(Hi! If you're not sure why you're reading this post, it's because you favorited No Regrets.)

Yesterday, my latest story went live: The Lotus Eaters, vignettes about the various aftermaths of ponies exploring a life without their greatest regret. If this sounds familiar, then you've read No Regrets and recognize the premise. (If you haven't, go do it. Lotus Eaters unfortunately does spoil the central mystery of that story, but in the words of one of my prereaders, "the best parts of No Regrets had nothing to do with the machine.")

Indeed, The Lotus Eaters is a companion piece to No Regrets -- different characters and a different focus, but the same fundamental plot device and similar themes. If you liked one, you should like the other.

(No Regrets fans can skip the rest; it's author's notes for a story you haven't read yet. Thanks for your time!)

Actually, I've got a regret of my own I'd love to go back and erase: I submitted the story right before leaving my computer for the day, in anticipation of it taking a while to churn through moderation. The site admins greenlit it within two hours, which leaves me in the awkward position of being disappointed because they're too good at their jobs. (*shakes fist*)

I'd been expecting to write up my author's notes during the downtime and have them in as story comments before any readers arrived. With that plan shot, I'm going to drop them here.

If you haven't read TLE yet, go do that first: it's short. Spoilers ahoy!

General Note:
It's remarkable how polarizing this set of stories has been. They're all so direct, and so different. All four chapters got chosen as both most favorite and least favorite by at least one of my five pre-publication readers.

Which one did you like best? Did any fall flat? I'd love to hear in comments.

Applejack:
The first version of this built up to the bare revelation of AJ's trip being about her father's death. That tested well with my readers who aren't big into fanfic, but apparently that scenario's enough of a chestnut to not carry much weight with heavier readers. I expanded the vignette into its current form to give it more depth -- which made it a better scene, I think, but by turning bittersweet also upset the delicate mood balance of the piece as a whole. If I do add more to TLE, it will most likely be in an effort to rebalance that scope of emotions.

Scootaloo:
Not much to say, except that with the lead tale taking a turn for the morbid, the twist of the knife here seems much more cruel.

I've written a number of 250-word precision short stories, but this is the first time I've clocked a complete scene in 200. I'm surprised at how short this wanted to be. 250 words and I would have been belaboring the point.

Whooves:
Another of my other pre-publication goals was to take another editing pass and bring this under 1,000 words. This one's a more self-indulgent chapter, in that I let it meander through the alternate machine realities after I've made my point about their repetition. The other vignettes were exercises in brevity; this one felt like I had to tell a more thorough story in order to explain the final line.

It also got the most mixed reaction from readers. (Who knew Doctor Whooves had such a hatedom?) The delta notation (∆) was an experiment based on complaints that the first section of the story was confusing. Nevertheless, this is my own favorite chapter of the four.

I wanted to lead with it (and properly introduce the machine via their pitch), but: 1) I was afraid the Whooves hate would drive off readers; and 2) I had to put my one unambiguously happy story later in the sequence as a mood lifter.

Trixie:
This vignette was the original inspiration for TLE. The primary reason the other three exist is that I had to build up a solid expectation of "stories about the aftermath of the machine" just so I could subvert my own premise. I am a bad pony.

It lost a full 25% of its word count in editing. (Contents may settle during shipping.) It's a great example of that aphorism, "a story is finished not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away."