“I’ll be back.”

Well, that’s what I thought. And that’s what other people thought, too. But truth is, I haven’t been back for a year now. 

Before starting to do online guitar tabbing, I had another project on the go. I started writing a story in the Summer of 2004, a fan fiction based on “The Terminator” movie series. Yes, I’m a fan, a Termi-geek, a Termi-nerd, whatever you want to call it. I’m very much a fan of the first two movies…but not really anything that came after. Sure, I saw T3 and I’ll watch the upcoming “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” TV series when it starts on Fox in January, but for me Terminator is basically those first two movies. The fact that they’ve announced that they’re stretching the movie series into another whole trilogy of movies is not the best news to me. 

But I’ve had an interesting time on some Terminator discussion forums over the past few years. Far from just being a sci-fi actioner, the movies lend themselves easily to pretty involved discussions ranging from philosophy to technology to religion to politics to the never-ending (and never resolved) temporal paradox discussions, and dozens of other topics. The talk can get pretty deep when people want it to. But I think you can say that about most sci-fi fandoms (although Terminator is the only movie/TV “fandom”, as such, that I’ve ever belonged to). 

Eventually, I decided to try my hand at writing a fan fiction. I wanted to try something a little different, so I based a story on a character who is only mentioned in passing in the first movie, and I had the events of the movies unfold around him. I was going along great, but it was in the Spring of 2005 that I started doing guitar text tabs. My time became divided between the two, and the work on the story slowed down quite a bit. And it continued to get slower. My most recent chapter posting was last year right around this time (Dec. 1/06). 

The thing is, I’d still like to wrap it up. There’s really only about two chapters to go (but my chapters are long, so I know it’ll take some time). I think I should make it a New Year’s resolution to get the story done. A lot of people have been good enough to read it and review it, so I should give it a conclusion. I should do it before the movie writers muck with the time line a few more times, or before the 12th movie in the series is released, or before “Terminator: The Musical” is announced… 

My grand opus so far: 

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2014457/1/Afterimage