State of the Scribe: December 2023 · 8:15pm Dec 1st, 2023
Hey pones! The holidays are here, with all their excitement and warmth. Every time I write another of these updates, I find myself amazed I'm still getting to write stories. Not as many as before as MLP continues to sunset, but enough to keep the journey entertaining for me. I'll get into all the pony stuff first, then give a personal update and retrospective at the end. Feel free to stop reading when you get there if you don't care about that.
No huge new announcements on the table. With the insanity of NANOWRIMO last month, I didn't have time to create any new stories to add to my list. And as you can see here, I'm almost out of days to use!
There aren't as many pony stories on the list as there used to be. Just the one ongoing story on Fimfiction--Beyond the Veil of Sleep. We continue to follow Mira in her quest to release Nightmare Moon from her lunar prison and save the thestrals of Equestria. Shattered Pentacle is waiting on its cover, so it could very well launch at any time this month. When I get it back from the artist, that's when it drops. That's the one with human versions of our ponies set in a version of our world where the supernatural is real and usually dangerous.
The other two monthly stories aren't pony related exactly, so they can't go on fimfiction, but I continue to link them here in these journals (at least until I improve my website or host them elsewhere).
Spirits of Change is what the pokemon world would look like if everyone had their souls outside their bodies as pokemon like the His Dark Materials series, where the world is ruled by the ruthless grip of the Mythical families and their invnicible daemons. A young kid from an eevee family makes one mistake: he settles as a mew. This story will reach its conclusion next month, so we're getting close. One of those forever-fics, but we're almost there. Just have to get a cover so I can post it places, haha. https://www.patreon.com/collection/108522?view=expanded
Then there's another strange story here, Forerunner's Child. This story arose entirely by accident, as my attempt to write something that I could actually publish in the same setting I created in Message in a Bottle. This story follows a colony where all of its members are children, kept frozen at their age to continue in ceaseless scientific innovation. An explorer from the ancient past arrives in this colony, and soon sets out on a search to unravel its secrets. What does Forerunner want to hide from his children? Like Spirits of Change, you can read this for free on my patreon, even if you aren't a patron. The site is actively getting worse, so my old links to read all chapters in a collection no longer work. But you can try this one, maybe it will: https://www.patreon.com/collection/216543?view=expanded
Then there are the fleet of monthly stories, which continue one chapter at a time until complete. A few new stories have joined the ranks of these stories, Family of Chaos and Rescue Process. (both working titles, they may have other names when they arrive on Fimfiction).
Family of Chaos follows a strange pegasus named Hurricane who has been around for much more of Equestria's history than most. When Discord briefly escapes containment in stone, she ends up discovering more about the god of chaos than she bargained for.
Then there's Rescue Process. This one is a Human in Equestria story, involving many of the staples my past readers will expect. Transformation, a little TG, pair of humans have to bumble their way to rescue and hopefully find a way home. But the Equestria they're in isn't quite like the one we're all used to--this one has been dealing with transformed humans for a long time, and isn't pleased about it.
As usual, the stories in blue are restricted to my Patreon until complete, except for the first chapter. That means you can check out the first chapters of these on the day they release, if they seem interesting to you. After that, they'll be for patrons only--until they're finished, and I can publish them to fimfiction.
That last new slot is a special I wrote for christmas--just wanted to spread a little festive cheer. But my schedule got out of hand, and I ended up not finishing in time. That does mean, unfortunately, that the story it's about isn't ongoing anymore. Still, I figured some people might care, and it was too cute just to toss into the bin. So expect that to go up on the 24th.
If you'd like to support my writing with a couple bucks, check out the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RealStarscribe
And if you'd like to buy a hardcover of one of my books, you can get one here: https://starscribe.net/
Lastly, my discord, where I run various silly activities and hang out with fellow writers: https://discord.gg/fZ2Y5KgbN2
I hope you have a great holiday! I know that can be hard with everything going on, but hopefully I can share a little positivity with these stories.
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who continues to support my work. I would've had to stop writing these a long, long time ago if it wasn't for you. Every year I think it will be the last year I write fanfic, and maybe this one really will be. But whether or not it is, my thanks for sticking with me this long! I promise to keep telling fun stories until my arms fall off.
I really don't know what else to do with myself.
Anyone who only cares about the stories can safely exit the blog post now. This part is more of a personal update from me. I try to stay a little detached in these blogs--I know people are here for the stories, and I don't want to wander too far. But it's the end of a year, and I thought a retrospective might be worth sharing.
This is the year I finally took 'student' out of my profile. Put that degree up on the wall, and went to work full time. I know I could've gone into software development, and maybe I could've enjoyed that, but I just didn't want to. Maybe I was spoiled by all this time getting to do what I loved. Maybe I'm stupid.
Either way, I went into full time creativity. Similar to what I did when I was using these stories to support my way through college--only in terms of an actual 9-5. Not just writing either, though there's a lot of that. Some of you may know I've been moonlighting with an indie publisher that made an Anime-inspired dungeon crawler named Middara. I wrote the story for the first game in print, and I'm back (with a lot more freedom, hahahah) doing prose as well as design on upcoming Act 2 and Act 3.
As fun as that is, my first passion and dream is to be a novelist, and that's still where I want to end up one day. That means all my free time (vanishingly small, between fanfic and having an ordinary office job) goes into making novels.
But I was determined to get things on pages anyway. I don't feel like I'm alive if I'm not writing, and finding new ways to challenge myself to improve a little with the next project. So I ended up staying up late into the night most nights, wedging in whatever hours I can. I wrote several new books this year, though so far none have made it across the line to getting published yet.
For example, I've just finished the trillogy for those magical girls books I was writing. Not sure if anyone will care to read them, but I had fun making them, and maybe that's enough. Doubly so with Forerunner's child, a book that falls into no market segment at all. Does anyone want to read about hard sci-fi focused on child characters? What about weird stories about pixies that form a collective into a single person? No idea, guess we'll see. Maybe no one does.
But I wouldn't be writing fanfic if this was money first. I'm writing these stories because I love telling weird stories that others wouldn't.
I think next year is the moment I get to see whether or not I ever do this full time--or if I'll end up as a perpetual hobbyist. Sooner or later this patreon will end, or at least change focus. But until then, I've got a few pony stories left to tell. I won't put something on fimfic if I don't plan on finishing it.
And with the other stories I'm sharing, the ones that aren't pony--odds are I finished them before you saw the first chapter.
Things look uncertain out there. But so long as people are still reading, I want to keep writing. Thanks for coming along with me.
-Starscribe
Thank you for continuing to write. Even in your post-pony period, I have no doubt I'll follow your efforts with great interest. (And if equestrian inspiration should strike later on, well...
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What happened to Words of Power this week?
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There was no words of power scheduled for this week. November Calendar, so nothing happened to it. That story involves a great deal of investment since tons of art assets are produced for it. It can only have two chapters a month regardless of the arrangement of weekdays, unfortunately.
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Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure if it was an error, or if that was deliberate.
Ender's Game is certainly a thing. Though it may not be quite as hard sci-fi as you mean. Either way, a good story is a good story.