Alright. So, I've posted the first chapter of a new story, titled Macintosh Must Marry. I've actually had that one floating around in my head for a looooong time. Like, since before Hearts & Hooves day. Sadly, the first chapter is a little clunky. Hopefully the second one will be better, and I intend to complete and update a chapter this week.

I also plan to update Ballad of the White Rose this week.

Well, now with chapter 28 comes the end of part 2 of The Book of Friendship. Boy, did that take a while to write. There is one more "part" left in the story. In the meantime, the story will be on a bit of a hiatus while I work on some other projects. But part 3 should have some interesting stuff, as our two plucky missionaries have to learn to fend for themselves. We'll also get a better look at the unicorn society, find out a bit more about what happened to Brothers Shine and Sky, and more things that'll happen before the story reaches its conclusion. And don't worry - just because part 2 ends with the missionaries separated, there will still be plenty of ambiguously gay antics.

I'm going to try to take some time to come up with a more cohesive outline for part 3, and try to avoid a sense of "sagging" with the story. As a general rule I decide (or have decided, since the terrible original version of chapter 22) that every chapter should have something happen, whether it be a progression with a relationship or an important event. Hopefully when I resume writing the story it won't be a five-week wait between chapters.

So again, a big thank you to my readers, and I hope you'll stay on board for what I have next.

Well, I recently finished chapter 28, and thus part 2, of The Book of Friendship. Just waiting on the final word from my editor, and, well, let's hope it's good.

And with that out of the way, I'm working on planning out part 3 of the story. I feel that part 2 kinda, well... "sagged" after chapter 22, and so I'm going to try to keep the plot moving and interesting and funny more in part 3. I am also trying to work on writing faster. In the meantime I've also been devoting some time to my other projects, mainly "Symphonics" and a couple stories I'm hoping to publish in the near future. I've actually completed the first chapter for one of them, though I'm holding off on posting it until I'm sure I can commit to it (it's gonna be a long'un).

Hopefully this week I'll be able to update "Symphonics" and "Ballad of the White Rose" - that last one's been really difficult due to me not knowing for sure what to do with it. Hopefully when I do update it and get the plot moving I'll have a few surprises.

And again, thank you for your readership and patience. Hopefully I'll be able to reward it with enjoyable prose in the near future.

Since I'm shameless, here are few hints as to some of my upcoming projects: we have a unicorn who may or may not be fake, a thief in a princess-less Canterlot lit by an artificial sun, a shameless attempt at riding the coattails of a much more popular story, a look at the Equestrian matriarchy through the eyes of Big Macintosh, and the music ponies in Saddle Arabia with slightly different personalities than you might be used to.

Well, hello there, readers. Today a fan happily informed me that he made an article on TVTropes covering This Nearly Was Mine and the first chapter of What I Did For Love. For a fanfic author who isn't one of the fandom bigshots, it's quite a treat, so for that, thank you. Also, I have had a couple comments lately asking about when I will update Symphonics.

No, this is not a "sorry, dropping the story" thing, though I have to ponder on a few things. Now, This Nearly Was Mine was born out of my desire to write a Frederic/Octavia story, but when I wrote I was unsure whether or not Frederic should get the girl in the end. Eventually I decided that it would make for a better story that he wouldn't get the girl. The theme, after all, is coping with not getting what you want.

Now I conceived a sequel, What I Did For Love, wherein the protagonist does get the girl. Now, it raises a certain concern. When the original story ended, it garnered some fairly emotional reactions, ranging from despair at the protagonist not getting the happy ending to congratulations on how gutsy I was for sticking to the title This Nearly Was Mine and not How I Tapped That Grey Ass. So I have to wonder if writing a sequel doesn't somehow cheapen the original story? But then... I really want to write a Fredtavia story, and it's as good a starting block as any.

Another big part of the delays in writing is that writing is difficult for me unless I get a flash of inspiration. Readers of my other ongoing stories, which includes The Ballad of the White Rose and The Book of Friendship, are also aware of my schedule slippage. It's kind of a downer, really. I started on The Book of Friendship in August of 2011, and by new years I had 18 chapters. Since the start of 2012 I am working on chapter 28. Another part of the slow updates is because I get too many ideas but I don't really stay focused. My posting the first part of Symphonics was a bit of jumping the gun, posting the first part of a story without having really committed to consistently writing it. Indeed, when initially conceived Symphonics my intention was for the original posting to have the starting chapters for three shipfics, each pairing the pianist pony with a different musician.

In any case, I thank you for your readership and your patience. An update may come when you least expect it.

Won't be long now...

Well, finally completed that thing that's been kicking around in my head since August of last year. Glad it went over well.

