WHO: First off, we're not going to tell you who actually chooses the stories because we want the stories to speak for themselves. The person responsible for most of the site design, actually asking most of the authors for their stories and the posting of the non-story pages is Mardi Quinn who can be reached at mardi@williamsmith.org. Randy Saavedra donated the server space and also does some of the design and formatting [which is nice of her because Bonanza isn't even her main fandom as you can see by the domain name]. The actual story selection committee for the Best of the West Bonanza Fan Fiction site has decided to stay anonymous, partially to avoid the inevitable pressure from friends and strangers who want us to post stories that don't meet the standards we want to honor. We also want to have the stories we select judged on their own merit, not on the basis of who selected them.
WHAT: This site will honor and make accessible the best written Bonanza fan fiction on the internet.
WHERE: Right here. Thanks to Randy with a fansite for her favorite cowboy/biker/villain actor, William Smith [Laredo, Wildside, western guest shots, Falconetti in Rich Man, Poor Man, biker flicks, horror flicks, blaxploitation, etc.] we have lots of server space for a quality Bonanza fan fic site. [A bad link will default to the Big Bad Bill home page - don't be frightened.]
WHY: The quantity of Bonanza fan fiction has increased geometrically over the past few years. Because posting on the internet is so cheap and easy compared to printing in fanzines, there's a lot of -- how do we say this politely - of stuff we don't want to read. This includes stories with characters not recognizable as the Cartwrights we grew up with, stories written by writers who never heard of beta readers, stories by authors who want to live their own fantasies or address their own psychological needs by writing about characters with the name Cartwright but without the personas of the characters gifted to us by Bonanza creators. There should be a place for writers who care enough to produce quality writing and to honor the source material.
Of course, no one has to read anything they don't like, but it's gotten difficult to wade through the mud to get to the grassy picnic spot, to rake through the chaff to get to the wheat, to push aside the swine to get to the pearls - well you get the picture. Sometimes it's hard to pick out the good writers in the mob. Or a reader might miss that one really topnotch story by a writer who is otherwise still struggling to hit the right note most of the time. Readers might have dismissed a writer based on her early work and missed the good stuff that came later. We want to make sure all those good stories don't get overlooked.In any fan fiction world, there is a need for several types of posting sites. An all-purpose site is needed, where almost anyone can post a story, no matter how good or bad and be very accessible to the reading public [e.g. BBAB where Kathy maintained a vast library in a very readable format and the current Bonanza-Legacy which appears to be on its way to gathering its own large library]. But, there's also a place for other types of sites, more controlled, such as sites that allow no major original characters or stories of only limited length or no AU's or AR's or WHN's or have a content rating limit (e.g.. Grotto Cafe or Women Writers Block). It's also valid to have a site where the selections are judged to be the best of what's available, so that as a new fan develops discriminating taste or when the fan has very little time, she can find the better stories without wading through miles of garbage. That's where we come in.
HOW: The first 100 stories selected were chosen by an anonymous committee of fan fiction readers who are very familiar with Bonanza characters/canon and the principles of good fiction writing. We are getting recommendations for additional stories/authors from the selected authors and will eventually get some from readers.
Email us at: mardi@williamsmith.org
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Readers, Authors, Site OwnersSpecial Pages
Stories for Holidays & Birthdays Authors Choice
Authors' favorite self-penned stories.Authors Inspirations Authors choose the stories by other writers that inspired them either as readers or writers or otherwise got them started.Tip of Our Hat We take a page to tip our hats to good authors and/or stories not posted here.A Sampling of:
Ponderosa Fanfic