I forgot this was going live today and didn’t get a chance to write the post in advance. I’m taking a sick day from work today because of my ear issues, so it won’t be as detailed as normal. Below will be the highlights.

General Writing

• First few weeks of January weren’t great, mental health wise.
• Stuff got done, but quality varied.
• Feeling better once I finished a project at work.
• Some days are better than others, just like everyone else going through this crap.
• Back in the building on Feb 16, and getting my first vaccine dose on Feb 20, so February should be interesting.

Site & Channel

• Wasn’t able to get things done on the channel, but planning to get back into it during February.
• Today, status video. Thursday, FMT vlog, then next week launching two new series — Origins and Future Projects.
• Got some site work done for the Facelift and easing myself back in.

Individual Story

Flash Fiction

• Brought Flash Fiction back in January. Mostly kept the schedule, but it got a bit stressful due to my own issues.
• When current round is done, FF will be on a break while I decide whether or not I want to continue doing it.
• A Shot in the Dark is completed. Working currently on A King’s Command and Not Knowing When.
• When one of those is done, I’ll bring back Signs of Life.
• After that, there’s one more story I need to write for Collect Your Regrets universe — in order to write the original story request by Tania, I wanted Liason in a good place with Jake back so I wrote the first two stories.
• I expect to be done that sometime in May or June. We’ll see.

Broken Girl, Book 2

• Starting first draft on March 1.
• Expected release sometime in June, but that depends on the first draft.
• May or may not push out release to July.
• Story is fully broken down by scene and chapter. Just needs to be soundtracked.

Mad World, Book 4

• On schedule to write and edit this summer.
• Scheduled for October release.
• Do not let me write a book 5.

Fool Me Twice, Book 1

• Vlog coming out on Thursday about editing.
• Editing got complicated because of my mental health issues.
• Felt like I was rushing edits and even then I wasn’t going to finish on time.
• So splitting it just made sense.

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Note: This is not a transcript of the video. I wrote it before I filmed the video. It’s the basic facts. I get into more detail and whatnot in the video if you’re interested.

Recapping 2020: The General Gist

• 2020 was, uh, a year that happened which is probably the best I can say at this point.
• In all seriousness, outside of the world falling apart and the pandemic, for me, personally, 2020 had a lot of ups and downs personally and career wise. I took over my parents’ house at the end of 2019, but 2020 was the year where I definitely proved I could handle it financially, even on the reduced income I was making last year as a long-term sub.
• Professionally, I worked every day over the last two academic years which is great. Last year, I worked as a long-term substitute in one district, then was fortunate to find full-time district employment in a new school this year. I have a steady paycheck, paid holidays, more sick and personal time, and health insurance. It’s a one-year contract but the odds are in my favor that as long as this position is here next year, I should get an invitation to return.
• Writing wise, this was also my best year on record. I spent a lot of the year studying my own process and refining it so that I could be more productive and make firmer promises about release dates and quality.  I wrote more this year than any year since I started writing Liason fanfiction in 2002 and 2003.

Recapping 2020: Site & Channel

• The site underwent massive renovations which are continuing through next year. I moved the site to its new home on a domain which allowed me to create sub-sites for my larger stories and create a more immersive experience for each story. I also began reorganizing how my stories are presented and making an effort to make the site more user friendly and easier to navigate.
• I started the YouTube channel last December, then relaunched in February with a firmer idea of how it would be used. I have a quasi-schedule with monthly site & story status updates as well as individual story vlogs. I did a few livestreams as well. It was my goal to be more accessible to the community since I decided to start releasing my projects all at once so I might disappear for a few weeks or months between releases.

Recapping 2020: Promises Kept

• Last year, I made two big promises. I said that you would get For The Broken Girl, Book 1, and Mad World, Book 3. I kept both those promises. Broken Girl was released in May and June, and Mad World Book 3 was my first giant, all-at-once release, which I think went over pretty well.
• I also said I wanted to write more flash fiction and short stories. I did both of those things, particularly during the summer with daily flash fiction.
• I’m really proud of myself for setting realistic goals and then holding myself to general deadlines. I might have missed some internal deadlines for first drafts and releases, but once I gave you guys firm dates for releases, I kept them.

What’s Next in 2021: General Life

• In 2021, I hope to continue my professional success. If I get invited back next year, I’m on the tenured track which would be amazing. I’m looking into getting additional certificates in middle school ELA, Science, and French to make myself more useful to the district and my observations this year have led me to believe that as long as – A, the position is here and B, I don’t mess up somehow, I’m in good shape to return.
• I have a lot of personal projects to work on in the house I took over — as soon as I’m on tenure track, I’m going to buy the house from my parents and start making renovations — painting, working on the bathroom, kitchen, and making my office and bedroom even more suited to my needs.
• Writing wise, I’m going to continue my 2020 approach:  tracking my process to make adjustments, being kind and generous to myself by taking time off when I need it, and keeping firm promises to the community.

