The Stars Ascendant, Sequel Information, and New Story · 10:04pm Jun 1st, 2014
When I wrote The Stars Ascendant, I was certainly hoping it was going to do well, but I was not expecting it to do nearly as well as it did. After four days in the feature box and another week in popular stories, it is now sitting in the 50 highest rated stories on the entire site, and for a few hours last week, it was briefly the single highest rated story on all of FIMFiction.
Thank you for all your kind words and comments on the story; I appreciated them.
So, what's next?
Several folks asked me about sequels. Is there going to be one?
Not exactly.
What there shall be, however, are several thematically related stories, of which The Stars Ascendant is the first published, but actually the third chronologically.
No One Will Notice focuses on the relationship between Luna, Celestia, and Twilight, as Celestia decides that all these disasters prove the need for teaching another how to move the Sun and Moon properly. Set prior to the start of season 4, it is focused on Luna's reaction to Twilight asking to practice on the Moon; after all, if something goes wrong with it, no one will notice, right? I have a first draft of this done, but it is being heavily re-written to tighten it up.
A Breezie Topic of Conversation is about the burden of responsibility that Celestia has played on Fluttershy, and centers around Fluttershy being put in a situation where she has to give advice on an important matter of state - something which makes Fluttershy intensely uncomfortable for obvious reasons. This story is presently in editing, and should be posted sometime in the next week.
Moving Heaven And Earth is set after the events of season 4, and sees Twilight's friends sent off to deal with a matter of importance while Twilight has to remain in the capital in order to practice her magic on the Sun and the Moon with Luna and Celestia because it is something which keeps getting put off and which needs to be done, as proven by the latest disaster facing Equestria. It deals with Twilight's feelings about this, as well as her personal relationship with the two elder princesses.
And now for something completely different:
I have a new story up that I hope you will all enjoy.
When Lord Tirek attained ultimate power, what did he do? Did he shatter the heavens with his power? Cast the world into eternal darkness? Tear down civilization so that he may rebuild it in his own image?
No. He began destroying the Everfree Forest.
But why? What possible motivation could he have?
I really like the sound of those. Are you planning on all of them being short, or is there an epic in the works?
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No One Will Notice is 10k words long at present, but is being heavily revised so I'm not sure how long it will end up being - it may go up or down by a couple thousand words by the time it is actually done.
A Breezie Topic of Conversation is 10k words long; it will certainly end up no longer than that.
Moving Heaven and Earth is not yet written at all, but will probably end up being about as long as the other two. I'm pretty bad at estimating lengths before writing, though.
My goal right now is to push out A Breezie Topic of Conversation this week at a minimum, and I want to get No One Will Notice done sometime in June - it will probably take about a week of writing to complete, though, once I do actually go and work on it.
Beyond that, I actually have several more stories I didn't even mention in this post which are in various states of doneness:
Shotgun Wedding actually has four chapters published; I have another three chapters I've been sitting on, and I have to write three more of them. The reason I haven't published what I have is that I'm concerned about pacing problems, and I need to basically write out the last three chapters and see how the whole thing ends up parsing before I actually publish any of it; this is pretty high on my to-do list.
Scaring Each Other is an adventure story featuring Applejack and Rainbow Dash set after Castle Mane-ia. It has been drafted and had four people edit it, and the unanimous verdict is that it has major pacing problems and the ending sucks. I have to do severe surgery on it, and thus, I'm not sure when it will be out because I've been procrastinating on finishing it and pushing it out the door because it is probably going to lose half of its present length in doing so. This is pretty high on my to-do list as well. Again, my goal is to get this out in June.
Ice Cream Sale is a RariJack story which was SUPPOSED to be a Hearts and Hooves Day story. The premise is that Rarity goes out shopping for ice cream the day before Hearts and Hooves Day because it goes on sale that day, specifically for ponies like her. She runs into Applejack while out shopping, and Applejack suggests that they spend the evening together so that Rarity doesn't have to be alone on Hearts and Hooves Day this year. Rarity is overjoyed to have a friend to commiserate their singleness with, while Applejack is nervous about going on a date with Rarity. Hilarity ensues. This is about halfway done.
The Best is a probably close to novel length story about Rainbow Dash joining the Wonderbolts and discovering that she really IS the best flier in all of Equestria, which greatly excites her at first until she realizes that the ponies she has been looking up to her whole life, who were supposed to be awesome... are ponies like everyone else, and actually aren't even as good at flying as she is. It is only about a third of the way done, hence my "novel length" estimate.
Daring Do x Rosetta Stone OTP is a (now AU) TwiDash shipfic; the story starts out with Rainbow Dash getting upset because Daring Do kisses Manehattan Silver in the latest Daring Do book; clearly she only has eyes for Rosetta Stone, the cute librarian who helps Daring Do do research. Clearly, the series is ruined forever, but Rainbow Dash's pouting (which definitely has no subtext whatsoever, no sir) is interrupted when they get news that the author of the Daring Do books was attacked in the Everfree Forest, and they have to help save her life and have totally subtextless talks with the author about what happened in the latest book. The problem here has been the OC, the author, who I've had trouble making an interesting character.
And that's ignoring the ridiculous number of stories I have outlined but haven't even started on.
I'll note that every story I listed here was actually started prior to me writing The Collected Poems of Maud Pie; I had some pretty lazy months in there, but I wrote 20k words in April and 26k words in may, so I'm getting back into the swing of things - though these high word counts are also why I have so many not-finished stories.