Author Archives: DS

At some point, I suppose I’m going to have to rework the TwiBrush timeline to reflect her new winged self. Brush, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind: “There would be adjustments, surely, but I would love her even if she got busted back to Magic Kindergarten, or whatever it’s called.” I would expect nothing less from this pony, of… (more…)

I’ve neglected this place of late, but then I haven’t had a whole lot to say, and no compelling story idea are forthcoming. There will be works in progress eventually. Really.

Naming consultant Nancy Friedman has happened upon a software gizmo to benefit those of us who write pony tales: I don’t get the appeal of My Little Pony even on a meta-meta-ironic level, but I am not you, and you, for all I know, may be a brony. In that case, knock yourself out with Ponify, a browser extension “which… (more…)

I’m still scratching around for story ideas. Apparently, though, I can recommend them to others more easily than I can recommend them to myself. A wannabe author at Yahoo! Answers was asking for story ideas involving Rainbow Dash, and in a surprisingly small amount of time I had this proposal on the table: Dash discovers a couple of grey feathers… (more…)

This is something I wrote about elsewhere three years ago on the subject of Thomas Crapper, vendor (if not necessarily the inventor) of flush toilets, and the unusual appropriateness of his surname: John Bemelmans Marciano, in his book Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009), advances this intriguing hypothesis: “It does seem fair to question,… (more…)

I’m not about to go full Sally Field on you, but several someponies apparently really like me: somehow today I recorded my 2,000th story read at FIMFiction. Who’d have thought that my modest little contributions would draw any kind of audience at all, let alone that much? Next milestone: to see The Sparkle Chronicles hit a thousand by itself. (It’s… (more…)

Kind words for The way she used to be, from FIMFiction member Martian: An incredibly deep and beautiful story, criminally under-appreciated. I had no idea it was that good. I may have to read it myself.

I quote these mostly because of their timely juxtaposition — and because timely juxtapositions are sometimes at the very heart of our existence. Jack Baruth writes today in The Truth About Cars: The notion of the crossroads as a sacred place is older than Robert Johnson, older than the blues, older than the automobile or the Romans who laid the… (more…)

You might remember this from October: I’m starting to home in on a concept. It’s primarily a CMC story, with a guest appearance by Sweetcream Scoops, who’s older than they are but who is perfectly capable of giving them questionable advice. And it’s (vaguely) based on a true nonpony story. I said later that I’d shelved the idea. I’m thinking,… (more…)

One thing I should have done when I set this place up was to do something about the infernal number of post/page revisions WordPress likes to accumulate. There was admittedly one occasion when I did have the need to retrieve something, which leaves about eight hundred or so when I didn’t. So I did a little housecleaning today, shrinking the… (more…)