Not Dead Yet! · 1:24pm May 11th, 2019
Well! Um. It's, ah, been a while, hasn't it? Lots of water under the bridge, lots of stories unwritten, lots of comments unanswered...
So, first of all, my apologies to all of you for my extremely extended silence, and for my dearth of work lately. I would like to apologize, particularly, to those of you who had enough faith in me to support the Patreon I opened ages back, and then promptly left to malinger; I've put up a post and sent out messages there as well, covering some details that may be particularly relevant to y'all, but for now let me just say, to everyone that has read my stories and given me encouragement, that I'm very sorry for having vanished so completely, and left you all hanging. You all deserved much better than that, and even if I've been far quieter about it than I should have been, I have always appreciated each and every one of you.
Now, while I don't mean to make excuses for my recent muteness, I can at least offer some explanation—as well as the reason why I'm speaking up again now. Following the completion of my last fanfic here, and particularly following the dwindling death* of my attempt to rewrite it as The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Sassafras, I hemmed myself into a mental trap in which I felt unable to put anything online that didn't promise to be a 100k+ word epic, doubted my own capacity to even produce such a tale again, and kept silent initially out of shame for my lack of work, and—later on—out of self-perpetuating shame at my own silence. So far, so unhealthy. In an effort to break out of that paralytic cycle, however, I've recently taken to uploading very small bits of creative work to a youtube channel I've set up—nothing terribly elaborate, or necessarily even that polished, but the idea is to have a means of putting out creative work in a low-stakes, low-expectations environment, where my own neuroses won't shoot me down before I've even had a chance to spread my wings. My current aim is to put up something, no matter how small or inconsequential, every Friday—which, practically speaking, works out to every Saturday morning, because procrastination—and as today marks the third week in a row I have successfully hit that target, I feel confident enough now to mention it here.
The pieces themselves will vary in nature, from readings of short stories or creative nonfiction I've written, to songs written by me and sung by myself or others, to readings of longer pieces, with the precise nature of each day's upload being more or less a matter of chance, dictated by whim and by what I may or may not have happened to put together in the previous week. The reason I mention this here is that, this week, I've uploaded a reading by myself of the first chapter of The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Sassaflash—with a "-flash," not a "-fras," mind, so this particular bit of audio is new even to those of y'all who supported my Patreon. I intend to read through the entire work, as well as Mendacity, but although I will be going forward chapter-by-chapter, readings of those works will be interspersed with the aforementioned newer pieces of work in a fairly haphazard manner, depending on what I've gotten written/recorded recently.
And that's about the burden of my song, I think. I can say nothing about any future activities here on FiMfic; I'm still very much a fan of MLP, and have been eagerly following season 9**, but whether that will translate into further ponyfics...I really just don't know. We shall see, I suppose, and until the arrival of that happy day, should it come at all, you can find my assorted creative endeavors at this youtube channel. I have intentions to eventually put together a proper website of my own, a sort of central creative hub for me, but as we are all acutely aware, my intentions have a spotty track record in terms of how well they're actually realized. For now, farewell, and I hope you enjoy the reading(s).
And yes, the Mule has his accent. May Celestia have mercy on my soul. Don't expect Bon Bon to slip into all her different dialects and voices, though, when I start Mendacity. I may be crazy, but I'm not that crazy.
*Well, medical coma, shall we say. I would like to revive it at some point, but clearly I'm not there at present.
**I am merely looking forward to this morning's episode. I am anticipating next week's episode with the sort of slavering, maniacal eagerness usually reserved for starving wolves chasing down a dying caribou. As the show has proceeded it has gradually acquired more and more delightfully dysfunctional trash characters, and the episodes in which they go on horrible garbage fire road trips with one another (To Where and Back Again, Road to Friendship, etc.) are sweet, sweet music to my twisted little soul.
Glad you're still alive and have found a creative outlet.
Good to hear from you. Glad to hear you broke out of the "epics only" mindset.
Oh my! Looking forward to reading Dark Lord this way. :D
Yay, life and creative endeavors!
If you’re looking for something light to do, wanna write a crappy collab?
I'm so glad to see your
faceicon 'round these parts again! Sorry to hear you're hitting a little bit of stagnation, but I certainly know how that can be.