Hi!

I call myself 24addict here (I'm also smitten on some other forums) because I am truly, madly, deeply addicted to 24 and to Jack. Writing fanfiction has been another outlet for my addiction while I'm deprived on new 24 on the TV, and I'm really honoured that anyone thinks what I write is worth reading, reviewing and is interested enough to read my profile.

I live in the UK so it's been a real challenge to write convincingly about American characters, especially the dialogue. I kept on having to take the torch out of Jack's hand and give him a flashlight instead. I hope I've done a good job, but if you see any real bloopers, please let me know!

What I've gained out of writing so far is a tremendous respect for those who do this for a living. It's really not as easy as it looks. It's all very well to want something to happen in a story (like we all want Jack to kick ass) but you also need to be true to all the characters in the story. That means you need to create a situation where it's believable that a good guy like Jack would really kick ass - and that is easier said than done. So I really do take my hat off to the likes of Joel Surnow, Bob Cochrane, and the whole writing team, as well as Marc Cerasini and John Whitman who brought us the Declassified novels.

'Picking up the pieces' is a collection of short stories really, giving an account of how Jack might reconstruct his life after season 6. I wrote this because I wanted to do something different with his character from what has been done before. We've seen Jack start afresh before and we know that, unless he's locked up, he will gravitate into a relationship with a woman. All his women are weaker than him, so he ends up in the role of 'protector'. So I wondered what it would be like if his partner was in some way stronger than him, how would he deal with that? She has her own skeletons in the closet, and while Jack is paranoid that something in his past will threaten her, this actually works the other way round. I also wanted to write a story about the process of him falling in love over time, because of course we can't see that in the course of a 24-hour day! I'm a midwife by profession, so I couldn't help but get some breastfeeding and a normal birth in there! :)

'Tortured soul' is the back-story between Jack and Jasmine who we meet in chapter 6 of 'Picking up the pieces'. I wanted to explore Jack's experience in China in more depth than just him being zapped and going "ahh!" It's about how he deals with captivity, boredom, humiliation, dependence, and his relationships with his captors. My inspiration for this is a book called Colditz (by H Chancellor), and also first-hand accounts by people like Terry Waite and John McCarthy. In a situation that is utterly desperate and bleak, I also wanted to get some humour in - hope it works!

I do hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading my page!