State of the Scribe: September 2025

Hey pones!

If you only care about pony stuff, skip to the horizontal rule later down the blog post.

Big month for me, though lots of it isn’t pony related, so I’ll be brief. I promise to only mention my indie books once and not bombard you with blog posts about them, so I’ll focus this announcement primarily on this and not talk about it again.

As of right now, I’ve released the third book in the Children of the Sky series: Surya’s Sunrise. The first three books in this series were written as a trilogy, so this one was fully intended to make the setting of the universe ready for its second stage.

For those who don’t know, the first book, Forerunner’s Child, was about a Forerunner probe (same as those from Message in a Bottle, and some of the same human crew) creating a colony of only children. Why this colony existed this way and how it would survive is what it’s about–I’d call it Ender’s Game meets Peter Pan, if I was pressed. A human astronaut from relatively modern earth wakes up in this far future colony, and its forced to reckon with the strange state of her world, and try to save these children and recover her adulthood.

The second book is about what a space program might look like in such a colony, as it reaches out for critical resources.

Now the third book, where a crew of children must somehow rescue a station of ordinary human colonists, harboring a dark secret about what destroyed their home.

When telling this story, I set out to capture much of what I loved about MLP, while translating it in a way that would not make me legally liable, lol. I wanted that feeling of innocence–I wanted a world where even your enemies generally want the best for you, where conflicts have social solutions. Where the universe is what makes things dark, not our fellow man. A world that doesn’t see the source of evil as inherent in each other, but in the cruelty of nature.

So I wrote a story about cute characters on a cute adventure. The first book in the series is currently .99 cents on amazon, if you want to check it out. (amazon only lets me run the deal for a week, so check it out now): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F46RKY67

The latest book, Surya’s sunrise, will leave this first era of the setting behind, and move into the world that Kit, our modern hero protagonist, helps the kids build, and the horrifying threats looming over them. The Red Tide is still out there, and it hungers.

Check out Surya’s Sunrise here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FNFZQM94

Completing the book above brings an end to my first era in this series. I have written a forth book, but I’ve decided I want to do one more before that one–as book 4 brings a full conclusion to this era and the setting of the Institute. I’d like a little more time with cute adventures in space before I start busting out the gravity weapons and strange matter.

(and for those wondering, the version of the book you’ll find on amazon or my personal store is not the one freely shared on patreon. You’re seeing draft 1 of the book on patreon, after basic copyedits. Many scenes are changed, new chapters added, and other dramatic changes before the amazon publication is made. In book 1, there were 20k of new words written. Thankfully the number is about half that for the other two books.)

I don’t have a timeline for when I’ll publish the remaining (at least 2) books in the series. I think I’ll let it rest for a while, while I figure out what I want to do. I knew it was never going to be sales juggernaut or anything (books with child protagonists are quite rare in the adult scifi realm), so I’ll need to mix in passion projects like this with more commercially viable ideas.

Passion’s a wonderful thing, but it can’t pay for groceries. But I’ll be back to polish up the draft of book 5, and finish writing book 4, at some point.

And for those who read this far, thanks for indulging me. I know this is a pony site and many of you won’t care much about stories about kids in space, even if they go on cute friendship adventures (while trying to survive the unthinkable horrors of the void).

I’m grateful for your tolerance up to this point. As always, I’ll try to keep my non-fanfic projects to a minimum here.

So, calendar for the following month:

Probably looks the way you would expect it to. I will continue sharing chapters of Surya’s Sunrise, and my Pokemon anthology, Another Day at Unity.

The monthly stories are still going: New Way Home, Legio IX Hispania, and Accidental Sunshine. All three of these will continue at least to the end of the year probably. They’re ambitious stories, and have some space to go. Legio IX is probably the closest to completing, though it still won’t before December.

Quarantine is the closest to a weekly story we have, and it still has a way to go yet. I continue to read your comments and wait eagerly to see how each vote will go, even when readers go against something bad I wanted to do for character reasons (it would’ve been so much better if Wayfinder messed up her life with an ill-advised relationship!)

No new pony stories to announce, other than the occasional minific. Though there is a new project on the horizon.

I don’t want to take spotlight away from it at this stage though, so I’ll leave it until next month. That should give me a chance to edit more of the chapters too. I’ve had to completely overhaul the magic system, and that’s time consuming.

So I’ll have that coming out. It’s not pony, though. As the years go on and I (stupidly) keep getting older, I have to move more and more attention towards writing outside of fandoms, stuff I can hang my hat on in the years to come.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll leave anything undone. I’ll finish what I began in the way I imagined they would end.

-Starscribe

· Quarantine, our vote-driven story about magical pony diseases and unfortunate transformations, is still rolling strong. If you’re not voting yet, now’s your chance to influence how Elliot’s story unfolds. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568477/quarantine
· Celebi Like Them is first. Quinn’s traveled back into the mists of distant history, with no sign of how to get his body back (or how to save his girlfriend) https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-celebi-121255137.
· Another Day at Unity continues to explore aspects of the Spirits of Change world that were out of scope for the main narrative. Visit strange new locations, meet all kinds of weird Pokémon. available right here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-day-at-115556555

• Surya’s Sunrise: Sequel to Ravana’s Shadow. Can the immortal children of Mara unite with the survivors of a destroyed human colony? https://www.patreon.com/posts/132919487
• Legio IX Hispania, our historical journey into the question of what if the lost Roman legion ended up in Equestria, unravels here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-story-legio-78027950
• 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

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