I've always had a sneaking admiration for Tanya Huff.  The woman writes everything, and I'll read it all.  Her Victory Nelson books were more serious, the Keeper books were goofball (I love Hell getting into arguments with itself), then there's the Valor sci-fi books...

Rachel Caine, on the other hand, makes liberal use of psuedonyms.  She's published under Roxanne Conrad, Rachel Caine, and Julie Fortune.  I'm not sure what prompted the change from one RC to the other RC, but I know Julie Fortune was the name she used to write fanfic under.  Then she got a piece of Stargate fiction published through Fandemonium (I believe) and kept with the Julie Fortune name for that, presumably to encourage readers of her Stargate fanfic to pick up the book.

I tend to follow writers more than genres.  I had no idea Robin Hobb had a psuedonym.  Had I seen any other books by her, I'd have picked them up where I haven't picked up anything by Megan Lindholm because I haven't been in the mood to "risk" a new author.

If you're in the US, the moment you put it on paper it was copyrighted.  You don't need to register it, send it to yourself in the mail and not open it, nothing.   You may want to do the latter if you really think someone's gonna steal it and you want to have proof you wrote it by a certain date, but you don't need to "do" anything to copyright it beyond putting it down on paper.

When I worked for AOL, back when it was just starting, we used to get a staggering amount of complaints over "You've got mail!"

Evidently, it's grammatically incorrect.  The majority of complainers favored "You have mail!" as indicative of possession, but some few die-hards held out for "You got mail!" to say that one has received mail in the recent past.

Needless to say, AOL kept its gramatically incorrect mail greeting, though I strongly suspect they chose that so they wouldn't have to pay someone to re-record it...

Most of the call center employees at the time, FYI, favored "Yo bi*ch, check yo da**ed mail!"  This suggestion underwhelmed upper management.  Facists.

I've written a few pieces of fanfic.  Usually I write them because something in a story sparked a question that's never answered by the author.  For example, in Laurell K. Hamilton's "Lunatic Cafe", there was a throwaway reference about Edward finding a witch to lift a curse.  I wanted to know who the witch was.  And, frankly, at the same time I wanted to explore a little bit about how a character could survive in that world and NOT be an uber-everything.  So I wrote "Swan Song".

Then, because I liked the interplay between my OC and Edward, there was a follow-up.  A third story stalled out, shortly after I realized I was writing it because people had asked me to write a story where my OC and Anita Blake met up.  It wasn't the story I wanted to tell, so it died out.

I also don't consider it time wasted when I could spend it on my own stuff.  For one thing, I myself do not have an actual well of creativity that can run dry.  There's always something to do.  Writing fanfic doesn't stop me from having ideas about my own writing.  The time sink is the only thing that might apply, and it's irrelevant to me.  I have no plans to publish, so it doesn't matter if it takes me two months or two years to finish a story.  I love writing, I couldn't not write.  I write a lot.  But, although I have submitted a story or two (actually, two in the last fifteen years or so) for publishing, I don't really want to.  I'm a writer, not an author.  I write for the sheer love of it.  Having to submit it to editing and deadlines and all the other crap that goes with being published would suck the joy out of it, for me.  So I write, and fanfic in no way impinges on my ability to enjoy the hobby.

I don't read much fanfic because, as other people have said, the vast majority of it is terrible.  Bad grammar, bad plotting, and don't even get me started on the horrible characterizations.  "What if Jack and Daniel were blue, telepathic aliens?!"  Then why use Jack and Daniel at all?

If I ever published my own work, I would let people write fanfic, assuming my lawyer or agent didn't have an aneurysm at the very notion.  I dunno if she still handles it this way, but for awhile Mercedes Lackey used to permit fanfic IF the writers used an alternate timeline wherein a major character who had died in the "real" timeline managed instead to survive.  Since most readers were upset he had died in the first place, that was fine.   I'd probably handle it in a similar fashion, if all the legal angles permitted.  Make a drastic change, so that all fanfic is actually happening in an alternate universe.

I haven't yet written any Dresden Files fanfic, mostly 'cause Jim's doing a bang-up job of writing it himself.   If he leaves a big gaping hole in a story that bugs me no end, I suppose I'd end up scribbling twenty or so pages.  But I have a feeling the Dresden Files RPG will give me all the room I need to tell whatever stories I want in that universe.  Go MUSH!