The TL/DR:
I have a lot of fanfic, and with little to no exception, it’s all Spuffy (Buffy/Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Really? Just Spuffy?
Well, yeah? I mean, I also have a long Dean Winchester/Faith Lehane mashup fic, but Spuffy are in that as well and together. In my world, Spuffy is always together.
You’re putting this on your author website?
Yep. ‘Cause I authored them and I’m proud of them.
All right, where can I find these fics?
Many of my Spuffy works are on my companion website, Stories by Holly. They are all professionally formatted in epub and PDF.
While all the fanfic I’ve written since 2002 will eventually be available on that site, older works will not be added until I have edited them. All works written and completed between 2017 and mid-2024 are currently available for download.
For all works (in progress or otherwise), visit Elysian Fields.
Say I’m curious about your fic. Where should I start?
I mean, wherever you want. But these are the stories I am proudest of:
- Seven – an alternative Season 7 with a different big bad and more focus on healing from Seeing Red and developing the characters to a natural conclusion of the series.
- Inside Man – a canon-compliant companion piece to Angel’s Season 5 that addresses the “why didn’t Spike contact Buffy” question.
- After – an alternate ending to Chosen in which Sunnydale didn’t disappear and Spike didn’t die.
- Almost Paradise – a monkey’s paw wish in Season 6 that explores identity, memory, depression, consent, and forgiveness.
- Blip – a story set in Season 6 in which Buffy seeks an abortion following a one-night stand with a stranger. Written in protest of SCOTUS overturning Roe in 2022.
I’ve written more than 4M words of Spuffy fic, though, so this is a drop in the bucket. Feel free to explore the site for stories that might be better suited to your taste.
About My Fandom Journey
I came to Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom in 2002. I’d known about the show for a while but had avoided it as I was loyal to the movie (or, more accurately, to Luke Perry’s Pike), but finally caved at the start of the summer when a friend insisted on watching her new Buffy DVDs (Seasons 1 and 2 had just come out). I was entertained by Season 1, but with Season 2 (specifically Spike’s entrance) I became enthralled. Even more so when my friend told me that bad boy slayer-killer Spike later had a romance with Buffy. Enemies to lovers is my favorite trope in all of trope land, so this idea took root in my head and has yet to leave.
Though was only seventeen, I was already a rather prolific writer. I had also been active in a few fandoms, so it didn’t take me long to do a deep dive into all things Buffy. I read episode summaries for the episodes I hadn’t seen, started recording the reruns off FX, and absorbed as much Spuffy fanfic as I could find…and being that Season 6 had just concluded, I could find quite a bit. It took me no time at all to start sketching out my own Spuffy fic, which I wanted to set after Grave (an episode I hadn’t even seen, just had read about thanks to insanely detailed episode summaries) and have firmly established prior to the debut of the yet-to-be-aired Season 7. That fic, Sang et Ivoire, was my first foray into fandom, and the longest piece of fiction I’d written at that point. It became insanely popular thanks to an invitation to be archived on The Crypt section on the invitation-only archive Fonts of Wisdom and helped launch me firmly into the Spuffy corner of the internet, where I have been (in one way or another) ever since.
In 2006, five fandom friends and I decided to start an archive called Elysian Fields, a name I chose since it was designated to be “a resting place” of our heroes. It wasn’t too long after this that I met my husband, graduated college, and truly began the arduous process of growing up. By 2010, I had more or less exited fandom (in presence only, never in spirit) and started writing original fiction (mostly paranormal romance) under the penname Rosalie Stanton. I also became a professional editor for a boutique digital-first publisher, which consumed most of my time. Even while I was away, though, I would periodically check in with Elysian Fields, sometimes dreading that I would find it had gone the way of other Spuffy archives and always relieved to be proven wrong.
By the time the show’s 20th anniversary rolled around in 2017, I had done a lot of that growing-up thing. I’d gotten married, bought a house, experienced extreme professional highs and lows, and lost a parent. The sudden renaissance of all things Buffy that occurred that year struck something in me, and I dipped my toe back into Spuffy. I was instantly reminded of exactly how much fandom meant to me, how much writing these characters and sharing these stories meant to me and vowed to not only finish my long-standing WIP Strawberry Fields (which I had abandoned in 2008), but write new stories. Lots of new stories. I also started an intense personal editing project to make my older fics more readable. This mostly involves clearing up some of the awkwardness that reflected a young girl trying to sound like she had more experience than she did. All my work will eventually be edited and professionally formatted; it will just take time.
In 2020, I was approached with an offer to rejoin the Elysian Fields administrative team as the tech mod…and I wanted to so badly that I forced my very non-techy brain to learn as much as it could about our software so I can help keep this site running. This is thankfully no longer my primary role, thanks to fellow Mods who have since picked up the slack.
I have never been happier as a writer anywhere than I am writing fanfic, and I am so grateful to everyone who kept the archive alive while I was off growing up.
About my Spuffy Work
The real world sucks. A lot. It’s painful and stressful and sometimes downright ugly.
I read and write to escape the real world. That doesn’t mean that my work will be all sunshine and rainbows—sometimes I write things that are downright depressing. But no matter how deep into Mordor I take you, my work will always feature an HEA/HFN ending (which isn’t to say everything will be resolved, but that Spike and Buffy will be in a good place together). I am, at my core, a romance writer. And while I know suffering (in the real world) doesn’t always lead to something good, but that’s what the real world is for and why it sucks. And as Stephen King says, the ending’s not really why you’re reading, anyway. You’re reading to take a journey.
That said, you can do a lot more in fanfic and still have an HEA/HFN. These are not romance novel rules. If you came here because you like my romance novels and want to take fic for a spin, be warned. I write a lot of dark stuff. All of it will end optimistically, but please be good to yourself and heed the warnings.