Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 108

Hope everyone is having a good day 🙂 Weather in New Jersey is back in the 70s this week — it actually got so chilly here I had to close all my windows and wear long sleeves inside. I hate when the season is going back and forth. PICK A STRUGGLE.

Kate Mansi is leaving GH as Kristina which is such a relief — she plays such an unlikeable version of that character and that really surprised me because I’d watched her on Days as Abby, and I really liked her. But that surrogacy storyline and fallout needed someone who could tap into even an ounce of vulnerability, and Kate just…was so flat. It made it easy to write a narcissitic version, which I’ve done in this last flash fiction.

One of the most frustrating things that’s happened in the last few years since I published Fool Me Twice, Book 2 is that three of the characters I put into important supporting roles came back or were recast and completely ruined my vision of them — Lucky, Britt, and Kristina — the Lucky and Britt of it all is suuuper annoying lol because I was building my storyline from Britt’s OG run back in 2012-14, and I was ignoring JJ’s entire second run and using Greg’s Lucky as my base. Britt was a neutral character in the fandom back then, and now we hate her, lol.

In other news, the Phillies are on the West Coast this week — they have a late start tomorrow night at 9:40 and on Friday at 10:10, so both of those days are planned double updates, but they’re playing at 4PM on Wednesday, so no update that night.

We should finish this story up this week or on the weekend, and I’m working on the next Flash Fiction — well, I’m trying to work on it. I’m looking for ideas! I put up a video on Patreon talking about where I am on ideas, but my basic call to action:

What should I write that isn’t set in a era where I have to do so much baggage work, lol, like half my stories are spent explaining why Jason was with Sam, why Liz was with Franco or Lucky, yada yada — I just want to get to the story! I’m looking at AU, 2000 Summer/Fall, or 2001 era, but open to anything. Bonus points if you have a Taylor Swift song connection.

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 107

One of the reasons I’m trying to get back to daily updates is I think I’m a better writer when I’m updating more regularly, and my audience is a bit more engaged when we’re doing updates every 24 hours or so. But when I stop updating on a schedule, you guys don’t know when to come here for updates, so you’ll miss things, and I fall out of the habit of writing daily so my brain thinks it’s harder than it really is.

This is probably the hardest, most exhausting year of teaching I’ve ever had, and I’m just really hoping it’s not solely because I had three preps (three separate course preparations) because, of course, I’m adding a fourth next year and it’s terrifying to think it’ll get harder. Instead, I’m going to remember a few things: my house was under construction for almost a month starting in September, then I burned my hand and got pneumonia in quick succession. I didn’t start feeling like myself health-wise until almost mid-February, and by then, I was just scrambling to stay ahead of myself week to week. The pace of that just left me feeling drained and exhausted so that even on breaks when I wanted to write, the thought of creating made me almost physically ill.

And despite my promises to myself not to overhaul my entire program — I’m doing it anyway because I want to give my students the best I can offer, and what I did this year was okay, but not as good as I think it could be. I’m also getting a new version of our textbook program and I am so excited (lol) because we’re getting the online materials with it and I really think it’s going to make my life easier. I won’t have to write their textbook anymore and I can work in days when they’re doing listening and speaking practice that I don’t have to create. A huge weight off my shoulders.

Anyway — all of this is to say that — just like with my students, I know I haven’t lived up to your expectations and mine when it comes to updating this school year (and mine are usually higher than they should be), but I just feel like I wanted to apologize and remind myself to set more realistic expectations for you (and for myself). A lesson that I have to learn every day, apparently, lol. But maybe this time it’ll be different. Right?

The plan is to see you tomorrow and every day for the rest of the week. Love you guys 🙂

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 106

Hello! My morning took longer than I expected yesterday (I swapped out my car lease!) and then I got busy when I got home. Good news! All content is written — I finished the last chapter of the yesterday yesterday, so yay!

I will see you guys tomorrow — hopefully writing around 5 and posting at 6.

