Émilie du Châtelet (Equestrian: "Busybee in Her Hive"), the departed love of Voltaire's life, turned 315 today, her birthday commemorated with a Google Doodle:

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So, I finally finished up what I’ve been calling my “Stupid Project”. “Stupid”, because in the grand order of things, it only deserved about three hours of my time, instead of the nine months I have wasted on it and it alone, with very few exceptions. The project is a proposed soundtrack for The Best of All Possible Worlds. Yes, it’s also a soundtrack for you readers, but primarily, it’s a soundtrack for the theoretical producer of an eventual audio play, assuming that ever

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It’s called “At the Inn of the Prancing Pony”. To help you decide whether or not you wish to invest your time reading it, let me tell you a little about it.

“At the Inn of the Prancing Pony” IS NOT

* A story with Voltaire in it. (I figure I just lost a few hundred potential readers with that statement).

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(Contains spoilers to The Best of All Possible Worlds. The title of this blog entry kinda makes that obvious, but I thought I’d spell it out for those of you who are in the middle of reading it right now. I also mention a couple of recent movies, but I don't think I spoil anything not covered by a trailer.)

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Anybody else in the world would have waited for it to reach 9,001. But I follow the beat of a different drum (and I had a major crush on Linda Ronstadt in the 1980's, but that's neither here nor there).

My thanks to you all. I can only hope you had as much fun reading "The Best of All Possible Worlds" as I had writing it.

Chapters 40 and 41 are done, but I’m still working on 42, and those three chapters are so tightly intertwined that I dare not post what I have until I am satisfied with all three. And I'm pretty sure that 42 is going to be the last chapter.

Unfortunately, what I have written brought up a bit of a snag—for only the second time, I’ve run into the main flaw in writing a huge story like this on the fly: having to go back for a re-write.

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You might want to stick around and pay attention to the comments that will start appearing on this entry: I predict that they will get rather interesting.

Wow, I really need to catch up on these letters.

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It’s the mother of all updates! You get a chapter! And you get a chapter!

Everypony gets a chapter!!!

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Alright, it looks like I screwed up by sticking a whole new history into this story on top of the French Revolution analogue I've been nursing along.

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When I originally started writing Chapter 23, I had a whole lot of hints in there about the identity of the mysterious "K".

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For once, I put what I had to say about this chapter (22) in the comments instead of here.

Since I'm apparently not going to be hearing from the crazy author any time soon, let me post more of her notes on the story that she gave me when she left from the San Diego trip:

Chapter 10

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Well, it’s time for the long- (or maybe only somewhat-) delayed meeting of Voltaire and Celestia. Let the sparks fly where they may!

The author has contacted me again. Unfortunately, she decided to send me her message in English instead of Equine. Read the following only at risk of losing your precious sanity:

Dear Son of a Human Doggy,

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This chapter (25) changed rather dramatically as a result of research. Originally, it was to be set in "Burr Linn", with the city under siege. Then I found out about the Second Miracle of the House of Brandenburg, coupled with Thomas Carlyle's story about the Warkotsch Plot (yes, that apparently actually happened), and suddenly I had a whole new way for Algarotti to get what he wanted.

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I'm sure everybody knows by now that all of the portals to Equestria have been closed.

I swear it's not my fault.

Well...not entirely my fault. Almost entirely the fault of one seriously crazy pony.

But, I suppose, I have to claim a teeny, tiny, extra-small, infinitesimal degree of blame.

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No actual news this time. I'll probably have Chapter 19 out by the weekend, unless something beyond my control happens and I can't.

I'm also planning to post something unrelated to "The Best of All Possible Worlds", but I despise authors who use story-update posts to try to sucker fans into reading unrelated fiction, so you'll hear no more about it in this post.

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Well, this was another long chapter, so I split it into two. Chapter 17 in particular forms the heart of this story.

I'd advise the reader not to proceed any further until they have read both chapters.

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I’m wondering...are my readers updated every time I update a chapter? Because if so, I’d like to apologize. I like re-reading the whole story every other month or so, to see if there were any plot hooks I forgot to pick up, and to correct errors. I’m constantly finding little mistakes in what I write.

Anyway this time around (besides putting out Chapter 18), I picked a single spelling for “griffon”, and made it stick.

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Reader Tyek has pointed out a motivational plot hole regarding Blue Belle (more like me totally forgetting to write in a scene), which I have resolved by editing Chapter 16. There is now a new beginning and a slightly-tweaked ending. Hopefully it should still flow well with the rest of the two latest chapters.

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