Like Tank, I wrote my first "fanfic" after I read the Black Stallion. Unfortunately, my interests have
always skewed toward novels, which was much more than my 11-year-old self could handle, so the story died a quiet death after some fifteen single-spaced, typed pages.
From then on, I worked on original writing for the next 15 years, mostly very bad unfinished novels. After that, I focused on writing some short stories that never sold anywhere before returning to romance novel writing. I finished one and then started another novel that took me 10 years to finish
.
About 30 years after my first fanfic, I got online access (February 1996). I was already a passionate fan of L&C, but then I discovered the online fandom. The first place I found was the Kryptonsite, which had a newsletter that included some short stories. After I read a few, I realized that I had found a place where I could be published and maybe even receive some feedback, so I started writing "A Shot in the Dark." In the 11 years since then, I've written something over 400,000 words of fanfic and original fic--not much compared with some of you, but many times more than I'd written in the whole of my life before that. So I think I owe this fandom a great debt of gratitude.
