Navigating the Red Hen Publications Website: The main theme of the 2024 rebuild is; “The Return of the Sidebars”. Click on the ‘Sidebar’ link in the header above to see a list of what is in each collection (click on the link again to make the sidebar go away). Select what you want to see/read from the sidebar links. Anything that lights up on mouse-over, is a link. Some links will take you to a different collection.
Red Hen’s Disclaimer: Please Read
Years ago somebody pointed out that NC-17 is a “film” rating, not a “book” rating.
This is not a minor distinction.
Books are not films.
A scene which would send a film straight into NC-17dom can be standard operating procedure in any mainstream novel — currently living on the shelves of your nearest mega-chain bookstore with a name that starts with ‘B’, right out in the open for any browsing 10-year-old to pick up and read all the spicy bits, and no one will blink an eye — except to tell him to pay for it or move on, and if he decides to pay for it, no one will refuse to sell it to him.
And, while we’re at it, let’s take a reality check; how likely is it that going to happen? How likely is a 10-year-old going to want to read a spicy romance novel? And if a 14-year-old decides to read it, people may roll their eyes, but no one will be storming the public library (or that mega-chain bookstore) with torches and pitchforks.
The fact is that people read what people read. And they are no more likely to read anything just because it is posted on the internet. Nor is reading something on a computer screen going to have any greater effect upon the impressionable than reading it out of a printed book. Text is text
So, unless you can justify how writing (or reading) a story about characters who were invented by somebody other than you, to put them in yet some other story, set in some other made-up world is somehow worse than writing about your own made-up people in your own made-up world, or how reading about any of them online for the price of your online subscription rather than paying $7.99 for a commercially published paperback (or an eBook) renders a piece of popular fiction into something that needs to be rated as if it were a film, I don't see what the beef is.
The publications posted on this site represent a variety of genres, and have been built from the works of a variety of authors. I have left it up to the authors as to what rating to give their fics, and those ratings may be found in the online fanfic archives in which the fics were originally posted (and where they generally still reside in the original format). I have better things to do than to support the pretensions of people who seem to think that reading a string of letters on a screen is somehow the equivalent of watching a movie. Stop clutching your pearls and hyperventilating.
For the record: you aren’t going to find anything anywhere on this site that is any racier than a mainstream, doorstop-style Historical Romance.
The only criterion used in the selection of these works for publication on this site is that I enjoyed reading them, and wanted to do a formatted, graphically enhanced version. Priviliges, (downloading/printing) are fairly open. One project uses the work of a local artist and has been exported in a non-printable version, but may be downloaded for reading offline. Another project is to be distributed only from this website.
On Viewing these files
All publications on this site are posted as Adobe Acrobat .pdf files.You will need either the Acrobat Reader or Apple’s Preview application to view them. The Acrobat Reader is a free download. If you are running a computer that uses any version of Macintosh OS X you should already have Preview, since it is a system-level application.
Most of the Publication files are offered in three versions. There is an uncompressed screen-resolution version for reading online. There is also a compressed screen-resolution version for downloading and reading offline. In addition, there is a compressed full-resolution file for download and offline reading, and printing. Indeed, I strongly recommend that anybody who is likely to want to keep a copy of a file available for future rereads, who is not limited to dial-up, should download the full-resolution version as a matter of course. It really does make a difference in the appearance and clarity of the graphical elements. The tradeoff is that the download times are likely to be much longer.
I do caution you that these projects are almost certainly NOT readible on smartphones. PDF is am inherently "responsive" format, but to the best of my understanding, it is not “smart”. It will resize to the window that it is opend on. But a letter-sized document opend on a tiny screen will probably not be readable. A letter-sized document will usually be readable on a laptop. I do not know about tablets, since I do not own one.
If you want to print these, it is technically doable, but the full-page background graphics will choke most printers, and eat ink or toner at a phenominal rate, so you’ll probably have to do it in batches of a few pages at a time. I do caution that one of the projects is exported in non-printable form, due to the use of some 3rd-party graphics.
All of the compressed files on the site are saved in .zip format.
An unfortunate update clarifying Red Hen policy
regarding Publication projects:
I am sorry to find that this statement is necessary. Unfortunately I see that I have been putting off the inevitable.
It is a long-known and continuing disappointment to many readers that not all posted fanfics ever reach compltion. I am sorry to say that this unfortunate situation also applies to publication projects based on posted fanfics. Many fanfics, even widely popular ones, remain perpetual WiPs.
I have never yet abandoned a publication project that was actually progressing, but I’ve had a number of them shot out from under me.
Therefore, I feel it necessary to make a public statement regarding unposted publication projects. This statement is referred to elsewhere on the site, in the Graphics Collection. But the full statement really does belong here.
To begin with; I’m not talking about projects which never really got off the ground in the first place. I’m talking about the ones where I had asked, and been given permission to base a Red Hen publications project on an author's work, the project had progressed to some point approaching (or had even achieved) completion — at least to the point of there being a rough final for the author’s feedback and input — at which point the author disappeared. Or abandoned the story, unfinished.
This could have been for any reason. Heaven knows there are enough ways that a fanfic author can be blindsided, or mugged by Real Life, or have some situation arise which is more important than finishing a fic, or sticking with a project designed to showcase one of their completed fics. But, regardless of cause, it is a situation in which the author did not give me written permission to post the project, or the portion/version of the project, that had already been built. I insist on having that permission, in writing, before I post anything. (Yes, of course eMail counts.)
With the majority of my projects, this might not be a huge deal. Yes, it’s always a disappointment, but the background page graphics might get adapted, modified and used in some other project. Frontspiece illustrations might get posted on an exchange, or fanfest site someday, or possibly repurposed into an Apa cover.
But publication projects that are illustrated works are usually something that I have put a great deal of work into.
I don’t put that much work into a project in order for it never to be seen.
On the other hand, I do NOT post projects on my site without the author’s permission and approval. I just don’t.
Consequently, I hereby make the following statement [Policy established circa 2018] regarding Red Hen Policy concerning publication projects. I am sorry to say that this is necessary.
To all Fanfic Authors; the story is yours. It is your work. Your having given me permission to base a project on it does not make the story mine. The story will never be mine.
However; these are colaborative works, and the graphics produced for the story are mine. If a project has stalled, and, after a 2-year moritorium, unless other arrangements can be made (Thank you, Vera Rozalsky), and I can either still not contact you, or we have been unable to reboot the project and start moving it towards completion, I retain the right to extract the graphics and post them elsewhere on this site.
They will be (and, indeed, a few already are) posted in the Graphics collection. You can find them under ‘Ah, Fandom’, linked to the page entitled ‘Unposted Publication Graphics’.
I will always credit the author (whose pen name will be stated), and if the fic is accessible online I will direct the viewer to the archive where it can be found in its original form. Almost none of the publications on Red Hen are exclusive to this site, although there are a couple of things that are. I will probably need to include a paraphrase of the story, to clarify what the illustrations refer to, but I will try to keep it as condensed as possible. After all, it is not my story. I do rather hope that if the graphics spark an interest, the viewer will hunt the original fic out and read it in its original form. If it is still online, and they still can.
My only regret will be that they will not get the chance to read the complete, illustrated version on this site.
But that is out of my hands.