Jump Reborn

I've had ideas for stories among other things for years. I've started plenty but never had the self determination to see them through to completion. One day I decided if I could actually complete a story, to see if the end result was as good as I thought it could be; or whether I was just fooling myself. The result is a short story called Jump.

Jump is set within the Star Wars Expanded Universe, crossing over with the events of Episode IV - A New Hope. It took around 8 rewrites and about 4 weeks of dark till dark obsession with a word processor. It was also a test to see if I could make a living from writing. I wrote it on a second hand electronic word processor, storing the files on 1.44 floppies. My reasoning at the time was "if I can do this, and the results are polished enough, then I should invest in buying a PC to do it properly". I have no formal training in anything I do now, this includes writing. I wrote this story on instinct. I am my own worst critic too which can be as much of a curse as a blessing. For an amateur I think the end result is pretty good.

For the curious, this is now fan fiction. It was intended to be written to be submitted as part of the official Star Wars Expanded Universe timeline. For a while after writing it, I could find nowhere to submit it to, nor how to submit it. I had it up as a preview on another site, before deciding to make it available in full there. When I switched to this domain I also planned to make it available in full too. It is fan fiction because it's not included as part of the official timeline, even though it was written with that in mind.

After deciding that for a first attempt it was pretty decent, and that I could refine that as well as having plenty more story ideas in mind, I decided to invest in my first PC. It came with Windows XP, it now has Debian Squeeze and is on it's last legs. After buying the PC, I decided I'd better learn how to maintain it, which led to becoming an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional), which led onto Linux and a whole plethora of other skills and interests. This led in part to web design and onto Drupal. The result is that I got sidetracked from my initial reasons for buying a PC, to write fiction.

Since developing a taste for Drupal I've often looked at sites using the Book module and wondered how it was done. I had Googled around to try and figure out how it knew what was a book outline, and what was a chapter as well as how to arrange chapters in order. Today I decided to explore it and found it was incredibly easy. So I reformatted the Jump story syntax to put it online. It's around 19 pages in print and wasn't designed to be split into parts, but I felt it was a good idea to split the sections up a bit to make it easier for people to read. The split points are somewhat arbitrary. If someone wants to do a decent resolution book cover for Jump I'd be grateful. It'd also be Creative Commons licensed with full attribution.

Now that I've figured out this Book thing I think I'll do a screencast about it, as well as making a little time to dust off some story ideas I've put on the back burner for too long. Writing is an interest of mine but a part time one. Anyhoo, enough of the back story, to read online via the wonders of the Book module click here, or to download in ePub format click here. I support open standards, and can't stand DRM.

Like everything else on my site, the story is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license, Enjoy.