Writing Projects
My current project is Do No Harm, a thriller about a doctor
who uncovers a worldwide conspiracy when a patient is abducted from his
office.
This is my first attempt at writing a major piece in first person. So
far, I love it. I love getting deep inside a character and filtering
everything through his senses. Of course, it's a challenge sticking
with one character throughout a novel, but I think I can pull it off.
I'm trying to make it fun with a surprisingly complex conspiracy,
exotic locales (e.g., Osaka, Las Vegas, the Caribbean, Cabo San Lucas),
and a relentless pace.
- “Birth Control”
- Bioengineering and politics collide, accidentally producing a world
where everyone is infertile, save for a few thousand children. In this
complex near-future short story, an auditor arrives at one of the
boarding schools where the children are sheltered, and the
administration must discover her agenda in order to protect the
children. This is probably my best work to date. Currently
collecting rejection slips. (2003)
- Kill Switch
- A science-fiction novel about the exploration of a planet outside of
our solar system. How far would you go for a second chance at life?
At love? What would you sacrifice to change the world? Could you
press the Kill Switch? Includes action, adventure, drugs, aliens,
and a romantic triangle. I think of it more as a story that
happens to have a science-fiction background, but it definitely has
a couple sci-fi ideas. (2003)
- “The Girl Next Door”
- A near-future short story about a young women trying to keep her
struggling brothel in business. I'm circulating this one. If it
doesn't sell, I'll post it here. (2001, I think)
- “Connie Lynn”
- A short story about how the information age enables big business
to invade our privacy. OK, so maybe I'm a little paranoid, but a
little paranoia can be a healthy thing, especially now that we have
the PATRIOT Act. The entire story is published
here for
your enjoyment. (2000)
- “Unit and Regression Testing”
- Hey! I actually got something published. This is an article for
programmers that illustrates the usefulness of unit tests and
demonstrates how they can be automated (using make) and
integrated into the build process. See
Dr. Dobb's Journal,
February, 1997, p. 18.
- Buying Time
- A two-hour screenplay about a man who has himself cloned for
spare organs. The clone, who the man has raised as a son,
begins to discover his origins. It earned me a very polite rejection
letter from a major Hollywood agency. Would have made a
great movie of the week when Dolly the sheep was in the news.
(1991)
- “Automaton Dreams”
- A spec-script for Star Trek: The Next Generation
written for the second season (remember Dr. Pulaski?). The
primary plot involves Data suddenly acquiring the ability to
dream. Several seasons later there was an episode about Data
dreaming, and some of my friends who had read my script thought
that I had sold it to Paramount. (1989)
- One
- An awful one-hour screenplay that I wrote for a screenwriting
class. I won't let anybody read it. (1989)
- Kidnapper Novel
- The idea is far from complete, but it starts with a kidnapping
from a surprising location.
- Untitled Novel
- A humorous, fictionalized account of my experiences working at a
corrupt company.
- Women Seem Wicked
- A strange idea I have for a novel that starts lighthearted but
grows ever darker. It would probably be impossible to sell.
- Planetation
- A two-hour sci-fi action-adventure screenplay about a colony of
humans on another planet who are forced into slavery by a bug-like
species of aliens. I know, from that description, it sounds a bit
like Starship Troopers, but it's not. (1989-1994)
After years of wrestling with different word processing systems, I've
gone back to TeX (often LaTeX).
I can't stand WYSIWYG. I must be
the only person in the world who can't use Microsoft Word. I don't
just dislike Word, I cannot get it to behave.
Never heard of TeX? It was written by Donald E. Knuth, a professor
of mathematics and computer science at Standford University. Combined with
METAFONT, TeX is probably the best typesetting program available today. It's
free, portable, and bug-free. No, really! To learn
more about TeX, visit the TeX Users Group
(TUG). LaTeX is a macro package for TeX that turns TeX into more of a
document markup language than a typesetting package.
For screenwriting, I'm resurrecting
ScriptTeX,
a macro package I wrote for TeX and released as freeware. It's floating
around on some of the TeX collection CDs and Internet archives although most
of the copies I've seen have some glitches. Get a glitch-free version
here
on Aidtopia.
More correctly, that's
TEX, but that looks awful in HTML.
What You See Is What You Get
(supposedly).
© 2001-2003
Adrian McCarthy.
All rights reserved. Last updated 12-JUL-2003.