My Own Private Writeoff · 5:49pm Nov 1st, 2020
One of my traditions:
In recent years has been to sit outside our front gate with my laptop Hallowe'en night and write Ponyfic while giving out candy to whatever passing children notice me. Between the porch and the sidewalk, y'see, we've got this giant hedge with an easily missed little walkway leading from the sidewalk to to gate. Our porchlight's not all that bright, either, so most folks hit the neighbors' house, cross the street to the bright and pumpkin-bedecked places over there, then continue along that side following the lights.
So I get a lot of writing time in. I finished the whole first draft of "Epitaphs" that way as well as the rewrites of "Perfectly Imperfect" and "Miles ot Go," portions of "Shades of Hades," and the conclusion of "Piefall."
This year, though, with no "trick or treaters" at all in the offing, I decided to go back to the Writeoff contest from the begining of October, one I couldn't take part in 'cause I was wrapping up my non-Pony novel, and throw something together sitting upstairs in my bedroom with my laptop instead of outside by the gate. The prompt for the contest was "Divide and Conquer," and I ended up writing a bit of Fluttercord called "Strip Poker."
Because it was a minific contest, I wrote a 749 word version to comply with the rules there, then expanded it into the full-length version attached to this blogpost. So Happy Hallowe'en Yesterday, everyone! 
Mike
They sell these little orange paper sacks with pumpkin faces on them. We put a couple cups of birdseed in them and top with a voitile candle to make a trail leading up to the house. The candles burn out around quitting time anyway. Blow them out when done, gather the birdseed to put back in the big bag tomorrow and toss the dead candles into a bucket outside if you want to be cautious. The bags can be reused a couple of years if careful, voitle candles are about five cents each, and birdseed is birdseed. You can go nuts with about fifty of them for the price of a candy bar.
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The walkway in question:
I should mention, is maybe 10 feet long, probably closer to 8 feet, and I do put out candles and glowing jack-o-lanterns. I could probably do more to attract attention, but, well, that's never been something I enjoy doing in any aspect of my life...
Mike
5390281 Heh. After several conventions and much thought, I've come to the conclusion that MLP fanfiction authors are the oddest group of shy egomaniacs ever. We want the world to grovel at our feet and acknowledge our brilliance, but if the New York Times called *any* of us and asked to run a story on us, we'd hide under the bed until they went away. Um. Correction. We've got a couple authors who would and could do the interview. Bad Horse springs immediately to mind. Heck, I'd pay money to see that one.
5390420
Now that you mention it:
It was because of all the notice my last AugieDog story got that I decided to release this one at 10PM Pacific time on a Saturday night. That way, the story slid through the "New Stories" list while the majority of the site's users were asleep, so I haven't had to worry about the story garnering too much notice.
Mike
5390420
Me doing an NYT interview would be… Entertaining to say the least.
Also, to the tune of that one Depeche Mode song:
Your own.... personal.... writeoff
5390756 Oh, heck yes. Pay-per-view material.