If you're familiar with group fanfiction you're familiar with Derrick Ferguson. From his work at DC Legends to Marvel 2000 to Frontier Publishing, Derrick is known for being a strong and thurough writer as well as an honest and respected critic. His Frontier story "Dillon and the Voice of Odin" is now available in paperback through Amazon.com.
This interview is culled from conversations that took place by instant message and e-mail from May, 2003 through January, 2004.
Jason Kenney: Been reading Doom Patrol: The Silver Age (DC Legends) and digging the hell out of it. I'm not a big DC reader myself and I still think it's great.
Derrick Ferguson: Really? I CRINGE at Doom Patrol. I messed that one up big time.
JK: How so? I mean, if it's continuity and stuff, I can't tell, but if it's writing wise, minus a few typographical errors that you get in any series, they're fine.
DF: I got lost in subplots.
JK: Lost as in you didn't finish them off or they bogged you down?
DF: I found myself with four or five subplots that I didn't have the skill to know how to resolve at the time. Now that I know what the hell I'm doing, I think I can pick up the series again.
But it's a series a lot of people don't know about.
JK: Ah. Hey, you know, I think we've started the interview.
DF: You better start copying then, because I'm usually not this profound in the morning. But I'm drinking French Vanilla coffee so that may have something to do with it.
JK: Well, let's see. Basic stuff first. How's it feel to be a petite white chick in a sea of overweight fanboys?
DF: Ask Megan Curtis.
Why Fanfiction?
JK: Now, when did you get into fanfic?
DF: I started writing fanfic about... six or seven years ago, I figure. I bought a WebTV on sale the day after Thanksgiving for $99 dollars and two days after I bought it, I found DC LEGENDS on the Internet and eleven months later I started writing Doom Patrol: The Silver Age right on that same WebTV which I still have to this day.
JK: You don't still use WebTV, do you?
DF: No. I have a Gateway computer I've been using for five years now. I still have the WebTV for sentimental value. And nobody will buy it from me.
JK: Why fanfiction, though?
DF: Why not? I LOVE to write. I do it almost constantly and even when I'm not writing, I'm reading. If I'm not reading, I'm watching movies. In one way or another, I'm constantly immersing myself in stories or the storytelling process. Fanfic is just another way of me expressing myself in what I truly feel is my calling: to tell stories.
And I think it HIGHLY unlikely that Marvel or DC is going to break down my door and me to write for them.
JK: Well, agreed, and I think most fanfic writers don't believe that either, but it's the few that do that make everyone look bad
But why fanfic and not just your own prose?
DF: I DO write my own prose. I think I've got a healthy representation of my original work out there. It's just that most readers of my fanfic don't crossover to my original stuff and vice versa.
Take The Wife for instance. My wife Patricia is my BIGGEST fan. She'll read anything of mine and she's read my fanfic and she considers it a waste of my time and talent. She just doesn't get it.
JK: God, I've heard that. Girlfriend's the same way.
DF: You have to grow up with an appreciation of superheroes and the whole psychology of superheroes and superheroic fiction. Do you think it's just a coincidence that we're experiencing a surge of superhero/pulp adventure fiction now? It's not. The last time superhero/pulp adventure fiction had such a boom was WWII.
JK: Well, early 90s saw an upswing too.
Actually, though, can't you also draw parallels between comic popularity and economic downturns? More so than war. Comics started big in the 30s, blew up in the 40s, died down a bit, big again in the 70s, down again, big in the early 90s, down, up again as of late.
DF: Of course. Look at the Great Depression. That's when we saw the greatest comic book heroes, the greatest pulp heroes, etc. The Shadow and Doc Savage were created from The Great Depression and they're the fathers of 90% of the comic book heroes today.
The Internet is the Pulps of The 21st Century. You can surf the web and find ANYTHING you want about any character you love.
JK: Since "The Internet is the Pulps of The 21st Century" do you think we're gonna see a greater resurgence of the short story as a viable literary form? I mean, it seems to have been phased out.
DF: The short story is always going to be with us in one form or another. You gotta walk before you can run and very few people are just going to jump up and say "I'm going to write a novel" and sit down to crank out 80 thousand plus words. So they're going to build up those creative muscles with short stories.
And The Internet has proven to be a way that writers can get feedback in a timely manner without waiting eight months to a year for word from some editor who's not going to provide much more than a "Try us Again" anyway.
JK: And since you mentioned short story as a testing ground, is fanfic a testing ground for anything or is it a final product for a writer in and of itself (or is there anything wrong with it being the latter)?
DF: That depends on the individual. There are some fanfic writers who have tested the waters as a stepping stone to going professional and there are others who are quite content to continue writing fanfic. It all depends on the individual's personal ambitions.
JK: What about those that think this is going to get them that dream comic job?
DF: I don't know about that. I think that this new EPIC deal from Marvel is possibly the result of somebody in the Marvel offices who may have said one day; "hey, there's a lot of talent out there that we oughta try and take advantage of". After all, there are only so many Grant Morrisons out there, right?
But the talent pool in the comic world is shallow in terms of top writers. You've got artists coming from every which way, but GOOD writers? That's something else again. And they've got to be recruited from somewhere, so why not from among the fans?
JK: Very true, the most recent crop do seem to be from elsewhere, novelists or screenwriters and the like.
