A few days ago I finished an article submission for December's Hudson Leick Official Fan Club Newsletter (HLOFCN). After reading the first four newsletters, I was impressed with the way people shared their thoughts and experiences. This encouraged me to write an article for the June 1998 issue of the then quarterly newsletter.

Most of the newsletter articles fall into one of three broad categories. There is fiction and poetry, the fiction being about Callisto, the poetry being more varied. Personal experiences make up the second category, this includes convention reports as well as how Ms Leick has inspired the writer in their life. The third category are editor surveys and reports, which include status reports and official information, as well as selected answers to the newsletter reader question or survey.

Let me discuss why none of those categories suit me as an article writer. Obviously, I'm not going to write an editor-type article since at best that would require me to do a survey or post a question to the readers, and I don't have access to the mailing list. The trouble with trying to submit fiction or poetry is that there is so much of it already, in the newsletter. Every issue has several pieces, some quite good, and I didn't want to compete in that logjammed category. As for writing my personal observations, well, I have trouble writing down my personal life here, much less air it in a public forum. And besides, I haven't met Ms Leick and I don't think she has personally affected my life, at least not as much as most of the fans. I'll probably always say that I'm more impressed with the fan community, who I've interacted with, than with a person I've never interacted with and therefore don't know.

So, I looked around for something original to write. And what I came up with was a sort of peek at the Hudson Leick Mailing List, of which I had been a subscriber for a month or two. To contradict what I said in the previous paragraph, this was a somewhat personal piece about a part of the fan community. It was enjoyable writing it and seeing it published. After that, I decided that my niche would be to write articles about the fan community. I will never write an article about Ms Leick, and after five issues and five articles, no one seems to want to write about us fans.

The second article actually has become a series of seven separate articles. My concept for this was to interview a few fan fiction authors and get their thoughts on writing. This is something that I find interesting, as I've read many good fan fiction stories and I wanted to talk with these authors. Surprisingly, out of seven authors, five agreed to answer my questions. And the total output came out to over 60 000 characters, much more than the about 15 000 maximum article length. So I've been been getting each interview published one at a time. Now, my personal philosophy is that the newsletter should be varied in authors, so I have not been writing any other articles in the meantime.

Some good article ideas have come and gone in the year since, and now that the newsletter is semi-yearly I won't have to write an article until next November, so I hope I have something good to write by then.