Arrant Nonsense

The BeagleFic has been edited into a story with characters of my own devising. Whee! Aliens! And whacking nine characters down to five! I'll want my (published) Mom to go over it for me before I send it off for consideration; I'm still waiting to hear back from her if she even wants to look at it, although I'm pretty sure she will. Once she's gone over it, I'll send it out into the big scary world for scary editor-type people to look at.

I recently picked up Vols 1-5 of "The Man-Kzin Wars" at a swap meet for about a buck apiece. I've read Vol 1 and am eagerly diving into Vol 2. What's really fun about this is that here you have a bunch of pro-fic writers delving unapologetically into someone else's universe...and the creator of that universe is not only okay with that, but enthusiastic.

Larry Niven, who is a creative genius, isn't threatened by others writing Known Universe stories. Lee Goldberg, who *cough* isn't much of a creative genius, is. Granted, the people playing in Larry's sandbox are well-respected authors in their own right and not a bunch of amateurs like me...but somehow it gives me warm fuzzies to realize that, as long as I don't butcher the KU, Larry probably wouldn't have much of a problem if I decided to write fic in it.