Welcome to an online listing of MathTans’ writing efforts! Stories which appear on this site are listed at the top, with local links, followed by other works of note.
(1) TIME & TIED
(“Interstellar” meets “Tomorrowland”)
Carrie Waterson is more than your average teenage cheerleader. Because she has a time machine. She also has a hidden past even she is not aware of… or, more accurately, a hidden future. One she is going to have to deal with, face-to-face.
BOOK #1. AWARENESS
Teenagers find a time machine. Secrets abound.
BOOK #2. ESCALATION
Someone wants to change the past. Someone is tied to a future destiny.
BOOK #3. DESTRUCTION
What happens when your present exists as someone else’s past?
BOOK #4. RESOLUTION
How the timelines are realigned to save everybody.
In theory, each book can stand alone. The tale can also be found here on RoyalRoad Legends in a slightly more edited format. Note that Chartreuse (and her sister Azure) have since appeared in “The Epsilon Project: Wish Fulfilment” (below).
(2) THE EPSILON PROJECT
(Characters clean up the multiverse – your votes change the story!)
Characters from my other creative efforts and prior role-play campaigns all converge here, as they end up in stories that literally develop week by week, thanks to reader votes as the plot progresses.
Story #1. NUMBERS GAME
“A teleporter, a Time Lord, and mathematics walk into a room…”
Story #2. WISH FULFILMENT
“Two companions. One artifact. Countless wishes.”
Story #3. FULL SCALE INVASION
“Small world. Big Problems.”
Story #4. EPSILON DELTA
“A reunion – at the end of the Project?”
(3) Personified Mathematics
(Because equations are people too)
TAYLOR’S POLYNOMIALS: THE SERIAL
Follow along as mathematical equations try to get along in a fantasy world that includes pop culture bleedthrough from our own Earth. Contains a lot of wordplay. Para has since appeared in “The Epsilon Project: Numbers Game” and “The Epsilon Project: Full Scale Invasion” (above). Full breakdown:
SERIES 1: Introductions. Meet Maud, Lyn, Para, and Root.
SERIES 2: Para Gone. The Conics kidnap Para from the Polynomials.
SERIES 3: Try Angles. Tangent quits Trigonometry to become Slope.
SERIES 4: After Math. The characters investigate other subjects, and encounter the step functions.
SERIES 5: Sign Change. Para deals with depression, as Logan’s crew reach Fractal City.
SERIES 6: Stat Us. Does statistics hold the key for a safe return to mathematics?
Follow along as mathematical equations try to get along in a fantasy world, only to encounter their counterparts from the earlier Serial. Though no prior knowledge is needed to read. This story has also been rerunning on the Tapas(tic) website. Lissa Jous has since appeared in “The Epsilon Project: Numbers Game” (above). Full breakdown:
SERIES 7: Any Q-Bars. Meet the whole cast, as they contemplate fighting decimals.
SERIES 8: d(Voted). The personifications decide to elect a President, shortly before a viral attack.
SERIES 9: eVolution. Another foray into other school subjects, plus a tourism project.
(This comic is still ongoing at http://mathtans.ca)
(4) THE GIRL WHO SPEAKS WITH ALGEBRA
Rose knew her first year of university would be rough. She didn’t expect to be questioning her sexuality by day, while dealing with a mathematical fantasy world at night. Can her roommate Seiko, her friend Marc, and her first love Paige Fourier help her to find some clarity in her life at last?
This story is in the continuity of personified math (above) but is also a completely stand-alone story. It placed #6 in the “Ink & Insights” Apprentice Category in 2017, based on it’s first 10,000 words. (You can see all ten winners here.) Rose has since appeared in “The Epsilon Project: Epsilon Delta” (above).
An early version of this story exists online at Wattpad, if you’re very curious, but I won’t link directly. It was a NaNoWriMo effort that has been re-edited and cleaned up more than once since then. True, I could go back and update the story there, but it never got great reception through Wattpad in the first place. I’d prefer to re-run the story here (or on my other website), once I feel it’s ready, and the time is right.
(5) VIRGA MYSTERIES
When James was looking for some cheap off-campus housing, he found it – as part of the Supernatural Investigation Agency run by senior student Melissa “Weird-Gal” Virga. He plays Watson to her Holmes, as she tries to restore supernatural balance to the world, one case at a time.
There were initially three cases, “The Invisible Girl”, “Net Worth” and “Borderline”. A more novel-length follow up was written some time later, “Balancing Act”. It takes place years later as James is graduating, but does have callbacks to the earlier cases – along with vampires, werewolves and zombies.
Those early cases can be found in rough format amid my old “creativity page”, though they are also in the running to be edited and reposted on this site.
(6) THERE ARE NO DUMB QUESTIONS
This was a non-fiction column I wrote from 2014-2015 at the site “MuseHack”. Its 16 entries explored mathematical concepts in connection with daily life, from comparing teaching to RPGs, to a look at rating systems, to an overview of education in England and France. When the “MuseHack” site folded into another, I republished the articles on my other blog, and you can find the index at that link.
(7) SHORT STORIES
Most of my writing has a tendency to spiral into ongoing sagas, or epic serials. But sometimes I’ve managed to produce shorter works. Here is a quick rundown:
- SUPPRESSION. Under 1,000 words, written based on the prompt “Fantasy Disabilities”.
- TIME FOR A SUPERHEROINE. Lisa can control time, but can she be taken seriously when crime-fighting?
- NO REASON. Marie invents time travel – because she was always destined to? (This story was cleaned up into “Free Will” for a submission, that version is not online.)
- RELATIVE CHANGE. Changing the past isn’t so simple. A short story submission that is not online.
- A BUNNY’S TALE. Ella wakes up as a bunny golem and tries to figure out how that happened.
- IN THE DARK. An attempt at horror, based on the prompt “Only Dialogue”.
- MAGE TRIXIE. A writeup from a set of three D&D Next sessions, from the perspective of my character.
- MODELS OF TIME AND FATE. Non-fiction, a guest post for “Time2Timetravel”. Looks at free will within the various models of time travel in fiction writing.
You can also check out this creativity page for more early writing, including a number of fan fictions written close to 20 years ago now. (Much of it connected to “Sailor Moon”.)
That’s about it. Thanks for checking the site out! I hope you found something you enjoyed. Feel free to leave a comment, or email me, mathtans@gmail.com.com
Time & Tied 