300 for 30: Day 25

I closed my Fanstory.com account today, ending what has been a significant era in my development as a writer.

Fanstory.com is like fictionpress.com in that authors post their work for reviews, but you have to pay for a subscription, which gets you two guaranteed reviews per chapter, a newsletter, and free entry into their contests for which you can get cash prizes. It was the one spam email offer I ever took up, and for several years it served me well. I got better, more rounded and mature feedback from readers, and best of all, I met my fairy godmother there.

Sally Odgers was initially just another of my fans, but she critiqued with a steady combination of enthusiasm and a helpful eye for details, eventually putting her marks on all the Laconia novels. I started reading her work and realized she was a woman of vast talent, a real professional. Eventually I discovered that she has been working in the business for six decades as an author, editor, manuscript assessor, and workshop teacher. She has won the Australian World Fantasy Award, an achievement even mentioned on Wikipedia. And she loved my work. She volunteered to write me a letter of recommendation to anyone I wished while I was still trying to get published, and when she got a job contracting for Eternal Press she introduced me to the company, nudging them to take me on. She is now my regular editor. She might as well have waved a wand and told me that I would go to the ball.

I don’t regret my time subscribing to Fanstory. But after a hiatus where I was concentrating on getting the first three novels out, I came back to find the place changed. Perhaps it was me who had changed. All I knew is that I saw an endless circle of people patting each other on the back in order to receive pats in turn, a wheel of inflated yet insubstantial praise and excessive granting of stars per review, with ugly flames and comments for those who didn’t comply. It feels more like an author mill than a think tank of creativity. I am saddened, and I have said goodbye.