New Chapter Up! · 11:31pm 6 days ago
Oof. That took way longer than I wanted.
I set a deadline for myself a few weeks ago, and that deadline was today, June 24th, Crystal Dew's birthday. Happy birthday, little apocalypse horse!
If the words don't feel like a punch to the face, a slap on the cheek, ice on your back, or fire licking at your heels, then your words are INSUFFICIENT.
Oof. That took way longer than I wanted.
I set a deadline for myself a few weeks ago, and that deadline was today, June 24th, Crystal Dew's birthday. Happy birthday, little apocalypse horse!
... and a change, inevitable as life.
Before I explain that, first, here's another excerpt from Chapter 12 of To Bellenast. I promise, I won't paste the entire chapter in blogs; I write long chapters. Sue me.
“Familiarity breeds comfort, so they say… though I reckon a fire helps more on that front. Where you from, girlie?”
“Neighvarro, for most of my life, but the mountains way east of here, more recently. Near the Celestial Coast.”
Clockwork2003 recently had a short-notice surgical procedure, the money to pay for which had to be diverted from a plushie fund, unfortunately.
... of things to come.
Without further ado:
A smattering of seconds, or perhaps several minutes, later, a fluffy, ash-colored figure appeared, and a haze of pink covered me, and the rushing in my ears faded enough for words to come through.
“Careful! She might be concussed.”
This has nothing to do with narrative voice, though I could talk about that for hours if I really wanted to.
No, this is inspired purely by the happenstance of my listening to a cover, by SquigglyDigg, of a song from Sonic Adventure 2, Crush 40's Live and Learn. Video here:
... to Crystal Dew, the little blue star of this pony show. Granted, I might finish typing this after midnight, so for clarity, her birthday is June 24th, or whatever your head-canon equivalent of that period of the year may be. I use our months because it's easy to interpret and, for narrative purposes, is interchangeable with whatever made-up names or conventions I might have chosen if I were so inclined. Midsummer or thereabouts.
Caution: Spoilers ahead for To Bellenast.
To use one of Shortskirtsandexplosions's words, though he may not have been the first to use it.
I'm talking about pacing, if the pattern wasn't obvious.
Let it be known.
Let it be known, as well, that this is actually the fastest progress I've made on To Bellenast thus far... and it's the shortest chapter, and it's barely under 10K words.
... okay, so, technically, the whole rocket didn't take Neil, Buzz, and Mike all the way back to Earth.
That was the Lunar Ascent Module, and then the Command Module.
It has been seven years since I first began to write, and almost five since I conceptualized this story and its characters as they are today. I meant to post this on Crystal's birthday, June 24th, just as with Chapter 5 in 2017, but it needed a little more work.