Main purpose of this post is a few pictures. First, I'd like to mention that Rare Find and Eventide are actual background ponies:

I plan to write another story with them in the near future. Working title is "The Jade Moose."

Also, this bit of art that I stumbled across on Derpibooru a while ago that's related to the fic:

Hello, all. I just thought that I'd shoot this little blog post to inform anyone who likes my prose about a number of stories that I have in the pipeline, have started working on, or have plans for.

Shadows, Secrets, Spells, and Steel - Crossover with the Thief series of video games. Set in an alternate future in Equestria, it follows the adventures of a sardonic, cynical master thief as she finds herself caught up in a tale of political and magic intrigue that she is thoroughly uninterested in.

The Unlit Lands, OR, Nothing I'm Reading - Works off the premise that the world Equestria is in is round, but Celestia only bothers to raise the sun on her half of the world. So this story is about, well, the ponies on that other half of the world. And a llama.

Symphonics - a little shipfic anthology, starring Frederic Horseshoepin, the pianist pony. I have three stories in it planned so far, each of them shipping him with a different music pony. One of them will be a sequel to "This Nearly Was Mine," which is probably my most popular story.

An untitled piece that involves a gay couple, a hotel, an old mare with a jade moose, a pair of bungling thieves who want to steal the jade moose, Time Turner, and Derpy.

I Have a Hat - set in an alternate future where magic has apparently died off, a rich idiot hires a magician who claims to be a genuine unicorn. A crossover I'm sure you won't recognize.

An untitled Fallout Equestria story.

I won't post any of the multi-parter ones until I finish with that Braeburn story, though... that needs to get done.

Well, hello everyone. I'm certain that if you're familiar with my story "This Nearly Was Mine," you are also familiar with the phenomenally ubiquitous Octavia/Vinyl Scratch pairing. And if you're familiar with that, then you might be familiar with the fanfic "Two's Company, Three's a Crowd."

Well, the author of that story and I have been working on a collaborative story, featuring everyone's favorite pianist pony, Frederic Horseshoepin.

And here we are: Ivory.

It is being hosted on his account rather than mine, due to his outrageous popularity.

No, this is not the sequel to "This Nearly Was Mine," buuuuut if you felt bad for Frederic in that story this might tide you over until I get said sequel posted.

Well, remember what I said about the real chapter 22 coming soon? Well, it actually came out a while ago.

However, since I basically took the chapter, unpublished it, and republished it, it might not have sent out a notification. So this is to correct it. Chapter 22 is out for reals this time, and I'm at work on chapter 23.

Granted, chapter 22 isn't very good. Chapter 23 will be better, promise.

Alright, so, to any of you who might've been confused, The Book of Friendship is not over. That was an April Fools gag. We got a loooooooooong way to go. In fact, the actual chapter 22 should be out really soon.

In any case, that does bring me to the main thing, that thing that's been sort of the driving thing in this thing. The missionaries' sexual orientations. Yeah, the whole story has been predicated on "ambiguously gay," wherein the protagonists are so phenomenally buddy-buddy that, well, don't they just look like a couple lovey-dovey boyfriends?

Now, that brings me to the question I'm beating around the bush with: Should the missionaries actually come out and be a couple? I know a number of my readers are going to say "YES!" and y'know, I'd like it, too. I think there's a really good story in there. Problem is, if I choose to tell one story, and specifically if I take on that story without care, that locks out another one. Suffice to say that I've somewhat unintentionally blundered into a sort of pseudo-love-triangle. I understand that among my readers there are a lot of Scroll/White shippers and a lot of Scroll/Tap shippers.

I don't want to go into a lot of spoilers upfront, so I'm not going to give details on plans or possibilities for scenes. I will say that when I started thinking and writing this story back in August of last year, my initial idea was "Okay, so I'll have these two characters who are phenomenally buddy-buddy, be the source of tons and tons of gay jokes. And hmm... maybe at the very end they'll hook up." So that was my first idea. However, after I showed another ponyfic writer the first two chapters (yes, those problematic first two chapters), he tells me that I can't just rely on shock deaths for the whole thing. So I try to think of something else, and I figure "hey, why not have the dweeby one lose his virginity and then feel bad about it?" And so I write that up, and I come up with the character Tap. And, well, I had a character and I had to develop her, didn't I?

So ever since then it's been a dilemma - should Scroll end up with White? Should he end up with Tap? Should I take the Mormon parody to its logical conclusion and have Tap marry both of them?

I admit, given the way I've been promoting this story (such as posting it in ponychan's m/m shipping thread), it's a bit awkward.

Since the fimfiction irc got flooded with newbies I haven't been able to hijack the channel with this discussion, so I'm interested in hearing my readers' thoughts.