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 105

We technically have four weeks of school left, but only ONE of those is a full M-F 7-3 schedule for me, so yay! Plus, two of my three courses have all the content completed, so it’s just grading, and I’ll finish the content for the third this week. And I finally allowed myself to stop demanding fully fleshed out slides for every single day.  I’m so sorry for not updating in so long. At first — it was just trying to get material completed, and then that push just exhausted me. I needed a few days to come home from work and just crash.

I know I’ve said this before — but updates should be more frequent just because I literally do have more time, and other than my fourth period feral freshmen, the kids are sort on board with the attitude of we’ll get through these three weeks of content and not torture each other.

I don’t know what time tomorrow’s update is — I have morning plans and the Phillies play at 4, so somewhere between 11 – 3, I’ll start writing. See you then!

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 104

I absolutely did not intend to ghost you guys for almost two weeks, wow. I am going to stop pretending I ever have anything completely ready for anything because every time I think we’re in a position to start daily updates, my job and brain are like LIAR.

I just got super overwhelmed with how much I have to do, what I’m not getting done, and I was starting to feel like all I do is work and nothing ever gets done. I literally have to work nearly every waking hour, and it’s still not enough. For example, I am writing this to you from my home office in the middle of a Tuesday. I had a personal day scheduled for a dentist appointment, but I had to reschedule because I didn’t have the $200 I needed for the dental work (dental insurance is such a scam because WHAT are you even covering at this point).

But instead of being able to enjoy my day off or cancelling and going to work, I kept the day off so I could…work. As I told my students, I took off a  day from work because I have so much work that isn’t getting done at work because I’m too busy…working. Diabolical. But I worked for about 90 minutes, and I’m taking a break.

All my content has to be basically finished by May 29. My grading has be done by June 5 for the most part, so we are in the home stretch. But we’re also in the part of the schedule where the students can smell summer and are more feral than ever, and my brain is just like LEAVE ME ALONE on a daily basis.  I legitimately crashed out on my eighth period students who never take any notes or do any of the work, but saunter over to my desk on quiz day so I can reteach them the entire chapter. I just kept asking for their notes over and over and over until they went away and they had the AUDACITY to be irritated with me. Listen, buddy, you want me to teach you twice? Welcome to summer school where I’ll get paid for it.

I will update what I can when I can.

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 103

ugh this week

I’m still sort of backed up in grading and content creation, but I get a slight break next week since state testing is next week, and I don’t see my freshman until next Thursday so it’s one less class to fully prep for the week. That’s pretty much the only plus. But I think I’ve reached the point where I just don’t care, lol. My  grading back log is like a month, and I’ve given up trying to get caught up.

Then my instructional supervisor (don’t get me started) comes in and says that our state auditor tagged us in French standards, telling me that French II needs to start at Intermediate Low and there’s no way to argue with it, so I have to rewrite the entire curriculum for all three years to align with a set of standards that are developmentally inappropriate with zero chance to appeal.  I’m gonna end up on the news at this rate.

Also the Phillies haven’t won a game in since Monday, April 13.

See you tomorow.

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 102

It’s April 19, the two-year anniversary of that time that I stayed up until midnight, listened to the entire Tortured Poets album, only to realize the lyrics she’d been using for promotion were no where to be found. We thought it meant another drop at 2 AM of a few songs like Midnights, but surely nothing as good as those first 15 songs. Early favorites were “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” and “But Daddy I Love Him” and I obsessed with “So Long, London.”

Then my queen dropped SIXTEEN MORE SONGS.

IMAGINE an album so perfect you could afford to leave “The Prophecy” and “The Black Dog” for the bonus album. AND CASSANDRA?????Iconic.

Anyway, it’s TTPD day in this house forever and for always.

Once again, during the week, it’s my goal and intention to be daily, but I will see you when I see you.

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 101

I wasn’t happy with yesterday’s update. I got about two lines into the writing and I was like — this was the dumbest plot choice ever. I actually kind of felt that way about five seconds into writing the Sam/Kristina crash but it was kind of too late, I’d already put the pieces in motion. If you’re interested in me explaining why I chose this, and why I hate it, I’m gonna write more below — if not, just know that I’m aware that post crash, the story is a bit weak, and I’m planning to adjust it in edits.

