Annie (who seriously hopes Kathy doesn't have a copy of that actual email somewhere.)
LOL! Nope, I don't, but I do remember it ... though interestingly enough, a little differently. <g>
Annie was posting "Anybody's Baby" to the boards, and I thought it was a neat premise with a ton of potential. So I posted some feedback, maybe made some suggestions for something I would have expected to happen that didn't, that sort of thing, when suddenly I got an email saying how much she liked my ideas and would I be willing to explain my suggestions more in depth. Talk about being delighted! <g>
See, normally when I post suggestions to a new author, I always worry I'm going to upset them. After all, you never know when you are going to run into someone who *says* they want constructive feedback when all they really want to hear is, "this is great! Don't change a thing!", and you get burned. So I try to be pretty careful about what I say if I don't know someone. So to actually have a author come back and tell me that they were fascinated by what I said and would I be willing to expand on them? Now how could I *not* love that?? LOL.
But to keep this on topic, I'll give my own delurking story.
In the summer of 1995 (before the 3rd season started), I was home on maternity leave, but my office was trying to entice me to come back early. My husband had been wanting to buy a new computer for some time, but I had been balking. After all, ours worked fine for the stuff we did, so why spend the money? "Ah!" he said, "But we could get on the internet!" Big deal, I scoffed ... what could I *possibly* do on the internet? (Yes, I'll wait while you all stop laughing -- the irony is quite striking, isn't it?
)
Eventually, we did get that new computer; my office offered to let me pilot a work from home program for them if I would come back early, and my extra earnings would pay for the computer I'd need to do that work. My husband installed all the software and was trying to explain to me about using Netscape to visit websites. "But I don't know any websites," I protested. He pulled up Yahoo.com ... "type in 'Lois and Clark'," he suggested, trying to get me comfortable with his new toy.
"I bet you can find information out about it." Talk about wishing he could go back and relive a day ...
The first thing I found was a big fan site about the show, and was astounded and delighted beyond belief. (I can't remember who ran it, but it was the main one at the time.) There were links to a lot of things, but one of them was fanfic. Fanfic? What the heck? The link took me to a page with a few stories (Zoomway's Counter Clark-Wise was there) and eventually led me to Rhen's mailing list and the majordomo list (this was pre-Archive). I was hooked immediately.
Another link was to info about IRC ... that sounded interesting, but you had to download this program ... that sounded really intimidating. I finally got the courage up to ask my husband about it and he poked around online until he found a program to use, and I finally summounded my courage and signed on. I think my first visit was on a Monday, and there weren't too many people there -- a dozen or so. (LOL, which of course totally cracks me up now; shows you how busy IRC was back then when 10-12 people was a slow night.) I was nervous, but people were really friendly and when I left, people actually invited me to come back! (I remember Dan Shawler saying I was "a nice, well-behaved newbie" and everyone laughing when I mistakingly assumed Zoomway was a guy.
)
I did come back a couple more times that week, and was told that Sunday nights were when it got *really* busy; after the eps aired in the US, tons of peopled logged on. I was so curious, I just had to come ... "Contact" had just aired that night ... and, after I got over the shock of seeing 50, 60, 70 people in a chat room
, the rest is history.
Kathy
