State of the Author: Contest Fics, Longfic Progress, and More! · 5:16am Jul 31st, 2023
Hello all! After a few exciting days of work on fics both large and small, I wanted to post a little about what I'm up to.
First and foremost, you may have noticed I posted two fics over the past weekend, both exactly 1000 words long. If you're unfamiliar, Sunday, July 30 marked the end of the A Thousand Words Contest II, which, as you can tell from the title, is the second edition of a contest run last year, where my story The Same Mistake You're Making received an honorable mention! Thus, I was really excited to try and enter again this year, but my work on another story got in the way for a while. Luckily, at the last minute, I've posted two that I really like.
The more recent of the two is my comic piece Maud-nagerie, a story in which Maud, on what's meant to be a low-stress workday at the museum, finds herself thrust into an unusual situation thanks to Fluttershy. It's a piece that was inspired by a story related to me on Discord by Tipper, who works in a museum himself and... well, I don't want to give the story away. But let's say there were some unexpected visitors. At any rate, this was a fun short dive into Maud as a character, as she's always been a favorite even if this is sadly my first time writing her.
As of this writing, the story is somewhat precariously holding in the Featured box, facing off against a lot of other 1000 Words entries that appeared on the contest's final day. I'd really, really appreciate anyone who can spare the few minutes to give this little fic a boost and keep up the momentum heading into the week. I think you'll enjoy it.
While Maud-nagerie was my entry into the contest's Slice of Life and Comedy categories, on Friday, I published my entry for the Drama category, Unstoppable Forces. This one was a really fun one to write as it was a full-on crossover with Star Wars, albeit written with accessibility for non-fans in mind (given the contest rules). It also doubled as an entry into the (still-ongoing as of writing) Sunset x Villains Sci-Fi Shipping Contest. In it, Midnight Sparkle, fallen Jedi, is close to a breakthrough in her quest for power when she's confronted by an image she never thought she'd see again. It's a very short read, and I hope you'll give it a chance!
Of course, the reason these two stories had to wait until close to the deadline was because I've been hard at work on my longfic, Together from Canterlot to Canterlot. It's a tough writing experience, with chapters that are longer than the majority of my individual stories and a lot of ground to cover narratively in these opening portions. But it's been really satisfying seeing some of the excited reactions from the people follow along, and even some interesting and surprising bits of speculation from readers. I hope you all stay aboard for this ride as we delve deeper into just what's going on with Sunset and how Twilight will handle things.
I'm also still editing for a lot of other authors, most recently on The Sleepless Beholder's exciting longfic The Goddess of Empathy and his two 1000 Words entries, You Don't Remember and When the Sun Rises, plus on Sledge115's wonderful Velvet Quill & Sunny Skies, Dewdrops on the Grass' contest-winning That Special Day, and more! I've also recently been given the honor of being invited to participate in editing Sledge and VoxAdam's long-running epic fic Spectrum, which is starting to gear up for new chapters following a hiatus. I've been immersed in the story's verse for a while, having edited both Velvet Quill and the first act of Sogno di Volare (and a lot of its worldbuilding has had some influence on Together from Canterlot to Canterlot), so the invitation is incredibly thrilling and I'm excited for people to see what's coming there.
And I'm really hopeful, if sadly not outright certain, that I'll be able to make an appearance at this year's Everfree Northwest. Last year was a lot of fun even if I ended up missing out on Iron Author; hopefully that can be rectified, but there's potential personal obligations that could get in the way. In any case, I hope everyone who gets to go has fun and I hope to be a part of it.
Thank you all so much for reading! Stay tuned for more of Together soon, and possibly some more exciting news shortly!
-- Eileen
Best of luck with your personal projects, first and foremost
Also, yup, Eileen's involved with Spectrum now - and we're quite happy to have their help!
Good luck with it all! Busy, busy, busy by the sound of it. Dead fandom, are we?
I hope you can get to the con in the end, though indeed, life has a habit of being awkward.
The Thousand Words Contest this year really has been something. Three-figure entry counts have always been very rare, even at the height of the fandom. I'm actually wondering whether this year's may even have set an all-time record.