Hello.

If you are reading me right now, you have likely come from one of my stories.

Thanks for reading!

These days I am writing Ashes to Ashes, Grist to Grist, a project which so far has spanned over five years. We are getting close to the end, and that's real bittersweet. I spend a lot of time in Ashes and Grist's world, and I'll miss that when it comes time for the story to end. However, that hardly diminishes the excitement of moving on to new projects, and falling in love with new characters.

Sharing my work here is one of the best choices I've ever made. There have been times when I've come close to giving up and leaving Ashes and Grist unfinished, and each time I've pushed through. Mostly because readers such as yourselves made it known to me how my work has touched your lives, and that gives me immense fuel. Without that circuitry in place, without you, I doubt Ashes and Grist would have lasted twenty chapters.

Although right now I am playing within the Homestuck universe, what first drew me to write on this site was Halo. I could not stop thinking about the SPARTAN-IIIs - in Ghosts of Onyx we meet over three hundred SPARTAN-IIIs from Gamma Company, but by the time Plot arrives at Onyx, only three squads of SPARTAN-IIIs are left on the planet. The other 315 SPARTAN-IIIs in Gamma Company had already left Onyx to be deployed, and that is the last we ever hear about them. What happened to them? Where the hell did they go? This curiosity led to the birth of Spartans of Gamma Company, which follows Team Rapier - a five-person team of Gamma Co. Spartans who are deployed to participate in the Battle of Earth.

Survivors of Gamma Company came next, mostly because I loved Team Rapier so much that I wanted to do more with them. I personally think it's a clunky story, but it did lead to greater projects. The best thing to come out of Survivors was Alley Garris. Alley appeared in Survivors essentially as a throwaway character. I had no plans for him, and I had no idea who he would one day become. There was one point in Survivors when Garris mentions that he fought on Installation 04, and although I never went into detail about his experience, somehow I 'knew' that I'd just touched upon one little piece of a powerful story.

Alley Garris never quite left my mind after that. So when I dove back into Halo for a third time, I decided it was time to take a break from Spartans and examine the Human-Covenant War from the perspective of someone without augmentations, someone without fancy armor and energy shields. In addition to this new challenge, after playing the Halo games for years I was feeling immensely dissatisfied with how the marines are viewed as ragdolls, thanks to their oftentimes hilarious and useless behavior as NPCs in the Halo games. I was taken by the truth of each 'disposable' marine having a story, a life, dreams, desires, and fears. Alley Garris was a perfect fit for this exploration, and through him From Harvest to the Ark was born.

Even after I started writing Harvest to the Ark, I never anticipated how many people would read it. Even now, years after its completion, I still receive email notifications of new readers discovering and following Alley Garris's story, and this is very moving. As a matter of fact, it's inspired me to start rewriting the story, a project I have already begun. I will not be changing the plotline. The focus is on fixing old spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and fleshing out the characters more

I may add more to this profile page as we go along, but I believe this is sufficient for now.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Some people like to post their questions in a review, and I respond to those questions via PM. You can also directly PM me questions. Just be aware that you need to have a Fanfiction(dot)net account for me to be able to respond to you. If you ask a question while reviewing a chapter as an anonymous Guest, I will have no way to answer you.

Enjoy your lives. Being alive is a beautiful thing.

FROM HARVEST TO THE ARK REWRITE PROGRESS

9/29/2020: I posted in May 2018 that I was beginning a rewrite of this story to clean up some clunky language, and I quickly made my way through updating Act I. Then my focus drifted to other projects, and unfortunately I have not worked on the Harvest to the Ark rewrite in quite some time. Then I recently discovered a number of threads on Reddit about this story, and several posts inquired about the progress of Harvest to the Ark's rewrite. I wish I could reply to those threads, but they have been archived and commenting seems to be impossible, so the best I can do is begin leaving updates here. If you read this update and know of people who were interested in the progress of this story's rewrite, do spread the word.

I cannot promise a speedy finish to the rewrite. Honestly, it might take years. But I will commit to finishing it. I spend a lot of my time on other writing projects, including my ongoing Homestuck fanfic, Ashes and Grist (which you should totally read, even if you don't know about/don't like Homestuck), so this rewrite will not have top priority for my free time. What I can promise is that I will begin devoting time towards updating From Harvest to the Ark, and although it will likely be a slow process, I am going to get it done one chapter at a time.

On the bright side, you will have plenty of time to experience the clunkier original version. Then you'll be able to re-experience the story anew as I work my way through rewriting the next chapters. I should specify that by 'rewrite' I basically mean 'touchup'. The plotline of the story is not changing at all. No new characters are added, and none are taken away. It is still the same story, just told better, with more intelligently crafted sentences and chosen words. With a little care, the language can be reworked to allow Alley Garris's story to shine more clearly and realistically.

As of now, 9/29/2020, I have reworked the first fifteen chapters of From Harvest to the Ark. Chapter 16 is the earliest chapter which has not yet been rewritten, and I will post an update here when it is complete. Thank you, everyone, for your continued interest in this project.

- TheAmateur