DF: Yeah. If the comic companies don't extend a hand and make an effort to recruit fresh writing talent, what's going to happen to the industry? We'll be in another mess like back during the early Image days where artists dominated the business and we had all these gorgeously drawn but stupidly written books.
JK: There seems to have been a recent move from emphasis on art to more on writing.
DF: It all begins with writing. I think Image proved that. You had these artists trying to show that they could sell books just on the artwork alone and that worked for a while but then the fans woke up and saw they just had prettily drawn pieces of paper and nothing they could go back to again and again and enjoy as a STORY.
JK: And, even then, not all of it was pretty. (Liefeld, ugh...)
DF: Liefeld, yet another Sign Of The Coming Apocalypse. What he did to Captain America should be illegal in all 50 states.
JK: Him and Churchill should both be shot.
DF: True Dat.
Reading, Writing and Inspirations
JK: So what do you look for in comics?
DF: In comics today? I don't look for anything more than well-told stories and good artwork. I'm crazy about stuff like TOP 10 and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. I'm more of a DC reader these days as well. Marvel just bores me to tears, maybe because I've been reading it for so long that nothing they do surprises me anymore.
JK: You seem to lean to DC writing wise as well. Have you always been a bigger DC fan?
DF: Like most comic fans, I started out with Marvel as a kid because dey wuz da BOMB back in the day. Around the time that Jack Kirby first went to DC and created The Fourth World is when I got hooked on DC. DC really got me when they overhauled some of their titles, making radical changes in the status quo. They allowed older heroes to retire or die and introduced new characters to replace old ones. DC's whole generational attitude towards superheroes is one I like.
JK: What writers do you tend to read more?
DF: Hm. [Kurt] Busiek. [] Moench. [] Gerber. [Grant] Morrison. [Alan] Moore. [Jim?] Lee. But the best comic book writer of them all is Will Eisner. I re-read THE SPIRIT over and over again and am just amazed at how much story he gets into eight pages. There's probably a bunch I'm forgetting but I'll email you their names later. LOL
JK: Eisner is the man.
DF: He's just fantastic. He took eight pages to do what most writers today take 12 issue maxi-series to do.
JK: It's unfortunate a lot of folks today either have never heard of him or don't respect his work and what he's done.
DF: You know what grinds my grits? Most so-called writers today don't even CARE who he is or what he's done.
JK: I hear that. How the hell can you get by without respecting the roots? If you don't know or appreciate the history of the art, how can you properly capitalize upon it?
What do you read outside of comics?
DF: Oh, jeez. I read everything I get my hands on. I have comics and books I keep in the backseat of my car and my van so that I'm never caught without something to read. My favorite writers include Lester Dent, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Iceberg Slim, Ishmael Reed, Michael Moorcock, Donald Westlake, Peter Straub, Clive Cussler.
People are always asking me where I get the time to read, and I ask them, "How come you DON'T make time to read?"
JK: Yeah, there's always time, even if it's five minutes on the crapper.
DF: And then again, I don't watch a lot of television. I KNOW that sounds like a cliché, but I really don't. There's only a couple of series that I really follow, like THE SHIELD and 24, but stuff like ALIAS I've never seen an episode yet. And to this day, I've never seen a single DARK ANGEL episode and I don't watch sports except for Mets baseball.
JK: Is that cliché, the television thing? I mean, I don't watch much either.
DF: You ever tell anybody you don't watch TV? They give you that "Yeah, right... bullshit on you" kinda look. It's just that I'm very discriminating about what I watch. The two hours I waste in front of a TV watching WWE wrestling or CHARMED I could be turning out 10 pages.
It's all about time management. If you're serious about being a writer, turn off the friggin' TV, stay outta the goddamn chatroom, get your head into your business and WRITE.
I just KNOW I'm gonna catch hell with THAT line. :-D
I watch movies all the time, though. I've got a stack of DVDs and Videotapes I just pluck from when I want to watch something.
JK: Yeah, you seem to take quite a bit of inspiration in your writing from movies.
DF: I think I'm actually a frustrated film director. I tend to use cinematic terms when describing my stories and plots.
But I AM a serious movie fan. Friends and neighbors call me up all the time to ask what's good for them to rent on theweekend or to settle movie trivia bets.
JK: I take it you've caught X2...
DF: Sure have. Matter of fact I saw X2 and MATRIX: RELOADED the same day. Caught a matinee.
JK: What did you think?
DF: X2 I enjoyed MUCH better than the first one. The first movie should have been called "Wolverine And The X-Men". X2 had much more of team feel to it and I'm STILL amazed at how Hugh Jackman has nailed Wolverine. I haven't seen an actor bring a superhero to life this well since Christopher Reeve in the first SUPERMAN. And Alan Cummings as Nightcrawler was no less than brilliant.
I'm VERY excited as both a comic and movie fan because with the technology that's available now, there is literally NOTHING that can't be put up on the screen and that's the dream every comic fan has always had.
JK: Yeah, but that leads people (like my girlfriend) to ask "why not just write movie scripts?"
DF: Why not write both?
JK: Here here, but she's one of those people who just doesn't get 'picture books'.
DF: Most women don't. My wife loves to read everything I write except for my fanfic and that's because she doesn't get superheroes at all.
