Sneak Preview and a Review · 4:15am Sep 7th, 2012
Hey folks,
I wanted to offer a short update so people know what I'm working on at the moment. Those of you in the know may have already read one of my other projects, Salvation, which was posted under a different account name. In a week or so I will start posting a new, unabridged version of that story on this account. I expect the final version will top out around 100k words.
For those of you who've read it already, and because sneak previews are apparently a 'thing' now, here's a pair of short scenes from a new chapter.
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Cinders drifted on furnace winds.
Rainbow Dash opened her left eye. The right was clotted shut and screamed its pain. Hot dirt ground against her face as she struggled in a futile attempt to rise to her hooves. Her body failed, broken far beyond the weakling punishments it had endured in the foalish crashes of her youth, and she flailed helplessly on the ground.
Stop. Stop. You’re panicking. She gasped for breath and nearly choked on the burning air. Its sear touch added another pain to the mosaic wracking her body. She coughed away the poisonous fumes before they could burn out her lungs.
Remember your training. Observe. She went limp and craned her head around. Thick clouds of smoke roiled above her and obscured the sun; the nearest of them felt hot enough to curl the hairs of her coat. The loud rampant rush of a blazing fire sounded somewhere close. Faintly, in the distance, a siren began to wail.
Orient. There’s been an accident. I’m hurt and I don’t know how I got here. I am in danger. Wonder Bolt’s safety training, the first thing drilled remorselessly into the heads of all new fliers, instantly leapt to her mind. No pony was allowed to fly with the team until they could recite the safety protocols and procedures backwards and forwards, under the most stressful situations the team could devise. Even now, feeling half dead, they were a clear and solid anchor against the chaos around her.
Decide. I need to get up. I need to try flying. I need to help anypony else who is hurt, and then I need to get out. The neat order of thoughts, almost like a flight plan, helped calm her racing heart. It was a checklist, and she could do checklists. Twilight loves checklists. The stray thought passed through her conscience without stopping, and she didn’t trouble herself with it.
Anyway, at that moment she could not have said who Twilight Sparkle was.
Act. She pushed herself onto her belly and struggled to draw in her limbs. One, her left foreleg, didn’t seem to be working the way it should. She ignored it for the moment and focused on the rest, and managed to lever herself into a wobbly stance. The ground around her was torn apart, raw earth exposed and scorched black by some unimaginable heat. A dozen feet away, smoke vomited from a shattered bunker door.
“Soarin?” she shouted. He was supposed to be here. She remembered him at her wingtip, just before... whatever had happened. Now there was nothing around her but smoke and chaos and pain and fear. Only the distant siren, still wailing its panic-song, gave any sign that she was on the training grounds, rather than dead in some hellish Tartarus.
She tried taking a step, and her foreleg collapsed, sending her stumbling back to the dirt. A wave of sickening pain radiated from the limb, and when she stood again it swung limply from an extra joint just above her knee. She stared at it, numb with incomprehension, then turned her scattered thoughts back to finding Soarin.
Observe...
***
Rainbow Dash jerked awake, the thin wool blanket sliding from her shoulders to pool on the floor. Sweat matted her mane and coat, and she felt her feathers standing on end, still reacting to the phantom pain of the dream. She clutched at the fibers of thought, but they drifted through her hooves and melted away. It had been that day again, but the details – only minutes ago as vivid as life – now vanished from her mind like fog in the morning sun.
She exhaled a quiet sigh and looked around. Pinkie’s room, bright with cheery pastels even in the dim morning light, stared back. Pinkie’s bed was empty, the pony herself presumably already up and preparing for the festival. Dash debated putting her head back down for a few more minutes of rest when a quiet rustle of cloth caught her ear. She turned to see Rarity lying on her own set of cushion, just a few feet away. The mare was wide awake and staring at her.
Dash swallowed to wet her parched throat. “Uh, hey. Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Rarity said. Her voice was a whisper. “Are you alright? You were talking in your sleep.”
“Yeah, fine.” The answer was instant, thoughtless. She could have been bleeding to death, and still would have given that same response. “What, uh... what was I saying?”
Silence. Rarity’s face was a marble mask. “I couldn’t understand, I’m afraid,” she finally said.
Liar. Dash didn’t press the issue. She wasn’t sure what she would do with an answer, anyway. Instead she shrugged and set her head back on her forelegs. She might have snagged a few more winks had not Pinkie Pie chosen that moment to burst in the door.
