Update Link: Scars – Part 4

Note: Long update blog. If you want to skip around

• P1 – Why I flaked on Wed.
• P2 – Mom & Sister health update
• P3 – Widget update
• P4 – Mad World started
• P5 – Vlog & Patreon Livestream

I hope everyone had a great week! I’m sorry for flaking out on Wednesday’s update to Signs of Life. I was so tired that morning, so I kept putting it off thinking my energy would bump up (I often feel a lot better in the afternoon), but it just didn’t and it hasn’t really in the last few days. I’m at the point where I really should be recovered from the school year, energy wise. My sleeping is better, I’ve been resting and recharging most of the time, but I’m still having some serious energy problems and my neck is still really sore. I made a doctor’s appointment to get blood work done because diabetes runs in the family and I want to make sure I’m not deficient in anything. That’s not until July 12 unfortunately, so we’re just going to have to muddle through.

Mom got the first results for her bone marrow biopsy, and, uh, they’re kind of mixed. It’s not the cancer they thought it was, but it’s a myeloproliferative disorder which is a type of blood cancer. We’re waiting on more firm results that give a final diagnosis as well as a prognosis. We don’t know which type of the disorder she has yet or how bad. Thanks to therapy, ironically, I’m been dealing with the stress and anxiety as well as could be expected. I can’t remember if I told you guys that my sister ended up with Covid a few weeks ago, but, uh, she did. Luckily, she got the very, very mild form and is already pretty much back to normal. June was just…it was a lot.

I did get started on Mad World, Book 4 yesterday. I updated the widgets on the side for July — I’ve added Book 4 to the writing section, moving it from drafting. I also added two in progress widgets — one just for CampNaNoWriMo and the other for the full book. We’re looking at a 200k word count which may or not not take me all of July & August. We’ll see. My July goal is at least 100k. That’s doable.

Yesterday, I wrote a new scene and then started reworking some older pieces from last year. If you guys remember, the timeline for Book 4 was my original timeline for Book 3 (I was going to start with Liason’s wedding and finish off Ric but then I realized we just needed more of the Sonny/Carly story as well as more of a fallout with Book 2’s rape story.) So Book 4’s story got pushed. I did, however, write all of Book 4 at that point. Some of it is going to be useful — early on, some entire scenes can be reworked, and later it might just be pieces of dialogue. We’re at 8k so far, but I don’t think that’s going to be typical going forward.

I’ll be doing a vlog for MW later today that will go live at some point today or tomorrow. If you’re a Patreon, I’m doing a Livestream tonight at 6PM (EST), planning a deep dive into Mad World and Fool Me Twice (and any others that are asked about).

I’m going to try to make up for Signs of Life tomorrow on Saturday, but we might just skip it. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes.

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Update Link: Scars – Part 3

Hey! Apologies for the slight hiatus last week. It certainly wasn’t planned, but the week got away from me and the lack of sleep was really starting to wear on me. I slept pretty well over the weekend, but then last night — ugh. Still, I’m hopeful. I also have to remember that I tend to drag in the morning if I don’t get up and start moving. I’m not much of a morning person, but the career I chose forces me to be one, LOL, so the summer is always a strange adjustment. I got up early this morning, went grocery shopping, and tried to get my blood moving. Still dragging a bit, but we’ll see how I feel in a few hours.

I’ve been soundtracking Mad World, and one of the fun things about sound tracking is you start really thinking about the emotional beats and the pacing of the story. Rereading what I planned back in December has me really excited. I worked on soundtracking yesterday, and today, I’m going to kick off writing. If you’re interested, here’s the Spotify Playlist so far:

I’ll be back tomorrow with Signs of Life, and then on Friday with the next part of Scars.

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Hey! Just popping in to let you know that I’m going to skip this weekend in updating. You guys know I’ve been struggling with back and neck pain due to all the hours spent remote teaching this year.  Combined with all the trouble I had sleeping these last few weeks, sitting at the computer has been really uncomfortable. I’m finally sleeping better (two nights in a row) and my neck is starting to feel better. I’m going to limit my time on the computer today to just this post and rest so that I can come back and start writing full time this week.

I’m going to make up for this delay by posting every day Tuesday – Saturday. Starting tomorrow, I’m also going to be digging into the final book in the Mad World series. I want to rest up and be completely read to throw myself into writing!

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Update Link: Signs of Life – Part 8

Hope everyone is having a good week! I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping which is really making it hard to get going in the morning. I’m not sure what’s up with any of that, but well, here we are. Anyway — fun fact — the scene with Alexis in Part 7 bringing up spousal privilege was NOT in the first plot sketch of this story. So, um, I don’t know if I should toss out my plans and go with it, or just have it be a funny thing that happened. Thoughts?

