Tron

by on October 22, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Tron has been a story I have long loved. As a techie kid growing up in the 80s, it was my jam. A human caught in the computer grid fighting against a great evil computer intelligence that wanted to take over the world. And the idea that the programs we created could take on the identity of the user who made them was so very intense. That what we put into it is what we would get out of it. And it is an idea we should all remember now, thirty years later, as AIs are becoming a reality. What we put into them is what we will get out of them.

Tron Ares just came out in the theaters and I watched it. It is a good movie. My cousin was in town, and we wanted to go see the movie together, so we watched Tron and Tron Legacy the night before. Both amazing, beautiful films. Then we went to see Tron Ares and it is a fitting part of the franchise. It is amazingly beautiful. The cinematography is top notch. The attention paid to angles and light was truly stellar. They kept to the red and blue themes of the previous stories, and it very much built on the legacy, pun fully intended, of the previous movies. It feels like a natural evolution of Tron and of the ideas behind it.

I love it. It is my jam. I recommend it. I know it is Disney. I know many people boycott that entire studio. And I understand why. Even through that, I recommend this movie. I think it is worth crossing the boycott line to see. I saw it in Imax and it was truly amazing. It was absolutely worth my time to see, and I will buy it on blu-ray when it comes out.

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Transformers and Heroes

by on October 21, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Transformers, along with Star Trek and Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and Narnia, and stories of that style, have been some of my favorite stories and universes to think about and imagine writing stories about for my entire life. The reason is simple. The common theme of good versus evil. And good generally wins.

In all of these stories, and in Transformers in particular, good wins. And good is good. Optimus Prime said that “freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” Fortress Maximus said that “we must be brave enough to wage peace.” The good guys were good. The bad guys were bad. And yes, most of them had rogues in the middle that lots of people liked, such as Grimlock. Grimlock would have been a great Decepticon if he had wanted to be. He agreed with them and their style on a great many things. In some versions, he was one of the gladiatorial robots that mostly became Decepticons. He was their brother in arms and they knew him. And yet he chose to be an Autobot. And many people like those characters. I have always loved the ones that were not conflicted. Optimus Prime and Fortress Maximus. They were good people who wanted other other people to live in peace. And they were people with the courage to fight and sacrifice so others could live in peace.

Those are the stories I love, and the stories I like to write. Transformers encapsulates this in ways that almost seem odd by today’s standards. They were a true black and white. Heroic Autobots. Evil Decepticons. But it is that clear distinction that there is good and evil, that there is right and wrong, that I love. They were not afraid to say that, and they wrote it in stories every week and every month for children to see. Many of us grew up looking up to Optimus Prime or Fortress Maximus. They were the heroes who would never stop. The ones who would protect us against anything if the time required it. They would die to defend others if they had to. They would never quit.

Those are the heroes I seek to write. Even if they don’t see themselves like that. It is those actions and those types of people that I like to bring to life in my stories. Because they are the heroes I want to highlight. That we should seek to be like in our lives.

I love to write stories of Transformers and Heroes because I wish we had more of them, and I will do what I can to show them.

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Story News

by on October 20, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I just published my Transformers fan fiction on my jackofharts dot substack dot come for anyone to read if you want to. Free of charge as it is fan fiction.

My Veiled Guardians story is one step closer to being published in Opal Kingdom Press’s Stone and Sky anthology this month. It is an anthology about gargoyles, and it covers everything from fantasy to science fiction and historical fiction. It is looking like a good anthology to my rather biased eyes. If you have a passing interest in the subject, you might want to look at it.

And Trickster is coming out next month from Three Ravens Publishing’s Wyld Magick, with preorders already open and waiting for your interest. It is about fae and wild lands all kinds of magic.

My Bourbon and Lead story did not get picked by Raconteur, but I’ve never written in that style before, so I’m not disappointed.

I just finished writing Part 2 of The Rebirth and it will be published soon by the Teletran fan magazine so you can find it there whenever it comes out.

