New Story On The Way! · 4:34pm Feb 20th, 2021

Hello, readers of me. Tis be I: Me! To keep this short, I've managed to stave off writer's block and have been working to pump out a new story for the last month. The process started around the beginning of January, and since then I've slowly added more and more. There are only two chapters written in full at the moment with a third half-written. This is the best progress I've made in almost a year.

The story will be ready for publishing when the cover art is finished. The biggest problem with pushing this story out was for a while I couldn't find an artist to do the cover, because the one I normally rely on has stopped taking commissions. That said, an artist has been found, and the commission has begun. It will be ready within four weeks, which is plenty of time to prep the story for publishing. Until then, for those who follow me because they enjoy reading my stuff, have a snippet:

Two guards stood on either side of each door that led into the different wings. The ones that weren’t guarding doors, were busy shoveling snow into giant mounds. Metal stakes with little red flags attached to the top of them were inserted into the surface next to where there were holes.
Ocellus blinked, trying to register the scene. Silverstream walked up beside her, and without looking she could perfectly imagine the hippogriff opening her beak in brief shock before commenting on what they both saw. Before she could, however, a gruff voice erupted from behind them.
“Nothing to see here.” One of the guards caught their attention. The two guarding the dormhouse from the outside had noticed them eyeing the scene. “Move along.”
And they did, with an air of confusion. On their way to the east wing, Ocellus noticed something from across the courtyard.
Leaning toward Silverstream, she whispered, “The doors to the west wing are missing.”
Silverstream’s eyes widened. When they arrived at the east wing entrance, she managed to get a glimpse and realized that they were, in fact, “...Gone.” Silverstream muttered. She turned back to Ocellus. “They really are gone.”
“What do you think happened?” Ocellus asked.
After arriving in the cafeteria, grabbing their food, and sitting at their table, Smolder asked the same question. Silverstream gave both Ocellus and Smolder the credible answer of, “I don’t know.”
“What if there was a murder?” Smolder mused. Everyone at the table could tell that she was joking. Well, everyone except for Silverstream, who straightened up at the word “murder” and began to tap her claws against the table’s surface with a nervous rhythm.
“Unlikely,” Ocellus replied as she hovered her coffee close to herself, allowing the steam to gently caress her face. “Ponyville has some of the lowest crime rates in Equestria. It’s highly unlikely you’d get robbed in the middle of the night, much less murdered.”
Smolder crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Hey, there’s a first for everything.”
“Maybe some creatures from the Everfree, like, snuck onto school grounds?” Sandbar suggested, before going back to sipping his strawberry milk with a bendy straw.
Ocellus took a sip from her coffee. “Maybe. It makes sense that there would be a few guards for protection then, but a whole cavalry unit? This seems a bit excessive.”
“Yeah, they’re all over the school,” Smolder said. She flicked a claw between Ocellus and Silverstream. “You two meet the guards in the dormhouse?”
Ocellus gave her a tired nod, and Silverstream gave her an enthusiastic, “Yup!”
Smolder chuckled. “Heh, I gave those dickholes a difficult time.”
Ocellus levitated the fork that was next to her porridge and jabbed Smolder in the paw. “Ow!” Smolder yelled, despite the fact that the fork was plastic and wouldn’t puncture dragon scales. She pulled her paw back and rubbed it.
“Language,” Ocellus said sternly, eyes half-lidded. She took another sip of coffee.