Discovered In A Letterbox/Issues 11-15

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==Issue 11==
Discovered In A Letterbox 11 was published in September 1999 and contains 52 pages.
* The discussion topic for issue is "What five zines would you take with you to a desert island?" and there is MUCH chat about this subject
* A fan writes about slash—it's place in a story and about "modern fans": 
* An article by Neva Chonin about slash entitled "Spock Does Mulder" is reprinted, along with the editor's comments about slash being openly talked about in other places than private fannish spaces: 
 
* This issue has a flyer for a 1999 Media Cannibals songtape that will debut at ZebraCon. The editor comments:
* A fan compares Net fic and zine fic: 
* This fan never tires of slash: 
* About slash on the Internet: 
* A fan is worried about how many zines she is missing due to the fact that she has no computer: 
 
* The editor writes: 
* this issue has an fan-written episode review for "The Purging of CI5," as well as two fan-reviews of the play "Dangerous Corner" starring Martin Shaw
* there is a flyer for a Sentinel Proposed Zine called "Tinman", one that didn't make it off the ground
* flyers for White Rabbit, "Speculation Press" (Original Fiction by Chris Power and Terri Beckett), Tokens and Traditions, Whatever We Are, You Made Us!, The Yellow Brick Road, One Bright Morning, (a story from The Larton Chronicles recorded on an audio cassette) Unprofessional Conduct #10, and Dreamers
* The Blyton Horror: The...Last Bit (Whew!) by Joan
* A fan writes that she considers Judith Seaman to be the Kitty Fisher of Blake's 7 fandom
* The editor has to edit and cut short a letter from a fan who wanted to discuss Forever True, as it contained major spoilers; this leads to this question: did fans want to discuss this zine in a later issue, knowing that the spoilers may put some people off?
==Issue 12==
Discovered In A Letterbox 12 was published in December 1999 and contains 45 pages.
* The editor suggest the discussion topic for the next issue: 
* Many fans write in response to the editor's question of whether DIAL should remain Pros-centric or become multimedia; all fans seem to agree the letterzine ought to remain the way it is—one example comment:
* One fan dislikes the fairly recent practice of editors or writers giving too much of a head's up on what a story is about:
* A fan speculates on the future: 
* Two fans discuss exposure and anonymity: 
* The editor interjects: 
* A fan comments on how the fiction, not the aired show, can be the conduit: 
* A fan writes about the place of sex in a slash story and, addressing another fan's earlier comment that new fans write more sex into a story than old fans did: 
* A fan talks of her fear of being searched in an airport and her slash zines: 
* A fan writes of a trend she'd rather not revisit: 
There is much debate about how much plot or details of a zine should appear in a review* —one comment: 
* A fan compliments a Pros fan-audiobook: 
* The creator responds: 
* this issue has two reviews of Roses and Lavender #3, see that page
* this issue has a review of Forever True, see that page
* this issue lists the contents of the fourth Media Cannibals vid
Stories:
* Anonymous Tip by Atropos
* Close Quarters by Atropos
* Old Friends by HG
* Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by Hestia
==Issue 13==
Discovered In A Letterbox 13 was published in March 2000 and contains 36 pages. Tthe editor announces she is stepping down and that [S W] will be taking over.
[O Y] writes an essay about the early years of The Professionals’ fandom in the UK:
* She starts by explaining that she only gradually entered Profs fandom and that gradual entry may have inadvertently contributed to the spread of the fandom. As a slash Star Trek writer, she had avoided the Professionals after hearing it was violent (a similar claim was made against Starsky & Hutch when it aired in the US). However, a Star Trek friend [D D] sent her 5 Professionals stories – one was Consequences and its sequels – and urged her to read them. She did, but didn’t like the stories or the characterizations and passed them on to friends, only to learn later from [D D] they were not supposed to be circulated: “Unfortunately, being used to the Trek ethos of not keeping things miserly to oneself, I had already lent them to other friends who had almost certainly copied them so it was too late for me to stop them spreading.”
* She was put in contact with [P D], a gen Professionals fan who also mailed out slash stories upon request. When she wrote a sequel to one of the stories and sent it to [P D], [P D] sent “her a enameled frog brooch” which, she later learned fans would wear to conventions to signal their interest in Profs fandom.
* She and her friend, HG, began watching the episodes together and found the actors attractive and the violence levels less than they had been led to believe.
* Shortly after she started watching the Professionals, she organized a Star Trek slumber party at her home. Eighteen fans showed up and slept on “mattresses, camp beds, garden loungers.” They discovered that many were writing Professionals stories or were in the planning stages to write Profs stories. This is how the first Professionals “weekend” took place. Other events followed over the next few years as any fan who could house 12 or more people would host weekend parties. Everyone who attended was expected to bring a story – many of these stories would form the backbone of the early circuit library.
