Everything Old Is New Again · 6:35pm Dec 26th, 2012
"Oh my goodness gracious!" my five followers might be saying to themselves right about now. "Who is this Errant Cog fellow and why do I have a blog post from him in my notifications?!" To answer your hypothetical question, dear followers, I am he who was once Jim North on this fine website. But long since I created this account, I have created one of those "ponysonas" or "OCs" or whatever the hip kids are calling them these days. He's a steampunk sort of pony with his own DeviantArt account and DeviantArt group about steampunk ponies and everything. Isn't that delightful?
What isn't quite as delightful is the reason why I've been absent almost the entire time I've had this account here after having posted only one and an eighth of a story. I've been rather ill for the past few years, you see, and this past year has been especially horrible for me. Though I have taken steps to rectify the situation, I have also been in a period of recovery for the past few months and probably will remain so for quite a bit longer. But in the meantime, I am really starting to feel better and have started taking advantage of that feeling-betterness by trying to get back into several things I was once very into. One of those things is getting my pony-writing career back into gear.
Sad to say, this means that the stuff I've already written is going in the dumpster.
Not permanently, tho! No worries for those of you who actually enjoyed what little I've written and were hoping to see more. It's just that looking back on what I've already written, I can see several things that I would have done much differently if I hadn't been feeling so unwell at the time, so my plan is to go back and rewrite . . . well, everything, to one degree or another. And I further intend to go ahead with some of the other stuff I'd been getting planned out before my unfortunate hiatus. For those interested, here's what's coming up in the new year to come!
GONE - My first (and only) completed MLP story was originally intended to be much, much longer. I wrote it as short as it is primarily because it was for a contest here, and the contest had a word limit, but I was always going to go back and expand it into something much more dramatic and action-y with more character development and scary moments.
My Little Mercenaries - The MLM universe was only partially thought out when I decided to start writing out Nightmare, and that was a mistake. Even during some of the heaviest parts of my illness, I've been slowly constructing the rest of the setting, and while it still bears a lot of similarity to what's already gone into the story, I've found that there are several sections that I really really really want done differently. So I'm going to do it differently, as well as flesh out some of the sparser parts and all that noise.
Both of these stories will be removed from my account in the days to come, certainly before the end of the year. So if you want to read or re-read these old version before they go the way of the dinosaur, now's the time to do it. But of course, rewriting these stories isn't the only thing I've got in store. Behold . . .
Elements of Silence - A My Little Pony/Silent Hill crossover. Been done before? Well yes, but not by me. And I want to do one. So there. Though I will mention that I have done the Silent Hill part before. In fact, this is going to be a semi-sequel to my previous effort Screams of Silence, which is a crossover with Daria. It's not necessary to read SoS to understand what will be going on in EoS, but it might still enhance your enjoyment of it in certain parts. And considering it's around 100k words long, it should certainly give you something to do while you're waiting for EoS to start.
If that's not exactly your cup of tea, I've got lots of other stories on my FF.net page, mostly in the Daria and Sonic the Hedgehog fandoms but of enough different genres to satisfy most folks.
Anywho, I guess I better get to work, eh? Here's hoping that 2013 turns out better than 2012 did!
Glad to hear you're coming back. I can't exactly remember why I followed you in the first place, but I remember My Little Mercenaries and being disappointed that the story never finished.