Free Digital Shop: Excerpts & Previews – These Small Hours, Chapters 1-3

Happy Wednesday! Flash Fiction is postponed tonight — I had an unexpected busy afternoon. I stopped by my dealership because my lease was up, and, well, three hours later, I walked out with a new car. Paperwork took forever, and by the time I got home, I was exhausted. So we’re postponing the update until tomorrow 🙂

But I didn’t want to leave you hanging, so I uploaded a PDF of These Small Hours, Chapters 1-3. Patreon readers already read Chapters 1-2 when we did the poll over the summer, so I wanted to make sure I uploaded enough that everyone got something new. Let me know what you think so far!

A few writing updates –

• Fool Me Twice Book 2 is coming along nicely. I finished up Act 1 which was 14 chapters, and about 34% of the story. Before I dig into Act 2’s 17 chapters, I need to reset that act, track some story details, figure out new material to add, etc. But I’m happy with the edits so far. I’ve really struggled with the Sam storyline mostly because I don’t like her, lol, and the show didn’t give her a lot of POV (they never really do and KM doesn’t really have the type of acting style that lets me headcanon much), so I’ve ping ponged all over the place. But this edit is definitely the right one.
• These Small Hours — I reworked the back half of the story and started Chapter 22 this week. I took a break to work on the Mad World holiday story, but I should be working on that draft more this month and next.

See you tomorrow! And let me know what you think of the Hours update!

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Update Link: Hits Different – Part 16

It has been a very strange week, lol. We’ve had two delayed openings in a row (Tues & Wed), and there’s a chance for more snowy weather on Friday. Still holding out for an actual snow day, lol, where I can just sit inside and enjoy looking at snow instead of hustling my ass to clean off my car and dig out to go to work.

Hope everyone is staying safe and warm 🙂

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Update: At Christmas – Epilogue

Finally finished! As I wrote in my author’s note, I hope you enjoyed coming back to this world and checking in with some of the characters. I wish I’d had space or time to fully explore everyone from the original series, especially more time with Ned/Lois, Lucas/Felix, Taggert/Portia, Justus/Tamika, but then we’re talking at least another 20k, lol. I wrote and posted this as I went, with only a few re-reads for typos and consistency. I plan to do another clean up in about a month (there’s already two things I’m thinking of that I have to adjust) when I’ll be able to find those errors more clearly.

This ended up being twice as many parts as I planned, and over 46k! Crazy, lol.  Thanks again for reading, and I hope you notice the bread crumbs I left hinting at some future storylines if we ever come back to this world.

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If you accidentally got a post with 2022 updates listed emailed to you, whoops! I was cleaning up the Recent Updates page and was moving 2022 (I never updated the Recent Updates page ONCE in 2023, YIKES), and I left it in the “Site News” archive. That gets automatically emailed. Sorry!

I’m switching to a different format to Recent Updates. Listing them by story, and then the updates for the last month it was updated. That way the page doesn’t get as long or as unwieldy. And maybe I’ll remember to update!

I’ll see you this weekend for Mad World’s Christmas epilogue 🙂

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Update Link: Hits Different – Part 15

Hope everyone is having a great day 🙂 The week is going by faster than I thought it would (and yet dragging at the same time, time is weird), and I’m done the hardest part of my week. The kids are taking a test tomorrow, and Friday is a half day for them, so that’s a relief.

I should have Mad World out sometime this weekend. I’m hoping by Friday, but the schedule is tightening up just a little bit, so I can’t make any promises. But I have Monday off, so definitely by then! Thanks for your patience 🙂

See you then!

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Update Link: At Christmas – Chapter 6

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone is staying safe. A huge storm system has been moving through the eastern half of the country, and it’s just starting to hit us in NJ. So far it’s just rain, but it’s supposed to get bad over the next few hours.

Sorry this took so long! I had to wrap up all the storylines, so I can set up the short, sweet epilogue which will come later this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this visit back into this universe. I’d love to revisit it sometime if I can think of a good story hook. Maybe taking one of the awesome sweeps events and seeing how it affects this universe (the virus, the hostage crisis, the Black and White Ball). Something we could use like the panic room that ripples out until everything has changed. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in.

I started editing Fool Me Twice, Book 2. First chapters are done. I’m going to work on at least two more today, if not three.

See you tomorrow for flash fiction!