What’s Next in 2021: Site & Channel

• I plan to continue working on the site renovations which are detailed in the Crimson Glass Facelift post I put together. I have some larger projects (the sub-sites) to work on. I also want to relaunch some of my older ebooks by cleaning them up and redesigning them. I want to offer more ebooks as well.
• The channel is going to have more regular content. As I get better with editing, it becomes easier to do that. We’ll keep the monthly site & story status updates, and I’ll be adding weekly vlogs for whatever project I’m working on.
• I’m also interested in doing more GH commentary on the channel in 2021. One of my resolutions this year is to put GH and Days back in my daily schedule. I fell off this year because I was busy with work, but I do miss my soaps.
• I’d be interested in doing an Live Q&As if that’s something anyone wanted.

What’s Next in 2021: New Promises

• This coming year, I will be publishing three novels which is realistic since one of them is already drafted. General release dates are as follows:
  • Fool Me Twice, Book 1: February 2021
  • For the Broken Girl, Book 2: June 2021
  • Mad World, Book 4: October 2021
• I also plan to work on the following projects
  • Fool Me Twice, Book 1:
    • Revisions: January & February 2021
  • For the Broken Girl
    • Discovery: January 2021
    • Alpha: February-March 2021
    • Revisions: April-May 2021
  • Mad World, Book 4 (this might change — I’ll keep you updated)
    • Alpha: June-July 2021
    • Revisions: August-September 2021
  • Fool Me Twice, Book 2
    • Discovery: August-September 2021
    • Alpha: October-November 2021
    • Revisions in 2022. Expected release February 2022.
• Flash Fiction & Short Stories
  • I don’t have a firm date to reintroduce and complete in progress flash fiction at this time. I’m spending part of my holiday break thinking it over.
  • Once they do come back, we’ll probably be doing one story at a time on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays until all are complete.
  • I won’t be writing any new flash fiction until the stories I’ve posted have been revised and republished.

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General Writing

• In my last update, I mentioned that I was hoping I’d have a decent amount of time to write in November because of the way my schedule was working out. I was supposed to have November 16-30 off from students I’d have to grade and lesson plan for while I covered absences in the building, and that I was anticipating being on remote learning again at some point in the future.
• I ended up covering a sixth grade science class that had no lesson plans and that I had to put in grades for, so in addition to preparing for my own classes in the next cycle, I had to prep for a subject and curriculum I don’t teach with no textbook. Fun.
• I also got exposed to Covid around November 9-10 through school and had to quarantine at home. November 13 was my last day in the building, and then my entire school kind of…went crazy. The school got two more positive cases and shut down on Wednesday while the entire district closed as of Friday, November 20. We’re on remote learning through AT LEAST January 8 with a return on January 11.
• That’s…a lot to process, to be honest. My nieces were individually exposed at their schools, so my hometown district closed, and my sister needed to be tested after being exposed by her best friend. Thankfully, we all tested negative but it was a lot more stressful than I thought it was going to be (and I was expecting stress.)
• Flash Fiction kind of went all over the place–we’ll get into that–and I didn’t quite hit the deadline I needed for Fool Me Twice. However, I still participated in NaNoWriMo and wrote about 62k for FMT over the entire month. That was pretty awesome and a silver lining to an otherwise crazy month.

Patreon, Site & Channel

• I had hoped to make some NaNoWriMo videos like I did last month, but it honestly never manifested. I do have plans for 2021 to be a bit more regular with content, but I also understand it’s not the main draw to my site.
• The site work is also completely on hiatus until at least winter break, if not spring break.
• Patreon Tiers are going to be revised starting January 1, 2021 to better reflect benefits and add some more. I’ll have them ready sometime in December.

Individual Story

Flash Fiction

• My Flash Fiction schedule was really hard to maintain in November. It became really sporadic and I think in some ways, the quality for some of the stories suffered. I definitely think while the 20 minute sprints are easier to fit into my schedule, the 60 minute efforts are better. I won’t be bring them back until I can devise a schedule that works in 60 minutes for each update.
• I’m thinking that means Flash Fiction might not return until 2021, so we’ll see what we’ll see.