“Girls! Wake up!” Her voice wasn’t quite a shout, but it shocked both of them to their hooves. “You’re late for the festival!” That said, she grabbed them both by their manes – Dash’s with her hooves and Rarity’s with her teeth – and dragged them out the door before Rarity could so much as squawk a protest.
***
In other news, Chris over at One Man's Pony Ramblings is about halfway through an ambitious project to review every single 6-star story on EqD. On Monday he reviewed (at last!) his 98th story, The Contest. It was my first 6-star, and remains one of my favorites. If you get a chance, check it out.
I can't wait for your unabridged version. The one you posted already was quite enjoyable and I am eager to see how you expand it.
I've been meaning to do my own sneak preview for awhile now, for The Camel Spider of Harmony. So stay tuned for that.
You and your goddamned en dashes.
Expanded Salvation? Sweet! Loved that story. Preview looks good, too.
Ack haven't read Salvation--must avoid spoilers!!
Sounds like a good fic, may give it a try once it's fully revised. Although I rarely read pure Romance fics. In fact, I think I've only liked 2 that haven't also had the benefit of Adventure or Comedy to make it worth my while.
341824 En dashes are best dashes! (Except Rainbow Dashes.)
Salvation was a great read. I'm eager to see the unabridged version!
So, I'm just curious, how far back on the back-burner is the sequel to The Wind Thief? Or has it fallen off the back-burner altogether?
And now I can't wait! A new (to me) Cold in Gardez story
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But what about em dashes?! D:
Huh. Salvation was slowly climbing up my 'to read' list, and I had absolutely no idea it was by you. Fancy that! Now, however, I think I will wait until it comes out on this account before diving into it properly. Best of luck!
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It's actually, like, third in line at the moment. I have another comedy planned after Salvation, then the Wind Thief sequel.
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Be warned, it's labeled Mature for a reason.
GASP. Secret hidden profile, revealed!
Also hey, I did a thing that is a thing now. Look at that!
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images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110610214858/gyropedia/images/thumb/5/5b/7-rainbowdash.png/300px-7-rainbowdash.png
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Psh... Erotica doesn't bother me unless it's grimdark. I am actually more likely to have an aversion to your fic due to the "romance" tag than the "sex" one.
Sex tends to speak to us on a more raw and primal level so it can actually be an excellent tool to forge deeper rapport with characters.
It's one of the reasons that Romance Reports was so popular. The sex made everyone actually care about the characters more than if the story were non-explicit. I mean it had some pretty good emotional character interaction too, but the sex was the sticky glue that held it together and the reader's attention. Reading that story without the sex, or with nothing but the sex, both lessens it considerably.
This is the reason that I could no longer stand to read SleeplessBrony's stuff after "Like Fine Wine". The romance was completely overshadowed by my horror at the future canon of the versions of those characters I had become so attached to. (And was only so attached to because the story had let us become so intimate with them.) (That and the sex was freakishly intense and a massive turn of, but that part's subjective.)
This is also the reason that grimdark clop freaks people out far more than regular grimdark.
It's one of the reasons i am highly disappointed in the fandom's relegation of literary sex to "clop". Yes, Erotica is it's own genre, but how many novels have you read that did NOT contain some sex scenes? More with than without, I'd wager. But in this fandom it tends to be a very polar criteria: either it's implied only, or it's "clop".
Of course, many argue that while sex is natural and nothing bad, the sexualization of these characters specifically is so massive a departure from the source that any such content is is more inciting than similar themes applied to a more mature property. That while sex obviously exists in their world, the innocence of the presentation should be maintained, with only the "love" side of relationships portrayed and the "sex" side handled off screen.
Of course, Not all stories are limited to being show accurate, so not all stories should be expected to abide by show portrayal.
And I've always kept the philosophy that being attracted to "innocence" is not wrong, as long as that attraction is based on celebration of said innocence, not a desire to shatter it.
Thanks for the Salvation preview. I'm looking forward to it! That's not something I can often say about M-rated stories, but you (and scant few others) pull them off with uncommon finesse. I think it's because everything in your stories typically exists to serve the story, rather than the story existing to provide a platform for a few sex scenes or some gore. Amazing how often authors get that backward, whatever the story rating.
I'm thrilled to hear that a Wind Thief sequel is on the way. I love your adventures!
Since someone's already cracked open the door to asking about past incomplete works... is a conclusion to The First Light of Dawn in the cards?
This blog lead me to read all of (the current) Salvation last night, and the concept of a longer and more polished version sounds pretty good right about now.