* She created the idea of the “Hatstand Birthday story” after announcing she wanted a “hatstand” story for her birthday. That year, most fans received 8-9 stories on their birthdays. The last fan, whose birthday was late in the year, was worried the offerings would run out by her birthday. Instead the fan received a long meaty novel called Injured Innocents.
* The early fan fiction distribution method was to type up a story and make copies using carbon typewriter paper. This turned out to be impracticable as more and more fans joined the group, so fans began mailing originals to HG who had access to a photocopier at work for a small fee. 
* Distribution of stories to the US was slow to start. There was tensions between some British and US fans regarding the quality of the fiction, the inclusion of Americanisms in fiction, and the "right" of those not living in the UK to write about a UK show. To ease tensions, HG and [O Y] increased the number of copies they mailed to the US.
* Eventually her family bought a personal photocopier so she could make more copies. She remembers “hours and hours standing there, and then there was the collating... Actually, it was all great fun.” She continued copying and collating for years even after zines began to be published and only stopped when the machine broke.
* The inclusion of the Americans changed the fandom: “…we could no longer lay claim to know almost everyone in this fandom as we had originally.”
* After several writers had some of their gen stories declined by [P D] for publication, they began publishing their own gen zine The Small Print. From there it was a small step for fan Whitehills to publish the first slash zine Unprofessional Conduct.
* She writes she is looking forward to learn more early fandom history from Profs fans who preceded her such as [F M P].
* Final thoughts: “One early hatstand includes the line, "Amazing the skills you find in fandom." It's one of the 'Mrs. M' series - and don't believe a word they write about the wretched woman. I deny it all (although if you want to know what those early 'weekends' were like you need look no further). But the sentiment is all true. Skills and kindness and generosity. It's a line I quote quite a lot about all sorts of aspects of this [fandom] phenomenon.”
 
The letterzine continues with HG giving her perspective on early UK Pros history. The article was written first for the CI5 mailing list before being republished in DIAL.
* Her entry into Pros fandom took place in November 1981.
* Her friend [O Y] was dragged into Pros by [D D] who then later dragged her into the fandom.
* By November 1981, 40-45 stories had been written: “Sebastian had written "Just a Kiss", ET her sequel to "Endgame" to make it more bearable for herself …and O Yardley had written “The Gift". Tarot had written "Consequences" and "Endgame...." The writer of Remember Angola had left the fandom.
* The English circuit was run by [P D] who used stencils to make copies. HG and other fans began retyping copies as this was faster than stencil reproducing. To encourage first time slash writers, [P D] would give them a small enameled frog (inspired by a scene in Wild Justice where Doyle gives one to Kate Ross). 
* Some members of the UK fandom community believed that “Pros should only be written by the English.” HG and her friends felt differently (“fandom is international”) and since they were already in contact with two US fans, [L S] and [A C], they were able to speed up the distribution of circuit stories to the US. They were also helped by her having access to a photocopier at work for small fee.
* [O Y] was able to bring many of her friends and acquaintances together at weekend gatherings – many did not know each other and longtime friendships were formed as result. There was a group of 10 writers who would meet regularly, among them “Sebastian, ET, O Yardley, Rob, LH, HG,POM, and CIA.”
* She was told by [P D] that Consequences was the first Pros story written and found it notable that Pros, unlike most fandoms, began with slash and then migrated to gen.
* Gen zines began to be published in the UK by 1984.
* She collected all the Pros stories she could find, even those that were not popular: “No one wanted the Mary-Sues, few people wanted the death stories, and there were other categories with a narrow distribution.” She would later give these stories to the new circuit librarian [S S] in 1986.
* Fans found many ways to contribute and participate: some wrote, some typed stories for writer friends, others retyped stories from the US “that had too much white space to be economically copied.”
* Siren was written between the autumn 1983 and early March 1984.
* Various copy trees existed – circuit stories would be sent in batches to fans who could copy for others Other fans set up tape trees where they make made copies of sixth generation videotaped episodes for each other. Audio cassette tapes and newspaper articles and clippings were likewise copied and handed on: “Sharing was the keyword.”
* She recommends that fans get copies of The Hatstand Express, as the early editions can fill in historical gaps. One of the topics debated in the early THE issues was whether zines would replace the circuit and if so, were they “here to stay.” 
* She is grateful to THE because it introduced UK fans to fan writer Meg Lewtan.
