Vampire Diaries and Fanfic

julie37619

I heard this on the BookRiot podcast today and was absolutely fascinated by it.  Apparently the Vampire Diaries series and characters were owned by the publisher, not the author.  So when they decided to stop publishing the series, the author wanted to keep writing, but couldn't because she didn't have rights to the characters.  Now Amazon Worlds has licensed Vampire Diaries for their fanfic writing and the original author is going to be publishing fanfic that finished out what she had originally planned for the series.  

84Lauren

::head explodes::

MrsJenE

That whole story around Vampire Diaries is so crazy.

Skeezon

RevJen

So this made my head hurt.

fabk

Wasn't LJ Smith hired as a ghost writer for the series originally? I think that was how it all started. Pretty crazy though!

julie37619

Yes.  I think I did a terrible job explaining.  The publisher hired LJ Smith to write the series, but they retained the rights to the story, characters, etc.  LJ Smith wanted to write more books, but the publisher decided they were done.  Since LJ Smith didn't own the books, she couldn't keep writing them.  Fast-forward ten years or so and Amazon has started licensing fanfic through a program called Amazon Worlds.  LJ Smith is now writing fanfic for Vampire Diaries on Amazon Worlds that tells the actual story of what she wanted to do with Vampire Diaries as VD fanfic.  Is that more sense-making?

RevJen

julie37619 said:

Yes.  I think I did a terrible job explaining.  The publisher hired LJ Smith to write the series, but they retained the rights to the story, characters, etc.  LJ Smith wanted to write more books, but the publisher decided they were done.  Since LJ Smith didn't own the books, she couldn't keep writing them.  Fast-forward ten years or so and Amazon has started licensing fanfic through a program called Amazon Worlds.  LJ Smith is now writing fanfic for Vampire Diaries on Amazon Worlds that tells the actual story of what she wanted to do with Vampire Diaries as VD fanfic.  Is that more sense-making?

Didn't they also steer the story in the direction they wanted as well?  I seem to remember an article or two about that.  She tried to take the plotline in a different way and they vetoed it.

fabk

If I recall you can tell when reading that you could tell when she stopped writing the stories.
I kind of want to give her "fan fic" a chance.

MrsJenE

RevJen said:

julie37619 said:

Yes.  I think I did a terrible job explaining.  The publisher hired LJ Smith to write the series, but they retained the rights to the story, characters, etc.  LJ Smith wanted to write more books, but the publisher decided they were done.  Since LJ Smith didn't own the books, she couldn't keep writing them.  Fast-forward ten years or so and Amazon has started licensing fanfic through a program called Amazon Worlds.  LJ Smith is now writing fanfic for Vampire Diaries on Amazon Worlds that tells the actual story of what she wanted to do with Vampire Diaries as VD fanfic.  Is that more sense-making?

Didn't they also steer the story in the direction they wanted as well?  I seem to remember an article or two about that.  She tried to take the plotline in a different way and they vetoed it.

Yes.

funkypineapple

The books weren't that great to begin with, but yes you can definitely tell when she stopped writing them.

If I'm not mistaken (it has been a while since I read it), she was fighting to get the story to go where she wanted after they rebooted the series (prior to the show), they said no, fired her, and hired someone else to ghost write the rest of the series.

She was also replaced with a ghost writer on The Secret Circle books.