Ponyfeather Publishing Release: For the Love of Faust

I announced this book last month in my Everfree Northwest 2023 release round-up, but I felt it deserved a standalone post announcing its online availability.

Other Everfree releases will be coming soon -- pending my unpacking and inventorying the overstock sitting in my living room -- but this particular title not only sold out almost immediately at the con but has been in high demand since, so I wanted to go ahead and get it out there without any further ado. (Some of my fellow bookstore staff have been publishing retrospective blogs; I'll have my own sooner than later, but wrapping up the bookstore post-con, as well as playing catch-up at work and dealing with other real-life responsibilities, means that's been on the back burner. Soon...)

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So! For the Love of Faust. This project has been such a long time coming than many of the authors included in it forgot it was ever a thing, which is my bad.

Over four years ago I put up a blog post asking for submissions:

I want to put together a book that's full of short stories by as many authors as possible, "big names" or small, where the stories are the most heartwarming, honest, wholesome, sincere embodiments of the theme friendship is magic. I want to put together a love letter to the show that brought us all together, that inspired us all to create, that built new friendships and communities and interests and skills.

Over a million words of ponyfic were submitted for consideration, and huge shoutout to Undómë Tinwë, R5h, and Pearple Prose for helping me sort through it all and pare it down to something that could fit in a book.

I posted the call for submissions at the height of my frantic pre-BronyCon scramble to get the first twelve Ponyfeather titles finished and ready to stock at Aquaman's BronyCon bookstore. I knew at the time, and said as much in the original post, that there was no way I could actually have it ready for BronyCon, but I had thought it could be my first Ponyfeather publication post-con, maybe in the fall of 2019.

But, that mad dash to publish a dozen books in six months burned me out, and along with some other issues I was dealing with at the time, that meant when I got home from BronyCon it took me a very long time to summon up the energy to dip myself back into the waters of publishing. I didn't release another book until May of 2021, almost two years later. (A book that came together because of a conversation I had with Oroboro at BronyCon 2019 itself -- another case where at the time I thought I'd kick it out in the fall of 2019 after a brief hiatus to recuperate from the con. Sorry again, Oro.)

All that time, For the Love of Faust was hanging over my head. It was the most ambitious print project I'd ever attempted, with over 50 authors who'd accepted the invitation to have their story included. I was still worn out, and frankly a little intimidated by it; whenever I returned my focus to it to chip away bit by bit, it never felt like I made any progress. I also had to figure out cover art, and I wanted it to be special. My concept for the cover was as ambitious as the book's contents: typically artists in the fandom charge a per-character fee, and my idea for the cover was to cram as many season 1 characters in front of the library tree as possible surrounding Fausticorn -- I had over 30 characters in the mockup I put together to show prospective artists. It was going to be expensive, and it was going to take a long time to create.

I ended up working my way through multiple artists in search of one whose style and sensibilities matched what I wanted -- I'd been looking for someone who could accurately ape the show's vector art style -- and who was willing to take it on. I wasn't getting anywhere and was getting more and more discouraged, which in turn affected my drive to work on this project at all, which in turn made it hard to keep looking for artists... you get the idea.

But then the answer randomly fell into my lap, when an artist named mellodillo joined a Discord server I was in and I discovered that one of their many talents was sketching in Lauren Faust's distinctive concept art style. We had a few conversations about loving her specific take and vision, and I realized mello was a kindred spirit in terms of how we loved FIM and what we loved about it. During vendor hall teardown on the last day of Everfree Northwest last year, I approached them, showed them my 30-character-plus cover concept, and asked if they'd be interested in taking it on.

"Yeah! Let's talk after the con."

And we did, and their unbridled, overflowing enthusiasm and excitement for this book really cleansed a lot of my own negativity surrounding it, and I can’t thank them enough for being such a genuine joy to work with.

(Shoutout as well to Pixel-Prism, who graciously allowed me to use her Fausticorn piece for the rest of the cover.)

mello had so much fun creating the cover art that they practically insisted on each story having header art as well, so... they do!

I love this book, now, and I hope you all do too.

Here are the contents:

1. Lucky Dreams — In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep
2. Autumn Wind — A Most Unusual Charm
3. HoofBitingActionOverload — There's Something in the Woods
4. Amber Spark — The Cycle of Flame
5. xjuggernaughtx — Apple Ninjas and Other Vital Concerns
6. Bookish Delight — Slipstream
7. Patchwork Poltergeist — The Moon and Thtarth
8. Scout Feather — Late-Night Reading Buddy
9. Zaid ValRoa — Those Who We Admire
10. Eakin — First Contact Is Magic
11. FanOfMostEverything — The Perfect Barnstorm
12. TheJediMasterEd — Beneath your feet, what Treasures
13. Quillery — When the Day Met the Night
14. Cold in Gardez — The Riddle of the Sphinx
15. DrakeyC — A Carrot Christmas Carol
16. Pascoite — Friendly Correspondence
17. horizon — The Dragon's Riddle
18. Skywriter — Sun Princess
19. Catalysts Cradle — Wingmares
20. Saddlesoap Opera — Where There's Smoke
21. Harmony Pie — Chocolate Talk
22. Cynewulf — For Everything There Is a Season
23. Dubs Rewatcher — Dinky vs. the Moon
24. Cillerenda — I Didn't Sign Up for This
25. R5h — The Clown Sentry
26. Ruirik — The Regular
27. iisaw — Apple Cider Caramels
28. RazgrizS57 — Insufficient Postage
29. Forthwith — The Brief Reign of Princess Twily
30. bats — The Thinkin' Spot
31. Pearple Prose — To Be Alive
32. Xepher — Trinkets
33. Sharp Spark — Today's Special
34. Regidar — Gathering Storm
35. Fahrenheit — Trial by Fire
36. GhostOfHeraclitus — The Game the Princesses Play
37. Monochromatic — Pinkie's Animal Balloons
38. Georg — The Lazy Dragon of Dragonvale
39. Oroboro — Little Apple
40. Cloud Wander — It Is My Fate to Enter Every Door
41. Chris — Going Up
42. Pineta — The Art of Eclipse Engineering
43. Corejo — Reading Rainbow
44. PoweredByTea — Never So Far Away
45. Estee — Jury Duty
46. SPark — Over a Cardboard Sea
47. KitsuneRisu — Tarnish
48. The Ponytrician — The Truth About Myths and Legends
49. OleGrayMane — Be
50. Bad Horse — Experience
51. Invictus — Pip
52. Aragón — Grave Implications
53. Posh — The More Things Change

Available now in paperback and hardback from Ponyfeather Publishing.

Stay tuned for more releases!

Comments

[RBDash47]

If you're an author in this anthology, I also have a post up for you in the project's group.

[Frith]

It looks fab! Lots of familiar names in that list of authors too.

[Falk0]

Gosh, its design is amazing!

[TheRealCoolRock]

Do we have an EPUB file? really want this for my Kindle Paperwhite.

[RBDash47]

5744348
Eventually!

[TheRealCoolRock]

5744350
YAYYYYY

[Chicago Ted]

Since iisaw and Scout Feather have both nuked their Fimfic portfolios, I'll just go ahead and drop links to "Apple Cider Caramels" and "Late-Night Reading Buddy" on Fimfetch. You're welcome.

[Wanderer D]

It's too bad I missed that one, or I would have written something specifically for this :(

I know it's selfish to ask, but if you ever do another one, don't let me miss it.