As I have previously mentioned, I have been working on a series of fanfics on and off for the past year. They started off as a simple project and evolved into something MUCH bigger than even I had expected.

They currently stand as an outline for a trilogy.

All three stories take place in the same relative time as the show (Starting roughly two years after 'Nightmare Moon') and will include many of your favorite characters.

Book One “Oracle” is mostly 'slice of life' with a bit of 'adventure' and quite a bit of 'sad' tossed in. A young filly finds herself in a rather unique situation and the story follows her struggles to simply live her life and try to do the best she can for herself and others.

What could be so unique? She is an Oracle (Sees glimpses of the future) and despite the title (or in irony of it), she is completely mute.

Book Two is primarily a ‘slice of life’ with some 'action' and some 'comedy'. The story follows a non-pony Main character and her progress in creating a new life for herself while trying to fulfill her responsibilities. She is an important political figure from another nation, who unfortunately has very little experience dealing with equestrian politics.

This story takes place a couple years after the previous, but takes place in the same ‘universe’.

Book Three is more Adventure than anything. This story follows the same character from book two, but more as a secondary main character. The mane character in this story is a young colt hoping to become a great botanist setting out to explore the world. This story has very little to do with Equestra itself and spends the majority of its time with original characters in places far from anything you would recognize from the TV series.

All three take place in the same ‘universe’ and, not surprisingly, building that universe is what has been taking me the greatest amount of time.

I don’t want to use the ‘alternative universe’ tag, but as MLP:FiM continues in new episodes, I continue to branch away from them. I build my ideas based on what seems interesting, and what seems logical in the flow of the characters and world.

Examples:

1: Twilight Sparkle is an only child.

She always acted like an only child and you have to admit, shining armor just kind of came out of nowhere at the end of season 2.

2: The ‘Flim Flam’ brothers episode never happened.

I think the apples are smart enough to not let foolish pride in their product risk losing the entire farm. That just seems stupid. That and you can make apple cider any time you have apples. Why only do it once a year?

3: Sweet Apple Acres has farm ‘hands’ and neighbors.

The community around SAA is a lot closer than simply AJ and BM bucking apples. There are vegetable gardens, wheat fields, etc... Quite a few of which are maintained by other ponies. Harvest seasons for different things fall at different times so you may be without work for a week while your neighbor needs help planting. In a small community it only makes sense to work together. So SAA has a large farm house with several spare rooms and a number of farm hand as well as friendly neighbors (like ‘Golden Harvest’ aka ‘Carrot Top’).

Like I said. I try to work out the logic in things before I add it into the stories.

There is a rather Large file on my computer filled with character background stories and the ins and outs of equestrian society. Luna and Celestia take up a large section of the file for obvious reasons.

Just an FYI. My ‘notes’ file is currently 15k words and growing.

I am trying to keep chapters between 3,500 and 7k words. I have the first 12 chapters of book 2 nearly completed but I want to completely finish the story (proof-read, edited, etc) before I post any of it. I simply don’t see the point in rushing to post something that you will have to go back and change later.

So what I am trying to say is... These are VERY long stories ( I estimated them at roughly 120-150k each) mostly filled with world and character building.

Although I hope to post one of the stories before Christmas, I make no promises.

Book 2 is likely to be done long before Book 1. Fortunately you don’t need to have read one to understand another.

If you have questions, comments, or helpful advice, please feel free to drop me a line.

~Autumn T