JK: Yeah, Jenn won't touch the fanfic shit, thinks it's a waste of my time.
DF: That's a real thing. The Wife doesn't understand why I write and give away stories for free when I could be writing something that sells. I DO write stuff that is available for sale on The Internet and I have a couple of book deals in the works that I can't talk about yet, but you get my point.
The main thing is, she thinks it's a waste of time and that's the attitude of a lot of women. *shrugs* Just like a lotta things in life men like to do they don't understand.
JK: What projects do you have beyond the fanfic work?
DF: I've got a bunch of stuff outside of fanfic. Some people know about it, some don't. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, I'm not a raving egomaniac who demands that every word I write be read by the fanfic community at large. ;-)
JK: Well, here's your chance. What all do ya write outside of the fanfic world?
DF: I have a bunch of stories on a site called ELECTRONIC TALES that is run by my good friend Joel Jenkins. The stories are for sale, usually no more than two bucks and there's an absolute shitload of good stories there written by nearly half a dozen guys besides me with some really great illustrations to go with them.
It's a cool site to just visit and browse around and I defy anybody to NOT find something there that they'll like to read.
DC Legends
JK: Cool. Well, hell, let's get into the fanfic stuff. You started with Doom Patrol: Silver Age, right?
DF: Yep. Very first fanfic series at DC LEGENDS.
JK: What brought you to DC Legends?
DF: I read fanfic for maybe six months before deciding on DC LEGENDS. It was a small site and I figured I'd have a better chance of my series idea being accepted there rather than at one of the larger sites.
JK: What did you read before you started writing?
DF: Lotta stuff at MV1. Everything at DC Legends. Then, once I got familiar with the names of the writers, I started looking for their work specifically, regardless of the site. Barry Reese, Gary Dreslinski, Lonni Holland, a few others.
JK: How long ago was this?
DF: Jeeze. We're going back to when I had a friggin' WebTV. Must be five or six years ago at least...
Lemme put it this way. MV1 was THE Big Dawg of fanfic back then. Everybody and their mother either wrote for, were getting set to write for, or had written for MV1.
JK: Four and a half, five years back, at least, yeah.
DF: And there weren't a lot of DC fanfic sites around either. So I didn't have a lot of choices about where to pitch my idea. :-D
JK: Yeah, pretty much DCL and Faux DC.
DF: Exactly, and FauxDC already had a Doom Patrol series.
JK: Are you still working on Doom Patrol? Or, rather, do you have more DP: SA stories to tell?
DF: I'm going to be returning to DOOM PATROL in the next couple of weeks. I recently read a post on the AV2K list from a reader who complained about fanfic writers starting new series and leaving old ones behind. I'm as guilty as anybody else of that so I've made a decision not to begin any new series until I wrap up the storylines of my old ones. And at least leave them in such a way that a new writer can come along and continue them if they want.
There is one new series I'm going to be doing that I agreed to do before I made that decision, so don't yell at me when you see my name on it and remind me of this interview. LOL
JK: So you did Doom Patrol and then started working on... Mon-El?
DF: Yep. Mon-El was my second series. It actually started out as a prop for a 12 issue Mon-El/Wildcat series. Mon-El would be thrown back in time where he would hook up with The JSA in the 1960's.
He would share an apartment with Wildcat and have adventures with the JSA. And the press would start to ask the JSA about the mysterious 'Superboy' hanging out with them and helping out.
JK: I take it that fell through?
DF: No, that plot WILL appear in the Mon-El series after the Apokolips/Daxam War arc.
JK: Ah, so it just got pushed back.
DF: Yeah. What happened was that the more I started researching Mon-El, the more I got turned on with doing a series about him concerning his past, present and future incarnations.
I always liked Mon-El a lot. He was my favorite Legionnaire and I never could understand why nobody could see the potential of the character.
JK: Yeah, you don't see many Mon-El series out there.
DF: Didn't see ANY, homeboy, which was another reason I wanted to do it. Why do a SUPERMAN series when there's four or five being written by perfectly good writers?
JK: Actually, you don't see many Superman series either. But that's for different reasons...
DF: Well, how much CAN be done with Superman, unless you do an Elseworlds?
That's why I've mostly written characters you don't see much of in fanfic. Hell, you don't see them in comic books, either. You can do so much more with them and really get more imaginative and creative with the plots and characterizations.
Marvel 2000 and Editors
JK: Marvel 2000. We're going to talk about it sooner or later, why not sooner?
DF: LOL. Guess so. Hit me with your best shot.
JK: So you went to Marvel 2000 as a favor to David Wheatley?
DF: No. I went to Marvel 2000 as a favor to Russ Anderson who had asked me to write Captain America, and for reasons I still am unclear on I was not given the title. I have heard rumors and I have been told certain things by other people associated with M2K but I'd rather not get them involved
JK: Ah, okay. So you didn't get Cap. Did you pick Hulk or were you asked to do it?
DF: Russ had actually wanted me to do either Master Of Kung Fu or Captain America. I did write about 3000 words of a Captain America story. But since I didn't get that title, Russ and I talked about it and I picked HULK. I've always liked The Hulk. He's one of my favorite Marvel characters.
JK: About when was that year wise?
DF: Jeez... I really don't remember... You never think anybody is gonna actually ASK you about this stuff, y'know?
