I have read 50 shades and twilight. I liked twilight no matter what anyone else said because I enjoyed playing Vampire the Masquerade. Twilight was fan fiction for the game. The glittering came from a clan that was killed off early in vampire history due to the fact it was hard to hide from humans. Her twist on it was interesting if not a bit bland. Alice was Malcavian. Roses man was a Breuha,... For the most part they were only together as a "family" because they were following a spiritual path that required they didn't drink human blood to maintain their humanity.

However, I saw none of that in 50 Shades. I can agree that the seemingly dominant and submissive roles of the main characters in Twilight could have inspired 50 Shades. I, however, do not believe the author had a good grasp of what fanfic really is. She didn't steal the characters, she didn't take the town, she didn't try to make twilight her own. She was inspired by it, but it wasn't fan fic. I think she used the term because it sounded cooler to her than just being inspired by.

Tina, that is why I am so afraid of self publishing. I know I am dyslexic and my grammar is often lacking. Heck I can't even spell it without the spell checker. If I decide to go that route, it won't be before I pay some very well educated people I know on here to help me edit. I have a friend whose spouse self published. I offered to read it first and help him work on the kinks. He refused. He sent me a copy after it was all said and done and I couldn't read it. I called him and said, "Had you let me read it you would have realized that you dropped a thread in the first three chapters that distracted me from the rest of the story, your action scenes made no sense and for the most part aren't possible, and you needed to make chapter three chapter four and chapter four chapter three.

I think He sold maybe 30 copies to friends and family but no one in their right mind would have bought it to read. I realized then that I either needed a good editor or a lot of help from the people here on WDC that I trust. Stories don't have to be bad. I think ~A.J. Lyle~ 's stories that she self published on amazon are awesome. She is definitely among the best of us. It's all about how much work you want to put into the editing process and how good you are at catching your mistakes. Then, it's about understanding you can't catch everything and finding someone else who will do a line by line edit and take it seriously.