State of the Scribe: April 2026

Hello everyone,

Been a wild month for me. I’ll try to get the pony-related stuff out as quickly as I can.

It’s wild that I’ve only got a handful of stories left. That might change in the next few months, if things after the text cutoff down there go badly. Current ongoing story on Fimfic is Quarantine still. I decided I’d rather do longer chapters than more frequent ones, it lets each chapter be more meaningful and interesting rather than forcing constant votes over things when I’m not ready. Sorry if it means more time between each chapter reading, but…

I still want to get Legio IX Hispania published, but it’s still waiting on a cover. I’ll update as soon as I know more. I suppose I could make something myself, but even with my circumstances being what they are, I don’t want to stop making great covers unless I have no choice. I think I still have a chance for the moment, so…

One last thing. I’ve got a little audiobook I made, more as a proof of concept than anything, for one of my short stories: Twilight Spun. Check it out here: Audiobook MP3

It’s a little rough around the edges, and I think some of that is an unfortunate artifact of the tech I used to make it. I’ll talk a little more about that in the section below the cutoff. But at least for me, I think it crosses the boundary into good enough that I could actually use it to listen to stuff. I love that I’ll be able to do different voices for everybody, even if the actual detection of those voices won’t be perfect.

I’ll probably have more of them to share in the coming months. I find myself often in situations where I can’t read, but I am able to listen, and this was created for exactly those situations. Even the file service/hosting is mine, so expect it to be somewhat slow if you’re grabbing the mp3 right after I posted this. A pi can only serve so many files at once.

Thanks so much for your support, everyone who has chosen to stick with me on my Patreon. I can’t tell you how grateful I am in my present situation that I’ve got the patreon to fall back on. If the situation doesn’t improve, you’ll probably see more pony writing from me over the next few months. Or if I get my way, lots of writing that isn’t just pony.

Either way, thanks for sticking with me.

-Starscribe

Now, here’s the real-life section. Sometimes I don’t have a lot to say in these, but unfortunately now isn’t one of those weeks. I knew for a long time thanks to [ongoing political conditions related to import/export taxation] that things at the board game company I work for were getting shaky. Turns out I underestimated how shaky, because they had to let everyone go while they seek more investment to secure the future.

Needless to say, it’s pretty rough. Not just for the financial reasons, though having my white-collar salaried position doing _exactly what I love_ every single day suddenly taken away…is not exactly a pleasant experience. But it wasn’t some shady megacorp, I was friends with everyone there, and what we made was a labor of love. It still is, and there’s still hope that we’ll find a way through this…

But in the meantime, my concerns are somewhat more immediate. I’ve got some savings, but that will not sustain me for long. I’ll have to really jump feetfirst into my writing in a way I never have before, or else bite the bullet and try to get a _software development_ job in the present environment. Won’t hold my breath for that one.

So really, it means the world to me when any of you choose to support. I’ll probably be doing a lot more writing in the next little while, along with some software projects. I’ve been working on this roleplay program for a long time I’d like to polish and make usable for people other than me.

I’ve also spent some of my time creating the program that made that audiobook up there. It uses open-source voice models to create audiobooks. I want more of my stories to be accessible to those who might have the free time and desire to read, but lack the opportunity for some other reason. I love bringing a book with me on a long walk or to the gym, and I guess I’ll have lots of extra time for both.

My hope would be for this program to be made available to everyone who might be interested down the road. Though I will warn that it takes a pretty beefy gpu and a day or more for the many different passes required to translate fimfic epub into audiobook.

Local LLM Speaker Extraction (I used a small open-source model running on the same machine) ->

LLM Temperament Extraction (to try and get the emotions accurate ->

Dialogue block extrapolation (to group similar adjacent emotions together) ->

Speaker design (using QWEN3 and extracted personality information, I strongly recommend writing these by hand though). ->

Speech Synthesis (using QWEN3 and the speech designs. This can take a very long time for a long book, about 16-18 hours for a standard novel on my macbook pro. Requires about 12gb of VRAM) ->

Manual editing/inserting silence, assigning roles ->

Proofread using Whisper STT locally (to make sure the synthesized speech actually says what it should) ->

Audio processing using FFMPEG ->

Final export

That’s a lot, but the goal here is for anyone who has a reasonably good GPU and the time to dedicate to it could make an audiobook for their story. Obviously this is not desirable in the professional world where a real narrator would be involved. But for small and hobby projects, where the realistic options were A. A subset of people don’t get to read the story at all. B. People use local TTS programs to hear them read by an evil alien, I think this one will be a compelling offering.

I’ve put… maybe 100 hours into it so far? Probably that much again to get it so it’s polished enough for someone other than me to use it. But if my employment situation doesn’t change this month, it’s a very real possibility I’ll finish. Though obviously since I’d be sharing the program for free, my ability to give technical support will be pretty low.

As I get a chance to make these for my stories, I’ll probably host them for free, with optional donate links if you enjoyed it, to cover bandwidth or my development costs. I’m hoping Shopify and my little hosting site I used to share the file up there will be enough to cover the low expected hosting fees.

Who knows what else I might make over this next month. It’s such a strange feeling to be unemployed. A feeling of freedom, yet confinement. Being directionless while free.

On the plus side, should finally have a chance to really dig into the hosting issues I’ve seen with the Patreon not getting my chapters up at the right time, haha. And time to hunt down a cover artist ruthlessly for those two stories that don’t have them so I can get them up on fimfiction.

Anyway, that’s the end of my long ramble. Thanks to everyone who continues to support me, you’re a critical lifeline for me in a time of crisis.

-Starscribe

Current story stable:

• Quarantine, a vote driven story about a transformative pandemic that sweeps across north america. Like Voyage of the Equanox before it, this story unfolds based on user votes. If you’re not voting yet, now’s your chance to influence how Elliot’s story unfolds. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568477/quarantine
• Another Day at Unity is an Anthology set in a pokemon world where every person’s soul is outside their body in the form of a pokemon. The original novel followed a mew girl who upturned the balance of power, this anthology jumps to many people and perspectives, so we can see just what it’s like to have various kinds of pokmoen souls. Visit strange new locations, meet all kinds of weird Pokémon. available right here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-day-at-115556555
• Accidental Sunshine: Changeling discovers ponies, but can she learn to master friendship before her deception is discovered? https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-105351764
• New Way Home is the story of when accidental human arrivals to Equestria are discovered by some very unfriendly creatures, and they’re forced to fight for survival: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-rescue-94115163
• Into the Everwood is my take on the Bloomburrow/Redwall type setting. Small wild animals, a medieval/magical elements, wars to fight and mysteries to solve. It’s an anthro world, though you’ll find plenty of my usual hallmarks (like TF), ancient technology, human influence, etc. I’m hoping to see it work as a series, it’s one of those worlds that has so much going on it could sustain several books with ease. Brave squirrel twins face creatures much bigger and stronger than they are. https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-into-144942218
• Layers of Change–Imagine an infinitely recursive hollow earth, where our same planet becomes increasingly bizarre the deeper down you travel. The story follows a true shapeshifter (at least he becomes one early on), which in this world are one of the most feared and dangerous beings–as they can travel freely between layers and take forms suited to each one. He becomes strange creatures, though his travels soon lead him to creatures he fears to leave behind. Everyone says he should be traveling deeper into the layers, but does he even want to? https://www.patreon.com/posts/147029874/

Grab copies of my books: https://starscribe.net/
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RealStarscribe
Come chat on Discord: https://discord.gg/fZ2Y5KgbN2?event=1275614019373498368