Updates: On WAtS, Readings, Event Horizon, and Stories.

So as of today, I've finished The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, and The Dictator's Handbook: Why Good Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. I've been taking careful notes of the three books I've read total (of which there is 61 pages and almost 20k words of), and of future events in War Against the Sun as well. Rest assured, it will come, but probably not as soon as you expect.

That is because the reading list I've made for myself is quite large, and covers many different topics. Even if I were to read a single book every week, which would see all of my time devoted to reading political, military, and philosophical theory, it would still take about 80 weeks. The list, as I may have stated but I can't remember, is over 230 books long, but I made the decision to not read all of them, as they aren't completely necessary. That said, it would still take over a year to read just these books, let alone actually plan for the story itself, or actually writing them, and then getting them edited.

And on the subject of WAtS itself, I've made the decision as well to sever it as a sequel to Event Horizon. That's right, it will no longer by a continuation of Event Horizon's story. This is for two main reasons: Firstly, it doesn't need to be. Starlight raising an army against Celestia isn't exactly a unique idea, nor does it hinge on Trixie's doings in EH. Secondly, I want WAtS to be as well told as it can be, with as little mistakes as possible. Naturally, all stories have some mistakes, that's just reflective of humans writing them and the fact that nothing can be perfect. That being said, EH had mistakes, though not as much as I figured in reflection. I'm happy with it, but having that story continue on constrains WAtS to the mistakes that did exist.

The advantages of having WAtS be its own story are too numerous for me to overlook them. I would feel freer in writing it knowing it is contained within itself, and I can set it up, progress it, and end it the way I want to, with new characters that I can establish and develop independently. It also allows me to escape from the slightly awkward way I set up Celestia and by extension, Equestria too. Call it lazy, call it brilliant, but at the end of the day, it's my call to make, and I feel it's better on this new line than on hold to another.

Now, on Event Horizon specifically. I was in considerations of rewriting it. These considerations are fruitless, and I will not be doing so. Reason being, I just don't have the time amid the reading of theory for WAtS and the speedwrites I participate in. And that leads me to my next point.

There will be more stories here for all of you to read, even one larger story that will serve as an intermediary between now and the release of WAtS. You might be saying, "Ruby, aren't you derailing the progress of WAtS to work on whatever this project is?" Possibly, but not to any detrimental extent. WAtS is a very long way off, and even if I'm writing other things, I am still planning for it and reading for it every day.

"Well, you said something about stories, can we be let in as to what these are?"

Thank you for the question, obviously massive crowd of my adoring fans. You may, yes. Though not to any specific extent. I will say that the next few days I will be taking to revise some speedwrites I've done to publish them here, and they're good ones soaked in the usual trademarked Ruby horror and darkness. "Yeah, but you said a large story?"

Ah yes, this is a story I'm quite happy to be planning and even happier to be writing. It's often that me and my circle of friends make fun of anarcho-capitalists, so I wanted to do a satire. I think that's all you need to know unless you're planning to storm the comments asking for more. If you want to know more, then ask. But for the time being, all I'll say is its title. "Supply and Command." It'll have more developed themes, characters, and world than anything I've written to date while remaining relatively small-scale. Rest assured that it won't be a flop or heavy-handed. Even though I'm known, at times, to hit my readers over the head with what I'm trying to say, I'll try to bash lighter with this.

Thank you for reading all this, and I hope it clears up my silence as of late. I will be posting more things within the week or two week period from now, and I look forward to seeing your thoughts on them!