Christmas is Coming, The Goose is Getting Fat

So I finally posted up Home Sweet Home. Parts of the story are more than three years old, while other parts were written as recently as this week! It may seem odd to do a horror story around Christmas time, but there is a rich tradition of holiday horror that predates A Nightmare Before Christmas and even Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. The yuletide season is a time for telling scary stories around the fire as much, if not more so, than the autumnal season. When the sun is barely out for a handful of hours before the outside world is plunged into cold darkness, it's an excellent time to stay in, stay warm, and maybe spin a yarn or two about the things that might be out lurking in the wintery wastes.

That and I really loved the movie Gremlins.

As for this story, as I mentioned before, it started out as part of what would eventually be Something Sweet to Bite Too. I was going to go into detail about what happened after the Candy Mare was first created and how she eventually was put down by a Luna who was just discovering the powers and problems that would eventually lead her to become Nightmare Moon. While I may eventually go into detail on that story later down the line, I wanted to focus on a period of the Candy Mare's existence that was a little more impactful to her own personal development.

The obvious Hansel and Gretel framing of the story, and the candy cottage, were the first places I started when writing the sequel to Something Sweet to Bite. Gretel's death was originally meant to parallel Rainbow Dash's 'death' in her dream, and then I'd alternate between the story of the Candy Mare in the past and in the present. Keep the two stories straight, yet still entertaining proved to be too confusing in the end, so I thought it best to cut Home Sweet Home and make the story a stand alone.

Over all it's about as long as the original Something Sweet to Bite, so those that complained about the length of the sequel should be pleased, though I don't think this story was quite as gory as I would normally write. Though the death of one unfortunate Pegasus was purely inspired by the movie Slither, it didn't come out as horrifying as I thought it would. Oh well, it is a holiday story after all.

Over all, while I do consider this story to be canon to Something Sweet to Bite, it's something of a teaser for what was and also for what may be. This will not be the last Candy Mare story, there will be another for next Halloween. As to whether or not this will be my last journey into holiday horror, however, that I cannot say.