Growing Years - the Novel

The Growing Years is now available as a paperback novel from the publisher, Createspace.
https://www.createspace.com/6227958
The wraparound cover art is by Graypaint - http://graypaint.deviantart.com/

Comments

[ARTL]

Similar to Pen Stroke's Past Sins.

I'd absolutely buy it.

[Oh hi there]

That's absolutely amazing.

[Carapace]

I dunno if I can flip for the book, but congrats Goldfur! Very nice!

[Boulder]

Love the look on Luna's face, that's priceless. Shame Leatherwing isn't in shot(in a dream bubble maybe?) asking "wanna a cookie?"
Just bought 'A Different Perspective' so now I'll have to buy this too.

Edit: just bought it.

So does this mean Growing Years here is complete, cause it still shows incomplete?

[Sylvian]

Congrats on getting another one out :3

I'll have to pick this up somewhere down the road to go with my copy of A Different Perspective

[Spectrumancer]

Isn't it unfinished? The story page is marked as such.

[IsaacTheHungry]

I hope you are not receiving any cash for it. That is highly illegal and you might get a cease-and-desist order and be legally banded from writing MLP fan fictions. For Past Sins and others you hear about use groups and companies that know how to sell it at cost with no profit to the writer.

[JediWyrm]

So Lucida is on the left with Flix, Destined is on the right, Guessing Pif is on the right as well...

[Goldfur]

3922096 You would be correct.

[Goldfur]

3921982 In my comments t the end of the story, I said that I was leaving it marked "Unfinished" because I might want to write a one-shot that fits into that period but I did not want to make an entire new story for. The arc itself is complete.

[JediWyrm]

3922702 For a while I thought pif was the other hippogrif and they just coloured Blue Streak wrongly.

[Spectrumancer]

3922708
Right.

Time to download and binge-read!

[Mythic Night]

There's something you never explained in the story; do Hippogriffs get cutie marks? And if so, what would they be for Lucida and Flix?

[Goldfur]

3923561 Because they are half pony, yes, hippogriffs can get cutie marks. Admittedly I should have written something about Lucida getting hers at least.

[Mythic Night]

3923589 I'm also still waiting on the chapter/episode I was promised early on about Twilight telling her family that she got knocked up by the herd stallion!

[H3lios]

I'm kind of curious, how do authors get away with actual publication of a novel when youtubers can't even say the name of a show without being striked to hell and back?

[IsaacTheHungry]

Because they don't get any profit and they keep the sales away from where the general public might see it by using fandom sites. Unfortunately Goldfur appears to be selling for profit (correct me if I'm wrong) and he is using a site linked with Amazon.com. I expected him it be hit by the hammer soon.

[Goldfur]

3924466 You are seriously misinformed if you think nobody is selling fanfic for profit. Fanfic is not "highly illegal" either; it is a long-standing grey area which is largely tolerated because we don't make tons of money from it. I'll be lucky if I ever cover the cost of the illustrations for the book! Even if it isn't your intention, you seem to be highlighting the negative aspects, and perhaps your opinion is that we should not be allowed to get away with this. Nobody appreciates being told this sort of thing in their blogs. You've had your say now.

[IsaacTheHungry]

I don't feel like discussing that law I know. I have made my warning to other blog reader to be careful without knowing the whole story in your case (you might be fine for all I know).

I was just worried about one of my very favorite authors. You do a fabulous job making you characters interesting individuals while still fitting in with the feeling of the show.

[ChakatFirepaw]

3924164
The short answer is that YouTube's copyright enforcement system _sucks_. It's basically set up that anyone with any rights to something anywhere you can access YouTube can put in a claim and steal two months of income from a video that uses any of the content in question, (hence the whole WTFU? thing).

Now, when it comes to things like fanfiction and fanart, it isn't copyright that is in play but trademark[1]. Trademark isn't as restrictive when it comes to use by others, really placing only three restrictions:

1 - You can't claim the trademark as your own.
2 - You can't use the trademark to advertise your own business outside of saying things like "we sell $brand."
3 - You can't do things that damage the value of a trademark outside of things like fair comment and parody.

The one that is at issue when it comes to fan works is #2, "trading under". A fan work may or may not violate this, depending on why people are going to buy it. Put simply, it's OK to sell "a novel by Goldfur that happens to be an MLP story," but not OK to sell "an MLP story that happens to be a novel by Goldfur."

[1] The Berne convention does not include things like character copyright. While the US does recognize it, the current status is that almost no characters actually qualify[2]. Plus, many of the FiM copyrights are actually Canadian in origin so no character copyrights at all.

[2] The current precedent is a "yes, but" decision that boils down to meaning that a character must have enough of an intrinsic meaning so as to be a work in and of themselves. The old Tarzan and Air Pirates cases were invalidated by the US coming into line with Berne in the 1980s.

[Goldfur]

3935988 Thank you for putting this far more clearly than I could have managed.