Year in Review: 2016 - Retrospectives, Revelations, Appearances & Delays

(Note: I should have fixed the issues with the images. It looked like imgbox.com went down for a bit, so I swapped them all to PhotoBucket. If you see issues, let me know!)

Howdy folks!

You know, originally, this was just going to be about some cool stuff, but I realized… it’s New Year’s, isn’t it? It’s funny, I’ve been so focused on Gardens of Equestria’s upcoming panel at Pacific PonyCon and SunLight Sliders that it didn’t really register with me.

So, apparently, the fashionable thing to do is to actually do a year-in-review, eh? I think that can be arranged.

First and foremost, we all know the bad that happened this year. We’ve seen the deaths, we’ve seen the chaos, we’ve seen the confusion and the loss. I’ve had a lot of personal hits as well. Didn’t get a promotion I needed. Found out rent was increasing. Finances got really tight. Lost some really important people on the Manehattan Project--important to the project, but also very important to me personally. But I don’t like to dwell on such things. I like to look on the more positive side.

Instead, let’s talk about the cool stuff.

Well, The Manehattan Project celebrated its one-year anniversary on May 5, 2016! Now granted, that’s about six months after I had first intended to launch the damn game (first rule of independent volunteer game development: deadlines laugh at you ), but it was a still a big deal. We got some epic new music, a new music video and a whole lot more.

We also finally finished putting up the “Fallout: Equestria (The Manehattan Edition) Audiobook” on YouTube. Corvus and I worked our flanks and tails off to finish that project. I was so happy to have it done. I also finished the Fallout: Equestria Project Horizons EPUB Project.

Shortly before that though… something crazy happened.

On April 16, 2016, I made a decision to actually make this a real FimFiction account and not just another PR arm of The Manehattan Project. I took up the name Novel Idea with a whole new passion. I started out originally with some cover artwork for some of my favorite stories (all of them unsolicited).

Then I moved onto these weird commentary/review/emotional retrospective-thingys until I finally realized I was simply doing followups. I also got to experience some of the greatest stories on FimFiction and in some cases, some of the best stories I’ve ever read, hooves (and hands)-down. I’ve yammered about them non-stop. You don’t need to hear all about them again. If you do, go here.

Some incredible people joined The Manehattan Project, people like Ebon Quill (who would go from Worldbuilding Writer to practically my right hand/hoof, Vocal Director and one of my most trusted personal editors) and Little Tinker (Who somehow handles GoE stuff in addition to being the sole reason Poniverse isn’t a melted hunk of slag (Edit: I’ve been informed that this isn’t true, but I’m going to believe it anyway, because it’s funnier)).

Then, in July, I released a little story called The Application of Unified Harmony Magics. Born from a combination of inspiration from The Albinocorn’s Sunset of Time, my own ongoing story project called Wavelength Theorems (I can’t actually remember the original name at the moment!) and a bunch of other things, to my shock, this actually received quite a bit of attention.

The next month, the somewhat quieter Grading on a Bell Curve came out, still to very positive reviews. Afterwards, the sequel to Applications, Princess Celestia: A Brief History, came out in September (and I was so happy I could put a Comedy tag on that one).

Then the bombshell came. The Cloudsdale Report hit your Feeds and my notification system promptly exploded. The story skyrocketed to over 6,000 views in 48 hours and ended up in the Featured Box for several days with a Hot Tag on it. It was so popular, it drove all three of my other stories into the Popular Stories list!

I still don’t know what happened there.

The Alchemy of Chemistry came out during the month of November as I worked my tail off to smash my best record for National Novel Writing Month, making it Win #8, not only clearing my goal on Wavelength Theorems and finishing Act II, but also finishing the first draft of How Not To Use Your Royal Prerogative (I can actually spell the word now, believe it or not).

I even released my first short story in years, Tactics of Snowbound Unicorns and that got featured on Equestria Daily on Christmas Eve! In fact, all of my stories have been featured there!

Oh yeah, I also wrote the first draft of Sparks & Bards of the Badlands.

I also organized the Equestria Daily Sunset Shimmer Day FanFiction most popular story list. And for some crazy reason, organized and launched SunLight Sliders starting today!