* In 2000, when this article was written, she felt that newer fans had “a different attitude to fandom.” For example, she was surprised when a US zine publisher invited her to submit stories “in any fandom I liked out of a list of approximately twelve fandoms.”
* The biggest different between Profs fandom in the 1980s and Profs fandom in the early 2000s was the arrival of new technologies: “Computers, scanners, etc. make it a great deal easier to produce polished prose. Old stories might have been rewritten, but it was by hand; the typed copy could only be revised by retyping.”
* Her favorite stories/writers: “Lainie Stone, Anne Carr, Courtney Grey, Ellis Ward, DVS, Lezlie Conch (the wondrous "Fly on the Wall" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger") and Pam Rose’s Professional Dreamer.”
The rest of the letterzine includes letters from other writers covering a wide number of topics:
* A fan writes of feeling left behind as fandom moves online: “Oh, how I echo your expressions of feeling left out of things by not having access to the Net Discussion of the one fandom I’m interested … and since I don't even own a PC (and not likely to have one in the near future) I do feel very excluded. And it's not really very satisfactory having to rely on the kindness of friends to copy stories off the Net for me as and when they have the time. Worse still, if they do it when they're not particularly interested in the fandom I’m raving about. It seems to me that fandom will become more and more Net-based, if for no other reason than that a lot of fandom is US orientated, and it seems that every man and his dog over there has access twenty-four hours a day to the Internet. The Net is also a far more immediate way of reaching an audience for one's writing efforts. There's no editor to point out the weak links in your plot, and no proofreader to tell you that you can't spell (and we all know that spell-checkers are not the answer) and that you don't know the first thing about punctuation.”
* The editor repeats a warning about delayed/missing zine orders from The Presses and offers a recommendation for Agent With Style as being reliable but pricey.
* A reader talks about what attracts her to The Professionals: canonical characterizations. Or rather, canonical Bodie characterizations (as she does not “always like [Doyle] anyway, but a bad characterisation of Bodie can spoil a story for me.”) Certain plotlines can also a factor in her enjoyment of a story, which is why she favors warnings on stories: “I won't touch certain plots in any fandom: abuse as a child, rape, S/M, death, where one of them likes to wear women's clothes, or crossovers. The writing may be wonderful, with great detailing or plot-twists, but if the subject matter is not to my taste, I won't enjoy the story at all. I’m not one for reading a story out of curiosity or a sense of adventure. I’ve come across all the above-mentioned dislikes more than once, because there was no warning as to what the story was about and so I started to read it.”
* A fan reports she was first a K/Ser but was pulled into Pros after talking with [S S] at a Zircon convention: “… a friend and I got chatting to her about Pros and she told us about the library, and also offered to make me numerous copies of episodes.”
* A fan writes that she usually doesn’t like reading about her pairings as older men, but doesn’t mind reading an older Bodie or Doyle. “Perhaps it's because both Lewis and Martin have aged so well and I can picture them as they are now in the stories, and so feel good about it. So, as they are ageing nicely, so is my appreciation of Pros.”
* A German fan writes that her gateway to Pros came through a Star Trek/Rebecca crossover zine written by UK fans. From there she started collecting zines and videotapes, found Pros and then found slash. She too thanks UK fan [S S] for being so helpful with the circuit library as she does not have access to the Internet
* A fan writes she entered Pros fandom 12 years ago via Doctor Who (her first fandom) and then through Blake’s 7 (her second fandom). “It was while looking through Horizon's fanzine adverts that I came across the Australian fanzine, Blake's 7 – The Other Side. I was off and running. It was a short jump to its sister zine, Down Under Express, and my fate was sealed. Ever since then the Pros universe has been my home…” The writing in the fandom is what attracted her and has kept her interest in Pros strong.
* A British fan wants “to say a few words on the very American practice of, er, The Back Rub', which 'buddies' seem to routinely offer each other. Kirk and Spock did it in public and Starsky and Hutch, too, for all I know, but our men just don't, do they? We may have New Men but it's still a bit too - well, you know... even in private... I am not saying that Doyle wouldn't offer to massage Bodie's back, or Bodie, Doyle's, if necessary; but as far as I know The Back Rub' per se, between mates, is simply Not British - is it, chaps? Doyle seems content to rub his own injured parts (see "Slush Fund") while Bodie usually ensures that his injuries are serious enough to require hospital treatment.”
* Another fan credits Blake’s 7 fandom for bringing her to Pros’ doorstep. Once she found other Bake’s 7 fans, she found there was a larger fandom although she remained unaware of slash for years. She “was finally introduced to slash fiction at Aucon in 1980 (I think) when a friend thrust a copy of "Consequences" into my hands saying, "Read this, you’ll enjoy it" And after the first shock, I did. That's basically it really.”
