One of my early fandom influences passed away in 2017.
I was thinking within the past couple of weeks that I hadn't received any notices in years that any of my old Kirk/Spock fanzine stories had been newly posted to the K/S
archive. A volunteer was slowly but steadily scanning in the old zine stories and we'd had some correspondence. But that was a long time ago, and I had no idea if that person was still doing it.
Out of the blue this past weekend, I got a lengthy email from a lifelong fan of the original series, and she had just recently discovered fandom. She said someone on a fanfic Facebook group had recommended my novel PORTRAITS to read, and she thought she'd try a Charlotte Frost short story first. So, she read one available on the archive and wanted to write me about it, since she, too, was also wanting to write.
She wanted to know about putting old stories on the archive, and if she could help, and I really didn't have much information to offer. I couldn't remember who it was that was posting the stories, and I didn't have any of those old emails on my current computer. In doing research, I ended up at fanlore.org, and got nostalgic and was clicking through various pages.
In doing so, I found out that prolific and long-time K/S fanzine editor Robin Hood (her real name) had passed away in 2017. I last saw her maybe four years ago, as she and her partner were living a couple of hours from me, and she was obviously not doing well at that time. So, it's not surprising that she passed away within a year or so after that visit, but was surprising that I'd never heard anything about it. But then, I'm not on any K/S media sites.
Robin Hood was a refreshing breath of fresh air in the early days of 80s fandom. While most all fanzines had an editorial that explained why the zine was years later than the original intended publication date, Robin Hood was one of those no-nonsense, responsible, does-what-she-says people that proved that it was possible to intend to publish a fanzine by a certain date -- and actually do it! Of course, it helped that she didn't have a husband or children to take up most of her free time.
More importantly, she understood how to treat authors, so they kept wanting to submit stories to her fanzines. Unlike most other editors, who claimed that they passed along feedback from readers to the authors -- and never actually did so -- Robin Hood was highly efficient about immediately mailing out any letters (no internet then) from readers to the authors that received comments. Even if there was just a one-sentence comment, she would make the effort to mail that one sentence to the author. What's more, she was a real editor -- who wanted to make each story better -- and not someone who just accepted whatever was offered and published it. She had a gentle red pencil that made newer authors eager for her attention.
Her fanzines were also known for having beautiful artwork on the covers. She knew how to treat artists, too. She had the financial means to buy a lot of original works from authors and always had the walls of her homes covered with beautiful, framed, erotic art of Kirk and Spock.
PORTRAITS was the one K/S novel I wrote and Robin published, and Chris Soto did the artwork for the covers. I remember Robin had Chris Soto read the manuscript and write a letter of her honest thoughts, and Robin forwarded the letter on to me, so I could consider the problem areas. The novel was published and reasonably well-received, though I know when I tried to read it word-for-word maybe ten years ago, I quit about 2/3 through, because the conversations dragged and it moved too slowly.