Dag Fiction

History

I have been writing my own stories since I was in Primary School. From "The Day I went to the Moon" to the more macabre "Murder in Fishbone Alley", these and a large number of other "simple" stories all exist in handwritten form in large book which I found hidden in an archive box in March 2003.

Early in high school I was given a task to write a story and present it like you would a novel. My handwritten science fiction story ran for over 50 pages and was to be my very first typed piece of work. I borrowed a portable typewriter from a friend and proceeded to type – using only one finger – the whole thing. Needless to say that task was far too daunting and time consuming to complete so the story was severely shortened (it too is now lost).

A couple of years after that. I learnt one of the greatest skills in my life, and that was to touch type – eventually to type as fast as I could think. Yet, even with this new found talent, I was always frustrated with the technology of the typewriter, as there was never any way of keep text for editing and re editing. Subsequently a lot of the stories I wrote were first draft only and later discarded as I had no interest in re typing them.

Then came the ultimate saving grace for any writer, the word processor. Finally I was able to write my stories, save the text, then re edit them to my hearts desire later.

This introduction of the PC quickly lead to the range of stories I now present here. Everything I’ve done has been in the realm of Star Trek or Star Wars as they have been the grounds of science fiction that are most familiar to me. I had plans on releasing my own fanzine for my Star Trek work, since none of it has ever been published, but I never got around to it. My Star Wars material on the other hand found its way into the Star Walking fan story publication; Alliance.

Most of the stories here have not been properly finished (in fact the stardates in "Taste the Sweet Scent of Victory" are simply listed as XXXXX). Like most people I have a tendency to move onto new projects before fully completing my existing ones – alas with my Star Trek work, A Time and a Place: Part 1 is the only one that has received a decent proofread.

Essentially I think my ideas are good, but my particular writing style and inability to flesh out scenes tend to let the stories down somewhat. This is possibly why I have a preference for writing film scripts.

It's also worth noting these were all written in the 1990s so my writing skills are probably quite weak.

*** All stories are copyright to Darren Maxwell ***