Signal Boost: JawJoe's Monsters, and a few other things · 8:08pm Jul 31st, 2015
I don't abuse my blogging privileges very often, but sometimes there's an author who I admire and who I think has managed something extraordinary. Today that author is JawJoe, who wrote one of my favorite dark fics on this site (Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift), and who today has published something to follow in its steps:
Two decades after the banishment of Nightmare Moon, her shadow still lingers. Princess Celestia has been left to tend the Twin Thrones alone and protect us all from those who would see Equestria crumble. Our enemies take many forms: some would tear the world down with their claws, others with their smiles.
They are monsters all the same.
I have had many names, and I have been many things. Today I am Swift Sweep, and I work for the Equestrian Bureau for State Security.
It's a grim look at a nighttime world, and very different from what I usually write. But perhaps that's part of its appeal for me. Anyway, check it out!
In other news, I'll be publishing the first four chapters of a new story in a week or so. Land of the Blind was originally an 8k Writeoff entry, for the Great Expectations event, which it won. I was quite happy with that placement, but I always felt the story itself was too rushed, and really ought to be more along the lines of a novel.
So I turned the 8k story into an outline for a 50k+ story. I'm very happy with how it's turned out so far, and I hope you will be too. For everyone who's been waiting for my Wind Thief sequel, I think you'll find this tickles your adventure bone just as much.
Remember Lost Cities? Apparently it's becoming a trend, with more and more authors trying their hand at the "no characters, no dialogue, no action" challenge it represents. Shortskirtsandexplosions recently reviewed it, which you can see here (scroll down), DuncanR of course wrote The Seal of Wax and Glass last month, and now Mr. Not_A_Hat throws his hat into the ring with a short tale, Unknown Architecture. It focuses more on the magical nature of a lost city, stuck between the seasons, but I think it upholds the tradition very well.
The latest Writeoff even features a few Lost Cities-style stories. I think their short, stand-alone nature lends itself well to the competition, but we haven't seen any winners yet (and, apparently, I'm not allowed to write one). Anyway, if you want to try your hand at it, the world is wide open! Just choose a lost city and tell its story.
We need more Lost Cities type stories, we really do.
You know I'm almost tempted to do a Lost Cities on one of the two (or both?) of the mušḫuššu cities in the Apotheverse - either the one buried under glaciers in Draconia, from whence they fled, or the island settlement where their civilization died and left a god-ghost.
3284972 We need more *good* Lost Cities style stories. I've written some good fragments, but getting an entire story in that vein is harder than nails. (It's good practice, though, so I'm going to keep trying.)
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What we really need is more Lost Cities.
Well, thanks for showing us this author! I now have three more stories in my read later!