Fool Me Twice, Book 1

• I started writing Fool Me Twice on October 1 with a deadline of November 30. Honestly — a few things go differently and if it’s a normal year, the draft is finished on time if not early. But I really never caught up from getting that job on September 30. I needed to be further along in October, and , well, I probably didn’t need the pandemic stress.
• That being said, the great thing is that the story itself is going really great. I’m so happy with the progress so far. I’ve finished 20 chapters — I still have roughly 14 chapters left to write. Today is November 30. I should finish this draft around December 14. Two weeks over my scheduled time — that’s not too bad.
• I can’t tell you now if that means I’m missing the February deadline. I don’t think I will. The draft is in good shape so far — while it needs work, it doesn’t need the top down, drag out revisions that Mad World Book 3 needed, and I understand my process better than I did when I revised Broken Girl last spring.
• I also didn’t set a specific day for posting. Since I publish on novels on Tuesdays, I could go with Feb 2, 9, 16, or the 23. It’s more likely to be like 16 or 23. I’ll keep you in the loop on that.

Mad World, Book 4

• I haven’t looked at this since early October. At that time, I was creating the structure of the second draft of Book 4 — what scenes and chapters, etc. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to make better revision notes. What stays, what needs to be rewritten. Once I know how much work needs to be going into it, I can put it more firmly on my schedule.
• I actually plan to give myself two weeks off from FMT between December 15-December 31 and distract myself by digging into Book 4 which will make FMT feel fresher when I open it back up to revise.
• I’m hoping to write this book in the background, but it also might be my June/July project (which makes it year 5 lol for series — please let 2021 be the last year)

For the Broken Girl, Book 2

• I’m still putting this into production after I complete the alpha draft for FMT. I plan to work on the Discovery Draft from December 15-January 31. After working on FMT’s Discovery Draft, I am confident that a prolonged Discovery process put me in the best possible position to get more than 110k written for FMT in eight weeks.
• As long as FMT is ready to go with revisions and I’m comfortable, Broken Girl’s alpha draft starts on Feb 1, with a deadline of March 31, and a publication of May/June depending on revisions needed.

Thanks so much for reading and following! I’ll be back at the end of the year with my 2020 Year in Review & 2021 Year Ahead (instead of January Update). I love all of you so much!

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So sorry about not updating last night! I was out trick or treating with the family — my mom, my sister and brother, my cousin, and the six nieces and nephews mixed between them — and just before we got home, my cousin tripped and fell. Since I didn’t have any kids to wrangle, I ended up in the ER with her until almost 9. I’ll try to make up Signs of Life sometime this week, but I also just might skip. We’ll see.

Also — this post isn’t as detailed as they normally are. I usually write the post, then use it as a script to make the video but, uh, not this month.

General Life Update

• I got a job. It made it difficult to write as much as I had during the summer, but we knew that would happen.
• I get into the weeds a bit about it in the video, but basically — want to write, lack energy some days.

Site & Channel Update

• Facelift on hiatus until Christmas Break.
• Planning some Nano videos for FMT and wrap-up for Mad World.

Individual Stories

Mad World

• Book 3 now out. Assumed you guys liked it since no one complained, LOL.
• Book 4 doesn’t have an official date since I’m trying to fit it in in the background, but if not done by March, it will go into the Damaged slot for September 2021 release.
• Some more information in the video about how Book 4 is different — a bit lighter, maybe.

Fool Me Twice

• I talk about my full NaNoWriMo plans — 25 chapters in 30 days. My upcoming teaching schedule works a bit in our favor, but only 2020 cooperates and thus far, the year has shown no plans to do that.
• I wrote about six chapters for FMT in October — finished Chapter 7 on Halloween.
• Enjoying it so far. Would be so much further if I hadn’t gone back to work.

Flash Fiction

• Uh, it exists. This month, the schedule might be a bit uneven with Nanowrimo, but we’ll see.

And that’s it!

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Note: Apologies for the framing and lighting in this video. I filmed it around 9 at night on Sunday, and I ended up cutting off my head from the frame — and the whole thing filmed with me way off center so I had to crop and scale a lot. LOL. I’m learning, I promise!

General Writing

• Hello! Apologies for this update being delayed by a little over a week.  I had a rough August and trouble sleeping for two straight weeks which really messed with my productivity. I wanted to wait for my medication to kick in and get back on track before I sat down to think about what else I want to do in September.
• I haven’t been able to lock up a long-term teaching position yet this year, and both my school districts are closed for the month of September because neither passed the Covid building requirements.
• That means I’m home at least for September unless something changes. That’s good for the writing, lol. And don’t worry about me — I kind of half expected to be in this position and I started saving in May for it. I’ve got enough in my savings to get through November, and well — let’s just hope things look different then.
• As for the writing, I’m feeling pretty productive these days. As long as I listen to my brain and take days when I should and take breaks, it’s been pretty easy to just sit down and write when I want to write.

