For those fans of writing very short stories, check out Loganberry's Flashfic group and the monthly event. Entries for May are due in about 2 days, but that's plenty of time to write 150 words. They're great exercises in economy of words and keeping focused on what's truly essential to the story, the same reason I used to like the write-off association's minific rounds.
I had three judges tell me they really liked my scribblefest entry, and one said it came close to winning something. But no dice. Oh, well. At least it finally got me to write a premise I'd been holding onto for a couple years.
It only took me 5 1/2 years, but I finally had a story hit 1000 upvotes. Never thought I'd get there. Well, I have one other that'd probably have gotten there long ago, but most of its ratings got wiped out when there was a revamp of the voting system some years back. But it's nice to finally hit that milestone. This story has gotten an uptick in views over the last month, too, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. There are no new referrals showing up in the stats, it hasn't been added to any groups, it hasn't gotten a high-profile reading or review lately. I don't know. But I'll gladly take it.
So soon after I got a nice Christmas surprise with a wonderful reading of Dinkin' Donuts, Illya Leonov contacted me to say he'd collaborated with scribbler, Doodlejinx, IMShadow007, and Neighrator Pony to do a reading of Basking. Doodlejinx even did the cover art. I'm not well-versed in readings, but even to me, that's a star-studded cast. Great job, folks!
This was just great, from all the voice acting to the sound effects to the music, and I loved every minute of it.
Thanks to Neighrator Pony, Starry Flame, obabscribbler, SassMasterMickey, Illya Leonov, and Emogak for the voice talents, plus Novel-Idea designed the art (plus a version for the story cover art as well), and music by Kevin MacLeod and from Overwatch.
If you're interested, I participated in the Advanced Writing panel:
and the other...
Dammit. Some panels are rated for ages 18 and up only, and the dark & sad fic panel I was on got put in this category due to the themes and subject matter that possibly could have come up, though nothing actually did that'd need that kind of age restriction. They didn't post any panels in that category, though, and now that I think about it, I never noticed whether there was any recording equipment in that hall. A quick Google search turns up nothing, so I guess it's lost to time. 
I didn't attend all the writing panels, but the ones I didn't make it to were run by good people, so overall, I can say I recommend most of them. Not all. But most of them.
I guess this is the kind of thing I'd usually put in an author's note or something, but for some reason, I just didn't want to. So, anyway, obviously this new story is out. It means a lot to me, and I had a lot of fun writing it. It's been quite a while since I wrote something new instead of revising something old and unpublished. And seeing it finally go live feels... bad. I don't have that anticipation anymore. It'll get some attention for a few days, then float off down to obscurity. And it'll take a fair amount of work to put in enough back story to make original fiction out of it. Oh well.
Always such a fun time meeting old friends and new ones. It's a huge letdown when that alarm rings Monday morning and it's back to work. I think I attended more panels than I did last year, which is odd, since I also missed several that I might have attended but for doing other things, like touring the National Aquarium with Not_a_Hat and Axis of Rotation. Both are super-nice guys. And I got a long hug from Pav. But not long enough. My sweet Pav.
So, lots of people I'd never met before. Great to finally shake hands with horizon, since we've worked together in some capacity or another for quite a while. A couple of EqD staffers I'd never met before in Gameleon and TheIllustriousQ, and I even sat next to Q at the Orioles game, then somehow didn't recognize him the next day at the EqD panel. 
Almost two weeks ago, I contributed a guest column to Chris's One Man's Pony Ramblings blog in which I covered some of the pitfalls of several kinds of niche stories. It was the same material I wanted to present at the Advanced Writing Panel that Wanderer D headed up at Bronycon, and I didn't figure too many people attending the panel would have already seen it on the blog. But now that Bronycon is over, I'll go ahead and link to it. So if you've been curious about some of the finer points of the epistolary (letters, journals, diaries), dialogue-only, or open-ended story, have a look here.
