Finally got this important chapter posted!!

Hello Everypony and Happy New Year!

Finally! This 100+ page monster chapter finally posted! Chapter 18 of The Wonderbolt Academy's New Volunteers' is finally posted! Good Grief! I don't think there's been a single chapter/part of the story that has taken so much time to rework, edit, rewrite and rework again as this chapter had. I think the toughest part of this whole story really has been keeping track of all the characters and having to do a 'head count' frequently to make sure I've included all the BFFs in their respected scenes. It can be daunting to make sure all of them are present at times and making sure each one has a line or two to speak.
This chapter (chapter 18) was the point in the storyline that I was working on when I and my former editor parted company; she was working on the earlier chapters with the beta reading and correcting with a red pen while I was plowing on ahead with later chapters. Chapter 18, 19 and 20 are my favorite because it has the moments I had originally envisioned for this story from its original inception when it came to the subject of 'race relations' in a way that was to reflect some kind of real-world feeling. I don't know if it will come across in the way she and I want but it is out there at last. The Fic Doctor and I really wanted this part to stick out as one of the two major personal conflicts of the story; one was for Gallus and Silverstream to gain acceptance among the ponies who were there for the trials and secondly, to demonstrate that a griffon and a hippogriff were capable flyers and able to try out for the Academy.
One of the things that I did not originally have in mind for a character that developed over the chapters was Firebolt's rather self-centered behavior that rears its head at times. The fact that she suggested Silverstream use her 'influence' through her mom to help she and her friends get a 'free pass' into the Academy, how she can leverage her position as Silverstream's wing pony to make her stand out and above the other recruits, her willingness to 'bend the rules' to gain an edge on the other recruits and her somewhat short-tempered nature when under duress. I wanted Firebolt to be a good, if flawed, friend for Silverstream to have.
An aspect The Fic Doctor want to emphasize with this friendship was that while Silverstream might feel accepted by her friends for the most part, she wanted Silverstream to experience a moment where she would be rudely reminded that she was 'different' or an 'outsider' to the tryouts and no matter what she accomplished that she 'wasn't a real pony' and could not understand Firebolt's self-centered behavior.
These three chapters were once just one giant 200+ page single chapter in its original form but got broken up; I didn't know just where the breaks were going to be because I wasn't sure how much of the practicing parts that I was going to have to detail out in the story to begin with. I only knew for this part of the story, in general, that there was 3 points to touch on: Firebolt and Silverstream were going to argue with Firebolt crossing a line and regretting it, Silverstream was going to react somehow to what was said to her by Firebolt and then a resolution reached between them. But The Fic Doctor and I had disagreements on how Silverstream was to react to being insulted by Firebolt and how she would regard Firebolt afterwards.
Since our splitting up, I have asked my pony artist, Kitty Sapphire, to review the scenes between Firebolt and Silverstream in the next two chapters, so as to help get the proper female perspective of just how two 17-year-old girls would argue over something as delicate a 'species relations' between a pegasus pony and a hippogriff.

For my story of 'Time Enough for Everything at Last', there is an epilogue I totally forgot to post and was planning to post this last bit this holiday weekend and will try getting it done and posted before the end of the week. It's not much, just a capping off to the story to give it a sense of closure.

I have managed to come up with about half of the third chapter for 'No Country for Bad Ponies' but stopped back at the beginning of December to concentrate of the Wonderbolt Academy story and get its chapter posted. I did not plan to neglect this story so much, but the others have had chapters languishing in various states of competition and it was something of a bummer to find myself splitting up my time so much between them and not feeling like I was getting any real amount of work done. The time I can spend writing is not always plentiful and I get the feeling of 'I'm never going to get these stories done!' every so often. Now with chapter 18 posted and the next two chapters of this story more-or-less written out, I can spend more time on the Sprout Cloverleaf story like I've been wanting to do. The outline i have for this part in particular is somewhat thin and I'm trying to fill out some details about his fellow inmates to make it more interesting. I will post more story updates with the next chapter drop in a few weeks, and I hope to have this third chapter ready to post as well.