JK: Yeah, true. Well, you got on Hulk, how long did you write that?
DF: I did six issues, so you can say I wrote the M2K title for about eight months, more or less.
JK: Now, there seemed to be a little discussion on HEROES a while back about continuing HULK and continuity.
DF: Hah! Now there's a bit of an understatement.
JK: What exactly was up?
DF: The situation was this: I wanted to remove the stories I had written and take them to another fanfic site and I was told flat out that I couldn't do that. The reason WHY I wanted to do it is quite simple: I was not happy with my work being at Marvel 2000 and I wanted my work housed at another site that I felt would treat my work with the quality it deserved.
JK: So someone said no to the removal? I mean, that kinda stuff happens all the time, writer leaves and takes work with them.
DF: The EiC of M2K told me that I could NOT take my stories off the site. I have stories on other sites where I'm being PAID and those editors take my stories off without question. Here's a guy who runs a fanfic site that quite frankly will post just about ANYTHING anybody sends them and not only does he tell me that he won't remove MY stories but he makes public private conversations we have in the hopes of embarrassing me, I guess.
He should have talked to my wife first about the topic of trying to embarrass me in public because she would have been more than happy to tell him that trick NEVER works.
JK: HA! So Hulk stayed on the site?
DF: If I had wanted the stories to be removed, I would have talked to the webmaster and they would have been removed, trust me. However, I didn't want to put the webmaster in that position because he and I are partners and I respect him and frankly, if the EiC of M2K feels it's so important to him and his site to keep those stories there, he's welcome to them.
JK: Very noble of ya.
DF: Not really. I've got other things going that PAY me money, know what I'm saying? The HULK stories are fanfic. They're done for fun. Much as I love doing them, I can't put those stories on a resume.
JK: So I take it you're done with M2K?
DF: I read the stories posted on M2K regularly. There IS a lot a good work being done there. Unfortunately there is a lot of awful work being done there and I'm not going to bite my tongue about it. Some of the writers at M2K are simply awful and that's the plain truth.
JK: Yeah, but you have that with any large group, I guess.
DF: Yeah, but you don't put them on your major titles. You don't put writers who have never done anything at all and let them run riot on three or four titles and do anything they want with no guidance or direction.
JK: True, bad editorial direction. Ever play the part of EiC or consider it?
DF: No. And I don't want to. I work with Tim Hartin over at DC LEGENDS and quite frankly, we turn down a LOT of guys. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Tim is the EiC there and he's got a high standard and I've learned a lot from him. He'd rather post ONE quality issue of a title every six months than 24 shit issues every week.
JK: Quality before quantity.
DF: Exactly. I'm the Executive Editor over at DC LEGENDS and Tim has turned down stuff I've approved and once he told me why, I agreed. And I'd like to say right here and now that Tim Hartin is one of the FEW people in fanfic who deserves the title of Editor In Chief since he does what an Editor is supposed to do.
JK: You mean he actually reads the stories sent to him?
DF: Not only that. He reads them and he has the BALLS to tell you if it's not up to the standards he has set for his site. He gives you back the story and tells you to either rewrite it or take it somewhere else. Tim isn't interested in having a bunch of substandard titles to post every week. He's interested in quality work. I respect that and that's why I've always been associated with DC LEGENDS.
Notebook
JK: Let's talk Derrick Ferguson's Notebook v2.0. What was the first Notebook?
DF: The first version of Derrick Ferguson's Notebook was done WAY back when I first started hanging out on the Internet.
After about six months, I used WebTV's PageBuilder to create my own website where I did movie and TV reviews. That went on for a couple of years until I tired of the limitations of WebTV and went out and bought myself a computer. Once I decided to start doing a fanfic review site, I resurrected the name.
JK: When did you start Notebook 2.0?
DF: A little over a year ago (July, 2002). I started doing really serious reviews on the HEROES mailing list. And when I say serious, I mean that I wanted to give writers something more than "You Rock!" and potential readers something of substance so they could say; "Yeah, that sounds like something I'd like to check out" or "Screw dat shit, I'm not wasting my time reading dat". LOL
So I kidnapped Alex Cook's favorite hooker and held a gun to the ho's head until he agreed to be webmaster.
JK: Heh. That usually works.
DF: Actually, Alex was all for the idea and INSISTED that the review site be housed at Digitally Mystic.
JK: That's no fun! I prefer the hooker story, that's always more entertaining.
DF: Use it then... who's gonna know? :-D
JK: How do you go about doing reviews? People recommend titles or ask for a review, right?
DF: That's how it started. People would e-mail me or ask me in chat what I thought of this title or that title or this writer or that writer. It seemed to me that it would be better for everybody all the way around if I just posted my opinions on the HEROES mailing list.
And it just started from there. Before I knew it I had a list of some 30 titles that people were asking me to review. Well, the proverbial lightbulb went on over my head and I figured I could get a whole site out of doing this so I hooked up with Alex Cook and voila.
JK: Do you find yourself still behind or are you pretty quick with getting through your list?
DF: I'm never going to get through the list. I still have series on my lists from months ago that I haven't gotten to. But I don't sweat it. My writing comes first before the reviews. I LIKE doing them and I appreciate the fact that people actively seek my reviews but I'm a writer first.
