Moon Trek 3 - Author's Notes!

Hey gang. Here I sit on December 31, 2003. Wondering why it took me so long to finish this story. According to the stats in Microsoft Word, I started it on January 31. 11 months. Why does it take so long to write something that doesn’t even make that much sense, to begin with?

I’ll tell you why.

I actually have readers.

When I was writing this one I kept watching the counter on the Moon Trek homepage. It was increasing twenty or so a day for a while. But I didn’t think anyone was actually reading these. I mean, I hardly ever got any email.

Then, when opening up my Yahoo mail one day I saw an email - for me, about Moon Trek.

I actually had a reader. And better yet, I had a reader who was paying attention to the story! He pointed out some of the flaws, both technical and otherwise with Moon Trek 2.

Don’t think I am complaining, because I am not. I enjoy getting those emails. They make me work harder on writing the stories. And in this case, made me work hard enough that it took eleven months.

There is also the fact that so far this one has been the longest of the fics. The first one comes out at 96 pages, but it’s double spaced, so it doesn’t count. Sitting here this one reads at 89 pages, but I am sure I will make some revisions and additions before I post the final version.

Regardless, the point is to keep sending me emails. Comments, criticisms, all that good stuff.

Now, a bit about this story. I had a hard time coming up with what I was going to write about in this one. I painted myself into the preverbal corner in the last one. I killed off two major characters in the Ranma/Sailor Moon world. I left two in an emotional meltdown. I had one running around the ship naked.

Yeah, it was going to be tough considering I didn’t even have an A storyline to work with.

So I asked my friend, Jerry, what he thought would make an interesting story. He mentioned what I think he said was a Star Trek (original series) episode where a being was saved by one of the characters and fell in love with that character.

Thinking that would make a great plot point, I started to work with it. However, involving all the characters in it turned out to be a bigger challenge than I thought it would be. So it ended up simply being a B storyline (or sub-plot). Which made this story even weirder because most stories don’t start off with the sub-plot. But I think it worked because I have always found grumpy people in happy places hilarious. So here comes Trevor, who inadvertently saved the energy being known as Foster. I decided not to have him fall in love with Trevor because I am not one who is very good at writing homoeroticism. Well, between boys that is. I am always up to writing a scene with girls kissing!

Yeah, I am single… But I don’t think that has anything to do with it.

Anyway, after writing the prelude, I was stuck. I still had no clue what the main story should be. I knew I needed to tie up all of the loose ends, but those would all have to be sub-plots. Finally, after rereading Moon Trek 1, and laughing at the antics of the Kunos, I decide that I would bring them back.

So there evolved the main story. But once again I became stuck in several spots. Where to go? Jerry once again stepped in to help me. He offered the idea that I should come up with an idea that would happen in the middle of the chapter. So I did. Then I wrote backward. That, in case you were wondering, explains why the first four chapters are relatively short, then chapter five and on are longer.

But it worked. I managed to tie up all the loose ends, and have some fun at Ranma’s expense along the way. 

What happened at the end though? The story did seem to kind of just end, which you have to admit is a common occurrence with Star Trek. I’ve always found it annoying how everything builds up to the final showdown, which just kind of ends. However, I don’t consider it the end of this story. I like to consider it the beginning of the next story, which should take as long as I already have the plot figured out. 

A preview you want? Well, I suppose I can let you in on it a little bit. There will of course be a couple of new characters. But two established Ranma ½ characters will be making an appearance. There will be fighting, sex and comedy! Plus there is now a title revision. The next series of stories will be called ‘Moon Trek Neo’, because of the ship’s new purpose.

Once again, please don’t hesitate to send your comments to me at funkdafied@douglasavenue.com. Also, of course, you can check out the Moon Trek website at funkdafied.douglasavenue.com/fic/moontrek.

I hope you enjoyed the story. Thanks for reading.

erin - ewink