Stories

by on October 25, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’ve got three stories either just published or about to be published.

The Rebirth is Transformers fan fiction. Totally free. Totally fan made. It features my favorite Transformers character, Fortress Maximus, and is based on the original Marvel comics story run. You can check the first part out on my jackofharts substack.

Trickster will be coming out next month in Three Raven’s Wyld Magick anthology. Captain William Carter goes to Santa Fe in 1877 in search of materials to augment his new rifle. He finds an unhappy Indian Trickster spirit. It is up for preorder right now.

The Veiled Guardians will be coming out soon in Opal Kingdom Press’s Stone and Sky anthology. Captain William Carter returns home to New Haven in 1839 to see gargoyles standing atop the Gothic Church on the Green. He’s never seen gargoyles up there before, so he decides he needs to find out why they are up there.

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

Opal Kingdom Press | Publisher

 Comment 

Weight Loss

by on October 24, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I haven’t lost much weight since my last update. I’m now hovering in the mid to low 250s, got under 253 for the first time in well over a decade, so the waveform of my weight loss continues to go down. And the average has in fact gone down ten pounds over the last 31 days. So that is the correct trend for me to have.

The interesting thing is that I just saw my doctor again this week and did blood tests, and the news there is very good. After having lost 30 pounds since January, my Pre-Diabetes is just gone. Almost every other number is good too. Losing 30 pounds has resulted in just about every blood number improving in a substantial way. And she was happy to see me again and congratulated me on my continued improvement since the last time I saw her. The one exception they will be investigating. It is probably just me being 50, but investigations will continue.

In other news, I can once again button the top buttons on my work shirts. I have always had a fireplug neck that makes it just about impossible to button my shirts all the way up. My entire life this has been a case. For the first time in I can’t remember how long, I actually CAN button that top button now. Doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy it. Or that I’m going to go out and do it for funsies. But I am actually physically capable of making the neck of my shirt meet itself after wrapping around my neck. That is a rather new experience for me. And when you add that to the continued shrinking of my waist and stomach and thighs, I continue to have more room in my clothes than I used to.

It is truly amazing to see the physical indications of my weight loss, even when my weight loss hits momentary hitches. My body continues to adjust to the loss in weight, and continues to shrink as I continue to work at it. That is always good.

 Comment 

Family

by on October 23, 2025 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I had family staying over at my house the last few days. One of my cousins drove up to Minnesota for the first time in a minute or three. The last time I saw him was two years ago when I drove down to Kansas for the funeral of his father.

My Mom setup a guest bed many years ago for family to sleep in when they came into town. It has served as handy storage for Transformers since I moved into Mom’s house, so I spent the Friday and Saturday before family arrived building some storage in a part of the basement I had long planned for that purpose, and then moving the Transformers onto it. Then it was time to launder bedding and towels and all the other things you do when family is coming. I also of course did a round of clearing, sorting things into the keep, donate, and trash piles and dealt with that. Every time I turned around, I saw something else I could do to make the house ready for another person to live in for a bit.

Then it was time to wait for family to arrive. I got some time off work and we spent time together. We ate at some nice restaurants. We had some A&W root beer. I made cornbread. He made coffee and tea in my Keurig. We watched some TV and some movies. We talked about God and politics. We did the things that family does. And then he went on to spend time with other family and I went to bed to get ready to go back to work. It is good to spend time with family, and I’m glad I jumped at the chance to get to do it.

 Comment 

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.

 Comment 

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.

 Comment