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Happy 7th Birthday to LOTR Adult Fiction
Apr. 18th, 2009 01:22 amLOTR Adult Fiction was born seven years ago on April 18, 2002. I had been writing LOTR fic for several months, perhaps a year and had been posting Real person fiction at one Yahoo and Character fiction at another. I was rather stupid and used a bit of fanon in an RPS story and was accused by a very vindictive woman of plagiarism. It was not true. But I was called several ugly names and one young man became extremely venomous so I packed up my fiction and bid them all a MUCH less than fond farewell.
The next day I opened my own LOTR group and made it a group to fit everyone. I allowed almost all LOTR fiction. I really believed that both hetters and slashers could be friends, as well as RPSers and character writers. And they did become friends. There are probably a few of you out there who were in that first 30 or so people who signed up the first day. If so, I thank you!
At first, I was the only one who posted fic but gradually other people began to post their stories too. One of my friends, a young lady named Robin, suggested an archive. Well, I had no skills to do such a thing and I still don’t but I did come up with the name: OF Elves and Men. Robin was a busy school girl and the archive never really got off the ground until another writer popped up and said she wanted to do the archive and that she would provide the webspace also. I said yes and within a few weeks, OEAM was born.
Some time passed and this person, along with another friend, decided that I was evil and informed me that the archive would be removed from her webspace and she would no longer maintain it. I said fine and Larian stepped to do the archive with a new webhost that I paid for. Later on, we added several other affiliated Yahoo groups and in its heyday, the archive might have 50 new stories in a week. Larian was becoming busy with graduate school and so BButtercup came on board as the new archivist.
We added Amazon as a partner to help offset my costs as well as a small Café Press shop that sells OEAM gear.
We are not the busy archive that we were years ago. The Tolkien fandom is a bit quieter than it was but it is by no means dead. I think we can look forward to an upswing when the two Hobbit films come out.
But we are still here and as long as we can, we will remain here. I wanted a place where experienced and inexperienced writers could find an audience for their work, where people supported one another as writers and readers. I think we have achieved those things and I hope all of you LOTR writers and fans will be with us for many more years to come.
Thank you all for making LOTR Adult Fiction and Of Elves and Men what they are and thanks for being my friends!
Alex
The next day I opened my own LOTR group and made it a group to fit everyone. I allowed almost all LOTR fiction. I really believed that both hetters and slashers could be friends, as well as RPSers and character writers. And they did become friends. There are probably a few of you out there who were in that first 30 or so people who signed up the first day. If so, I thank you!
At first, I was the only one who posted fic but gradually other people began to post their stories too. One of my friends, a young lady named Robin, suggested an archive. Well, I had no skills to do such a thing and I still don’t but I did come up with the name: OF Elves and Men. Robin was a busy school girl and the archive never really got off the ground until another writer popped up and said she wanted to do the archive and that she would provide the webspace also. I said yes and within a few weeks, OEAM was born.
Some time passed and this person, along with another friend, decided that I was evil and informed me that the archive would be removed from her webspace and she would no longer maintain it. I said fine and Larian stepped to do the archive with a new webhost that I paid for. Later on, we added several other affiliated Yahoo groups and in its heyday, the archive might have 50 new stories in a week. Larian was becoming busy with graduate school and so BButtercup came on board as the new archivist.
We added Amazon as a partner to help offset my costs as well as a small Café Press shop that sells OEAM gear.
We are not the busy archive that we were years ago. The Tolkien fandom is a bit quieter than it was but it is by no means dead. I think we can look forward to an upswing when the two Hobbit films come out.
But we are still here and as long as we can, we will remain here. I wanted a place where experienced and inexperienced writers could find an audience for their work, where people supported one another as writers and readers. I think we have achieved those things and I hope all of you LOTR writers and fans will be with us for many more years to come.
Thank you all for making LOTR Adult Fiction and Of Elves and Men what they are and thanks for being my friends!
Alex