I also developed great friendships on here. I had a ton of fun doing RadiantBeam’s various story covers, doing almost all of Tchernobog’s covers, as well as the cover for Long Road of Friendship and every one of Oroboro’s Sunset Shipping Project story covers. In total, there are over fifty stories on FimFiction using my cover designs, many of them featured and/or followed by a heck of a lot of people. In total, I’ve done over 220 covers for various FimFiction stories and I’ve even done some special work for YouTube projects and more!

Somehow, along the line, I got over 350 followers, too. Now, all I need is another 1,500 or so and I’ll pass both Albinocorn and Tchernobog. So get cracking!

"Just kidding! I'm so not going to do that."

So, it’s been an eventful year. And this coming year, I will be attending at least three cons, maybe four. First, of course, Pacific PonyCon. Then some of my friends in the Equestria Daily Contributor Chat lost their minds and decided to help me get up to Babscon. I’ll also be doing EQLA 2017 (because that’s easy to get to!) and I might also be doing Everfree Northwest.

...honestly, I have no idea what’s going on in my life. I’m just holding on and trying to go with it.

Celebrated eleven years of being married and the third birthday of the littlest filly and the sixth birthday of the big filly.

2016 was one heck of a year… and 2017 going to be an even crazier year.

So let’s get this year off started with more madness!

First and foremost, I want to make sure that every single one of you is aware of the epic event happening right now. A coalition of twenty-five authors have joined together to create the first-ever Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle collaboration story, SunLight Sliders. And you’ll get to see it grow and develop before your very eyes until the middle of March!

This story features legends like Oroboro (the only author I know to get a hat trick on the FimFiction Feature Box of three stories on there at the same time) and Albinocorn (only the definitive author of Sunset Shimmer fanfiction) to people who are brand-new to the craft. But wait, there’s more! An old master is coming out just for this special event: Tchernobog, the author of the smash hit short story, Mood Wings and one of the most rabid AppleDashers in the multiverse. He was the one who organized At The Drop Of A Hat, the inspiration for this project.

You’ll want to stay tuned to that thread. Because every three days, there will be a new chapter in this epic story across time and space. I’m starting us out today, January 1, 2017 and my first chapter is due by the end of the 3rd. However, even better is the word count limit: authors can only do 1,500 words. So this will officially be the shortest piece of fiction you’ve ever read from me.

So saddle up! We’re going for one hell of a ride!

Second, as many of you know, besides being this crazy author person, I also am Project Lead for The Manehattan Project, currently in development of the DLC-like, story-driven experience “Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm” for Fallout: New Vegas. Now, what Project Lead actually means is… just about everything. I’ve done art, modeling, scripting, quest design, story writing (over 80,000 words of dialogue alone), management, HR, PR, website design (ayep, I did that entire website by my lonesome), cinematics and more.

This week, I’ve done just about all of that and then some. Created a brand-new cinematic. Worked out scripting spawning mechanics. Created OnDeath scripts to cause enemies to explode in a ball of plasma. Did combat balance. Designed a massive new surprise. Wordsmithed dialogue lines. But it was all for a reason.

This coming weekend, we’re going to be having a live demo of “Gardens of Equestria: This Coming Storm” at Pacific PonyCon 2017. And it’s not just combat. I’ll actually be playing the first part of GoE: “Prologue: The Watcher.” No, folks. This won’t be scripted. You’ll get to hear our epic voice acting in addition the world premiere of the opening cinematic for the game.

If you haven’t bought tickets yet and you can make it down to San Diego this weekend, go buy them! And if you’re going anyway, please stop by to say hi! I’ve love to meet anyone in person!

Finally, that leads us to the last bit for today. I know that originally I was going to launch Bards of the Badlands today. I’m sorry, but I just didn’t have the bandwidth to work on it during my vacation between Christmas and New Year’s. From Monday on, I was literally spending 8-10 hours on Gardens of Equestria to make sure it was ready for the live demo this weekend. I’ll likely be doing that until the actual convention, so I simply won’t have the time to have it done by next week either (plus Ebon Quill is actually one of the other members of GoE joining me at the panel and I’ve been cracking the whip over the entire Tech Team, which includes the beleaguered Little Tinker).

