Christmas Update

It's that wintry time of the year! Although you wouldn't have thought so from looking out my window. Sunshine everywhere. It actually looks like a nice day to sunbathe.

Anyway, I've finished editing that story for BFG, and that means I'm free once more to publish all my things. And that means:

1: Next chapter of Vox Veritas Vita. It's not my favourite chapter, but I believe it is essential to the continuation of the story, and marks a vital passing of the torch that will bring about the conclusion to my Death Note plagiarism. On that note, I also feel that I've distanced myself from that show now that things are coming to light (see what I did there?). I loved the back and forth game of identity guessing, but giving Gabby a power to determine secrets seemed... I guess it didn't seem smart enough. What I came up with for that story does touch upon a rather troubling matter in the real world, however, and that's that everything you do can and will be recorded somewhere. Your phone, accounts, criminal record, all of it gets written down and is never completely forgotten. I find that more than a little scary, and Gabby Gums is that one pony who's gone mad with the power of information.

2: The Case of the Purple Diary: a brand new detective story, featuring once again Shining Armour as an up and coming detective. No Noir for him this time, though: the world I've cast him in is far more mellow than before. I think that's a good thing: there's only so much dark ponies can take before it becomes unnecessary. And he's not alone: Twilight Sparkle, Cadence, and two brand new OC coppers, Stache and Truncheon, are there to help. Whilst the culprit and methods of the crime are not as groundbreaking as I would like, I am especially proud of how the notebook played into the investigation, and how it tricked Shining (and hopefully the reader).

3: The Fruit Thief. Anybody who knows what I'm about probably saw another AppleDash coming, but that's beside the point. What started with me trying to find some aspect of incompatibility between the two ended in a fun 4K word plot that's all about having fun. The whole story is about fun: how Applejack rejects it, how Rainbow enforces it, how the chase is written and even the inclusion of Pinkie Pie (who I usually avoid writing like the plague). The story was a fun little thing to write, and I hope it turned out as a fun little thing to read. That was the objective: sometimes I write to be smart (my mystery stories) and sometimes I write to force engineering on an unsuspecting reader (it was one time!), but this time, like I did for my very first story, I wrote to have fun, and hopefully share some of that with you guys.

On another note, one of my stories, Home is Where the House is, made it to the shelves of Twilight's Library. Now whilst I'd usually be proud of this achievement (quite the milestone for an up and coming author), I'm actually particularly grateful that the staff, in particular Winter Solstice, took the time to review the story at all. The group is going through an incredibly rough patch, and whilst I won't go into detail here, I think that it was particularly noble of the remaining staff to continue to judge stories despite being in what I can only imagine is a very poor working environment. So hats of to Winter Solstice for keeping on going despite the chaos. I appreciate it, and I bet there are a few others who do as well.

Now then, what's next for me? Two plans are currently being set in motion, but before I can begin, I have an online test to complete. However, all I will say is expect more mystery, and more AppleDash.

Have a merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate.

I'll get into any holiday spirit for good food.