Do you love fanfic like we do? Check out our interview with editors and authors, Casey Childers and Amy Stephenson, about their new fanfic anthology, Loose Lips!
Loose Lips is an upcoming anthology of fan fiction that combines classic literature with everyone’s favorite part of fic…smut. These one-shots are over-the-top, filthy, and hilarious.
Casey and Amy started holding fic read alouds in San Francisco. Soon the engagements would sell out weeks in advance. People loved watching the actor they hired read the fic that authors contributed based on classic pieces of literature with random prompts.
Want a one-shot written about the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg from The Great Gatsby? They have that. Need a smutty look into the seafaring adventures of Moby Dick? No problem.
We were lucky enough to get an interview with these ladies, and you can check it out below! Next week, we’ll have our review for Loose Lips!
Update: You can now read our review HERE!
1. In what fandom did you start writing and/or reading fic?
CASEY: Harry Potter, naturally, but in those days I didn’t “get” it. It was a different time, and I wasn’t a naturalized web citizen. It was only years later that I realized I’d spent my entire high school career writing unattributed Dark Tower fic while spinning my wheels with trying to put a thin veneer of not Dark Tower fic over the surface.
AMY: I was in a lot of fandoms before I knew what fandoms were. I remember being in like 5th grade and using our newly minted modem to search AOL for Calvin and Hobbes stuff, and finding fan art and theories and other things that I didn’t even know were out there. But I didn’t really get what it all was until years later. But I can’t remember a time when I ever liked a thing without going ALL the way down into it, like, needing to know what other fans thought and how they felt, needing that catharsis. That’s always been a part of how I interact with the media I love.
2. You’ve both come up with so many prompts, do you have an absolute favorite?
AMY: I will ride and die for T. J. Eckleburg. We assigned him/the billboard at our first Shipwreck ever, and I remember fighting about whether or not that was a mean thing to do to writers, but in the end some of the best stories we’ve ever seen came from those weird prompts. A close second for me was assigning the portrait when we did Dorian Gray.
CASEY: The pork chops in The Gift of the Magi. Hands down. The result was great, but it could’ve gone any direction.
3. Do you find that more people are open to fanfiction after they’ve been to one of your shows?
CASEY: Absolutely! We’re proud of the fact that we have this thing that the fic community rallies around, but we also love how many uninitiated or fic-curious folks attend every show. The cycle is as predictable as it is adorable. From “What’s all this, then” to “Naturally I felt the need to investigate the relationship between the old man and the sharks” in a matter of weeks.
AMY: I second the “what’s all this then” when they first hear about us. We used to explain the “shipwreck” joke at the top of the show and I was always surprised at how few people got the reference. I hope they’re more open to it afterwards! It’s a wacky and fun and super creative world. Go Forth and Fanfic, citizens.
4. What type of audience do you think would most enjoy LOOSE LIPS? What is one thing you would want your audience to know about the book before they start reading?
AMY: I think anyone who enjoys engaging with their media will Get It. Overthinkers, think-piece addicts, the pathologically neurotic who can’t enjoy a thing without dissecting it. For me for instance, like, Moby Dick is an objectively beautiful book. It also only has one female character and that character is a ship. So that’s a thing that gets inside my brain and colors how I interact with the art. Shipwreck grew out of that spirit. When the 2013 Gatsby movie was coming out, Casey and I talked over beers about how the book is gorgeous, but also how hilarious it is that a story relying SO heavily on Jazz Parties and Rolls Royces and beachfront Long Island mansions somehow explains the American Condition. Shipwreck was born in the spirit of loving a thing and also laughing about its pretensions, and the book is a natural extension of that.
CASEY: Objectively, there is no audience for which this book is inappropriate.
Amy Stephenson is a curly-haired human female and lipstick enthusiast who prefers whiskey. She’s Booksmith’s social media maven, the emcee of an untold quantity of literary events, and a sort of dry bartender for everyone who wants to tell her what the 60s were like. She’s Shipwreck’s co-creator and emcee, and a writer for Hoodline’s Upper Haight channel, which was voted Best News Site in Best of the Bay (RIP) 2014. She tweets at @LoserTakesAll and for @Booksmith.
Casey A. Childers is a men’s lifestyle editor by trade, co-creator of Shipwreck, and a producer of WRITE CLUB San Francisco. He is the author of the novel Bear Season and the short fiction collection Pictures of the Floating World, She Said, and I Pretended to Understand. He lives in San Francisco, has three children, and is loved by all he meets.
Thank you so much to the authors for the opportunity to interview them and pick their brains about fic!