Dear Readers (most especially the ones who get the above reference unprompted):

Slightly over a week since Everfree Northwest 2023, so it still counts, right? Anyway.

Everfree Northwest didn't quite go the way I planned. But it never does. And that's the fuf fun of it.

August was to be my first real no-kidding vacation since January for a lot of weird IRL reasons. The first part was a week long family reunion, then a one-day turnaround at home (you try explaining a suitcase of pony plushies, tech components, doorspam, and expensive liquor to your family) followed by a week in Seattle for Everfree Northwest, then a week back here at home, then a family wedding and a week of mixed vacation/parental tributes in a totally different place. Except I came down with a weird cold right before the family reunion, one which left me with a persistent cough that kept persisting all the way back home and up to Seattle. Not COVID--I've been self-testing more regularly than a book princess with confidence issues--but it did turn out to be asthmatic bronchitis, which I seem to get whenever something squats in my lungs for more than a week.

To top it off, this year I had also volunteered to run one of the infamous Everfree Northwest "Party Suites" for my longest-standing group of Pony Friends from BerryTube. That was genuine fun. A lot of work, though. Still fun.

But between the coughing and the booze and the partying, I felt spread very thin, like butter over too much bread, for most of the weekend. It wasn't all bad. In fact, kinda first-rate. I got to go to a Seattle Mariners game pre-convention. I got to do some karaoke at the wonderful open mic night hosted by Bill Newton and Nicole Oliver (a song about aging gracefully... and those who decline to.) I got to meet a whole bunch of new friends at some VIP stuff, including catching up with now-IRL friend/Christmas Card recipient OldenBronie just as things were wrapping up. I got to explain both my day job and the concept of "waifus" to Athena Karkanis and Bahia Watson (don't worry, I was careful with the wording).

And, of course, I did Iron Author again. After last year's surprise win, I didn't know what to expect. The prompts ("vexing volcanism," "verdant vegetable," and "vibrant vestigial") threw me for a serious loop, and I had to mangle a few metaphors to get a story out. Between the slight hangover, persistent illness, and general recent gunshy-ness when it came to writing, I wasn't sure what would happen. That I managed to swing one of seven honorable mentions out of a field of 42 (with a highly metaphorical and decidedly T-rated Cozy Glow story) is a testament to... something? But mostly, I think the value of speedwriting practice, even when you feel like doing anything but.

When the winners were announced, I was not surprised to find two of my fellow Quills N' Sofas speedwriters atop the leaderboard. UndomeTinwe's "Lost Harmony" took second. Shaslan's first-place winning story, "Flower Wars," blew me away. A skillful mixture of MLP and Aztec mythology surrounding a dark and bittersweet story of two conflicting and irreconcilable loves--one of a pony, one of a god--was up there among the best short stories I've ever heard. And when I spoke to Shaslan, I was expecting someone who had done IRL work with mesoamerican lore or anthropology; it turns out that she had spent the first 30 minutes of the contest doing furious research.

TFlower Wars

• MLP: FiM
• Dark

Rainbow Dash was beautiful, the most beautiful pony to be born in a century — and so her fate was sealed. Beauty must be sacrificed, and so Rainbow Dash must die.

• Death
• Alt. Universe
• Fluttershy
• Rainbow Dash
• Applejack
• Raven Inkwell

Shaslan · 3.2k words  ·  114  5 · 798 views

But the really fun part was getting to meet all my fellow QnS friends in person - Shaslan, and Zontan, and UndomeTinwe, and Lost, and a whole bunch more that my insomniac mind cannot now think of. And I did get to go down and snag the last copy of Shaslan's short story collection from the con bookstore. Which she signed.

And I couldn't help but feel a bit of missing out when all the QnS'sers revealed that they had met the night before to read their own stories. I had no idea such a thing was going on, or was too distracted with party room stuff or other things to notice. And I regret missing that. (I'll try to do better next year, guys!)

But perhaps the most valuable part of my time was spent in some Open Read & Critique sessions. Rescue Sunstreak & Co. gave me a lot of food for thought about what to do with stories you think are bad. And then AdmiralBiscuit led another group during which I read a story that I had been letting sit, off and on, for a very long time. It started out as one of my first QnS speedwrites a few years during which I spent most of the writing time trying to write a Shakespearean sonnet (probably not the best use of writing time). Level Dasher, who was my editor back then, helped me out with the poem. Then when the last Thousand Words contest came I made a half-hearted effort to extend it out to the minimum length, only to miss the deadline by three hours. So I read it the story, and everyone in the group... really liked it. And it was a tough crowd to please, with both a writer of legendary renown, and an active military guy who knew a thing or two about orbital mechanics and flight stuff, among the critiquers.

I promised the group I would fix up the story. So here is "Sonnet: To A Pegasi Navigator."

ESonnet: To A Pegasi Navigator

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

Pegasi train for flight, looking to the stars to find their way. But sometimes, home calls to them.

• Second Person
• OC

MasterThief · 1000 words  ·  12  2 · 181 views

The poem itself is loosely based, structurally and thematically, on one of my favorite poems, Against Entropy , by John M. Ford (1957-2006), with perhaps a bit of Gerard Manley Hopkins' As Kingfishers Catch Fire that my brain threw in for good measure.

The story, characters, and settings are loosely based on my own parents.  My father was a navigator in the U.S. Air Force, back in the pre-GPS days when celestial navigation was still taught, particularly for long trans-oceanic flights when air crew needed a backup for LORAN beacons (which are, themselves, making a comeback.)  I remember him taking me out to the back porch one clear New England night, where he showed me how to use a sextant to sight stars and take a position fix. The sighting part came easy, the math involved... not so much. The kneeboard chock full of maps, airspeed calculators, fuel calculators, emergency checklists, and random slide rules was another actual thing I borrowed, as were the special flight suits and oxygen masks from earlier WWII-era flight crews, who flew in unpressurized aircraft where the air was thin and cold. The Hoofstrong Limit and the Kárpón Line are, of course, references to the IRL Armstrong Limit and the Kármán line, which mark the limits of human endurance and the boundary of space, respectively. In my Equestrian headcanon, pegasi units include specially-trained navigator pegasi who can ascend above cloud cover to take accurate star sightings. I have some other stories inspired by this, which I may someday post.

My mother, of course, dutifully followed my father around to multiple Air Force bases at a time when that was not a very fun life, all the while making her own career as a teacher and waiting for my father to come back at odd hours of the night after weeks or months away on flight duty, bleary-eyed, unshaven, and with a bag of ratty clothes.  She was also known to leave kind notes in his lunchbox, though, never to my knowledge, a sonnet. Eventually, she convinced my Dad that marriage to a loving wife was better than marriage to an airplane; she was persistent like that. She died ten years ago after many years of cancer and grace, and I still miss her terribly.

And yes, daisies were her favorite flower too. 🌼

And of course, I had to take time post-con with my BerryTube friends, first to do an Escape Room...

...then to visit the Museum of Flight a short ways south of the con in Renton...

...then to end things with a boat ride with friends.

Oh, Equestria. Stay weird.

Various and Sundry: Still have another week of out-of-town vacation to prep and pack for. There may be a new story next week. Or not. Regardless, it was good seeing everyone.

The story I did do for Iron Author is a Cozy Glow story, and I may be fixing it up and expanding it for the Cozy Glow contest.

Now if you will excuse me, I need a vacation from my vacationing...