National Novel Writer's Month

I once found a Buffy the Vampire Slayer "licensed novel" (which is basically professional fanfic, for all intents and purposes; Joss Whedon's office approves the rough overview or outline, and that's about it) that actually was pretty awesome. It was called Go Ask Malice: A Slayer's Diary, and it was about Faith before she came to Sunnydale, basically a combination of illuminating a little of her backstory and clearing up the actual events that led her to being Watcher-less and heading to Sunnydale. Despite the fact that it's written in diary form (epistolary, ya know), which you would totally think wouldn't really work well with Faith, somehow it does; it captures her voice perfectly (the first entry alone is HILARIOUS), it has enough gaps in what Faith knows to be suspenseful, and if you watch the episodes from season three where she talks about her past or whatever, it fits perfectly. So perfectly in fact, that it's almost eerie (you just know the author spent ridiculous amounts of time pouring over the scripts and stuff, to get all the details right)... hell, to be frank, I've seen almost every episode of Buffy, and I've read up through all the Season Eight comics including the Faith arc, and have actually yet to find a spot that doesn't utterly, perfectly jive with her story as told in the book. I sometimes have to remind myself that it isn't actually canon, it just feels like it is. XD

So, if you're a Buffy fan... ordinarily, I'd say "don't buy the novels, they're basically published fanfiction and they're mediocre at best" (although some of them are kinda fun to check out from the library for a bit), but Go Ask Malice is an exception, both in terms of the "published fanfic" quality and BtVS novel quality. :)