This was copied directly from Cecilia Tan’s site, and used with her permission.
I, Steven Brust, tell stories and publish my works because I want to spur the imaginations of my readers. I view non-commercial fanworks as a natural extension of that inspiration. The only thing I can’t support is anything that would damage my livelihood or reputation, hence keep the stuff non-commercial and label it as non-commercial fanfiction when disseminating/posting it. If you break any local laws where you are to either read my works or write about them, please don’t tell me. I may or may not read or comment on fanworks out there. Sometimes my time is limited, sometimes a comment would turn out to be a spoiler for another reader, and so on, but don’t mistake my silence for ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I support the creation of non-commercial fanworks and fanfiction as a valid fannish activity, right up there with costuming, filking, and text-based play-by-post role-playing.
An excellent way to put it.
I find your books—in particular—very inspiring. Reading good writing is what makes me want to write. It’s not so much good stories, interesting plots, great ideas, or fun characters that make me want to write so much as it is simply well chosen words, within well constructed sentences (of which, this probably is not one), within well crafted chapters within a story-arc that is stimulating in some sense or other.
Whether I’ve expressed my point very well above or not, the bottom line is that your work does make me want to write. It makes me very much want to get back to that story I was spending hours a day working on a few years back.
That’s nice to hear; thank you.
Dear Steven, thank you for such a healthy attutude to thousands of fans who can’t even control their graphomaniac nature after reading your stories!
It obviously happens only because these stories are brilliant and make people think about, imagine and then spoil some paper)
There’re not lots of fans here in Russia (I haven’t found even a dozen as crazy as me here yet, heh – or maybe they just hide somewhere, I don’t know) so fanfiction is rather poor and seldom to be found. But maybe it’s not bad actually) One should read an original first)
Thank you for Taltos series, your heroes are truly alive, sentient and inspiring without redundant pathetics!
And it’s really nice to know that your famous author is your contemporary :)
Best wishes from Russia!
*no dzur helped me to write this comment so nobody got hurt :)*
Thanks kindly, Tatyana. Enjoy!
I’m surprised I somehow never saw this until now, but seeing as how I was introduced to your books via play-by-post role-playing, I’m quite glad to know now that you approve of such endeavors! (Although I will, sadly, have to decline to mention just where on the internet this role-playing took place, as I’m quite sure my old acquaintance the former Morrolan RPer would have quite the heart attack if I did and he found out!)