* A fan writes she came to Profs fandom via Star Trek: “In many ways, this [path] provided a sense of security because as everyone knew everyone else, or knew someone who knew someone, there was very little risk of material falling into 'outside' hands.”
* The fan goes on to write: “….the last thing I needed was another fandom – but thanks to a certain woman who selfishly persisted in lending me zines, I finally gave in….I also owe a debt to [O Y] who passed on the circuit stories in the pre- zine days.”
* There is this announcement: 
* On the topic of whether to allow DIAL letter writers and reviewers to “spoil” the contents of the zines they are discussing, a fan writes: 
* there is a review of Forever True, see that page
* there is a review of Close Quarters, see that page
* a fan offers up a con report for the recent Escapade, see that page
Stories:
* Rhythm Method by Tish
==Issue 14==
Discovered In A Letterbox 14 was published in June 2000 and contains 65 pages.
* this is Jill R's last issue as editor and she signs off: "Which leaves only one thing I've been putting off, mainly because I don't quite know how to say it. Perhaps I'd better keep it simple: Goodby, and thank you. It's been great."''
* the discussion topic for this issue is "What makes for a perfect Pros story?" 
* a fan congratulates Jill R and POM for winning two STIFfies: "I might not approve of awards in fandom but if we have to have 'em, it's great when they're awarded to those who talents deserve them." 
* a fan writes of her Pros BNF mother and tells of her own introduction to slash and that she now writes it herself
* a fan writes that a perfect Pros story has a number of elements, including "no cuddly toys"
* A fan comments on the frog brooch and how it:
* One long-time fan corrects another long-time fan's estimate of how many Pros stories there were in existence in late 1981. She says it wasn't 40-45 stories but sixteen. She gets this list from 
* The editor of DIAL comments: 
 
* A fan comments that:
* A fan remembers watching the episode "Man Without a Past" for the first time: 
* Many fans write in about what makes a story "perfect" and this is a typical response: 
 
* Another comment: 
* A fan corrects another about comments in issue #13: 
* A fan writes about the touchy and delicate subject of story-sharing: 
* A fan writes of the underground nature of early Pros fandom: 
* A fan remembers some round robin zines written by The UK Group: 
* On computers: 
* this issue reprints the articles Is Luke Skywalker Gay? and The X-Rated Files
* a review of Arabian Nights, see that page
* this issue has a reprint of an interview with Mel Keegan that was published in 1998 for an Internet publication called "Screaming Hyena" It can be read .
* A fan thanks three longtime fans for photocopying "for distribution" all those old stories many years ago: "Professionals fandom would not have got very far without their efforts."
* About Consequences: "I do know that one half of the writing team had no time for The Professionals." 
* A fan falls off the monofannish wagon: "Sentinel." I've really fallen in love with it I've never got hooked on anything since Pros till Sentinel." 
* a fan comments that even though Bodie is "definitely a toucher," Doyle and Bodie are "British and products of their time. They're not going to be all over each other the way Starsky and Hutch are..."
Stories:
* By Any Other Name by Elizabeth O'Shea 
* The Gift of the Moggy by The Hag
* Highland Gold by Kitty Fisher
* Thorn by Kitty Fisher
==Issue 15==
Discovered In A Letterbox 15 was published in September 2000 and contains 37 pages. It is the first issue under the new editor, [S W].
* the discussion topic is "How do stories get started? Is it an episode, a scene, a remark by the characters which provides the seed? Or perhaps a conversation with a friend that makes you think, What If...? And whether or not you write it yourself, have you ever been present at the 'birth' of a story? Were you in the room when a Pros classic first reared its head?"
* the new editor jokes: 
* a fan comments on editorial polish: 
* a fan has something to say about the discussion topic for his issue: 
* another comment on seminal Pros fiction: 
* a fan comments on a zine distributor: 
* a fan comments on some of the recent online articles on slash fiction: 
* a fan writes that she was inspired to write a story after reading another similar one, but felt it would be a story that had already been told—another fan said: 
* this issue reprints an article called She's gotta have it, about women writing and reading erotica and slash, the publishing company "Black Lace's" "Wicked Words" series from "The Observer/The Guardian" (10 September 2000) which, among other things, quotes and profiles Kitty Fisher 
* this issue contains a review of Roses and Lavender #1, No Holds Barred #10, see those pages
* there is a con report for Mountain Media Con
* there is a full-page flyer for a new fan club called CI5 Past/Present
Fiction:
* Untitled (Toronto) by Joan
==References==
Category:The Professionals Slash ZinesCategory:1999Category:2000