Site & Channel

Channel

•  I need to film new updates for Mad World and Fool Me Twice, I know. I had two videos made but I didn’t get a chance to edit them and they’re enough out of date that I want to update them.
• One of the things I do I want to finish is the Channel section on the site with each video having a page so I can be ready to do transcripts when I can get to them.

Site

• I’ve been working like crazy on the Facelift the last few weeks. I made an EPIC checklist that I still add things to but it has pretty much everything I want to do. This list is definitely more for me than you guys because it keeps my brain organized.
• One of the big projects I’m working is organizing my screencap collection by scene and date. The reason I want to do this is I want to make lots of graphics for my stories, but I tend to use the same screencaps over and over again.
• Plus — my screencaps have been in folders where there are thousands in one folder which Photoshop struggles to open effectively.
• This just makes my life so much easier and I’ll be able to get to the rest of the Alternate History overhaul faster. For example, the newest 2001 Flash Fiction, The Ghost in the Girl, has graphics because I had already organized 2001 by date and it was super easy to find them and use them.
• I re-launched my soap commentary blog with daily snark recaps and a weekly commentary column: Crimson Suds.

Story Updates

Mad World

Book 3

• Book 3 was completed on Saturday and posted at Patreon for my $5 and above supporters. It’s 25 chapters and around 156k words. I’m taking the week off to let it sit before beginning my final round of edits for typos, inconsistencies, and flow.
• I’m so happy with how this new material is coming together. When I separated Book 3 from the new Book 4, I had about 90k words — I’ve added 50k to this draft with a plan to add 10k more before I’m done.
• Patreon Release for $7 supporters is October 1. I’m trying very hard to get Patreon supporters a better preview — optimally, I’d like you guys to be a month ahead of release, but so far it hasn’t been possible.
• The general release is October 6 to let me catch any last typos and schedule all the chapters.

Book 4

•  I’m starting a light edit on Book 4 this week. Having finished Book 3, I want to plan the big structural changes in Book 4, so I can make sure Book 3 flows into it well while still feeling like its own narrative.
• Book 4 will go into full beta draft revisions in October. I’ll do the big round of edits — major additions of new scenes and new chapters in October, then the second round in November to polish it up.
• The general release is in December, probably December 8.
• If you read the first draft of both books (Patreon Supporters $3 and above), Book 3 ends with the wedding and Book 4 begins the day after.
• I don’t have a ton for you guys on Book 4 because I haven’t really played with it too much, but I have some really fun changes and expansion ideas. I’ll have more information for you in October’s video.

Flash Fiction

Revisions

• Thanks to a vote at Crimson Glass, Desperate Measures is the first Flash Fiction series that I’m revising into a novella/novel. At the moment, it’s around 55 scenes which puts it into novel word count territory.
• I’m not sure how long it will take to write it, but it’s definitely the flash fiction I need to rework the least — I’ll be able to clean up big pieces of scenes, but I’m also adding more teens, more context, and building in more Liason scenes.
• After DM is completed, I’ll have enough vote for the next revision. Because DM had such a huge win, I want anyone who voted for DM to have a chance to ask for the next revision.

New Series

• I’ve launched all of the new series, and so far, I’m feeling more confident. I’m taking an hour to write these entries so that they’re longer which hopefully makes up for not updating twice a week. I learned so much from the first round of fiction, and I’m hoping that I won’t need to do so much revising in this round if that makes sense. I’m trying to write these and plan these to minimize the editing needed to pull it into a mainstream story.
• In the video, I talked a bit more at length about Not Knowing When being set in 2002, and what I’m hoping to bring to it. I haven’t written this specific time period (October 2002) since 2002, so it’s fun to get back into it since my perspective has changed.
• For A King’s Command — I had some readers who were surprised that I was rewriting it. In fact, some of you seemed disappointed. I’m so sorry for any misunderstandings. The way I approach flash fiction has changed since I wrote the first version, and I had written myself into a corner with the old version. While I’m happy to revisit old ideas from earlier flash fictions, I will always be rewriting them.
• The 2001 rewrite has its first short story planned — I have 2-3 part story set after the Face of Deception photoshoot. I don’t know yet if it’ll be 2 parts or 3 because it depends on how long it takes to write it. This is the first story I’ve written set in this period of GH, mostly because I wasn’t actively watching and by the time I got into Liason, The Canvas writers had written about it so well I wasn’t sure what I could add. That being said, I’m more comfortable with my own voice and what I bring to a story, so I’m dipping my toe in.

