Discovering Lost Tales of Oz

Joe Bongiorno’s Royal Publisher of Oz releases its latest book today: the short-story anthology Lost Tales of Oz, featuring illustrations by the multiple-Eisner winning artist Eric Shanower. This volume contains eighteen stories—over 500 pages of new fiction in all—inspired by and adhering to the Oz book series.

One of those stories is a little piece by me called “Ojo and the Woozy.” For folks who haven’t read The Patchwork Girl of Oz, in the jacket art above Ojo is the boy dressed in Munchkin blue and frills near the left side, and the Woozy is the cubist blue creature at the far left.

In the same year that he released The Patchwork Girl of Oz, L. Frank Baum wrote six short books collectively titled Little Wizard Stories of Oz. Each was about two established characters, such as Dorothy and Toto, or Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse, having a brief adventure together.

Several years back, I set out to create a new story along those lines, using some pair of characters Baum didn’t get to. Ojo and the Woozy felt like a natural choice. In Baum’s seventh Oz book they travel together to the Emerald City. The Woozy is almost always calm, cheerful, and straightforward while Ojo is a moody fellow, so their personalities can play off each other.

My “Little Wizard” story ended up never leaving the vicinity of the Emerald City. The drama of Ojo and the Woozy’s adjustment to life there after having spent years in isolated forests was too interesting. As a result, this tale offers its heroes no greater challenge than being a shy new boy who doesn’t know how to play the local sports.

Which is, of course, a great challenge indeed. I may have given Ojo some of my own childhood experiences.

Lost Tales of Oz is available in hardcover and paperback via Lulu.

When Harry Hardin Met Anna

Anna Todd’s After is taking the English-language publishing industry’s exploration of fanfiction to the edge of legality.

Originally published on Wattpad as a series of erotic adventures with Harry Styles of the pop group One Direction, the 2,500-page saga is being republished by Simon & Schuster as a series of erotic adventures with…a college boy named Hardin.

According to the Washington Post, Todd first wanted to keep using the names of the One Direction singers:

“I felt like, ‘Are you sure we have to do this? Can’t we just give Harry Styles all the money?’” Todd said in an interview.

But the S&S legal team rightly said no. The singers have whatever rights to control their public images that they haven’t already signed away to Simon Cowell.

What’s more, Todd’s original text might be considered libelous. Though Harry Styles is “the cute one” in One Direction, in her story the male lead is a boozing, lecherous bad boy—something a lot of Styles’s fans have resented.

The New York Times reported some additional changes for the print edition: “leaner punctuation and some extra content — mostly added and extended sex scenes.” So, given One Direction’s popularity with teen-aged girls, there’s a third minefield: potential complaints about selling pornography to minors.

Meanwhile, Todd’s original files remain intact on Wattpad for free instead of $64. This is quite an publishing experiment to watch.

Rush’s Fanfiction

I just filed a column for the SCBWI New England newsletter on the big publishing corporations’ newfound respect for fanfiction—because it’s a way to make money. Big firms are checking fanfiction sites for authors who can craft a story (Sourcebooks), licensing fictional universes (Amazon), and commissioning latter-day sequels from big-name authors (practically every major children’s publisher in the UK, it seems).

Right on cue, the Children’s Choice Award for Author of the Year went to Rush Limbaugh for his historical fanfiction picture-storybooks, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims and Rush Revere and the First Patriots.

Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post recognized the hero of these books as a classic Mary Sue author stand-in back in December, quoting such lines as:

• “A fine answer, Rush Revere,” said William [Bradford], smiling. “Are you sure you don’t want to be governor?”
  
• Liberty [the horse] again whispered to me, “William really put you on the spot with that question. I couldn’t have dug you out of that one. Nice job answering him! Maybe you should get your own radio talk show. You know, callers call in with questions and you give them advice and stuff. I’d totally call you!”
• “You are always thinking of the future, Rush Revere,” said William, smiling. “I like that about you.”

This week Vicky Smith at Kirkus reached the same judgment, quoting from the title character’s introduction:

“You know that at Manchester Middle School we have the smartest and most educated teachers. It is my pleasure to introduce you to your substitute, Mr. Revere.”

Of course, these books are also commercial ventures. Debbie Reese noted that Limbaugh’s own website describes his company buying “10,000 or 15,000” copies to give to schools. Such bulk sales are a common way to jumpstart books onto bestseller lists, where they benefit from increased visibility. But these books aren’t just product in themselves: they also help to sell Rush Limbaugh’s other goods, with an illustration showing his branded iced tea.

Limbaugh’s two books are the only juvenile titles that Simon & Schuster’s politically conservative Threshold Editions imprint has published, and two of the very few fictional books. So the editors there may not have recognized the fanfiction for what it is. Then again, with guaranteed sales and a heavyweight author, they probably didn’t care.