Update Links

• These Small Hours, Book 2 (Beta Draft) on Patreon (Free to $5 and above tiers, available to purchase for $5)
• Holiday Highlight: Bittersweet Epilogue
• Holiday Highlight: The Next Best Thing

This is a bit of a housekeeping post with a few announcements, some holiday story highlights, news about These Small Hours Book, and Flash Fiction plans for my upcoming winter break.

Flash Fiction

• I did some housekeeping on my Recent Updates & Flash Fiction page, updating information for Masquerade and Dear Reader, including adding graphics. I also updated the sidebar with the Tues/Thursday schedule.
• This week, Tuesday remains unchanged, but Thursday’s Masquerade update will be either Wednesday or Friday depending on schedule. Thursday is the winter concert 🙂
• I’ll be on break December 23–January 2. Thanks to the calendar, that means I’ll basically be off for two weeks straight. (We have a half day that last Monday so that barely counts, and going back on a Friday barely registers as a real day, lol).
• Mon, Dec 23–Fri, Dec 27:  I’ll update Dear Reader every day, including Christmas Day (I do all my family stuff on Christmas Eve in the evening and the next day is recharge and resting).
•  Mon Dec 30–Fri, Jan 3: I’ll update Masquerade every day.
• Then, in January I’ll switch back and forth on Tues/Thurs, so  there’s a bit more continuity.

These Small Hours, Book 2

• I finally finished the beta draft of Book 2 last night. This took twice as long as I hoped it would, mostly because I seem to repress how stressful and exhausting the fall semester is. Next year, I won’t schedule any novel work until November.
• I’m taking off this weekend to do some housekeeping, to rest, and to give myself a break from deadlines.
• I’ll do my reread at work because it’s a light week.
• Editing starts December 20 (hopefully). At the moment, I don’t know how long editing will take, and I don’t want to estimate since I’m always wildly off.
• I’ll work on the final draft during my break.
• Right now, I’m estimating the book could be released as early as January 9 or as late as January 18.
• The beta draft is on Patreon for the Devoted ($5) tiers and above. Patreon recently added the ability to make single posts for sale, so you can also grab the draft for the price of the tier. That’s pretty useful, and I’m excited to continue to reorganize the Patreon next year. 2024 was definitely a challenge to keep up, and it’s on me for not being organized and on top of things.

Holiday Highlights

Completely slacked on posting this last week, but we’re back on track this week! I’m highlighting one of my favorite ways to update during the holidays — epilogues for completed series.

• Bittersweet Epilogue – Bittersweet is one of my favorite stories. It’s the last story I started posting while still writing it (not even a draft completed!), and also the last one where I started posting and took breaks. Set in 2002, it rewrites Jason’s return hitting some of those same beats we did on the show but with my own twist. It has a sequel, Malice, that I am super excited to get into at some point. The epilogue takes place a few weeks after the story’s end. Bittersweet was originally written from 2016-18, and the epilogue was posted in 2020.
• The Next Best Thing – My second novel after returning to write in 2014, The Best Thing, is still one of my best stories. I finished it in early 2016, then I wrote a novella in 2020 revisiting the characters three years later. The novel was set in 2005 and takes a twist on how Sam and Sonny’s baby story played out, as well as the ultimate fate of Sonny and Carly.

See you on Tuesday!

+9

Update Link: Masquerade – Part 11

I have reached the promised land, lol. Today, in all my classes, students finished up final projects for their units or chapters, and all that’s left is chasing kids who were absent to finish and grading. My content is written for the next six days. I have to make basic slides for each day, but I can do that during contract hours. I really only have to do maybe an hour or two of work this weekend. Cannot wait to be on break!

Just a reminder that next Thursday’s update is shifting to Wed or Fri. It’s our winter concert and a ton of my kids are in the choir or the band. As a former band/theater kid, I always try to support them.

I hope you guys enjoyed the first part of Dear Reader. I’m excited to play in this version of GH. See you on Tuesday!

