Jack of Harts

I’ve been a fan of Transformers, the toys not the energy network converters, for pretty much my entire life. The TV show and the comics and the toys filled my childhood, even as I could barely afford them. We didn’t have cable most of my childhood, so I rarely got to see the cartoon, but I rented what videos I could from Blockbuster back in the day. And the toys were expensive, so I didn’t have many of them. But the comic I could buy for 75 cents a piece back in the day. I could afford that once a month, and the Transformers comic became one of my reading pleasures along with Star Trek and Star Wars novels. They were my window into a world where good fought evil and usually won. Or at least survived to fight another day.

You may not be surprised to learn that the first fan fiction I wrote was Star Trek and Star Wars related, and Transformers was in there as well. And what might surprise you is that the first story someone else ever published that I wrote was for a print magazine that published Transformers fan fiction. Now I spend most of my time writing my own fiction looking to get paid for it, but I have soft spot for that old Transformers story, and it was one I never finished. I’ve always wanted to go back and complete that story, but never had the opportunity.

Well, the opportunity has arrived. The guy who ran that old fan fiction magazine has resurfaced on the internet and started doing his old thing again. We are all twenty years older than we were back then, but I quickly volunteered to redo my old story for his magazine. Just because I’m a fan and I want to do it. At first I thought I would just do a polishing up job and resubmit. But then I read it and realized how just how rough it was. So I shelved that over twenty-year old version and rewrote from scratch. The first part has been published already. The second I’m working on now, with a deadline of two days now. I’m mostly done. I’ve written the beginning and end and am working on the big fight in the middle as we speak.

I’m taking my time and introducing things a piece at a time. The first part was basically setting the stage, and acted as a kind of refresher for people who haven’t read the comics in thirty years. Yes, it has been over thirty years since the original comic ended, and this story is a direct continuation of it. So I needed to do a lot of universe rebuilding in part one. Part two is where the action really starts, and we get to see Transformers doing Transforming things in the here and now. You’ll get to see it soon if finish on time. Which I had better do. I did promise it on the 15th after all, so I need to finish that fight scene and get it all polished up and nice for publication.