SteelHyaena

Thank you. Both my sigpic and my avatar are my own work. The avatar was done using Poser 7, and the sig was made in Photoshop. Your translation is correct! 'The sun never rises, yet winter never comes.' I am a creature of the desert night.

Good to know and good advice, too. I am working on deadline right now, but I will see if I can get a couple of my short pieces up—things I don't have an intended market for. My main manuscript is going to have to be something I keep to myself for now. I have to be careful with things I actually intend to sell.

The main bulk of my work is original fiction, so obviously that means well-crafted, researched and believable characters. I don't so much as start an outline until I know enough to write on the subject I want to explore. In the event that I do choose to work with a fandom, my tendency is to create original characters and pair them with canon characters about which somewhat less is known, or who are tertiary to the storyline. An example would be writing a Potter fic in which one of my 'originals' interacts with someone like Blaise Zabini or even Gregory Goyle. I also shy away from insertion into things which the original author has already explored. Gregory Goyle survived past Book 7, for instance; the idea I am knocking around is what he does to redeem himself after all the bodies are hauled away. The writing of Mary Sues/Gary Stu's is a part of the learning process. Most writers go through a stage where they need to make this mistake in order to learn how not to write. One thing that absolutely pisses me off, though, is the immediate assumption that all original characters are Mary Sues—and I have been in places especially in Potter fandom where that has very much been the case. Between this and what I call the 'Rabid Slashers', I keep most of my Potter fics private. ('Rabid Slashers' are people that ridicule anything that is not a same-sex pairing, and/or that includes any original female character, regardless of whether she is with a favorite of theirs or not.)

I might not share that sort of story as a personal taste, but I do have to say it's a breath of fresh air that even something that potentially controversial can be posted here. Makes me worry a lot less about some of the visceral horror that appears in a few of my own works. Do original works get attention as well? Sometimes, I have a story chunk that needs to come out that is not connected to a fandom.

Fucking a... wow. Euw. Maybe people are reading that for shock value?

How much traffic does this site get? Not just the forums... the posted stories as well. I have a fairly long fic and also some other stuff I am thinking of moving here, but I'm wondering if it'll get read.

I'm new... obviously. I am Steel Hyaena. My fandoms are Tolkien (books more than movies, heavy Silmarillion), Harry Potter (NO slash, please don't ask me to read or beta for it) and a very, very old anime series called Uchu Senkan Yamato or Space Battleship Yamato. I also have written a few pieces in the older Marvel-verse before things got absurd and I stopped reading the books. Be aware that I am not one to suffer fools gladly. Be literate and intelligent when posting to me or reviewing my work; I do not accept critique from anyone that is not of comparable or better skill than my own. I am currently working on an actual novel manuscript. The genre will be post-apocalyptic horror. Because of this, my stories may be slow to go up. My original material has to take precedence over things I write for fun.