TWENTY YEARS AGO, IN A MOMENT OF INSANITY — YOUNG I WAS, HUSBAND TRAVELING FIVE DAYS A WEEK WAS, STUCK AT HOME WITH TWO UNDER-SIX KIDS I WAS — I DECIDED TO WRITE FANFIC:
Only to realize one probably needed to watch much more TV or movies than I did (or do.)  Bizarrely, (ahem) no one had pages for Heinlein fanfic or Agatha Christie fanfic. The only sf series that had a robust fanfic following — of the series I’d read and liked, that is — was Anne McCaffrey’s Pern, and she’d just stomped all over the fanfic groups before I started looking.  Dumas fanfic…. Do yourself a favor and don’t look up Three Musketeers fanfic. Let’s just say that’s not what I wanted to write.  I finally found Austen fanfic. And after I’d got myself kicked out of the most humorless of the groups for a joke about unruly pillows (you had to be there) I found myself a home at the Derbyshire Writers’ Guild.  Over the next few years, I established some online friendships.

Eventually this led to the creation of a fantasy version of Pride and Prejudice, co-written with a friend (who honestly did most of the work, as — as soon as we’d started writing it — I found myself under a bunch of deadlines and also working part time in a real-life job.)  The story, set in the same universe as my novel Witchfinder (if not the same world) went on to be one of the most popular at the site. (And by the way, now that the health problems are, if not conquered at least under control, I am writing the sequel to Witchfinder for free on my blog, one chapter at a time on Saturdays. Only somewhat impaired by it being 2020. Another sequel is largely finished and waiting a clear week to make it coherent. Note the free novel is first draft, with all its typos and inconsistencies upon it.)

A Touch of Night was published, for a few years, a few years ago (don’t make me look up how many) and we’re now bringing it out again, considerably cleaned up (and I take some blame for how bad it was, since I did see page proofs. Take that as a measure of how ill I was back then) in terms of typos and inconsistencies and now under my published-fanfic name.

A Touch Of Night: Pride, Prejudice, Werewolves and Dragons, Oh, My! – by Alyx Silver and Sofie Skapski

In a world that puts shape shifters to death, Mr. Darcy was unfortunate enough to be born as a were-dragon.
But the cruel laws don’t always find their victims. Mr. Darcy has survived and protected Mr. Bingley who is a werewolf.
Meanwhile, in Hertfordshire, Lizzy has been protecting her sister Jane who turns into a beautiful hunting dog.
When Mr. Bingley rents Netherfield, the Were-Laws and the shape shifting of three of them add extra complications to the flowering of romance between the well-loved couples. And Mr. Wickham. joining the Royal Were Hunters, lends additional danger to the situation.
Will they get together despite the danger, Lizzy’s active imagination and Mr. Darcy’s excessive nobility of character?

(This book was previously published with Sarah A. Hoyt and Sofie Skapski as the authors. Sarah’s name has been changed to match her other published Austen fanfic.)