So currently, I’m aiming for the middle of January as a launch date for Book 2 in the Origins Arc. I am happy to report that I’m finally making some progress on A Study on Chaos Theory, the first full book set in the Infatuations and Other Lies Arc (I was seriously stuck for a long while). I’m not quite sure when How Not To Use Your Royal Prerogative is going to come out. It should be about a month after Bards though.

Interesting note: Did you know that I’ve consistently launched a story on the 19th-22nd of every month since July? I can’t believe it’s been that many stories too.

So hopefully, you’ll forgive a little delay, but I hope you know that it’ll be worth the wait. While I do have a draft of Bards (I think I’m on the eighth), I want this to be done right. Remember, “Do it right and do it with style.”

So, I’d like to give another special shoutout this week for the indomitable Manehattan Project, specifically Ebon Quill (who’s been utterly invaluable and I would have pulled out all my hair long ago without him), Little Tinker (who stepped up when I needed him the most to take charge of dialogue and scripting) and Quantum State (who also stepped up and was willing to make some hard calls for the good of the project).

But more than anything, to Painted Heart. Without her… I couldn’t do any of this. I simply don’t have the words to express how much she’s done. I’ve said that you owe the Wavelengths Editing Team more than you know… you owe Painted Heart even more than that. Without her, you would have never seen a single story.

Yeah, she’s that amazing.

Anyway folks, that’s it for this week. I’ll have a special GoE post this Thursday with the unveiling of something really cool you’ll get to see before the convention.

I’ll see you next time!

Comments

[Seraphem]

Wow... that is a lot...... And almsot all stuff I either love... or didn't know about but now very interested in.

First off anything FoE related... SO MUCH YES!!!!!!. As I've said love your stories, especially after Cloudsdale and the revelation there. So looking forward to more. And loving the idea of this Sunlight Sliders thing.. only other real 'co-lab' works I've read are the insane Pony Authro stuff, but that's far more bizarre and done to make the most absurd story they can from the ideas. Since no one sees anything but the section before them when writing their own.

Also, hey.. I know the name rang a bell, it was with Oroboro's Sunset Shipping project, yeah remember him being excited about getting you do the art.. and it was awesome. So were the stories (Yay getting to be a pre-reader and see them early!) As to Albinocorn.... have not read anything of.....*checks page* Oh I have read one of his, the 'Sunset gets turned into a Vampire' story, it was pretty good, so yeah Sunset of Time is now on my read Later list and getting downloaded to my kindle next time I move fics over. Still I'd have to Give "Definitive Sunset author" to Oro.... damn was his stuff SO damn good.

So that was a lot of info... and a lot fo great stuff to check out now, thanks.

[Czar_Yoshi]

It's awesome to see someone actually having good things to talk about from 2016. Good luck balancing all those projects, and may you not lose your momentum!

[journcy]

Honestly, man, you're such an inspiration. The goals you've set for yourself regarding your hobby projects and the accomplishments you've made towards achieving those goals are basically what I want to strive for in my own life...though heaven knows if I'll ever even come close.

Anyway, super jazzed to see the new Wavelengths stuff up and coming--I'll gladly wait, you do masterful work--and I'm beginning to feel like The Manehattan Project is what's going to finally get me playing F:NV.

[Lurks-no-More]

So... If, as a big big fan of Sunset Shimmer, I wanted to greedily devour read your stories, should I do so in the publication order, or according to the internal chronology? Or does it matter either way?

[Amber Spark]

4367284 I recommend chronological, but please leave comments on how you enjoyed it! Most of my readers ended up starting with Applications, but I think it's a better progression to go by time.

[Silver Inkwell]

I literally have no idea what The Manehattan Project is (though I think it has been around 1 year apparently?)

[Silver Inkwell]

Also the front/ first image of Sunset Shimmer is just too sexy and tantalizing, why do you insist on torturing me?
Why is my life pain and joy?

[Amber Spark]

4388429 http://gardensofequestria.com/ is the best place to find out all about it.