Reader's Diary #840- Newfoundland Novelist: Winnie and Christopher Robin

In anticipation for my trip to Newfoundland, I've scheduled a few Short Story Monday posts to appear in my absence. The first story I've chosen is from an writer that simply goes by "Newfoundland Novelist," which is how I found him/her— by Googling "Newfoundland novelist." The results brought up a fan-fiction site.

I had my reservations. I'm not sure why. After all, I like the idea of fan-fiction. Someone riffing on someone else's creation? It's socialism meets art! I can totally get behind that. When I think about it, I've even read fan-fiction before: I've read Stephen King doing a Sherlock Holmes mystery. And then there's that whole crazy success of Fifty Shades of Grey, that began as Twilight fan-fiction.

But still. I'm also a believer and supportive of self-publishing, and quite frankly the majority of self-published books that I've attempted to read stinks to high heaven. Isn't most fan-fiction pretty much the same thing?

 In any case, I have an open mind and decided to give Newfoundland Novelist's "Winnie and Christopher Robin" a chance. Taking Christopher Robin into adulthood, "Winnie and Christopher Robin" is basically in praise of childhood imagination. It's sweet, maybe overly saccharine, but then again, so were Milne's stories. If you were a fan (I was always a little blasé about Pooh) you may still enjoy it. Though be forewarned: it does come across as amateurish. There are a few typos here and there, but most problematic for me was the lack of creative sentence structure. Almost every bit of dialogue is written as: "'Blah, blah, blah,' someone [said]" which gets boring fast. Still, it's pretty innocuous. It doesn't sell me on fan fiction, but it hasn't deterred me either.

(Did you write a post for Short Story Monday? If so, please leave a link in the comments below.)