Welcome to the website for the "The Master's Daughter" fanfiction series. As most of you already know, this series is based off of Laurell K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" series of novels. I have been a fan of that series since 2003, although I have been disappointed in the quality of some of the latest books. I think LKH has a gift for creating interesting characters and a fun three-dimensional world that makes a fanfic writer itch to play in it.
Having as I do very little resistance to temptation, I began to think it over. What if Anita had a child? What would it be like to grow up among vampires, animators, and lycanthropes of every description? If magic were merely life as usual, rather than something you only read about? There was no question of who among all Anita's lovers the father would be: Jean-Claude, the wonderful Master of the City whose combination of selfless concern and Macchiavellian political ability made him a fascinating character. Besides, what a great challenge for a writer: to depict the consummate seducer in a completely non-sexual role!
So in spring of 2007 I went for it. Starting in March, I worked feverishly every day. Even on days I had to go to college, I took my flash drive with me so I could work on it in the library between classes. For over eight weeks, the story, which I affectionately nicknamed "The Fanfic That's Eating My Life", consumed me.
My main character is Mara Blake. My biggest concern when I began was the age-old insult against fanfics based on an original character: "Mary Sue!". So I took care to create a character who was interesting but not particularly powerful, and was surrounded by characters and a world that would be interesting even without Mara. Obviously the world was mostly LKH's, but I tried to change and expand it as it would be by twenty years going by. Mara's "species", the half-vampire half-human hybrids, are the fastest growing minority in the United States, creating a whole host of changes in human society.
What kept me interested was not so much Mara herself as seeing the world through her eyes and looking at the characters from a totally different perspective from Anita's. The fact that all the canon characters would be family to my main character necessitated creating more OCs for her to relate to on a more equal level (not to mention love interests that her mother didn't already have dibs on!).
The characters began to take form: Cameron, the human best friend and a foil for Mara's very atypical mindset; Bobby, a fellow hybrid, but one who was more "normal" and more human; and last but far from least, Caden, my vampire leading man.
Judging from the responses, Caden has become the runaway most popular character in the series. He first began to form in my mind when I noticed that LKH always gave the pleasant, sexy powers to the good vampires, and the creepy ones to nasty characters. What if? What if there were a vampire who was a good person saddled with frightening, unpleasant powers? My first thought was one of the rotting vampires, but that was a bit too much. (I have reserved the idea for a possible tertiary character, though.) Then I remembered the moras, or night hags, who fed off fear, and even gave it off like pheromones. Coming fresh off an obsession with the Wars of the Roses, his time period wasn't hard to choose, though he startled me a bit by informing me he's Welsh, thanks very much, not English! Add to that the bloodline of The Dragon, a Vampire Council member whose vampires are all warriors, and I had the ingredients for Caden. (And it didn't hurt that I'm a sucker for angst!)
In June of 2007 I returned to a lovely Anita Blake fanfiction website I had previously enjoyed reading, and thought "Why not?". So I broke up my superfic into individual stories and began uploading them to Pomme de Sang. The first story, "Friends with Fangs/Taking A Stand", with Mara beginning as a slightly smartass fifteen year old who is just beginning to view her worlds as an adult rather than the child she has been, went up on June 17, 2007, to some nice, positive reviews. I followed it up with a fun little fluff piece centered on Jean-Claude, showing the day Mara and Cameron met when they were still fiery little five-year-olds. This garnered more reviews of a very postive nature, and I thought this is cool.
So, encouraged, I posted the first half of "Cutting Shards", the second tale, in which Mara deals with the aftermath of a sudden and traumatic lesson of the dangers of her chosen home in the vampire world. I posted the second half with some trepidation, since it contained my first explicit love scene. To my astonishment, it was met with rave reviews.
And so it went on. When the PdS site format changed in August to include hit counts, I got another shock. My readers, whom I had estimated from reviews to be a few dozen, numbered more on the order of several hundred.
I initially wrote the series simply for fun, but I have found that posting it and getting feedback from readers is exponentially more satisfying- not merely for the ego-boost, but because it has enabled me to improve my skills and expand the stories in ways I would probably not have come up with myself. The readers often spot things I don't see, and several times their comments and requests have led to new stories and plotlines, or simply given me new insights that made me see and think of things I might have otherwise missed.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say this series has changed my life. I have gained not only valuable writing practice, but a new range of interests and some truly wonderful friends.
So to all of you: my readers, my reviewers, and most of all my friends, thank you so very much. You helped turn what began as a lark into one of the most fulfilling things in my life. I sincerely hope it doesn't end anytime soon!
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Questions? Comments? Requests? Dedications? Email me!
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Roguefemme, 2008