Communities of authors

[Darqref]

I recently re-read a couple of books whose authors are part of an interacting community. In this case, they both write for the same publisher, and pay attention to the forums for that publisher.

Communities pay attention to each other, and if someone does (writes) something, then others reply in their own works. When you read both side, sometimes you snicker, other times you see sides of an argument that aren't actually presented in either book alone.

Two examples of the snicker variety both come from Baen authors.

1. Everyone tries to do in Joe Buckley. Now Joe is a perfectly nice guy, and runs a great website, but his comments got on the nerves of an author. Ever since, lots of Joe Buckley characters get mangled or otherwise persecuted.

2. In one Baen series, Dave Weber has a character take a precaution against getting arrested by her society's equivalent of the Gestapo. When the arrest order actually comes through, a self-destruct command is sent to all the arresting ships, and a bunch of explosions occur. When others on the bridge of her ship look around in confusion, she says "oops".
On the other hand, Wen Spencer starts one of her books with a character thinking about a situation "There are some things that 'oops' just doesn't excuse..."

Only when you read both works together, or at least near enough for memory, do you find the interaction between them.

[ficbot]

There was a joke on the Nanowrimo boards one year about how there was no story that could not be improved by the addition of ninjas. Many writers took this to heart and included ninja scenes

On a smaller scale, one of my fellow program directors at my summer camp job has an imaginary friend named Bob the Dragon who she has trained the little ones to believe is real (there are some artful props which enhance this mythology). We've all been told to encourage this (although the director involved can be kind of a brat about it) and when a child asks me a question such as do I know about Bob the Dragon or have I seen him etc. I always answer yes. I have a small stuffed bird I use in my own programs as a teacher and I expect my colleagues to play along with me, so I am happy to help spread the lore of Bob the Dragon when called upon.

[BenG]

H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard were the big three at Weird Tales and often referenced elements of the others stories in their own work. They sometimes even directly referenced the other writers in the stories, though usually with exotic spellings, such as Lovecraft referring to the great wizard Klarkash-Ton and Howard mentioning Lovecraft's Necronomicon.