Fool Me Twice

•  I’m working on chapter breakdown, and I’m really looking forward to writing this one starting in October. There’s so much great stuff that I’ve planned which makes me very happy that I took a minute and reset after last year.
• Moving the starting point to Jason’s return is really letting me work in the teens better as well as open up a more interesting revelation of Jason’s identity and set up other characters.
• I don’t know yet how long Book 1 will be, but I should know by the end of the week.
• I’m not that nervous about going into the first draft of this while working on a beta draft of Book 4. I’ve learned a lot about my process, and I’ve also learned to be very patient with myself in the first few weeks of an alpha draft. I don’t need to write a chapter every day — which was the pressure I was putting on myself back in April.

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Be back around 10:30 with Flash Fiction update and Mad World video with text highlights. 

Life & Writing Updates

• So, July was interesting.
• I’m joking, it was even more boring in my house than June.
• Teaching is over, I barely leave the house, and I even stopped shopping for groceries at my local store when I kept seeing people wearing masks. I stayed inside, did a lot of reading, watched a lot of television and wrote. A LOT.
• I got sick towards the end of July which really messed up the structure I’d put into my day to maximize writing. I took a few days off, tried to relax, but I’m still not quite up to the speed I was before I got sick.
• You guys, I discovered drama channels on YouTube after the Shane Dawson stuff, and I am not proud of how much of my life I’ve wasted now, lol.

Site & Channel Updates

• There’s not much to report here. The channel was mostly dormant because when I get really into writing, I don’t have a lot of time to film and edit. I started the channel to maintain communication with you guys in an easier format but with flash fiction, I’m posting daily and that’s serving a similar purpose.
• I do want to get back into my Mad World vlog, particularly during revisions because that really helped me when I was revising Broken Girl.
• In Facelift news, I was moving along at a pretty steady pace in July. I had reworked sub-sites in June, moved to a new domain in early July, and was working on an Alternate History redesign project that included cleaning up the design of all my History rewrites, reworking the organizing, adding new graphics, organizing screencaps and clips — but then I got sick and I haven’t gotten back into it.
• For August, I want to finish reworking Alternate History. The graphics might not get completely done, but I’d like to see the rest of it completed because that’s the largest portion of the site and needs the most work.

Story News – Mad World

• When I wrote the last status page, I had written 10 chapters. Now, it’s 23 chapters later and the story looks VERY different.
• Not only did I write a lot, I also changed the order of the story — wrote a whole new first half of the story and added a lot of things I hadn’t planned to.
• I had hoped to be done the first draft on or by July 31, but the addition of 15 chapters in the beginning of the story, and then writing everything out of order (I wrote the middle 17 chapters, then the first 15, now I’m working on the back 8), it’s kind of messed with me a bit, lol.
• I’m a very linear writer so it’s been a struggle to accomodate all of this — and this first draft is incredibly messy and will a lot of revising. How much? I won’t know for sure until I read through the first draft.
• Patreons will still get the draft on time — I’m posting the first 15 chapters on August 1 (today!), the middle 17 on August 2, and the final leg of the story sometime next week when it’s completed. I’d honestly like to be done by August 6 because that is probably the limit of how much revision time I can afford to use without pushing back my release date.
• At this point, we’re not doing that — October 6 is still the general site release. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as I move through revisions. It depends on how much time I can spend in September on the story. I don’t know what my job situation is going to look like because of COVID.
• It’s really important to remember that the story is currently at 196, 362 words. When I did the site and story status last month, the story was at 61k. I’ve written 130,000 words since then. There’s a lot to go through, lol.
• There’s a slight chance Mad World might get divided into two books — with a release in October and December. I should know whether that’s going to happen once the full draft is done and I’ve read it over in full. If I feel like there are two separate main narratives, I will. If it’s just a reallllly long book that isn’t going to get cut down much in editing, I still might do a split but you won’t get “official” books and the releases would be closer together (half in Oct and half maybe 1-2 weeks later.)

Story News – Flash Fiction

• Flash Fiction plugged along relatively well until last week when I took off Wednesday – Sunday to make sure I stayed mostly on track with Mad World and didn’t lose time.
• Flash Fiction returned on Monday, and I finished An Everlasting Love. That story is going into revisions and I should have more information soon on when you might be able to expect it.
• I still have three series in progress, and at this point, don’t plan to add a fourth. I’ll finish the ones in progress and begin a new schedule with new series sometime later this month or early September.
• Hopefully, we’ll be back at 10 AM schedule for August. Once I’m back to work, it will likely decrease from daily to 2-3 times a week and be moved to the evening. We’ll see what happens once we get there.

