Well that didn't take long. I had this sequence of events in mind for quite a while, so all I needed to do was write it down. And I didn't make people wait long on that cliffhanger. :)

http://www.galactanet.com/bonnie/bonnie6_mod.html

-ATW

Here we go, the long awaited Bonnie Mackenzie Part 5.

Sorry for the long delay. Between chapters 4 and 5 I moved from Boston to California. So you can imagine I was a tad busy. But I'm back on track now. Wouldn't want to let my 8 or so readers down!

http://www.galactanet.com/bonnie/bonnie5_mod.html

-ATW

I've been a big fan of Doctor Who my whole life. I even tried my hand at some fanfiction. I wrote it a long time ago, but as part of my general archiving efforts, I'm including it on my writings page, and thus including it here.

It's surprisingly long. I was attempting to write an entire 4 episode story, like on the TV show, with a mind toward each episode having an air-time of 30 minutes. This makes for about 15 pages of single-spaced text per episode. So the total story is almost 60 pages long!

Advanced Warning: If you are not a Doctor Who fan, this story will probably not be entertaining to you on its own merit, so I wouldn't bother reading it.

Anyway, here are the links to the 4 parts of the story:

http://www.galactanet.com/romana/xoloans1_mod.html
http://www.galactanet.com/romana/xoloans2_mod.html
http://www.galactanet.com/romana/xoloans3_mod.html
http://www.galactanet.com/romana/xoloans4_mod.html

-ATW

I wrote this a long time ago. It's a one-off about a character I was playing in a D&D campaign. This was all part of her backstory. I include it here because I'm working my way through my various writings and putting them all in the new format on my website.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/rat_mod.html

Unfortunately, the story was written for a specific audience of about 6 people. So I made no effort to establish the genre first, nor do I give any conclusions (at the time of the writing of this story, Rat's life was still being lived through adventure and whatnot in tabletop roleplaying.) Still, I think it stands reasonably well on its own as a wartime tale of bravery, romance, and human spirit.

Or maybe it sucks. Up to you to decide.

-ATW

I made a page for all my various writings, so people don't have to hunt through LJ posts for the stories. Obviously, it's very bare-bones. But it has links to all the things I've written recently:

http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html

-ATW

Just a little one-off very short story I wrote today.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

-ATW

And here we go, part 4 of Bonnie, which seems to be the more popular of the various things I'm working on. Not sure what I'll work on next. Maybe more Bonnie, maybe the next part of Zhek. But anyway, here's the latest on our favorite mermaid:

http://www.galactanet.com/bonnie/bonnie4_mod.html

-ATW

I have decided that LiveJournal just isn't a good venue for displaying stories. It makes them difficult to read, and I run in to repeated problems with formatting and fonts. So, from now on, I will host the actual stories at my site, and whenever I write something new, I will announce it here in the jack_sharp page. All comments on the story will go here, as responses to the announcement about it.

So now, I bring you "Zhek, part 1". The overarching plotline and concepts behind this story would make it the largest, most complicated epic I have ever even considered telling. This is just the very beginning. I wonder if I'll have the fortitude to make any real progress into the main plotlines. Time will tell.

http://www.galactanet.com/zhek/zhek1_mod.html

Please let me know what you think.

-ATW

 

( The Adventure of the Sealed Room )
-ATW

 

 

( The Adventure of the Unscrupulous Assassin )

 

-ATW

People probably want more Bonnie Mackenzie. But this was just too fun to write. I couldn't resist. :) 

 

( The Adventure of the Dishonor Among Thieves )
-ATW

( Bonnie Mackenzie, Part 3 (under this cut) )

Printable doc version

-ATW

The whole premise behind posting chunks of a story in progress is new to me, so I'm kind of making things up as I go along. And one thing I need to address is how I deal with changes.

Writing always needs editing, rewrites, etc. There's no way to serialize a story without having to do major revisions later. This may make thing bumpy occasionally for people who read each issue as it comes out, but in the long run it will make for a better story.

So I've decided that when I've made enough changes to the already-posted parts of a story, I will edit those posts to the new version.

To that end, I have edited Bonnie, Part 2. The main change is I changed her clothing habits. While stubborn in the quasi-omniscient first person narration that people are commenting on, I sided with the readers on the issue of the dress.

Bonnie wearing a dress has several problems. Firstly, it was out of character for stubborn Bonnie to simply acclimate to the dress without a stronger fight. Second off, it breaks conventional knowledge. You have an preconceived image of what a mermaid should look like, and that image gets really stupid when you imagine her swimming around with a wet dress draped over her.

To that end, I have added a bit more struggle, and a different resolution, to the dress issue.

If you prefer to re-read, stop reading this post now.

For those of you who simply want to be up to date without having to re-read the chapter: After repeatedly sending dresses off to sea, Bonnie finally accepts wearing a comfortable leather skirt-like item with straps to keep it fastened to her pelvic area. It has a liner so as to no chafe her scales. Lotti made it with her experience as a tanner's daughter. No attempt is made to hide Bonnie's chest, as there's nothing yet there to hide.

So this is what Bonnie wears from that point on. A skin-tight leather skirt-like thing. It does much less damage to the way a mermaid *should* look. Hopefully this will eliminate some of the distraction to the reader while imagining the story.

-ATW

I'm still working on Bonnie Mackenzie, part 3. But I'm also drawing on occasion, and what better subject than Bonnie? So yes, I started creative writing to get away from art, and then immediately drew pictures of my creative writing subject.

I guess I do like making art occasionally, just not in the quantities required for a comic.


Anyway, for anyone who is interested, this is what Bonnie looks like in the modern day.

( Bonnie )

-ATW

Printable doc version

-ATW

Printable doc version

-ATW

Hi, there. My name is Andy Weir. I'm best known as the author of Casey and Andy and Cheshire Crossing.

Over the years I have learned that I am, at my core, a writer. I made webcomics because it was the only way I could think of to reach an audience. And, while it was satisfying to gather a much larger than expected number of readers for my comics, the sheer effort of doing all the art work was weighing me down.

There are many people out there who enjoy making art. I am not one of them. To me, the art was a necessary evil to making the story. After finishing Casey and Andy, I found myself with no art responsibilities at all for the first time in eight years. And I have to say I like not having that hanging over my head.

Still, I have a mountain of ideas for stories, all of them percolating and meandering around in my brain, demanding attention. So I've decided to return to creative writing for a while. This will, no doubt, gather only a very small audience; nothing like what I was getting for C&A or CC. But I am past the days where I obsess about the number of readers I have and instead am just looking for a creative outlet.

This journal is dedicated to my creative writing efforts. I have another LJ account, shanex. That account is for general rambling, political rants, etc. This account is solely for creative writing. "Jack Sharp" is the pen name I use when doing creative writing, hence the account name.

Rather than try to write long, complete stories, I will be writing them in serial format. Each post will be short, on the order of 5 to 10 pages. I will not necessarily work on a single story at a time. As my interest wanders from one story concept to another I will work on whichever I feel best about writing.

Each post will be titled appropriate to the story it is part of, and numbered so that it's easy to browse archives (if this creative writing impulse of mine lasts long enough to warrant such browsing).

Of course comments on my stories are desired. Any feedback is welcome.

I hope you enjoy my work.

-ATW