Obligatory 2019 Blog Post · 4:43am Jan 2nd, 2019

Welcome to ~~Nightvale~~2019!

2019 is upon us like a rushing freight train made of bricks!

We’ll start with a look back. How many of y’all remember this?

Building a box-fort was no real effort, and it tucked neatly into a corner of the attic, almost behind a diagonal support on one side, with the chimney stones on the other. I used my pocketknife to enlarge a knothole on one of the boxes—that actually took longer than I thought it would. All the while, I was wondering if I wasinsane.

--The Haunting

“Maybe.” She leaned a little bit closer to him. “How's Mom?”
“Grumpy. She says that the foal's kicking, and she blames Dad, 'cause he wouldn't let her go out on the ice.”
“She got grumpy before she had you, too.” Winter Berry nuzzled his mane again. “Come on, let's get cleaned up for dinner, okay?”

--Spring Comes to Snow Hill

“It’s a centaur,” Rarity said, a tone of surprise in her voice.
“At least the panicked mob got something right,” Twilight muttered.

--Centorea Shianus in Equestria

There were no noble words to be spoken. Not for her—she would go wherever valiant ponies went, he supposed, regardless of what he did or did not say.

--unpublished*

She rummaged around in her saddlebags for a chocolate biscuit and nibbled on that while she considered the terrain in front of her. Now she'd gotten high enough up that the snow was covering everything it could stick to, and she knew as she got further aloft, it would be thick enough to hide crevasses, which was another thing she'd have to watch out for.

--Climb Every Mountain

When he was only fetlock-deep in the water, he shook himself off as well as he could, then rejoined his partner on the beach.
“There'snothingaround here,” he said. “I haven't smelled anything too unfamiliar.”
“Me neither. At least the briefing said what humans smell like, but I wish they could have given us a fresh human artifact to smell, so we'd be sure.”

--Onto the Pony Planet

Rainbow grinned. “So you're saying that rushing in without thinking is a smart thing to do?”
Twilight’s ears flattened. “Sometimes boldness succeeds where caution fails,” she admitted.

--unpublished**

With a twist of the key, the big Speedwell Ironworks straight 8 rumbled to life.

--Drive

That left him with his second option. Riskier, but if it worked, victory would be complete.
“Get me a pegasus messenger,” he barked. “I have new orders!”
“New orders!” The shout went around the camp, and moments later a young pegasus swooped in for a landing.

--No Time for Caution

“I’m out of paint.” Splish Splash shook her hoof, rattling the ball in the empty can. “Or else this thing’s broken again.” She pointed the nozzle back down towards the roof and pressed down; nothing came out except for a gentle hiss of propellant.
“I’ve still got a bunch left.” Heavy shifted his withers, sliding the chainsaw as much out of the way as he could. One of the straps had gotten snagged and had broken, and now it slid around his body. It liked to settle against his foreleg, which wasn’t so bad when he was flying, but it got in his way when he tried to land.

--unpublished***

I published seven out of ten of my works in progress from last January. That’s not spectacular, not setting the world on fire, but it’s not nothing, either. And of course, there were a few stories that didn’t make that list, since they weren’t in progress last new year. Stories like Fence Post or Turnpike or Sunbeam.
______________________________________________________________
*One of my pre-readers and I spoke at length about this one at Bronycon, but thus far I haven’t had time to get back to it.
**This has the distinction of being the longest story to sit in the hopper; it was first conceived in 2012.
***This one’s got the honor of being the longest unpublished story I’ve got.

In fact, I published 27 new stories in 2018, and updated a few as well. I could really dig through and tell you how many total updates there were, but I’m feeling lazy and so I won’t. If anyone wants to comment below with the total number of stories and updates, feel free.

Anyway, in terms of stories published, I certainly had a good year; likewise, I did a fair number of blog posts on various subjects. Started a new group that’s mostly been ignored; I probably could have pushed on that harder, but didn’t.

Got more active on Discord, at least for a while. Incidentally, somebody or several somebodies have invited me to join their Discord groups over the last year, and I didn’t, largely because I don’t remember who. So you can hit me up, and I might join your server . . . or I might not, because free time is precious to me, and I’ll be honest, I’ve largely been off Discord for the last month because of everything piling on over the holiday season.

Still, I’d say that in terms of ponyfic, 2018 was a decent year.

Source

I also should note that I did participate in Jinglemas 2018, although I haven’t had time to get my entry up on my own account. Should be doing that this week . . . just gotta get cover art and gin up a blog post, mostly. I probably could have done that tonight instead of writing a blog, but that’s Future Admiral Biscuit’s problem.

To cut the suspense, though, my entry was for Fan of Most Everything, and besides what he asked for, it also included an obligatory Magic reference and Derpy. It’s also the second time I’ve done a Jinglemas story for him; the first was Dinky’s First Hearth’s Warming.

What’s 2019 gonna bring? Well, I don’t know.

Hopefully, I’ll get those stories from 2018 finished and published. A couple of them were supposed to have been published in December, along with one for Cold in Gardez, but those just didn’t get done. December was also supposed to bring a new chapter for OPP, but as is obvious, that didn’t happen.

Part of the reason was that our new guy quit at work. I don’t remember if I told y’all that, but he did, and as we adjusted to the lack of the new guy, we worked a lot of overtime, and of course that cut into my writing time rather substantially. In the end, it all worked out; we set a new record for the year, and our previous record was set with two mechanics instead of only one (me).*

I do have some other stories in the hopper, and I think I’d be remiss to not include little teasers for y’all. One’s gonna be a gimme; that’s from the next chapter of The Haunting, which should be published today or tomorrow. And, just for giggles (and to give me a sense of accomplishment when I do publish it), I’ll include a snippet from my Jinglemas 2018 fic.

Plus, there’s that one for Gardez.

So here we go:

There were spring hooks on the ends of her chains, essentially really simple carabiners. Interestingly, the latch could open either way, which was probably better for ponies.
“Do you want me to help push?”
She shook her head. “That will make it want to tip forward, and dig the front of the skids into the ground. If you can pull up, that would help.”

We both ordered a glass of wine.
She drank hers with a straw. I was glad we weren’t at a fancy restaurant; any sommelier would have tossed her out on her rump if he’d seen that. I thought it was adorable.

I could have moved to my armchair; that would have been less intimate, but it wasn’t nearly as cozy.

Applejack’s expression finally got so smug, it slipped off. Fortunately, she was wearing a slightly smaller smug look under the first.

“Do you?”
“I don’t think so. You were with me at the Andravidan Temple; did I look like I was enjoying being tied up?”
“Yeah, actually. You were kind of moaning.”
“I was not.”
“Squirming around on your seat.”
“That was to keep the ropes from being too tight. I wasn’t—ugh.”

So grab hold, y’all.

Derpibooru because Tumblr

The ride never ends.

Report Admiral Biscuit · 702 views · #2019 #2018 #teases #whatever tags I used last year and am too lazy to look up again #happy new year #the ride never ends.

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Obligatory 2019 Blog Post · 4:43am Jan 2nd, 2019

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Story Notes: Unity 2 (part 2)

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March Music Monday 7 (bonus 3!)

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March Music Monday 6 (bonus 2!)

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Missing: Hobo Shoestring