Story News – Other Projects

• Once Mad World goes into revisions, it’s time to start thinking about what’s next! Fool Me Twice goes into discovery today. I had thought about waiting until the first draft was completely done but honestly — I need a bit of a break from Mad World and looking at FMT for maybe 20 minutes a day will help.
• Right now, the production schedule for Book 1 of Fool Me Twice is Discovery in August and September, then alpha draft in October & November, revisions in December & January, and release in February.  Based on the length I think this is going to be, I honestly think this schedule is fine the way it is.
• I also have some thoughts about what I want to do in August to celebration Liason 21 — my plans got a bit derailed when I got sick so I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it after all. I’ll let you guys know once I can really devote more time to it.

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Life & General Health

• Wow! This month had a lot of ups and downs. I finished teaching for the school year, and despite having two second interviews at both the high school and middle school, I didn’t end up getting a contact for next year. You win some, you lose some.
• Classes ended on June 12, so for the last two weeks, I’ve been working on a routine, getting myself into a relaxed schedule where I’m still working but I’m also taking time for self-care.
• NJ is slowly reopening back up (I went to Barnes & Noble for the first time in months!) but we’re all still nervous, of course, with cases continuing to rise in the rest of the United States. I hope everyone is staying safe.
• I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Thanks to my Ripped Bodice care package, I’ve been binging on Deanna Raybourne’s Julia Grey and Veronica Speedwell mysteries. I’m a traditional romance girl, but these books are great.
• It’s funny to go back watch the video where I unwrapped the package because I definitely didn’t look excited to read the Veronica Speedwell book, but these are really great slow-burn romances with fun mysteries and really immersive world building. Each series has one primary romance, but they take place at a veerrrry slow pace, lol.

Site & Channel

• I’ve been neglecting the channel to be honest, and that’s mostly because I generally have to put myself together to film things. When I’m not at work, I’m not blowdrying my hair, I’m not putting on make-up, etc. But I’ll be getting updates in this week and next, I promise!
• The Crimson Glass Facelift is under way. I’ve been publishing ebooks at a fast pace, three of the stories have been converted to sub-sites and I gave out a survey to get some feedback on the site.
• I still have a few more stories I’m converting over, and of course, more ebooks. I’m also working on the other site clean up I mentioned. Making sure all the stories are tagged, decluttering any parts of the site people aren’t using, etc.
• I’m also going to be getting a domain for Crimson Glass again. I like the home at cg.dearisobel.org but CG is the larger project, and it should be on its own domain. The dearisobel.org domain is used for my book reviews and general blog.
• Don’t worry! I’ll have a permanent redirect to the new address.

Currently: Mad World, Book 3

• I just finished Chapter 10 today, and I’m fully expecting to swing into the chapter a day pace I need to finish the story on time. I wrote all of the chapter today, and can’t wait to write the next group of chapters.
• Mad World is currently at 61k. I’m expecting to have about 20-25 more chapters. I’m about 2/3 to the midpoint and once we hit that, it’s all down hill from there. I expect the second half to go a lot faster.
• I’ve been spending most June building up my stamina — starting with 2 25-minute writing sprints, then working my way up to 3. Over the least few weeks, I added the fouth. I usually need 4-5 to finish a full chapter.
• The Alpha Draft will be finished on July 31, so I will be releasing it to the Crimson Love tier on August 1.
• The Beta Draft is scheduled to be released on September 1 to Crimson Devoted.
• The Posting Draft/Ebook will be posted to Crimson Adored on October 1.
• We’ll have  general release to the Crimson Glass site on October 6, and then I’ll be posting a few chapters a day on Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own.

Up Next: Fool Me Twice, Book1

• Updated the Production Schedule with the dates. I’l lbe starting Discovery on August 1, then writing the Alpha Draft in October and November.
• That puts me on schedule to start editing on December 1, and do a general release in the first week of February.

Flash Fiction

• I added a new flash fiction series last week, so that you get a new part every single day, and then Darkest Before the Dawn will be updated on a random day through the week as a  double update.
• I think An Everlasting Love and Whatever It Takes will probably be finished sometime in August. Desperate Measures may take slightly longer. I probably will not be replacing all three of them at once.
• Daily Flash Fiction will continue until August 23. If I get a full-time job or a long-term position, most schools go back to work August 24, so I need to be ready to shift.
• If I am back at work full-time with my own classroom, I’ll probably do flash fiction twice a week.
• I’ll keep you guys updated.

I think that covers everything! Thanks for all your support! Let me know if you have any questions!

