Once in a while, an author has to have a bit of fun. Or a distraction. Or a way to flex the creative muscles for a story, but can’t work on a particular story. For me, that means it’s time to write some fanfiction!

What is fanfiction?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Okay, that’s snark.

Fanfiction is any story written within the world of a pop culture property by someone who is a fan and not the direct controller or licensee of said property.

Usually, “fanservice” comes with fanfiction. By that, we mean the fan creating the fiction puts an inordinate amount of wish fulfillment into the project.

For example, two characters that may not be romantically linked in the original property are linked in the fanfiction. Or characters from two properties who would never meet due to licensing team up — or fight one another.

(Okay, under that definition, The Force Awakens isn’t really fanfiction, but it might as well have been for all the fanservice it provided. But I digress.)

A true example of fanfiction comes with the short film, Batman: Dead End. It features Batman taking on not only the Joker but the xenomorph from Alien and the Predator.

How about some RPG?

RPGs, or role-playing games, are exactly what they sound like. Players take on the “role” of a character in a fictional world.

RPGs are affectionately also called “roll”-playing games because players often roll dice to add a level of chance to their character’s actions.

People outside of the geek community know RPGs as “Dungeons & Dragons” and other tabletop games of its ilk.

Have you ever played a video game where your characters level up? Something like Mass Effect or Final Fantasy? Or even the classic Xbox Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic?

Surprise! You played an RPG! Hell, in the case of KOTOR, it’s based on the tabletop Star Wars RPG, with all those pesky die rolls done in the background.

Welcome to being a geek.

I like a mix of RPGs in my fanfiction

I played “D&D” and some other RPGs back in the day. Got to the point that I created adventures I never played with friends just to create.

Recently, to get the creative juices going during a slump on the “Shadowdance” saga, I dusted off my RPG chops by picking up Green Ronin’s (now unfortunately discontinued) “DC Adventures” game.

I got lucky in that “DC Adventures” is compatible with Green Ronin’s “Mutants and Masterminds” 3rd edition game, which is well supported online.

Thanks to some players on the “Echoes of the Multiverse” forum, I got all the write-ups I’d need for characters from Marvel, DC Comics, and a myriad of other mediums like video games and movies.

Armed with this material, I set out to make a world of superhero fanfiction.

And now you get to read fanfiction!

With all this effort to create these stories, I figured I’d show them to somebody. That somebody is you! And you behind them!

As a fan of serialized storytelling (comic books, duh!), I’m going to publish the stories in episodes, one on Mondays and one on Thursdays starting November 27th. I already have a story called “Doppelganger” ready to go.

“Doppelganger” features SHIELD agents Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Grifter and the Black Widow. General Fury makes an appearance, as well as SHIELD’s longstanding arch-villains from HYDRA.

Behind that, I have “Armored Underworld,” teaming everyone’s favorite tech billionaires, Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. (If you don’t know who they are, you don’t get out much.)

Now I’m not sending these off to my usual editor. I can’t make money on these stories due to copyright, so no point in spending money on them. So please forgive me if Microsoft Word and Grammarly don’t catch all my ramblings.

So there it is. Swing back by on Monday, November 27th for the first installment.

Oh yeah! On my “Thoughts From the Shed” blog, I’ll occasionally write behind-the-scenes posts that take you inside the creation of the fanfiction. Think of it as one of those audio commentaries on a blu-ray disc.

UPDATE: If it’s good enough for SYFY Wire…

I was honored to have SYFY Wire interview me as part of their Fan Creators gallery. I credit my “Star Wars” prologue crawl for that one.

Oh. In case you were interested, here’s “Batman: Dead End.”