Review and Preview 2023/2024

Dear Readers of weird stuff on the internet,

I hope that this, my latest Review and Preview, finds you well. If I wanted to sum up 2023, this would be the result: 26066

That is the combined word count of all literary texts I have published on this site this year, distributed as follows:

• One part of Ponygirl Vet: 1,319
• Four doses of Pony Boot Camp, including Part LX for the story’s 10^th anniversary: 14,456
• Two chapters of Skeleton Crew: 10,291

That number makes for a decent novella, but I wished it would have been spread more evenly. Keen eyes may spot that there is no new chapter of Æquinoctium, nor a concluded short story.

Review and Preview 2022/2023

It’s not looking good, guys, it does not look good…

As some of you might already have realised, the year is about to end, which calls for another highly informative review/preview routine. And especially with the output on my multi-part stories I am not happy:

• Two new parts of Pony Boot Camp (gotta pump those numbers up!)
• Zero new parts of Æquinoctium (I don’t even know what to say.)

The tragedy here lies within the fact that at least three more parts of PBC are drafted out, and that for many moons I am 1,600 words deep into Chapter IX of Æquinoctium. I can only point at time as the limiting factor.

Review and Preview 2021/2022

2021 is (almost) dead – long live 2022! I have a great feeling about the upcoming year, although many state that it can’t possibly get better than the closing one. In any case it’s time again for the inevitable review/preview dance.

2021 – What’s the damage?

• Four new parts of Pony Boot Camp

I received quite a positive feedback on pushing the escape story arc in PBC. Totally unexpected with my writing style, the word count went through the roof again, therefore Seventeen’s search for greener pastures is definitively something to be carried over into the next year. As for isolated stories, we are looking at:

Review and Preview 2020/2021

It may be a tad early for my annual R&P, but I like to get it out of the way before everybody else starts their own laments – and laments will come!

There’s no nice way to say it. The clusterfuck of our Lord 2020 had been a low-blow chapter-wise:

• Only two new parts of Pony Boot Camp (sorry for that!), and Chapter VI of Æquinoctium (not sorry for that!)

Looking at the numbers for complete stories, we find ourselves with:

Life Imitates Art

Posted on 10th May 2020

https://venomstories.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/aequinoctium-chapter-four-part-3/

Weirdly enough, the initial aspect Denise’s mind took from the scene before her was how loud a silenced gun actually was. In contrast, R’s presence didn’t qualify as a surprise any more. As that nutcase ex machina was crouching on the squat member, strangling him out with a knee to his neck whilst keeping her gun trained at the second Rapid Responder, Denise could glimpse the mean-looking sniper rifle with its black skeleton buttstock strapped to R’s back.

C. F. S.

Greetings, my plentiful readership!

As you can already tell, I am way behind my writing schedule. In parts – and here only indirectly – this is attributed to COVID-19. With kindergartens and schools closed, some colleagues of mine have to stay with their hell spawn fledglings, and priorities have to be set. Since I am neither a virologist nor an epidemiologist, I have no business with commenting on how to behave and what to avoid in the current situation. Yet I cannot help but notice how certain individuals and organisations are attempting to use the outbreak‘s slipstream to push their own agendas (curfews to fight the climate change, just to name a random one).

So the best strategy for this crisis and everything which may come afterwards once again boils down to C. F. S.

Common Fucking Sense.

Review and Preview 2019/2020

Greetings, fellow survivors of 2019!

With Twenty-twenty upon us, things again are bound to get a bit nostalgic. And so, as always, let us have a look at almost-last year’s loot:

• Four new parts of Pony Boot Camp

Not an impressively high number as such, but I’m content as this quartette not only closed the Gymkhana story arc, but also opened a worthy follow-up.

Review and Preview 2018/2019

Anybody else happy that 2018 is almost over?

It presented itself somewhat troublesome, and it shows in my story output — two additional parts for Pony Boot Camp, one (!) for Æquinoctium, and two stand-alone stories.

I am saddened that I didn’t come up with anything for Christmas (especially anything with ponies). My writing has been delayed and derailed to much higher degrees than I had experienced in the past. It is this that keeps me away from making any far-reaching prophecies.

To the Next Five Years!

Today is my fifth anniversary on Word Press – reason enough to take a stroll down Nostalgia Street. (Actually, the anniversary was yesterday, but one has to consider the… uhm… the leap year, right, the leap year – or just learn how to read the bloody calendar!)

It had never been my intention to create a blog as such, but I still landed at WP because of its popularity and its “low-threshold-ness”. What I had in mind was to create a base camp for my stories, from where they could travel the vastness of the Internet.

The 100th Post

Actually, this is the 101st post I’ve created on this site. The 100th was The Writer, kind of fitting. Now, 100 posts in almost five years doesn’t sound much, but the overwhelming majority of them are short stories or story chapters, a fact which puts the numbers in perspective.

And I already know how to celebrate this milestone — with post no. 102, of course!