New Story Coming Soon-ish: Control Freak · 7:55am Feb 11th, 2017
Man, this thing has been in the works for years. It's also the story I've put the most effort into.
I first got the idea to do a corrupted Twilight story from Vimbert the Unimpressive, who was a connoisseur of the genre. His story "Twilight, Revised" is a classic, and he was a respected colleague at Equestria Daily for a long time. So I decided I wanted to try my hand at one, and he said he wanted to be my beta-reader. So I outlined it all into 7 chapters and laid out what happened in each scene. By the time I'd finished writing chapter 5, he started into it, liked chapter 1, loved chapter 2, and found chapter 3 dreadfully boring. Given that it continued on the same subject matter, he would have found chapter 5 dreadfully boring, too. And by then, I'd gotten GaPJaxie and Corejo to look at the first couple chapters as well, and they found the opening scene to be confusing and suggested I ease into it, while Vimbert argued for leaving it alone, since he likes getting right into the action, but he left the fandom shortly after. The story was done by then, after 9 months of writing, but it still needed work. So the reconstruction began.
I tore chapters 3 and 5 out, looked at each scene, and decided whether to keep them, scrap them, or stick them in other scenes as brief summaries. Then I had to insert all the "keep" ones back in, but sprinkled throughout the story this time, write new scenes to fill the chapters back out, and reorganize it all so it was balanced. Now a year and a half since starting the thing, I had a revised draft done. I'd long before decided not to publish any of a chapter story until it was completely written, so there it still sat, only 4 people having read any of it.
Now, it's an unfortunate truth that you get significantly more readers with nice cover art. After pouring more work into this story than any other, I wanted to give it every advantage I could. And it so happened that not long before, I'd placed high enough in the More Most Dangerous Game contest (in early 2015!!) to win an art commission. The solution dropped right in my lap! I'd use the prize to get cover art for "Control Freak" (previously, I'd settled for show screencaps, asking permission to use stuff I found on DA, or in rare cases, drawing something myself).
The artist kept making apologies and putting me off. In the meantime, I had PresentPerfect do a final read-through, and I made some last changes based on his feedback, including killing the super-secret Vimbert alternate ending. But I kept waiting on the art. And waiting. A year and a half later, still no art. The crappy thing is that with readership in general on the decline, I probably would have gotten more views if I'd just published it with stock art two years ago instead of doing so with custom art now. But in for a penny, in for a pound, huh? This is how long all this stuff has been going on. I had to edit parts of the story to account for the fact that Shining Armor and Cadence had a kid. I had to edit parts of the story to account for the fact that Twilight no longer lives in the tree. I had to edit parts to account for the fact that she'd become an alicorn.
I gave up on the artist and tracked down another who did nice-looking art and worked for cheap. But when she hadn't replied to my request for a commission in 2 months, I gave up on her as well. Then Ruirik saved my bacon. He does live art streams on Picarto, has a patreon, does commissions... so go support him, folks!
My magnum opus, so it's all downhill from here. No way I'll write something of this scale again before the fandom dries up. I'm actually going to post the first two chapters together, because I don't think chapter 1 alone gives a good enough picture of where the story's going. So here will be the posting schedule:
Week 1:
Chapter 1: Dream a Little Dream
Chapter 2: Breaking Point
Week 2:
Chapter 3: Immovable
Week 3:
Chapter 4: Assumption of Guilt
(I love the double meaning of that title)
Week 4:
Chapter 5:
Recesses of the Mind
Week 5:
Chapter 6: Schism
Week 6:
Chapter 7: More Than the Sum of Her Parts
The whole thing runs about 50k words by GDocs count, so somewhat more than that by FiMFiction's count. I hope Vimbert reads it.
Then I shall look forward to it.
Color me deeply intrigued.
All right! :D It's about time!
I so hope this does well.
Woo!
I am eagerly awaiting it!
Yay! I remember you lamenting the cover art situation last year; I'm glad the story is finally getting published… but not as glad as you are, I'm sure
Man, Pascoite, that's crazy. Well, it's a happy occassion! No matter the outcome. Strange to think how things begin and end. Who could've known?
I can't wait to read it.
Ah true. If only more people realized this, there would be less misfortune.
And don't forget the importance of the synopses! That alone sometimes spells life or death. Why not test it out on some trusted friends, including some who haven't been prereaders?
Can't wait to read it!
I did.