Anyway — we’re moving on and I’m relieved to be moving away from this part of the story.

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everything below here might include spoilers, please stop here. thank you.

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From the day I began planning this story in June 2025, I knew two things: Kristina was going to frame Elizabeth and Sam had to die. A Sam-free GH is the best GH, so she’s deader than a doornail. I just didn’t really know exactly how. I outlined the first 2o or some updates, and initially — Sam was going to more of a background character, popping up to help Spinelli investigate. She’d find evidence that Kristina planted the gun, and during the confrontation, she’d die. Kristina would be responsible for killing her sister — which I thought would be a great punishment. Why did I go with flooding? I should have just gone with a regular car accident, but I honestly couldn’t think of a way to do it in a single car accident, and I didn’t want a passerby that might help, lol. I wanted to sort of leave them both for dead.

But then I started writing, and the Danny storyline ended up really helping me figure out Kristina’s role and suddenly, I had a better reason for Sam to confront Kristina, one where she’s even more upset. But I still had the flood outlined, and I’d done a lot of research — but then I came up with the idea of Sam to get trapped and know she’d die so Danny would have a little bit of closure, and then she was on the phone with Spinelli which meant Jason was there, and I sort of accidentally wrote Dante and Chase closing in — all these story elements I never envisioned converged — and now I was exactly in the position I had been earlier. All these people who knew Kristina was probably the killer coming across the accident right away. So then I had to send the car off the hill, —

Honestly, if I’d been doing anything but timed sessions, I would have stopped, cut pretty much everything before the crash, and just had Sam and Kristina go off the road, hit a tree, and kill Sam instantly or something. But doing the timed stuff puts you under a different kind of pressure, and you make story choices you sort of have to live with until the edits.

So if you read yesterday’s update and thought, this kind of sucks, you should know I agree and it’s why I stopped writing at 53 minutes because I was unhappy, and I wanted to be done, and I think it was showing in the prose. I felt like maybe it would be a stronger choice to stop for the day, come back today with the knowledge I’ll be adjusting things in edits so I can write an aftermath.

Update Link: You’re Not Sorry – Part 100

This has been a very annoying week because I feel like I did nothing but work during spring break and that I was prepped for this week and yet somehow I had mountains of work every day after work to bring home. Boo to the world.

Also we got a heat wave with temps going up in the 80s and touching 90, but I didn’t put the AC in the bedroom on because once it’s in the window, it doesn’t come out, and it’s not really time for that yet. So sleeping was annoying. But the temps dropped and we’re good for a while.

I still need to grade tests from before spring break and then grade benchmarks, and by the time that’s done, it’ll be quiz time — i hate everything.

But it’s Friday and I don’t need to set the alarm for two days, and I’m in charge of my own bathroom breaks!

This is just a quick check in –

I had zero intention of missing three days of updates, I promise you.

I think I have time blindness — like I just severely underestimate how long something is going to take to do and instead of adjusting, I just assume I’m the problem and I’ll do it better next time.

Anway. Sunday I was trying to prep everything — Monday, I was trying to do everything I didn’t get done at work but my brain was just not on it, and today? Today I decided to clean the house because I avoided it all last week (and my vacuum broke so I used it as an excuse to not clean anything because I am an ADULT). But the new one arrived, and I thought — if the downstairs looks nice, maybe I won’t want to set myself on fire as soon I get in the house.

Then of course as I was finishing up using the spot cleaner on the carpet, I spilled the canister on myself trying to empty it so I had to wash my shoes and get a shower. I am a very graceful adult.

It’s after 5, I still have to make dinner and do some prep work for tomorrow, but we are finally sort of back on track in real life, and now that my house doesn’t look like a disaster zone, I can (maybe) start concentrating on other things.

Unless my brain comes up with a new excuse.

Let’s just say — my intentions are to update daily, but I am absolutely going to miss days, and I’m going to try not to apologize for it every time.

I will see you tomorrow.

Probably.

Almost definitely.

Maybe.