan-fiction than any other series (46,000 stories and counting on FanFiction.Net).
If this business venture is a success, if Buffy fan-fiction is then authorised legally to be published, and if Chaplin Books agrees, I'd be perfectly happy for the quadrilogy to be published in ebook format.
The entire series was done to the same standard Dear Miss Landau was, and it's just languishing in a hard drive at the moment. I'd really like to let it out.
As Mr Spock would say, "there are always possibilities..."
I just didn't foresee this one!
James Christie is the author of Dear Miss Landau. He was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, a mild form of autism, at the age of 37 in 2002. He lives and works in Glasgow.