How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Way back in July over on Fangs, Fur, & Fey, Marie Brennan had a poll about what readers think of side stories surrounding books, especially books in a series. Her responses seemed to indicate that readers enjoy these kinds of stories (where we find out what happened to the characters before or after the book ends, or in between books, or when they were offscreen) although most people aren't really interested in having to pay for them. I don't know that I agree. When I used to write fan fiction about television shows, we called these stories "missing scenes." They would be stories about what happened in between scenes in an episode or in between episodes themselves, but one of the key elements was that a "missing scene"* would have to fit seamlessly between the scenes where it took place. One that didn't wasn't a missing scene story, it was just plain old fan fiction, jumping off from the show and going in a whole new direction. I call this k