JK: Do you find most folks to be understanding and appreciative of your reviews and the time you take to do them or do you get a lot of bitches coming back at ya?
DF: 90% of everybody I've reviewed have thanked me and expressed their appreciation. But you always have that 10%...
JK: Ah, so there are the few bad ones...
DF: I had one high profile EiC say on the HEROES mailing list that I obvious did not read his series before reviewing it since I didn't understand what he was trying to do.
JK: Have you ever read something for a review and not posted a review? If so, what would stop you from doing that?
DF: As a matter of fact I have done that a couple of times. I've given people personal reviews.
JK: Are you usually honest in your reviews or do you find yourself pulling your punches time to time?
DF: I have no choice but to be honest. My reputation as a reviewer stands or falls based on the fact that writers and readers trust me to be honest. Once I compromise that, I'm through as a reviewer.
And it may sound harsh or cruel but I'm not put on this Earth to be nice or be liked. God gave me a talent to use to the best of my ability and that's what I do. I could give less than a shit about trying to be nice. It's more important for me to be honest about my work.
JK: It's more helpful to the writers if you're honest as well.
DF: Exactly. Part of the problem with fanfic is that there's too much tiptoeing around. "Well, I'd better not say anything bad about his Daredevil story because then he'll say something bad about my Thor". Screw that.
JK: I think it's a greater concern over making someone quit. Too many folks don't want to be "the bad guy" when it really isn't a matter of being bad but helpful. It's more in presentation.
DF: Look, if you want to be a writer then dealing with rejection is just a reality you HAVE to learn how to deal with. I've got a drawer full of rejections and criticisms from professionals. You think fanfic writers are harsh and cruel? HAH! Wait until you submit your stuff to professional editors. You will truly see what harsh and cruel is then.
I've had people email me and accuse me of being 'rough' and 'mean' and I just shake my head and say to myself, "you have NO idea of what rough and mean REALLY is."
JK: But what's so rough and mean in the truth? It'd be one thing if you were over the top, but if you're helpful and constructive...
DF: First off, fanfic is filled with selfish primadonnas. Part of the reason that I started reviewing is because there were so MANY talented writers going unnoticed because of the attitude of "screw them. I read stuff on MY site and nowhere else."
I would ask a LOT of fanfic writers "who else do you read?" and they would react as if I were crazy.
"Why should I read somebody else?" they would answer. And to me, that was really bizarre because in ANY field of endeavor, professional or amateur, everybody knows everybody else's work and is familiar with who's doing what.
Superhero fanfic is really weird in that respect. You have writers who honestly expect people to read their work but they feel as if they don't have to read what anybody else is doing.
JK: Yeah, that's weird, all of the attention on me, none on anyone else. That's the whole circle, though, and you really see it come with groups too. "Why are you reading any other group?"
DF: That's why you have the sort of crab mentality that goes on that these smaller groups where everybody is just kinda feeding on each other and reassuring each other that they're the best group in the world and 75% of what they're producing is utter crap.
It's kinda sad, really. And I really hate it when I get "Well, I'm too busy to read other people's stuff."
JK: It takes, what, 5-10 minutes to read one story someone else wrote?
DF: I'm married, own and manage a building with two tenants, hold down a job, spend quality time with The Wife, friends and family, go out to dinner, movies, family function, etc, and I STILL find time to write fanfic, my own original stuff AND read other peoples stuff to review. So DON'T give me shit about "I'm too busy."
JK: Yeah, but that's because you're a god, D.
DF: No. It's called 'time management'.
JK: What is this "time management" you speak of? You sound like my supervisor!
DF: Mostly it's just cutting out the bullshit that takes up a lot of wasted time.
JK: True, you can't tell me all of the time you spend on the net is all about your site or stories. Take 10 minutes out of your porn time and read something.
DF: LOL! And it really doesn't take that long. Say The Wife wants me to drive her to Pathmark. I know she's going to be in there for at least 60-90 minutes. I print out a couple of fanfic series, buy me a pack of smokes and I'm set. I hang out in the car and read, she shops, I go back home and it takes me an hour to write the reviews and I'm done.
JK: Wow, you'll be seen in public with this stuff?
DF: Well, I AM inside a car. LOL
JK: Heh, true.
Thick Skin and Ego Stroking
DF: I never show my work to my friends or family. At least not until it's posted. You'll NEVER get an honest answer from friends and family.
JK: Yeah, I can't let them read my stuff anymore. Heh, I once had my mom edit a novel I was working on. It was weird.
DF: You got balls, man...
JK: Yeah, she actually said it was okay, but it's my mom. I didn't have any sex or crap in it, so I was okay on that front.
DF: But mothers are natural born critics, tho.
JK: True, she tore it up grammatically, which is fine.
DF: Ah, yes, don't say anything about the characters or story, but they'll hound you about it being spelled correctly.
JK: Exactly. Looking back on it I realize the whole thing's about 50% shit but no one ever told me that.
DF: Well, as I've mentioned, I am violently anti political correctness and I absolutely detest the PC notion that it's better to be nice than honest. That's why you've got so many thin-skinned people walking around today because people have been 'nice' to them because they didn't want to 'hurt their feelings'. Shit, that's the only way to toughen up and face life on it's own terms, you learn how to deal with the truth no matter how much it hurts. That's why you've got schools lowering basketball rims three feet so every kid can make a basket because it's bad to make them feel like underachievers.
