About the Story Vat:

Sometimes I'm inspired. In this case, I was inspired by a combination of factors.

1. Nicole Perry's "Road" series. Such a wonderful story, left hanging with a blind Scully and a quest.

2. Playing for Keeps. A completely ambitious project dedicated to bringing us the season 5 we wanted, which vanished like mist when season 5 started. Incredible writing, gripping story, and left hanging, nay, dangling over a cliff.

3. My own project, Facing Janus. When the idea for this struck, I knew from personal experience with my projects that I couldn't do it alone. I love collaborative projects, and wanted others to have just as much fun with the idea as I did. Plus, it's a story that would equate more to a season of the show than a single episode, due to the complexity of the story.

4. Camping, by Amperage and Livengoo. No, it's not unfinished, but the whole concept of a ping-pong, round robin story sounded like so much fun that I wanted to make a place where two or more people could ping pong a story about until the game finished.

5. The pleas, begging, and dispair of the masses of people who would start a story, follow a story, and then be left hanging when the original author vanished or went on to other projects.

6. Comments from a number of authors of unfinished works that they had copious background notes and outlines and character bibles for the stories, but no inclination to finish.

I realized that done properly, these notes could be used by other authors to finish the stories that had been started. I also realized that while some authors would want to retain some control, others could care less what might happen with a given story. I also knew that some authors of unfinished works would have vanished without a trace, unfindable in a sea of changing email addresses and web page shifts.

So here are my policies for stories on this site.

Whenever possible, I will seek to get permission from authors before posting their unfinished stories to this site. If someone says no, it won't go here.

If I cannot find an author of a story people are asking to have posted here, I will post it provisionally, with the understanding that if the author shows up and wants it removed, it will be removed.

When I can contact authors, I will find out how much editorial control they wish to retain, and the stories will be posted accordingly.

Most stories will have affiliated discussion forums on Deja News unless the author specifically requests otherwise.

This site will be reader-driven. That means that I will attempt to prioritize stories based on requests for the stories. Authors may request that their unfinished stories and round robins be posted here, but the stories that will be at the top of my list are the ones that the readers/potential authors are asking for.

There will be a page for links to authors' own unfinished works pages. It would be easiest, particularly for those who wish to retain editorial control, for stories to stay primarily on their authors' own pages. Also, it is much easier for me to simply post a link to another author's page than it is for me to set up the whole shebang here. So if you want your story listed here, that's a more guaranteed way of getting it listed quickly than asking me to post it. Send me an html tag via e-mail and I can post the link very quickly indeed. Email: jenrose@jenrose.com for with your html tag.