Writing (and Life) Update With Spellbound Fireflies News · 5:27am Feb 23rd, 2023
*peeks around corner*
Well, um, howdy, folks! It’s been…much longer since I’ve talked here than I would have liked! Like, eesh, over a year now, huh? What the fuck, batsy ol gal, what the hell have you been doing for the last year?
Well, funny story that, actually, hypothetical person asking me such a leading question! It’s been a pretty eventful year for me, and I come bearing news, both of the pone words variety, and the other, boringly lifey variety.
Mmmkay, so before diving into the personal stuff, I know some of y’all are here for the pony news, especially considering the certain story I’ve tagged for this blog, and I do indeed have news for Spellbound Fireflies, so let’s start there.
Spellbound Fireflies was published in 2013, between April and June. That means that in a scant few months, it is turning a whole ten years old. It is in some capacity my fandom legacy. It’s the story I’m most well known for, and my most popular based off really any metric, from the ‘numbers go up’ site things of ratios, view counts, and raw numbers of comments, to the way it’s impacted the people who have read it and approached me to say, to in some ways my own view looking backward at my time here. I’m not, like, ‘done’ writing ponyfic, I don’t think, but Spellbound Fireflies will be something special to me forever, too. And as it approaches the ten year mark here, I want to do something special for that. And so I will.
I’ve got a few main things in the works for it, one for the anniversary itself, and another for sometime soon-I-hope-but-that’s-still-in-planning. The former I’m announcing now, which is that I’m in the process of a fresh edit of Spellbound Fireflies to publish as the Definitive Edition. I’ve recently reread Spellbound Fireflies out loud to my girlfriend (more on that in the life update a bit later), and while the story shines through, there are some stumbles with the prose that color my feelings on the story negatively. This is a light edit, I want to stress, nothing really changing with the plot or pacing, no extra scenes or cut characters, nothing really added or omitted at all. This is just a clean-up pass, cutting out some writing style things that were the marks of a less experienced writer. The goal isn’t to “change” the story, I want it to read pretty much the same as it does now, to where if you’re reading over it again after having not looked at it for a while, you might not even notice it’s changed. Now, looking side by side, the impression should definitely be, “Yeah, that’s a lot cleaner,” but not really much more than that.
The Definitive Edition should be going live by June, barring unforeseen delays (why yes, I am posting this blog partially to have accountability to working on the edit, why even ask such an obvious thing), and with it will be announcement for part two of the Ten Year Anniversary shenanigans. I’m excited for that one, and despite being coy about it now, it’s probably not hard to guess what those plans are going to vaguely look like. Tis all this bitch will say for the time being though. :>
Now then, announcement aside, what else is going on with me? Well, if you’re wondering about other writing projects, I am working on some new writing now as well, though it’s original fiction, not pony. I’ve had a kinda rough dry patch for writing over the past year, stumbling through some no-go projects and only really getting back into writing something regularly in the last month or so. That thing is an original fiction fantasy novel that I’m about 12k words into. This was in fact the original fic story I mentioned back in December 2021 when I posted about Today’s Truth, but it’s been rocky between now and then. It got started, written for a bit, then abandoned to not write for a while, then I started another original fic story that was a non-starter, before going back to the bit of this one that was written and discovering I liked it and wanted to keep going.
When I do work on it, the writing tends to go comfortably, so I’m hopeful it will continue to go well and I’ll get it written before the sun goes out. As it gets closer to done, I’ll probably post about it more in here, as well as any other writing projects that come along.
Now then, the whole writing business over this last year is on the slim side, you can see, but that’s for good reason (and bad reason, I’ve been in a funk with writing for a while, too, but that’s how dat goes). This year has been wild y’all. I’ll save the really fine details, but a quick play-by-play.
So this current original fiction writing project? I was working to get it off the ground back in December 2021 in anticipation for going to visit another Fimction writer you may or may not have heard of before who goes by Krickis. Krickis and I had been friends for a while before we met in person, and after that initial as-friends meeting in January, she came and visited me that April as my girlfriend, and in July of last year, we moved in together.
I’m sure y’all don’t strictly care about the love life of a 36 year old trans girl fanfic writer who hasn’t written a god damn fanfic in over a year, but this is a beeg reason why I’ve been MIA on the site. 2022 was just such a huge shift, I swear to Celestia. Krickis moving in with me involved us getting an apartment together, and this came tightly on the heels of me changing jobs at work. It’s been a whirlwind of a year and few spare months, but that whirlwind has put me in a much better place in life. There is in fact so much that happened this year, I’m overwhelmed trying to compress it into this blog, I feel like I could go down a tangent and spend ages talking about, like, my current job, or adjusting to life with Krickis, or my plans for the future (y’all I’m going back to college to get a career-appropriate degree, aaaaaaaa), and while this shit’s exciting to me, I doubt how exciting it is to anyone else.
Anyway, yeah, that’s really all I’ve got for now, I suppose? How y’all doing, I keep meaning to be more talkative here, then disappear for a while. I sometimes feel like when returning to fimfiction that I’m just shouting into the void of a site that I Used To Be known on, but that nobody cares anymore, but I’m sure that’s only mostly true. Hope 2023 is treating you well so far.