JK: Instead of making them work for it.
DF: Where would guys like Michael Jordan be if he didn't have to work at what he did?
JK: Playing 7' rim basketball.
DF: Exactly. That's why the next generation is gonna be a bunch of sissy boys. You can't criticize some people. They're too sensitive.
JK: Yeah, but everyone supposedly wants 'feedback'. They just don't like what they get sometimes, I guess.
DF: If you want to be a writer the FIRST thing you have to do is develop a THICK SKIN.
JK: Oh yeah. So many series end with the first bad review.
DF: Because the guys who were writing weren't really writers. They wanted ego stroking.
I honestly think that you should write for one reason: you like to tell stories and you want to tell stories. If you write for ANY other reason than that, you're in the wrong game. Now, if you want to write to make a lot of money, that will come IF you have sufficient talent, skill and connections.
But the main consideration has to be a love of telling stories. That has to come first. And I can tell after reading so many fanfic stories who is writing because they love to write and those who write just because they want to get approval and/or feedback.
JK: I find that most of the folks wanting approval usually burn out quick. Most.
DF: Sure they do, because they want that approval and when they don't get it, they go somewhere else and write BUFFY or HARRY POTTER fanfic. I wrote fanfic for three years before I got ANY feedback from anybody besides Tim Hartin and Dannell Lites.
JK: It only took you three years?
DF: Matter of fact, I was writing original work and got more feedback from THAT on my own website .
JK: Yeah, I've found the original stuff gets more feedback than the fanfic, which is weird considering there seems to be a larger audience for fanfic...
DF: The selfishness of some fanfic writers continues to ASTOUND me. I have had people hound and beg me for feedback and when I ask them have they read my stuff, they say no. I ask them have they read Russ Anderson or Mike McGee or Nate Charles and they say no and I ask why not and they say "I don't have the time".
To me, that's like a musician saying he wants to play Beethoven but doesn't have time to learn how to read music.
Props
DF: I remember I was in a chat with some fanfic guys and one of them called me arrogant and I responded that it's not that I'm arrogant but I've worked hard to achieve a level of respect in the fanfic community, nobody handed it to me.
JK: Arrogant?
DF: Yeah, we were discussing about props and dibs and I said I didn't believe in either one. Then I was asked if I ever submitted a prop for any of my series and I said the only time I ever submitted a prop was for the first two series I did at DCL. After that, nobody ever asked me for a prop. I just said I was going to do this series or that and the EiC said "go for it".
So anyway, one of the guys says that if I ever decided to write for them, I would damn well submit a prop and dibs like everybody else.
JK: Looks like there's someone you're not writing for...
DF: And I told him I would not.
JK: If you can bring a certain quality of work and readers to a site, that's a submission prop in and of itself. They should be pleased you're coming there.
DF: Exactly. There's some people in fanfic you just don't do that to. For instance, asking Bill Kte'pi or Chris Munn to submit a prop is like asking Robert DeNiro or Sidney Poitier to do a screen test. You ask Robert DeNiro to do a screen test and I bet he tells you to get fucked.
JK: No, his agent does.
DF: Hah! yeah!
"Excuse me, but Mr. DeNiro has instructed me to inform you that you should get fucked. Thank you and have a nice day"
JK: "Mr. DeNiro regrets to inform you that he will be unable to perform a screen test for you but wants me to reassure you that you should consider fucking yourself in the future."
DF: LMAO. Exactly!
JK: You just don't do that. And that's not arrogant, that's simply knowing you're good and what you bring to the table.
DF: And there are those in fanfic who actively resist the notion that there are levels of competence and talent in fanfic just like any other creative field.
Remember the big shitstorm when DCH first started and you had all these people crying that you couldn't build a fanfic site around names?
JK: Yeah, I do recall that. Like any other field, each writer has their own following. There are a handful of people who will read anything a particular writer churns out.
DF: Exactly. And I'm just like that. There are some writers I read everything they've written and then there are others I wouldn't read unless somebody paid me.
Promotion and Group Deaths
DF: The big B43 Special [Bush43 #12] gets unveiled Sunday, eh?
JK: Yep. I'm trying to think of another promo to toss out. AC had 20 more hits than usual the day I did the tease.
DF: Really? That's cool. Be interesting to see how the special does.
JK: Yeah, especially with who's working on it. I want to try and promote the hell out of it.
DF: Well, hey, as we were saying the other night, you get out there and work at promoting the hell out of.
JK: Exactly. I still think Jac [Milenstein, writer of Millennium Man] and Bill [Castonzo, writer of The Spyder] do much much superior and more worthy work, and while both of them get a lot of readers they really deserve more. But if no one knows about it...
DF: I tell fanfic writers that all the time, you can't just write the story and then sit on your ass and wait for the masses to discover it, you gotta lead the horse to water. Keep your name out there in front of the public.
JK: And you can't rely on the EiC to do all the promoting for you. That's the biggest problem I see in a lot of groups, they think the editor will do all they promotional work and you can't expect that.
DF: That's a big problem as well and you're right, the EiC can't do everything for the writers. But then again, so many writers are so lazy. They won't contact other writers and bounce ideas offa them, they won't post on their own message board to keep it active.