Next up I’ll be working on other stories on my docket, including something right up my jam. Uncanny Valet. Robots that are almost human. I’ve already got the story in my mind for that one. The kernel of that story has been in my mind for literal years, waiting for the time to let it fly, and Uncanny Valet just asked for it. So it’s going to get it with both robot barrels from me. 🙂

I hope you take the time to read some of my stuff soon. And if you don’t, I hope you read something from someone else. Reading should be fun for everyone after all.

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The Rebirth Art

by on October 19, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The story of the art I used for the cover of Rebirth is literally older than the story itself. Way back in the 1990s, not long after Fort Max died in the comics, I had this story pop up in my head of Fort Max being rebuilt and fighting the Cybertronians. The story that would become The Rebirth came to me three decades ago. And it was big enough in my mind that I found an artist who did fan art of Transformers back then and paid him to draw that scene. Fort Max standing on a vanquished Cybertronian, with fortress mode and Cerebrus standing in the background. Because… why not?

I paid him, he did the drawing, and he sent it to me. The physical piece of art that I scanned this image from is hanging in my house, and I don’t even know who did it. He did it 1998 and he signed his art with an M. That’s all I can you tell you now, after three decades. I wish I could tell you who he was, because that piece of art is why I’m writing The Rebirth now. Because for three decades, I’ve walked by this piece of art and remembered the scene I imagined in my mind so long ago. The scene I still haven’t written to this day. He made the scene real and visceral, and something I’ve never given up on putting to paper.

And now I will. I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t know how many parts there will before this scene happens. But everything I’m writing leads this scene. And I hope I can do this art justice when it comes time to write it. Because it has been in my mind as I’ve walked past it for almost thirty years. It is the story I’ve never been able to fully walk away from, even as I did other things with my life. And one day it will be told. Because of this art.

They say that images speak a thousand words, and they are right. They can also speak for many decades.

And recently, for fun, I put it into Grok Imagine and asked it for a series of scenes based on the image and the story I wanted to tell. Head on over to my substack to see one of the examples that came out, and the one I thought best caught the idea of what I was going for. Fort Max standing and delivering as explosions go off behind him. It did a good job, and I liked it enough to share it all with you.

https://jackofharts.substack.com/p/the-rebirth-art

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The Rebirth

by on October 18, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Fortress Maximus has always been my favorite Transformers character. He was one of the most powerful machines of war ever built, and yet he yearned for peace. And like many aspiring writers, I wrote stories about him. Fan fiction is the appropriate label. A Fan Magazine called Teletran printed Transformers fan fiction back in the day, over twenty years ago, and The Rebirth was the first one of my stories ever published by anyone. It was my magnum opus. The best writing I’d ever done. I was so proud of it.

I never finished the story. I went and did other things. And Teletran went away as well. And time passed. I started writing my own things. I published myself. And in time other publishers picked my stories for them to publish. And then the guy that headed Teletran back in the day resurfaced on the Internet and started contacting all the old people he used to talk with back in the day. I sent him some of my hard copy issues of Teletran, because he didn’t have them anymore, and he said he wanted to start up Teletran again.

And you know? There was this story that I’d always wanted to spiff up a bit and finish. I hate an unfinished story, and The Rebirth had been sitting in the back of my mind for literal decades, wanting to come out. Wanting to be finished. And so I told him I’d spiff it up and finish the story for him if he was willing to publish it again. He was. So I opened up the old story, and started to do some minor edits with the stuff I’ve learned over the last two decades. Then they became major edits. And then I shook my head and scrapped it all. The story was good, but I sucked at writing back then.

So I rewrote it, from scratch. And I sent it to Transformers fans I know in real life for feedback. The biggest response I got was confusion. You see, The Rebirth is a continuation of the Marvel Transformers Comic, not the cartoon, and the comic is niche even within the Transformers fandom. So I rewrote Part I as a kind of primer on the history of Transformers, telling people how we came to be here. And then showing what Fortress Maximus did next.

Part I was published in the last issue of Teletran. Part II I just finished and it will be in the next issue of Teletran if you want to go find it and read it. Follow the link to The Rebirth, Part I, free to read for anyone since it is fan fiction. I hope you enjoy it.

https://jackofharts.substack.com/p/the-rebirth

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