That’s it for now, TTFN.
Oh, but I do, bats... I do care...
Wow, that's a story mention from the deepest reaches of my personal vault. I mean, from back when I first started reading horsewords even.
Looking forward to the definitive edition. Spellbound fireflies is one of my fave scootadopt fics.
I would love to see a version in print one day. I love physical copies of fanfics and having Spellbound Fireflies in print would be just wonderful
Neat!
I don’t really need an excuse to read it again, but I will thank you for it nonetheless.
5714847
The fact that I hear from so many people that they regularly reread SF is just such a warm feeling for me.
Ohhh, thank you.
5714845
Ur neat.
5714844
I hope it doesn't disappoint, and as for print editions, I'd maybe have something to say if I wasn't being coy about it right now.
5714842
Y'know, I get that a lot. I have strong (and traumatic) memories of being told by someone that they and all their friends would talk about chapters of it as it came out back in middle school.
5714841
You're uniquely allowed to care.
5714848
I can't see how it could disappoint.
I have read the fic 4 times though. I am actually looking forward to seeing if i can spot the differences when the new version is released.
Whoa. This was an unexpected ping from the ol' Feed. Nice to hear you're still kicking around. I'll be sure to have a nice re-read of Spellbound Fireflies when the extra sparkly edition comes out.
5714848
No u.
can hardly blame a gal for being quiet online when she's doing something like moving in with her schmoopy-doo!
It's amazing what you find when you read your work out loud, even to yourself.
Excited to hear about potential print nows, and congrats to the happy couple!
Congrats to both of you!
I actually have never read Spellbound Fireflies. All the more reason for me to celebrate your arrival I guess, huh?
Seriously though, nice to see that you are still kicking and are thinking of us lowly turds as well. Thank you for all that you have done.
5714924
I'd say you're all quite elevated turds, personally. :V For real, I do think about fimfiction a lot, and have actually been here more frequently as of late than I have been for a while, just mostly as a reader.
5714917
5714912
Thank. I tend to read out loud to myself as part of editing sometimes, but it's been a while on this'n. And I'm still being coy about that news.
5714900
I'd object, if I didn't have other, disgustingly cute pet names with her. I have no moral high ground here.
5714850
Nice to see you're still around, too! It's been a long-ass decade. I hope you enjoy the reread.
5714849
It could always disappoint, but I'll do my best to not, lol.
Aww i'm so happy for you two! You guys deserve all the great things.
And hurray for writing! Sorry it's been difficult, but it sounds completely understandable considering what a huge upheaval your life has gone through.
Glad to hear you're still around and happy. n_n
Lookie who's back
It is indeed your legacy, one of such stories that will live forever. It's good that you decided to clean it up
Will be looking forward to it
5715106
Of things to live forever, it seems like a good choice. I'm glad my legacy is something I can be proud of.
5714961
Thank you.
And while it all sounds reasonable, I can assure you that there have been many, many opportunities for writing where I've been a lazy bitch instead.
5715261
Pshaw, laziness just means your body was focused on something else.
5715416
Yeah, not doin shit.
I am overjoyed to hear your life's gone so well this past year!
I think I only recently (it may have been years ago at this point, time dilation has been weird lately) reread Spellbound Fireflies, and dang if it isn't still excellent. Looking forward to that edit, and moreso to all your other future works. Your fanfics are genuinely among my favorites, I love your writing, so a Bats Original is exciting
5717063
Ohhh, thank you!
I'm looking forward to being able to share original work at some point, whether that's this current project or any of the other projects I have out there in various stages of completion. I do have some work for other fandoms (The Owl House and She-Ra) on other sites, but the only original fiction of mine that I've really put out there was published in an anthology that's now out of print.
I have retained rights to it, at least, and one of these days if/when I have enough finished short stories to fill out a book I'll see about putting out an anthology of my own, perhaps. Getting ahead of myself there for sure, though, lol. Next step is finishing an original fiction novel that passes the muster enough to publish.
Well, this is a late respond, but I'll say this, whatever you provide to us in the future, we'll do our best to support and care because our community's three core elements are creativity, ponies and love. (these elements make the bronies bronies, and we won't ever forget them.)
Anywho, your Spellbound Fireflies was one of the Best romance stories and I'll say that we definitely enjoyed it very much! It even got plenty of views over Here and lots of us Chinese Folks liked it, too! (there weren't that much traffic even now but this is still impressive)
Keep calm, and fight on! We're here cheering for you!
Also,
Thanks, and hopefully you've seen some good things!
Your favorite list still has lots of unread chapter though, about time you start to sort through again!
A friend advised me to read this fiction.
I'm not a good english speaker but I learn a lot of vocabulary with it. It's well written!
Plus reading that Scootaloo workout motivates me to do sport.
Too bad there's no voice reading online.
I guess it's not so important since I have to stop to write down the voc anyway, but it deserves one ^^
That's a good thing a definitive version is thought about. :)
Just decided to check on you to see what the latest was. And I see you so enjoy hearing that folks reread SF. Which I just was about to do for the 10th+ time (lost count), so I might as well post that. Hope you're doing well.