As much as I crack on M2K, I gotta give 'em props for keeping the energy level at their site high. Their message board is constantly active and they always let the readers know where they are, what they have available.
JK: Yep, yep. Many a group dies under it's own weight because of a lack of community.
DF: Or they drown under their own bullshit. Know what killed MV1? They spent too much time all day long thinking up 'Sam's Sister' jokes and not enough promoting their work and drawing in new blood.
You look at their mailing lists toward to end, 50 or 60 posts that were nothing but jokes about 'Sam's Sister'. The readers don't want to hear that bullshit, they wanna know what the writers are working on, what new projects are being hatched, who's gonna write what next, how THEY can get to be writers on that site. That's why Gary Dreslinski has been able to keep two sites so active, he works his ass off to foster a creative atmosphere.
Winding Out Of Fanfic, Reader Input and Required Reading
JK: Congrats on the Dillon publishing deal, that's a pretty sweet thing.
DF: Thank you. It's the realization of a dream I've had since I wrote my first story and in a lot of ways I still can't get over it and I hope I never do. It's an exciting time for me.
JK: Having been published now, there seem to be a few folks asking why you bother keeping up with fanfic. We've discussed "why fanfic" already, but what do you say to these folks? Why do you stick with fanfic?
DF: Who says I can't do both? It's fun, it's enjoyable, I enjoy associating with a lot of the people I met through fanfic. I've published one novel. ONE. Yes, it's a major achievement but it's hardly a reason for me to stick my nose up in the air and say: "Well, I don't need this anymore."
I have a loyal audience who have been reading my fanfic for years. Should I just give 'em my ass to kiss and say, "I don't have to write fanfic anymore. I'm a PUBLISHED WRITER". If I were the rampaging elitist egomaniac some people claim I am, yeah, I would do that. But there are people who have been reading my fan fic for years now. They've hung in there with me and I appreciate that.
JK: Wouldn't really be fair to those who helped ya get there, huh?
DF: Exactly. Without readers, where would writers be? You have an obligation to treat your readers with respect and fairness. In a very sense, they're your bosses.
I will be leaving fan fic at some time in the near future, sure. Now that my foot is in the door, so to speak, I'm going to be stepping up my efforts to get other original work I'm writing into print. But my leaving fan fic is going to be a gradual process where I'll be bringing the various series I have out there to resolution points where even if nobody picks 'em up, they'll have reached satisfactory conclusions so that the readers won't have to wonder years down the road how they would have ended.
I have no idea how long this "winding down" will take and I really don't care. As long as I'm enjoying myself and the readers like it, I'm okay.
JK: True, enjoyment is the reason anyone's doing this
DF: And fan fic actually helps me write my original stuff.
JK: Really?
DF: Whenever I hit a bad patch on something original, I just switch over and write HULK or Challengers of The Unknown. Sometime during the writing of the fan fic, my subconscious usually works out whatever problem I was having on the original piece.
JK: Huh, pulls you out of writer's block?
DF: Yeah, it's just a way to trick your brain into continuing to write.
JK: Given that you view readers as psudo-bosses, do you think that writers have a responsibility to their readers in their work whether it's plot, direction, frequency or otherwise?
DF: Depends in what arena you're talking about. You've got fan fiction which is very loose and relaxed and nobody really stresses (well, they try not to at any rate). But over at FRONTIER we're a lot stricter about stuff like that which overall has contributed to whatever success we enjoy. For me, personally, the main responsibility I feel is to provide my readers with the most entertaining story I can provide on as regular a basis as I'm able.
JK: Are you saying that Frontier is more about the writer where fanfic is more reader based? At least in contribution?
DF: I think so. The work done at FRONTIER is more personal. In many cases we're doing stories that we've lived with for years and so we tend to nurture them and be a little more protective. Fanfic is supposed to be more interactive. At least that's how I see it at any rate.
JK: So are you more likely to listen to reader comments and suggestions for your fanfic work than original or do you usually take reader comments into account across the board (depending on how constructive they are, of course)?
DF: I always take reader comments into account for everything I write. As I've said to you before, a lot of times you don't know what the hell you've written until somebody who's not as close to the work as you are tells YOU what you've written and then you stand there with your mouth open saying to yourself: "So THAT's what I meant."
JK: It's weird how some people can read into your work more than you can.
DF: It's downright scary at times...
JK: You've noted to me on a few occasions about the trend you're seeing of more and more people moving to original fiction, as seen in the growth of places like Frontier, Artifice and Foundation. Why do you think that is?
DF: Because fanfic only satisfies up to a point and then you want to flex those creative muscles and really see what you can do. No matter how well you can write Spider-Man or X-Men or how brilliantly you craft the characterizations of The Flash or Batman, the bottom line is still this: these are licensed characters you really can't go anywhere with if you intend to write as a career. You can't put down "I wrote 20 issues of GenX for M:Rev" on a resume. They'll look at you as if you were crazy.
And not so long ago, Frontier (and to a certain extent, Artifice) were the only game in town when it came to original fiction. People read and enjoyed what we were doing but privately they didn't think we would go anywhere and were just pulling our collective pud. But in the last year and certainly in the last six months with the explosion of new talent that has come to Frontier as well as our successfully publishing a novel, I think we're being taken a bit more seriously these days
JK: You think that there's an increased amount of legitimacy to the original sites thanks to strides taken recently?
