blog catch up and your opinion on fanfiction

It's January 4th! How is it already January 4th? O_O Some quick catch-ups:

First, a very happy (late) New Year to all of you! My crazy busyness is finally normalizing after the holidays, and I'm knee deep in editing (for others) and rereading my in progress novel to tweak it and get back into the swing of things.

Second, I realized I never did mention the age of my character in the Can We Guess Your Character's Age
contest. He was sixteen, and the narrator for my YA fantasy novel, My Kingdom for a Newt. I'll have more on that story later on this year. (Maybe sooner rather than later.)

Third, my kids loved their Christmas kitties. It didn't exactly go as planned. I got up, got everything ready, and tried to get the kittens in boxes for the kids. I'd wrapped boxes the night before, but no matter what I did, the kittens kept poking their heads out of any crack and then escaping. So I found one box that had a lid that fit over the box, and put my son's kitten in that, and tried to find one for the other kitten, and failed, so I finally stuck her in a box (I put this cat in a box like four times and she kept escaping) and tried to tape it shut for a moment, and I called the kids and my hubby into the room, and meanwhile, the second kitten is trying to make another break for it and I tried to hold the box shut so that my daughter could open it. I videotaped it, and that's how the video starts: my urgent voice telling my daughter, "Quick, come open this present now!' because I'd stuck the kitty's head back in the box right before she walked in and was trying to hold it closed with a bit of wrapping paper across the top. ;) Then she opened the box and the kitten jumped and dashed under the couch, and my daughter's squealing, "IT'S A KITTY!" My son then asked, "Is it real!?" because he thought it was a robot kitty or something, and as he was asking, he was flipping his box over, and I'm like, "Ahh, don't flip it!" And then he got to see his kitten. It was fun and crazy and the kids were SO THRILLED. The kitties are a lot of fun.

Now that I'm done playing catch up on my blog, I'd like to ask you all for your opinions on a subject that some really don't think much about--or know much about--and that is controversial to others.

Fanfiction.

Fanfiction, for those who might be unaware, is when someone reads a book, watches a movie, plays a video game, etc., and thinks, Hey, wow, this world is really cool! I really like this character! I think I'll write a story about him/her/it. Then maybe I'll post it online so people can read it. 

There are all sorts of stories: some people try to write a continuation of where you left off. Some people write a "missing scene." Some people are intrigued by a person's past, and will write a childhood story. Some people fall in love with the background characters, and write their idea of that story. There are one-shots (just a short, one-chaptered story), novel-length stories, stories that are only a few chapters.

There are some authors who cannot stand the thought of fanfiction. It makes them very uncomfortable to think of someone writing stories about the characters they created, digging through their sandbox, as it were, and for various other reasons.

There are other authors who welcome the idea of fanfiction, for various reasons. Promotion of their book, involvement of the readers, things like that.

But I'm very curious as to what you all think. Do you hate the idea of someone messing with your characters because you spent so much time with them and it feels wrong for someone else to touch them? Does it not matter to you? Do you like the idea because you know that you'll always have a final say in what really happens to these characters?

Christmas Kitties

This is a post totally unrelated to writing, but I'm excited about it, so I'm blogging about it. ;) Hubby and I decided last month to get the kids kittens for Christmas. I am a total cat person; I adore kitties, and it's been a while since I had one around.

Anyway, hubby wanted to give cats to the kids on Christmas morning--wrap them up as soon as the kids woke up so they could unwrap them and be surprised. I wasn't sure how that would work, but in the end, here's what happened: we found a wonderful woman who had just moved into town with her husband and two kids, and had brought two cats and a litter of seven kittens with them. I talked to her and she agreed that if we came and picked out the two kitties we wanted, she would hold them for us. So last month, hubby and I went and picked out two kitties, and in the process, I made a new friend! The woman with the kittens has gotten together with me and another of my friends a couple of times for playdates, and that's been tremendous fun.

Last Wednesday, I went over and picked up the two kittens. They were the last two left, and as such, they've bonded and they play together and fall asleep cuddling and do all sorts of cute kitty stuff. So I packed up the kittens and took them to my sister's house, because my sis volunteered to kitty-sit until Christmas Eve.

This was when I first picked them up:

My kids have already named the kittens, though they don't know it. We asked, hypothetically, if they ever got female kittens, what would they name them? I've been reading the Harry Potter series to my kids at bedtime for the past eight months or so (we're currently on book six), and my daughter immediately said Lily, and my son decided on Tonks. So Lily and Tonks it is.

Lily is the gray and white kitty here (held by my three-year-old niece, who is thrilled to have them at her house right now):

And Tonks is the tortoiseshell here:

My sister keeps giving me updates on them, and I'm so, so excited to bring them home next week and to see the kids open them on Christmas morning. (The kids know they're not allowed to go downstairs on Christmas morning this year; they have to come straight to us and wake us up. I just need to remember to add in that it should not be four in the morning when that happens. ;))

So that is what I am going to be doing on Christmas Eve night--picking up kitties. :D

Do any of you have special plans for the holidays?