The next author I want to discuss is Kayla Griffith, aka
Openhome. She is an administrator for
Ramblings and Thoughts / Twilight Fan Fiction and Art web site [link on the
right side of this site]. She gave me my first break into fan fiction. I sent
her my first Twilight related poems and asked if they were suitable for the site. The
next thing I knew they were posted. Wow! Heady experience! She has encouraged
me in other ways as well. My first fan letter was to her after I finished
reading Singularity. I had posted
regular reviews, but when finished reading that story I needed to send her a
separate emailed letter as a fan. We have continued with occasional email
exchanges.
Openhome is her fan fiction name. She has completed two
books about Alice
and Jasper and working on the last book. The first two were completed before
the Illustrated Twilight Guide was
published so the story does not agree with the new information found in the Guide. The first book, Singularity, is about Alice ’s time from waking as a vampire until
meeting Jasper, about 30 years. It was written in response to discussions with
her daughters about what Alice
was doing during those years of waiting. The story is an interesting character
study of how one adapts to a new unexpected life and the challenges that life
throws at you while waiting for fulfillment of a vision. Alice is searching for what / who she is and
for home. She finds out things about her new self and learns about who she is
through her trials and joys. She is
helped along the way by some human and vampire friends and some alone time of
self reflection.
None of us are immortal vampires, but we can still relate to
some of the experiences Alice
has. Alice
knows who she loves and the family she will eventually be a part of, but has to
wait for those things to actually happen. So what does she do? Sit and mope or
goes after life? What do we do when waiting for someone? She gets some
disturbing news, what does she do? How do we react to bad news? She has human
friends that die. She has vampire friends that need her help. She has choices
to make. Some are not well thought out and not well executed. She learns. Reading
Alice’s story prompted me to look at some of my decisions and how I’ve lived my
life. It shed light on topics in ways that I hadn’t thought of. It has given me
a different perspective to some topics. I appreciate this fresh look at things
for my own self reflection time.
The second book, Coalescence,
is about the time Alice
and Jasper have together until about 7 years after joining the Cullen family.
It is their journey of discovery of each other. It is their journey together as
Alice supports
Jasper as he learns to live off of animal blood. The third book, Rogue, is more about Jasper finding peace after the life he led
before finding Alice and the Cullens. There are elements of post traumatic
stress disorder for Jasper in Coalescence
and I think some final resolution to that will be in Rogue. It is good to see
this issue tackled in fiction as so many people today are dealing with it themselves
or helping others deal with it in the real world.
In reading the Twilight Saga books, I’ve not understood why after
nearly 50 years the lure of human blood was still so strong for Jasper. Reading
Kayla’s stories helps explain that aspect of his character. Jasper is one of
the minor characters that changes between beginning of Twilight and end of
Breaking Dawn. The end of his change is mostly due to Bella and Nessie. Kayla
is giving Jasper a fuller story of that change. That is the appeal for me of
Kayla’s stories about Alice
and Jasper, getting into their heads as to how and why they change. That also applies to her other stories, just not as detailed being shorter.
Kayla has also written other fan fiction stories – based on
Twilight and other fan favorite books. Those
stories can be found through her profile page on R&T and FFn, links
provided below. She has a blog about life and writing that shows off her sense
of humor. There are at least two original novels that she is working at getting
published. The first is a PG13 romance
called Casserole Committee where a
town’s casserole committee interferes with the love life of two ladies – one
divorced and one widowed. Results are funny and touching. I hope it is
published soon so more people can enjoy the small town happenings and Kayla’s delightful
and clean sense of humor. The second one is still undergoing final edits.
It is good to see a fan fiction author moving on to being
paid for their work, even it means less fan fiction stories. Fan fiction can be purely for fun and self fulfillment or
for fun and practice. It is exciting to watch as Kayla’s practice writing in
someone else’s universe yields published original novels of romance without all
the sex so prevalent in books today. I look forward to whatever else she may
write.
Below are links to her fan fiction profiles, a blog entry on
R&T and the final link is to her web blog.
author profile
author profile
Tells how peanut butter and cat paws got her to write fan
fiction.
The Comfort of Chaos
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