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Life & General Writing Health

• As everyone knows, the last two months have been difficult for literally every person on the planet. We’ve all had our own unique challenges that have made isolation and social distancing an uphill battle.
• It’s been a struggle for me, personally, to deal with mental health as I live alone and was cut off from pretty much my entire social network outside of my online communities. (Thank you to everyone who’s reached out, commented, or even just clicked like — you have no idea what you’ve done for me.)
• I also had some professional difficulties as I was switched from teaching one curriculum to another and my class size doubled. I had four classes (three ELA, one science) of sixth graders with an overall size of maybe 82 students. Now I have six classes of Spanish, Grades 4-6, with an average class size of 28 with an overall population of 170.
• It…was a lot.
• I also had a minor health issue that I didn’t really get into publicly that really took apart my stamina and energy. It was hard enough to get through my classes and teaching, much less writing. It’s mostly cleared up for now and hopefully it won’t come back.
• I still feel good about my writing, and I’m glad that Broken Girl is getting a great reception. As long as my health continues to stay where it is, we’ll be good to go this summer.
• I hope everyone is staying safe and taking care of themselves.

Site & Channel Status

• I have a Mad World series for the channel that will be premiering this week on Tuesday & Thursday. This week it’s twice, but it’ll probably be once a week after that.
• I’m planning a HUGE overhaul to Crimson Glass this summer. As I said, I’ll be moving Mad World over from its subdomain and merging into the site. I’ll also be closing down Damaged and Hand Me Down subsites. I need to rewrite the Word Press coding for CG — it’s a few years old and needs some clean up.
• I also want to revamp the story pages for my longer novels so that they look a bit cleaner and easier to navigate. I have some really interesting ideas about using multiple themes to make each novel its own experience, but I’m not sure yet if that’ll work.
• EBOOKS! I am going to make them a priority this summer. Using Scrivener will make their creation soooo much easier. Half my problem was formatting in Sigil, but Scrivener lets me create a template for the ebook, and then uses my existing writing file to create the book. I’ll have more on that in July.

Return of Flash Fiction!

• I’ve been searching for a way to make flash fiction posting more regular and work for my brand of writing. I’m not much of a impulse writer and I’m not great at coming up with my own prompts.
• I took three basic ideas I’ve been playing with and wrote out short outlines. Basically I decided — what is the premise, who are the characters, what is their relationship to each other, and the ending.
• On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I’ll post a notice on Twitter that I’m setting a timer for 20 minutes, then I’ll write and post the results. I’ll update each series weekly.
• When a series completes, I’ll take the finished product, edit it together, and the post as a complete short story, novella, or whatever it ends up being.
• That starts June 2. I’m looking forward to breaking my writing with fresh content every week!

Story Updates – For the Broken Girl, Books 1 & 2

• Broken Girl, Book 1 has been completed. I’ve scheduled the chapters to post on their schedule. The final chapter will post Friday, July 17.
• Once that’s done, it’s mostly just remembering to occasionally update the main page and post the chapters at Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own.
• I’ve made a bunch of notes for Book 2 so that it’ll be easier to write that when we get there, I have a basic structure already to go.

Story Updates – Mad World, Book 3

• I am officially pushing out the publication date for Book 3. It was scheduled for September, but I think we’re looking more like mid-October.  It’s not something I’m happy about, but I knew that if I hadn’t made decent progress by the end of May, I was going to end up squeezing my revisions again which I did with Book 2 and Broken Girl.
• It’s just too much pressure on myself. It’s better for me to finish the edits on Broken Girl and the ebook this week, then take a day or two of no writing at all before going into it in June and July. Book 3 will be my Camp NaNoWriMo goal this July — and that’s fitting. I have great success in finishing Mad World in July.
• This does push some of my schedule back a bit but not terribly. The plan is to take 6-8 weeks for the alpha draft (June 1-July 31) and then 6-8 weeks for edits (August 1 – September 30).
• That’s about as much time as Broken Girl took once I really got started. I had struggled throughought January to get anything done, but in February and March, I finished the alpha draft then did revisions in March and April. It also built in a lot of extra time for me to be sick, to teach, to rest, etc. Four months seems right.

After Mad World

Here is a tentative schedule for the projects on my planning slate. I’ve broken down the specific details at the bottom of the page. All of these dates are subject to change, but as you can see — I’ll average about three books a year for the next three years.

That would clean out the majority of my planned projects.

