Lady Sybilla, the much-maligned, crack-pot author of "Russet Noon," a self-published, fanfic sequel to TWILIGHT, has given an interview to a Brazillian website. She says, in part:
F: So besides all the problems you are excited and proud of it?
A: Absolutely, I know there’s been a strong reaction, and I’ve learned to take the good with the bad.
F: So what do you see as good? Cause I know that a lot of the fans don’t want it, but a lot of them do.
A: Yes, I have to thank the haters for the publicity.
F: And how the release is gonna be, still September on the internet?
A: Well, I had already bought an ISBN number for it and everything but I withdrew it, because I realized I’d never get away with selling it, so I gave refunds to all the Ebay buyers, and now I’m waiting a while to see how things turn out. But probably the release will still be September, in chapters online.
F: Do you feel like your work its more like a regular book or a fanfic in a bigger scale? Cause some people say it is.
A: I believe I have more training and education than the average fanfic writer, so that’s the only reason I wanted to release it as a book, but I guess it’s been turned into a huge moral issue.
F: So about the whole publication problem and rights,did you receive any contact from Stephenie’s people?
A: Yes, that’s definitely a legal mess, no attorney will defend me if I decide to publish. Stephenie’s rep or even herself didn’t contact me, I believe she probably has her mind made up about me already. I think she laughs at the whole situation, to be honest, it’s just hilarious, the rage, the hate, the strong emotions.
Mrs. Potato Head, although she considers herself more educated than your average fanficcer, seems to have realized too late that she has no understanding whatsoever of copyright law. I suspect this revelation came sometime after eBay shut down her account for terms of use violations and shortly before the cease-and-desist letters came from Meyer's attorney, publishers, etc. Yes, I think she's lying about not being slapped down by Meyer & Co. Her "Russet Noon" website has been shuttered for "renovations" and the press releases touting her fanfic novel have been yanked from prlog.org.
Writers and readers all over the net have opened their eyes to the truth: authors sell their fanfiction and get away with it. Sure, published authors play a safe game around copyright laws and change the names and circumstances of their characters around just enough to claim they've created a new character.[...]No author truly creates characters. The characters already exist in the archetypal world that Jung, Freud and Joseph Campbell have described in their books. The author is a medium who channels these characters. The origin of all characters is the Shared Mind, the only mind that truly exists. Our minds are all one single ocean of shared memories, fantasies, dreams, nightmares and visions [...]Laws that attempt to privatize the ownership of characters operate based on a delusion of separateness that we all share in this matrix we call reality.
Uh-huh. I think Mrs. Potato Head lost touch with this "matrix we call reality" a long, long time ago.
