Tales of the Sun · 4:50am May 25th, 2019
The Ministry of Image, a group of Russian bronies who print hardbacks of famous pony tales, is coming out with a great new anthology of stories about Celestia: "Tales of the Sun".
I know it's great because I know they have great taste, and I know they have great taste because they have a story by me!
They were going to print 3 stories by me. But I suggested they look at Georg's "In Celestia We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", and they did, and kicked out 2 of my stories to make room for it. This is why you should never be nice to people.
It costs $25, and has these stories:
- Brokenimage321 – Celestia XVII
- PhantomFox – Sunny Skies All Day Long
- Skywriter – Princess Celestia Hates Tea
- Prane – Dune Goddess
- Horizon – Administrative Angel
- GhostOfHeraclitus – Whom the Princesses Would Destroy...
- Miller Minus – Analemma
- Georg – In Celestia We Trust, All Others Pay Cash
- Bad Horse – Sisters
I have not read all of these, because I'm lame--Metaphorically! Put down that shotgun, Biscuit!--but I have read most of them, and those that I read were excellent.
But, shipping to the US is $20. I asked lezvion, a member of the Ministry of Image, about lowering shipping costs by shipping a box of pre-ordered books to Bronycon. I don't know if anything will come of that. PM lezvion if you're interested in that. Who knows; maybe they'll do it.
There's a companion book, also $25, for those of you who can't handle the Sun: Tales of the Moon. It has these stories:
- Tigerhorse – Her Soldiers, We
- Dragonjek – Music for the Mare in the Moon
- TheKissoftheVoid – The Nightmare Omen
- Chuckfinley – Luna, Princess of Space
- Pearple Prose – Tenebrae
- Cynewulf – Lunangrad
- Ponydora Prancypants – Que Sera, Sera
- Horizon – Thou Goddess & Quiet Boy and Moon Horse
Don't get confused and accidentally order that one, because it doesn't have a story by me in it.
Some of you may be wondering, as I did, "What's their racket? Does it really cost $25 to print up a bunch of fanfic stories that they got for free? Can I get in on this action and make a bundle?"
I looked into it. Yes. Yes, it really does. And that's not even counting what they spent on artwork and typesetting. No, you cannot make a bundle doing this [1]. (Also, it turns out "muscle in on the Russians" is a poor business plan.) So keep turning those tricks and strong-hoofing those shopkeepers.
[1] Unless that bundle is in the shipping charges, which seems unlikely; the Russian post office's lowest rate to ship 1 kg to the US is about $11.
It does sound like they did an amazing amount of work on both books.
Those Russian Bronies do some amazing stuff!
I don't know if it's the same group, but there's at least one more upcoming book from the Russians. They asked me for 2 of my stories, and I know Cold in Gardez has at least 1 in it (they wanted a foreword to each story, and the example they sent me was by him), but that's the extent of my knowledge about it.