Mad World, Book 3 – October 2020

Fool Me Twice Book 1 – February 2021

Damaged – May 2021

For the Broken Girl, Book 2 – September 2021

Fool Me Twice, Book 2  – January 2022

Feels Like  Home – May 2022

Fool Me Twice, Book 3 – September 2022

Malice – January 2023

Burn in Heaven – May 2023

These Small Hours – September 2023

Details

Mad World, Book 3

• Alpha Draft (June – July)
• Beta Draft (August)
• Gamma Draft (September)
• Ebook & Release (October)

Fool Me Twice, Book 1 

• Discovery (August)
• Alpha Draft (September – November)
• Beta Draft (November – December)
• Gamma Draft (December 2020 – January 2021)
• Ebook & Release (February 2021)

Damaged

• Discovery (November-December 2020)
• Alpha Draft (January-February 2021)
• Beta Draft (March 2021)
• Gamma Draft (April 2021)
• Ebook & Release (May 2021)

For the Broken Girl, Book 2

• Discovery  (April 2021)
• Alpha Draft (May-June 2021)
• Beta Draft (July 2021)
• Gamma Draft (August 2021)
• Ebook & Release (September 2021)

Fool Me Twice, Book 2

• Discovery  (August 2021)
• Alpha Draft (September – October 2021)
• Beta Draft (November 2021)
• Gamma Draft (December 2021)
• Ebook & Release (January 2022)

Feels Like Home

• Discovery (December 2021)
• Alpha Draft (January – February 2022)
• Beta Draft (March 2022)
• Gamma Draft (April 2022)
• Ebook & Release (May 2022)

Fool Me Twice, Book 3 

• Discovery (April 2022)
• Alpha Draft (May – June 2022)
• Beta Draft (July 2022)
• Gamma Draft (August 2022)
• Ebook & Release (September 2022)

Malice

• Discovery (August 2022)
• Alpha Draft (September – October 2022)
• Beta Draft (November 2022)
• Gamma Draft (December 2022)
• Ebook & Release (January 2023)

Burn in Heaven

• Discovery (December 2022)
• Alpha Draft (January – February 2023)
• Beta Draft (March 2023)
• Gamma Draft (April 2023)
• Ebook & Release (May 2023)

These Small Hours 

• Discovery (April 2023)
• Alpha Draft (May-June 2023)
• Beta Draft (July 2023)
• Gamma Draft (August 2023)
• Ebook & Release (September 2023)

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Hello! Today the May 2020 Site & Story Status Video went live on YouTube. I’m linking it below. Here is your text version!

• The plan for April was to finish revisions for Broken Girl and work on the first draft of Mad World, Book 3. I’ve learned a valuable lesson – NEVER try to do that again, LOL. It was just too hard to juggle a first draft and revisions at the same time, particularly with the challenges of working from home.
• I had some mental health issues, particularly in April. Just a lot of stress from worrying about family I can’t see, news I can’t change, and starting a brand new curriculum teaching double the amount of students I’ve had literally all year. I went from 80 students in ELA/Science to nearly 170 in Spanish in three grade levels. It’s…been interesting.
• Last week was a bad week for that — I kind of hit a breaking point. But I took a few days to get myself together, and this week has been so much better in all ways. I’m looking forward to taking this energy into May and making sure I pay attention to self care.

Site & Channel Update

• Starting the process of changing the site over to a new active story. I changed the widgets, got the For the Broken Girl story page ready to go. I still have some pieces to work out.
• On the channel last month, I completed two vlog series: Revising Broken Girl and Camp NaNoWriMo. They were a lot of fun to film.
• This month, I’m launching a new vlog, Discovering Mad World. I’ve filmed the first three parts — that will start next week. Basically, it’ll be like the BG series — taking you through the process.
• If you’re interested, I can create text highlights of my videos to post here. I do this for my Patreons already, and I’m happy to do it here if you’re not someone who has time/interest in the videos. Let me know by replying!
• Right now, Mad World exists on its own domain. I’ve been thinking of moving it back over here before the next book comes out. I can’t remember now why I put it on its own site. Any thoughts?
• Thanks to a free trial and Patreon support, I now have a subscription to Adobe Creative Suite, which means I get to use Adobe Premiere to edit my channel videos. This summer, I’ll be working on organizing my videos and making promotional videos.

Story Updates

• For the Broken Girl, Book 1:
  • I finished the beta draft on Monday, April 27. I’ve been working on the posting draft this weekk. The alpha draft is available to Patreon supporters at the $3 level, the beta draft at the $5 level, and the posting draft & ebook will be available at the $7 level.
  • I’m hoping to finish the posting draft tonight, the ebook tomorrow, and then start scheduling chapters on Sunday. $1 supporters will get that week’s chapters on Sunday.
• Mad World, Book 3
  • The first draft has had a bumpy road, but we’re getting back into this week as I finish up BG. The plan now is to finish the first draft in June, edit in July, then post in September.
• Fool Me Twice, Book 1
  • We’ll be working on discovery off and on throughout Mad World, B3’s production process. If revisions for MW are done on time in July, we’ll get into the first draft of that sometime in August.

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