Look who it is...

[chicksrus]

Michelle

Remember Nsyncgrrl? Who knew after all these years she'd be a successful fiction writer? Of course, she's rewritten most of her Nsync fic into original fiction stories. She’s listed them here. She also rewrote Original Sin. Her latest is Tee'd Off l which I recall was originally a Chris and Justin fic. Looking at her website, I find

Comments

[firelily]

Is it just me or do those books just look...kind of like "fake" books somehow. The covers all look like someone maniped a bunch of wannabe book covers. Are they actual published books??

If so, congrats to her. she was like everyone's gateway drug into popslash, so it's kind of funny that she's rewriting all her stuff.

[velvetaj]

They do look fake, but I assure you, they're real. Her name is actually pretty well-known (from what I can tell) in the world of m/m fiction. The problem is the publishers of the books are pretty small presses with (ahem) minimal skills in the whole book cover thing. I noticed her prublisher for Without Sin (which I totally loved when it was Justin/Lance and I might have to try out as whoever the hell they are now) is Prizm books (http://www.prizmbooks.com/zen/), a small section of Torquere press (http://www.torquerepress.com/), that does exclusively LGBT YA fiction. Notice the covers they've got. Anybody want to offer them some graphic design skills

[firelily]

Oh geez...why would anyone think an entire chapter devoted to kitten adoptions is okay? Unless you're writing a book about how to be a good kitten owner, that does NOT make for good storytelling!

Too bad about the quality of the books. It's such a niche market that I'm sure you would run into that same problem even with books published by larger, more respectable publishing houses. I bought this book once at a library sale about a boy's coming out story, and it was so boring that I put it down halfway through. It's like the LGBT book realm is so narrow that they have to let just anyone write stuff or there'd be nothing there. It's kind of a shame...

[velvetaj]

Cassndra Claire (Draco trilogy) from the HP fandom also moved on to published original fiction (http://cassandraclare.com/cms/home). I bet there are more, hiding beyond their real names.

Funny thing - when you first said Nsyncgrrl, I thought of the twelve year old girl who used to post the most heinous stories in the YA forum. That would have been a shocker!

[firelily]

Ahahaha! I had forgotten about her!

[chicksrus]

OMLord, I remember her! Hahaha!

[chicksrus]

Oh, that's why Cassandra Clare's name sounded familiar to me when I came across her lastest book on display at our local Chapters bookstore here.

Michelle

Original Sin

[velvetaj]

I thought you guys would get a kick out of this - I just had the opportunity to review the reworked version of Orginal Sin on my blog: http://allybookblog.blogspot.com/

The story was almost exactly the same as I remembered - just the names changed. I played a lot of guess-the-Syncer throughout the book.

Re: Original Sin

[chicksrus]

Ooh, excellent review. I always liked Without Sin. It was one of her best works. Have you read Hero by Perry Moore? I've heard lots of good things about it. They are even making a tv show out of the book. Also, you should check ellie_rose on LJ. She does a lot of book, tv and movie reviews of LGBT.

Re: Original Sin

[velvetaj]

Hey thanks! I always liked it too - liked all of her fiction. Unfortunately I expected more with a published book. With fan fiction you get a lot of leeway because the audience mostly knows the characters. The book changed very little from the original (heh) story.

I enjoyed Hero and I'm looking forward to the TV series. I'm reading the Msaks series by Hayden Thorne that's about gay superheroes too, which is kind of cool. What's different is this time the gay part is just part of the character, not a main plot point, which is kind of refreshing. I'll have to check out Ellie_rose. I know of Elisa Rolle, an Italian reviewer - I wonder if they're the same? We'll see - thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Original Sin

[chicksrus]

You're correct. It's Elisa Rolle.

http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/profile

Another one who has an LJ is Erastes. Have you heard of her? She writes Age of Sail books. An interesting thing about her is she helps people get published.