+8

Update: Dear Reader – Part 1

I mentioned two months ago I had a flash fiction series that was supposed to follow Chain Reaction, but I pushed it back to see how some things would work out on screen. They ended up not going full-throated with the Liz being blamed for Sam’s death thing, so I’m going back to my OG plan.

I know about half my readers aren’t super interested in the AU stuff, and that’s totally fair, so I’ll be doing Dear Reader on Tuesdays and Masquerade on Thursday until we get to my winter break and the schedule will shift slightly.

Programming note: Dec 19, I have a winter concert at work so I’ll either be updating Wednesday or Friday depending on my energy. I’ll keep you posted.

See you Tuhrsday!

+14

Update Link: Masquerade – Part 10

Writing this post before I start the timer at 7, and I gotta tell you, I am running on fumes today. Just pure exhaustion. The only bright spot is that tomorrow is Friday, and I do everything in my power to make Fridays low-key for me and the students — catch up days, media days, etc. I really just need to sleep, and my humidifier kicked out on me last weekend so I have to get a new one for the bedroom. I have to shop around and get a good one — the one in my office is kind of crappy but I can live with it.

I did some housekeeping — the Flash Fiction & Recent Updates page are up to date, and I also cleaned up the Flash Fic widgets.

See you next Tuesday 🙂

+11

Update Link: Masquerade – Part 9

By the end of Tuesday, I always end up feeling like it should be Thursday. I can’t believe I have to go to work three more times with these little gremlins. Whom I love, but mostly want to yeet into the sun by this time of the year.

The other flash fiction series I was planning needs a bit more work (and for me to catch up on current GH) so Masquerade will slot in for Tues/Thurs, with some hopes to increase posting during the my winter break. Thanks to the way Christmas and December 23 falls on the calendar, I’m basically off from December 21 – Jan 5 (we come in on Dec 23 for like 4 hours and have ONE full day on Friday, Jan 3.)

These Small Hours, Book 2 is going to miss that first December 17 deadline. I had some hopes that I might still make it but that was only if I finished the beta draft by Nov 3 and the draft only needed light editing. I had to rework Act 3 and add two more chapters (which I’m happy with) so right now, I’m hoping for Dec 30.

See you on Thursday!

+10

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 47

Hope everyone has a great holiday! I’ll be heading down to my parents this year. I’m bringing sides (look how adult I am!) and dessert — a ginger apple crisp. So I’m writing this, then hopping in the shower so I can start prepping and cooking.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Chain Reaction. It was definitely a strange and wild ride, and there are tons of things I would’ve done differently, but that’s the beauty of Flash. You write it and hope it works.

See you this weekend for a Holiday post, then next week for Masquerade!

+13

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 46

It has been a very annoying week, lol, and it’s only Wednesday. Feels like the kids packed in five days of nonsense in 2.5 days.

Apologies for no updates the last few days — on Sunday, I fell asleep at like 5:30 and didn’t wake up until after I was supposed to have started to write. Then Monday night, I ended up only sleeping like 3 hours. By the time I got home from work, I was dragging really hard. I went to bed early and got eight hours, so I feel a lot better.

I’ll be updating tonight (obviously) and then tomorrow morning, so Chain Reaction should be wrapping up unless something goes off the rails (you never know). I’m not quite ready with the flash fiction series I was planning to launch this weekend, so for the time being, Masquerade will slot into the Tues/Thurs slot. I had a great breakthrough for the middle part of the story so I’m looking forward to updating that more (still with the option to write for 60-90 minutes).

I made huge strides in Hours, Book 2 – for most of October and November, the beta draft has felt like it’s dragged, but in the last week, I’ve managed to get it to the point where I’ll still have it out in December (though Dec 17 is, uh, pushing it). I’ll be able to make some firmer date choices after this break because my plan (dream) is to finish the draft by Sunday.

I actually have most of my next two weeks of classes prepped already — all I need to do is my slides, and I can do a little bit each day over the next four days. That’s really great for my evenings — more time for writing! And I’m caught up with grading. All good things.