DF: I think there's a lot of talented fan fic writers who, for one reason or another, were reluctant to step out there and see how the waters were. But since Frontier has been around for a while now and has shown that yes, you CAN successfully bring your original work to the public and find an audience, they're saying; "hey, if those cats can do it, so can I."
JK: Do you find original fiction to be of a better quality generally? And do you find the readers to be a bit more discerning?
DF: You have some writers who are just as good at writing fan fic as they are doing original fiction but that's only because they don't know HOW to write below the level of quality they've attained. I don't think it's a question of quality. I think it's more of a personal passion that comes with writing something that is totally, completely yours instead of borrowing characters you have to turn back in at the end of the day.
I mean, no matter how much I may love writing The Hulk or The Avengers or The Doom Patrol, they're still not MINE.
Dillon or Diamondback, it's a different situation. I wake up in the morning with those guys and I go to bed with them. I know their lives in as much detail as I know my own.
JK: So you find your original work to be better typically?
DF: In my case, I definately consider my original work to be better than my fan fic with the exception of Mon-El. I consider that series to be the equal of any of my original stuff.
JK: What about Mon-El makes it stand out for you?
DF: Back when I was actively writing it, I was clicking on all circuits as far as characterization and throwing out those Michael Moorcock/Jim Starlin cosmic themes I really loved and also dealing with the character of Mon-El himself who in the 41st Century is a lot like King Arthur.
JK:Who in fanfiction to you generally like?
DF: Who do I like? Jeez, how long you got? Bill Kt'epi. Russ Anderson. Mike McGee. David Wheatley (don't look so surprised, the man made me like Wolverine, no easy feat, that). Matt Pierce. Mike Franzoni, The Human Typewriter. You. Megan Curtis. Josh Reynolds. The list goes on and on... Despite what you may have heard there are very few writers whose work I actually do dislike and that only because they're so goddamn lazy and sloppy.
I tend to work with people whose writing I like, lemme put it that way. If you see my name on a site, you can take it as a given that I've read and enjoyed at least 75% of what's there on that site.
JK: What do you look for in a good story, or a good writer for that matter?
DF: Professionalism. Characterization. A sense of excitement about the material. You can read something and tell if the cat writing it gave a damn about what he was doing or not. I don't like pretentiousness or the writer disguising a message in his story. You want to send me a message, use Western Union. Entertainment value. At the core of every story is this: Did I Enjoy Reading This?
I like who can take their work seriously but still have fun with themselves and haven't souped themselves up into thinking that their writing deathless prose that will change the course of Western Civilization.
JK: So no "next great American novel" folks for you, at least, not anyone who either sets out or thinks of himself as doing that.
DF: I think that anybody who sets out to just tell a good story will come a lot closer to writing that "Great American Novel" than somebody who sits down proclaiming that they will do exactly that. Let's not forget that most of our greatest novels were written when the writers were broke, starving or out of work and didn't have anything else to do. LMAO
Look at that J.K. Rowling chick, the one who writes the Harry Potter books, wasn't she on welfare and about to be evicted from a tenement when she wrote and sold the first one?
And take Charles Dickens. All of his novels were written in serial fashion, appearing in monthly installments in magazines. He'd have been right at home at Frontier.
My point is this: I don't think you can sit down and consciously say you're going to create great art. You can only sit down and write the best story you can and time alone will decide if you've written great art or not.
JK: Great art is inspired not forced.
DF: True
I gotta wrap this up, The Wife needs to get online. Any more questions before I go?
JK: Uh, no, think that's it.
Thanks, man.
DF: Anytime
Bibliography
Fanfiction - in chronological order
Doom Patrol: The Silver Age at DC Legends - http://www.paratime.ca/dclegends/
Mon El at DC Legends - http://www.paratime.ca/dclegends/
Blackhawk International - http://ourworlds.topcities.com/blackhawk/fanfiction/bin.html
Justice Squadron at DC Legends - http://www.paratime.ca/dclegends/
Challengers of the Unknown: The Silver Age at DC Legends - http://www.paratime.ca/dclegends/
Avengers Spotlight featuring Stingray at Avengers 2000 - http://www.ironrodstudio.com/av2000/
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell at Vertigo: Subculture - http://www.digitallymystic.com/sites/fiction/subculture/index.html
The Avengers at Avengers 2000 - http://www.ironrodstudio.com/av2000/
Hulk at Marvel 2000 - http://marvel2000.cjb.net/
Mon El at DC Heroes
Original Works
Dillon and the Voice of Odin at Frontier Publishing - http://www.frontierpublishing.net (available in quality paperback at Amazon.com)
Diamondback at Frontier Publishing - http://www.frontierpublishing.net
Dillon and the Legend Of The Golden Bell at Frontier Publishing - http://www.frontierpublishing.net
But It Was Just A Scratch at Electronic Tales - http://www.electronictales.com/
In Need Of A Friend at Electronic Tales - http://www.electronictales.com/
Of All The Plagues A Lover Bears at Electronic Tales - http://www.electronictales.com/
Other
Derrick Ferguson's Notebook v2.0 - http://digitallymystic.com/