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Update Link: Hits Different – Part 14

I got a very lovely response to the last update of this on Wednesday, and I had a little time and energy tonight. I probably should be finishing Mad World, Part 6 but the Wednesday cliffhanger was a little mean, lol.

I’m sure most of you have heard that Steve is coming back, and Jason will be, once again, returning from the dead. I have mixed feelings — obviously, I’m happy to have both of my favs back on the screen and for Jason not to be dead. Plus, I’m hopeful we’ll get more Jake/Jason now that they’re investing in Jake as a character. But I also can’t stand the thought of Jason/Carly, especially with this version.

That being said, the last time Jason came back, I had a flood of new readers and there’s always viewers who discover Liason for the first time, so hoping good things come to us all 🙂

I should have Mad World for you guys on Monday or Tuesday. If not, I’ll see you on Wednesday. Enjoy and let me know what you think 😛

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Updated: Flash Fiction – Hits Different, Part 13

Hope you’re all having a good Wednesday. We’re back to school, and I am exhausted, so this is going to be a short and sweet post. Don’t forget to leave a reply letting me know what you think or leave a thumbs up on the post!

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Update Link: Mad World, Book 4.5 – At Christmas Chapter 5

If you’re a Patreon supporter, free or paid, check out the Perk post for January 2024. There are some tier changes coming.

Well, here we are on the last day of my winter break. Back to work tomorrow.  Our BOE gave us an extra day off this year — normally we go back on Jan 2, but we’re off and honestly, it’s really making so much difference.

I wanted to share a little writing quirk I have that comes up in this chapter. There’s a scene with Dante, Lucky, and Cruz bantering over a hockey game. I’ve also referred in a previous chapter to a penguin movie that Carly and AJ took the boys to. These are real media events, lol. Whenever I can, I look up real details about the dates in which my scenes are set to match weather or media. Every time Elizabeth watched a reality show in Mad World, it was a real episode airing on that date. They watch a romcom on Valentine’s Day in Book 4 that was actually on that night in real life. In Bittersweet, Gia and Elizabeth watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and talk about an episode that aired that day.

I think I started doing that with Bittersweet — I was writing the opening chapter, and wanted to describe Jason heading to Elm Street, and I thought — well, what was the weather in upstate New York back then? Thanks to the internet, I can answer that question. I picked Oswego, New York as the location of Port Charles (on Lake Ontario, with decent elevation for the “cliff roads”) and since then, I drive myself nuts with small details. I know way too much about Istanbul Turkey, and the Schloss Sauerthal in Germany (Fool Me Twice spoilers!)

I always try really hard to get those small details right, even if they go pretty unnoticed. I never want to be that reader thinking — why are there cliffs in Jacksonville? (if you know, you know) and hear someone talk about the Bolivian coast (2002, Alcazar story, oh and Bolivia is landlocked) and be thrown out of the story, lol. It can also be traced back to reading a romance novel set in like 1817 and have the characters refer to themselves as the Three Musketeers (a book that wouldn’t be written until 1844). I put the book down and never went back, lol.

Anyway, the hockey game proved a little difficult because I could find the details (Rangers scored three unanswered goals in Periods 1 & 2, and the Lightning came back and tied it in first 3 mins of Period 3 and went on to win 4-3!) I couldn’t locate the time. A Twitter mutual, Steve Holley, located it for me. So there’s still hope on that hellscape 😛

I’m off to finish prepping for returning to work. I’ll see you tomorrow for Flash Fiction!

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Update Link: Mad World, Book 4.5: At Christmas, Chapter 4

I think, as always, I was a little ambitious in saying I’d be doing daily updates until the end of my break, lol. I was doing pretty good, but then on Friday, I wrote in my schedule to spend about 25 minutes working with FMT Book 2, and I just got swept back up in that project. I haven’t touched it much since mid October, so I was able to look at it with fresh eyes, and I started working on it, and sometimes, you just got to go with those things.

I feel like I’ve got that under control again, and I’m excited to get into the beta draft of Book 2 so you guys can finally read it!

The plan for the rest of break is to do my best to finish writing At Christmas (I’m halfway through Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 is supposed to be a bit shorter so that shouldn’t take as long), but for right now, Flash Fiction is back to just Wednesdays, though it was fun to update it a bit more this week and get further into the story.

Thank you for spending time with me in 2023 and since the beginning! I hope you have an amazing new year! <3

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