See you tomorrow morning/afternoon. I plan to start writing around 11, and post at 12 PM.

Happy Thanksgiving!

+8

Story Links: Noel & All I Want For Christmas

Hello! Quick schedule update. I forgot that I have the high school drama tonight (several of my students are involved and I’m excited to see them perform!) so I’m doing Flash Fiction tomorrow night.  BUT I was going to launch a holiday thing tomorrow so I’m just switching. 

Happy Holidays from Crimson Glass! Over the last 22 years I’ve written countless stories set in and around the holidays, but there are some that I wrote specifically for the holiday or added an epilogue/sequel after first publication. Each Sunday (Saturday this week!) I’ll post 1-2 stories, closing out the new year. I’m not planning any new additions this year, but then I also didn’t plan to write an entire Mad World novella last year, lol.

Week 1: Noel & All I Want For Christmas

Noel was a challenge response I wrote TWENTY years ago. What if Jason, who had lost his memory, was visited by the three ghosts from A Christmas Carol? It was only my second story back after a year’s hiatus, and it was a lot of fun. I’d write it differently now, of course, but it’s fun to revisit.  One of my favorite things about archiving nearly every single story I’ve written for 22 years is seeing my journey as a writer. I’ve learned so much over the last twenty years.

All I Want For Christmas was written my first year back to writing. As the OG fans might know, I wrote in bursts from 2002-04, Late 2005-08, and then disappeared between 2009-2013. I didn’t really watch GH much at this point. I’d gone back to college and was just so incredibly busy and GH was just so terrible at this point that it seemed pointless. I returned to the show in 2012, and writing in 2014.

I relaunched Crimson Glass in January 2014, wrote a few new pieces (Shadows & A Few Words Too Many) and finished the year with this alternate universe Christmas story. Hard to believe I’ve been writing consistently again for 11 years! And it’s great to see how far I’ve come in that second decade of writing. This story was also the first time I did a holiday epilogue — there’s a second epilogue added a year later.  I think if I wrote this today, it’d be longer for sure, but I still love it.

Happy Holidays from me to all of you, and I can’t wait to see where this holiday season takes us! See you tomorrow for Flash Fiction and this week for more Chain Reaction!

+9

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 45

Happy Thursday! This week has felt like an entire year, lol. Can’t wait for Friday. I desperately need some extra sleep so as soon as I finish this update, I’m off to relax, read a little, and turn in early.

See you Saturday for Extended Flash Update on Masquerade. I had some really good ideas on that one this week, and I’m gonna try to take some time to flesh it out and do some planning. I think Chain Reaction proves I should do a bit more planning on my flash series, lol. I am awful without a plan.

+10

Update: These Small Hours – Chapter 33

I have never been more annoyed, lol. I had a shitty day at work, but I was determined to come home and relax. I soaked in a bubble bath, read a book for an hour, and then went to make dinner before writing Flash at 7. It was all going perfectly.

And then —

I got an email that my Wayfair ordered was delivered — but it was not my house. I don’t remember if I went into this back in June, but my Wayfair card got used fraudulently for thousands of dollars. I managed to fix it, and cleaned out the account. Deleted all payments, all addresses, everything. And didn’t touch it until last week when I wanted to grab a few things and didn’t want to use Amazon. Somehow that fraudulent address got put on my account AGAIN and all my of new items were going THERE instead of the order address I asked for.

I literally spent an HOUR on the phone explaining it over and over before I finally got to a supervisor who fixed it but by the time I was done, my dinner was stone cold, my patient and energy gone.

I don’t want to promise you I’ll update Flash tomorrow, because I can’t make that promise. Tomorrow sucks for lots of reasons, lol.

SO as an apology, you get a preview chapter of These Small Hours. This is the first chapter in the second book. It hasn’t been edited for typos, and there’s no guarantee this is what the final version is gonna look like. But it’s probably not too far away.

Anyway, enjoy, and see you on Thursday.

+13