State of the Horizon: April/May 2019 · 6:13pm Jun 1st, 2019
Boy, funny how two months can go by in a blink. Time for a double-sized project update!
First, a shout-out to Hopeling -- who's doing MLP fanfic reviews over on tumblr, which I didn't think was a thing -- for their positive review of You Remind Me Of You. Unrelatedly, also a reminder that in just a few hours, the writing portion of this weekend's Writeoff Association competition just began: you've got 24 hours to write a minific based on one or more pictures submitted to the prompt "Not The Whole Truth". A great way to get your muse out of a rut, or to get fantastic community feedback from your fellow authors on your first draft!
Meanwhile, just over the horizon:
April
Holy heck, I pulled nicely out of the March slump! Along with some light project progress, I managed to finish one story, publish a second, and end a third.
The last of those is somewhat bittersweet. My Harshwhinnial, Luther Blissett's magnus opus, has now been marked Complete in the wake of the metafictional author's death (omba horison, spoliers!!!one). A final chapter has been added. Closure has been achieved. And I can pretty confidently say that I will never write anything to equal it.
In contrast, Double Jeopardy is an ascended crackfic made actually good. It started life as a Writeoff minific medalist and got expanded for FIMFic publication (and also because I wanted it for Songs of the Sisters, my Bronycon short-story collection). It's a punchy little story about Chrysalis, dreams, and the nature of power. It's also my first story published here since March 2018, and it's a good feeling to break that streak.
It's not, however, the first new story I finished this year! Devil May Care -- the sequel to Administrative Angel which will debut in August in Songs of the Sisters -- has now been run through prereaders, lovingly massaged, and is in its final form!
Six chapters ... 16,000 words ... and one giant heap of chaos for two non-royal sisters. Celestia and Luna become reluctant heroes when Discord accidentally teams up with Harmony to destroy the human world. It's very different in tone and focus from the first story, but also very much a sequel, both in character and spirit. I'm my own worst critic, and I'm super hyped with how it turned out.
May
... Boy, it's a good thing April was so productive, because that's how I've been feeling all month.
I started a new full-time remote job on May 6, which involved me packing up and leaving home for three weeks to do intense on-site training. Intense enough that I basically accomplished nothing but sleep in my off hours, despite being alone in a hotel room with my writing laptop. Part of that, admittedly, was the fact that I was also still working part-time at my old job -- today was my last day there, and now I'm done bouncing back and forth.
The good news is that I've been home for about a week, and I've started settling back into my usual groove (albeit with much less free time than I used to have, since I'm now back to working 5 days a week instead of 3). I got a writing day and a few evenings in on TEFL, and I'm getting things like Bronycon planning and this blog post knocked out, and I'm mostly caught up on the adulting I skipped while away from home.
The bad news is that that was a bad month to lose. I'm gonna be on a damn tight deadline to make the book happen; I can't afford to do pretty much anything else with my free time till that's wrapped.
I'll drop another update this week about the book once I've had a chance to consult with the publisher and the artist.
And here's the skinny on the standing project list:
1. The Bronycon book project
I talked about Songs of the Sisters a bit above, and I'll give a supplemental update later.
2. Devil May Care
Done! 
(As noted above.)
3. Time Enough For Love
The month of May brought it from 27.5k to 30k. I've outlined the scenes I'm writing next, and I have a basically complete list of the things I want to add before calling it done. I think the last set of additions finally fixed the last thing that bugged me about the character arc. I'll be looking for prereaders once I make another few days' worth of progress!
4. Hard Reset 2
Nothing to report since last update.
5. Back When Tigers Used To Smoke
Nothing to report since last update.
Looking forward to the daily routine getting more evened out so that I can push harder on what needs to be finished by summertime.
Congrats on the new job (and on freedom from the old one)!
Now back into the word mines with you.
FUCK I WAS GOING TO ENTER ART INTO THE WRITEOFF AND I ACTUALLY CAUGHT IT AT THE RIGHT TIME FOR ONCE AND THEN I ACCIDENTALLY FELL ASLEEP AAAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH
Sorry; I’m just frustrated; I had some great art ideas.
You're goddamn right you won't. :B
Advancing on all fronts! (Nearly.) Looking forward to all of the above!
You're a madman.
5067943 I prefer to think of that story as a floating point number. Indeed, nothing will ever equal it.
5068199 5067943
"Often surpassed, but never equaled!"
5067953
I worked for a small rural ISP for the last thirteen years. It was basically a second family. The reason I got a new job is we just closed down. I couldn't just quit -- I had to help with the transition. As the system administrator, in a lot of cases I was the only one who immediately knew how everything worked.
woo! good luck with all your projects!
Sounds like progress, RL and otherwise.
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Losing a sysadmin can be an interesting ride… Especially when, two days later, everyone discovers some deathly important file or program was actually stored in their (now-deleted) home directory. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. No sir…
Good luck with your projects and new job! I'm in the midst of a couple time-crunches myself, the bookstore being one of them…