A Bard, a Panel, a Roast and a Review · 9:29pm Jan 15th, 2017
Hey folks!
First of all, sorry I haven’t updated since Pacific PonyCon last weekend. I have simply been exhausted and real life has been practically whipping me through the streets. Tons of stuff going on, tons of projects to juggle.
I’ll give you the short version of how our GoE Panel at Pacific PonyCon went: pretty well. We’ve got a lot of room to improve (and I need to learn to stay on script or at least on topic). But in the end, I’m happy with the outcome.
Didn’t get a chance to come by? Don’t worry. We’ve got more in store for you. And more about the launch of Bards below the break!
Okay. Writing. I had to push back the release of Bards of the Badlands by two weeks because of the push to get GoE ready for the convention. And you’ll be happy to know that yes, Bards of the Badlands is indeed launching tomorrow at my usual launch time of 10 AM Pacific!
Now, I know I said earlier that I had intended to release Bards with the entire story in one shot. This was when I planned Bards to be a 15,000 word story.
It is not a 15,000 word story. It is a 28,500 word story.
That’s a bit big to put up all in one go and I’m afraid the Wavelengths Editing Team and I haven’t finished the polish edits to the rest of Bards. So, for the first time, I’m launching a story that’s still in editing phase. Now, granted, we’re at polish editing phase and not story editing phase, so I don’t foresee any serious problems.
My goal has always been to give you the highest possible quality and that takes time.
But there are a couple cool things going on too!
First of all, SunLight Sliders is booking along ahead of schedule. The last couple of chapters have been especially good. Remember, you can read the entire story from the original post itself! Just click the links to each chapter and they’ll populate inside the window (neat, huh?). Keep an eye on that! This is going to be fun!
Third, this last week was my birthday, as I mentioned earlier. I got an interesting little birthday gift in the form of a roast/review of The Application of Unified Harmony Magics from CommissarAJ on Reddit. Now, before I actually link it, these are designed to be fun nitpicky roasts of the story. I wasn’t offended at all by it. I was laughing my tail off most of the time. 
Here’s a little quote from his extremely reluctant “okay fine, here’s the good parts before I tear this thing apart” rant:
This story is hands-down the best written collection of words and sentences that passes for a story that I've reviewed in this book club. I don't know if it's the best one of all the stories featured since I haven't read all of them, but I'm willing to bet it's up there, if not as the top. This guy knows how to string words together and paint a captivating picture. He knows how to make characters interact with one another in a lively, entertaining, and believable manner. The dialogue is fresh, the characters are witty, and for the most part he didn't leave me in a blinding rage. It's enough to almost make me overlook his grievous sin of not using an Oxford comma, or the fact that he decided to not put an extra line space between paragraphs.
Yeah, I enjoyed it. A lot. Classic roast, with the added benefit of forcing the poor, poor guy to actually admit good things about a story. I almost felt bad for him (That is a blatant lie 
).
So go take a read if you’re interested. Most of you have already left comments on the story, so you don’t need to add your thoughts. Also, remember that this is done in fun, so please don’t feel obligated to defend me. I’m a believer in (most of the time), if you’re defending a story, you’ve already lost. 
And if you're wondering, yes, I have updated all of the stories with the brand new Moon Dancer tag! 
Anyway, that’s it for this week! You’ll be getting weekly updates on Bards, which I might shift to biweekly updates when we’re done polishing the story. So I’ll see you all next week!
Until then, have an awesome day and an awesome week!
-NI
With any luck, next week will usher back the usual assortment of tripe and garbage that I'll be able to freely firebomb without hesitation. Though I'll admit, roasting a well-written story felt far more satisfying than roasting garbage. Any drunk hillbilly with a keyboard can flame a badly written story, after all, so reviewing yours was far more challenging.
Maybe I ought to do another one some day. Not right now, of course; too much roasting and it loses its novelty.
4384107 With Albinocorn on the docket? Good luck with that.