Wikipedia article on original slash - assistance needed
I've been working on an entry about original slash at Wikipedia for ages (long enough for a subentry to appear in the slash fiction article there), and I'm still missing some info. Hope you guys can help me. (For those of you who don't know, "original slash" is original homoerotic fiction that is written for, or published within, the slash fiction community - and if anyone knows of a better definition, speak now, because that's the definition I've drafted for my entry.) 1) I need names of writers (and Web references for this information) who have published in the fan fiction or original slash communities and then went on to professionally publish books with m/m content *and* have publicly acknowledged their fanfic/slash connections. (I don't want to out anyone.) I'm looking for authors who either have been published by big presses or who have won or been finalists for literary awards. 2) I need a name or two of authors who have published both in the slash community and in gay publications (as opposed to m/m publications aimed at women). 3) Does anyone know what's up with ERWI? The Website has been down for a while now. 4) As far as I know, no press currently states publicly that it publishes original slash, and the only magazines that have stated this publicly are Forbidden Fruit, MAS-Zine, and JACK. Am I correct? (I do mention Torquere as an example of a press that publishes a lot of original slash authors.) 5) In addition to the above, here are the publications/organizations/Websites I've listed that have strong connections with original slash. Have I missed anyone? Master List of Original Slash Original Slash Archive The Skinny Uniquely Pleasurable ERWF ERWI (and the Fruity Award) Original Slash Fiction Webring Boy's Love Original Fiction NetRing SCREWZ Awards (its original fiction category) Nifty (because original slashers have posted there over the years) FanFiction.net and its original fiction successor FictionPress.com Kathara's Original Slash / Yaoi Recommendations (as an example of an early original slash directory) Original Slash Writers Guild (defunct) SlashAndHack TheSigil Hint of a Century (defunct) Sache Publications (because they've published a book about slashers) 6) Most of that list comes from my timeline. Have I missed any important events in the development of original slash? Keep in mind that this entry is on original slash, so I haven't tried to trace the history of m/m erotic romance, except where it overlaps with the history of original slash.

Keep me out, please (just in case you'd ever thought of including me *LOL*), because I started out writing yonks ago all originally (in German) and didn't even know slash existed. Dabbled for a wee while in fanfic, which got my creative juices back on track (this time in English) and have never touched anything but my own worlds since. I do not want to be seen as a slash writer, but as a writer of gay erotica. :)

"I do not want to be seen as a slash writer, but as a writer of gay erotica." Well, you have the Original Slash Fiction Webring on your home page, so I doubt you can erase that label *entirely*. :) However, I should have said, "People who don't mind being mentioned as being published in both places." Quite a few of us (waves hand) are shy about being labelled. I wouldn't mind it so much if there weren't a tendency by folks in both communities to put up fences. "Oo, you write gay porn, so you're not a slasher!" "Oo, you write slash, so no gay men would want to read your stuff!" Such idiocy, but I see such statements all the time. If I had to put a label on myself, it would be as a fantasy writer, since that's where my roots lie.

ERWI is kaput for the time being. I need to kill it from listings (unless someone else beats me to it).

I've already been labelled a gay man, a fangrrl and on one memorable occassion freakpervert urinating on the genre and found the easiest response is 'shoot, ya got me totally figured out haven't you, next...'. I do notice, however, that my fanfiction pages pull in the most unique users and the highest proportion of users that exit to a point of sale. So I see slash as a positive marketing tool for me. IMHO a short piece on mm and mmf in erotic romance epublishing might be good? I can do you a paragraph and some links if you like but I am wiki-impared so I don't know how to post it myself--could I put it here or email it to you?.

Oh, and what about Minotaur's page?

You might want to include the Original Slash Fiction Webring which has (by definition <g>) lots and lots of links to other orig. slash sites. Some you already mention, some you don't.

"ERWI is kaput for the time being." I'm sorry to hear that. Is this a temporary shutdown or a permanent one? "IMHO a short piece on mm and mmf in erotic romance epublishing might be good?" There is currently a paragraph on erotic romance in the Romance Novel entry, but nobody yet has started a separate entry on it. Do you guys want to collaborate on that? I don't know the erotic romance publishing world well enough to write about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_novel By the way, I'm 99% sure that the original slash section in the slash fiction entry was written by One Of Us. The names mentioned in the original draft pretty much give it away. "Oh, and what about Minotaur's page?" Well, he doesn't write about original slash, does he? Though I do have a paragraph about male original slashers, so I could link to his site in the footnote. "You might want to include the Original Slash Fiction Webring" Look at my list again; it's already there. :) "Some you already mention, some you don't." Well, I can't link to every original slash site, because there are hundreds of them now. Were there any particular sites you felt were important enough to mention?

I'll keep my eyes and ears open for ya. Are you going to group \"yaoi\" in with that or are you looking specifically for writers who identify with \"slash\"? Most of my contacts are \"yaoi\". :?

I'm not qualified to write on original yaoi, unfortunately, and I think it deserves to be separate from the original slash article, since it developed independently from original slash. My guess is that the best place for it would be as a subsection within the main yaoi article, since that article already discusses professionally published original yaoi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi

Woops! Good point, Dusk, I've just taken all my webrings off. Thanks for reminding me. :D Still uhming and ahing if I should take all my old slash fiction off. Hmmmm...

"Thanks for reminding me." That wasn't my intention :), but I gather this was something you'd already decided to do? "Still uhming and ahing if I should take all my old slash fiction off." Well, I'm of the same mind as veinglory, that fanfic can draw visitors in. However, if you prefer to keep your original fiction and fan fiction separate, why not just put them in different places on the Web? Better that than depriving fanfic readers of good reading matter.

Hmmm no, I like to keep things under Marquesate, because I wrote it under that name. We'll see, haven't made up my mind yet. Kept it on the site, but far more hidden. Buried beneath a top link.