I’m not sure, again, when I’ll be able to do Friday’s update. I’m spending all day with my mother tomorrow for a procedure (the last one to confirm cancer — it’s not the one they thought it was, but they haven’t ruled out other types), and my electric is being turned off most of Friday. I might do it Friday night or Saturday morning.

See you then!

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Update Link: Scars – Part 2

I hope everyone is having a good week! I’ll probably be moving the Flash Fiction update on Friday to either Saturday or later on Friday. They’re going to be turning off the electric on my block between 10 AM – 4 PM to do some work on the lines. I could try to do it earlier, but we’ll see.

I cleaned up the widgets a bit — in that I updated the Recently Updated/Completed/What’s Next sections. I’ll be cleaning it up further when I’m done Flash Fiction today. My Photoshop decided to take forever to open up any files, so I got a little behind.

I’ll see you tomorrow for the next part of Signs of Life!

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Update Link: Signs of Life – Part 7

Happy Sunday! I’ve spent the last five days doing very little, lol. I played a lot of The Sims 4, to be honest. I’ve been working on the Decades Challenge — a version of the legacy challenge that begins in the 1890s and works its way up to the 2000s, changing rules for historical play. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve been suuuper unstructured, lol. That’s good a for a bit, but I actually am better when I have some sort of plan for the day.

I think I’m nearly ready to confirm that Mad World will be the next project, starting in June. I do like the opening scenes I played with for Broken Girl, but I was looking over my plans for the story and I think I need to go back to the drawing board on the second half just a little bit.

I’ll see you guys on Tuesday!

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Update Link: Scars – Part 1

Happy Friday! Today, we’re starting a new Flash Fiction story, the sequel to Darkest Before the Dawn & Shot in the Dark. Scars takes place in 2016, three years later, and rewrites the Tom Baker storyline. Tania asked for the rewrite, but in order to set it in 2016, I had to do some things first. I thought about just making some of it backstoy we’d talk about, but as I planned it, I realized I wanted to write those parts of the story, LOL.

If you’re a Patreon supporter, I posted some opening scenes for Mad World and Broken Girl to get some thoughts about which story I should focus on. If I’m still undecided next week, I’ll post them here for general thoughts.

I hope you guys are having a great week! I’ll see you on Sunday for the next part of Signs of Life!

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Update Link: Signs of Life – Part 6

I hope everyone is having a great week! Today is the first day of my summer vacation, and I am READY to get some more sleep, get the house in order, and just relax for a few months. It’s been a very long school year, and I definitely need this vacation. I have to write curriculum for next year, but that’s not until next month, and fingers crossed —  I can do the majority of it remotely.

Thank you so much for the overwhelmingly positive response to Fool Me Twice! It was such a huge and ambitious project — it definitely has more moving pieces than anything I’ve written and tackles a much harder period of GH history than I’ve attempted. Setting something in the last five years of GH is no easy feat and I appreciate everyone coming along with me on that ride. I know some of you guys are NOT Carly fans, LOL, so I love that you’re supportive of my undying love for her. I know it feels like Elizabeth gave her a lot of slack, but I promise you — that’s something we’re coming back to in the next book. I’m not done dragging Carly through the mud just yet.  And stay tuned — the Carly in Michael is going to jump out. Sometimes you gotta be stupid before you can be smart.

I’m happy to be bringing back Flash Fiction. Signs of Life will be updated on Sundays & Wednesdays, and Scars will be on Fridays & Tuesdays. Both of those stories should take us about the entire summer or so.

I’m taking off the next week or so from thinking about the next project. I’ll be starting whatever it is on July 1 for CampNaNoWriMo. I’m leaning towards Mad World because I always write it in July for this event, but I’m also going to consider Broken Girl. Both of those projects would be completed with the next book. Let me know if you have a preference!

I’ll see you guys on Friday!

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Hey! For some reason the update post got pushed out ahead of schedule. The chapters went live at 6:30. They should be working now!

Chapter 35

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Update Link: Start with Ricochet, Chapter 35

In case you missed it, I posted Chapters 31-34 yesterday. Today, we are bringing the first book to a close with chapters 35-38. I’m really happy to finally have this project done and delivered.

If you’ve been reading and haven’t left a reply yet, please make sure you do today. I’m still finalizing the plots and character beats for Books 2 & 3 so I want to know what you guys want to see more of. What you connected to.

The only thing left to do is complete the book. Because FMT’s editing process was all over the place, I’m actually going to do one more read through of the entire draft so that ebook will probably be out sometime next month.

As for what’s next — I’ll be able to start flash fiction this week on schedule but I might miss a day here and there with other things going on. The next time you hear from me will be Wednesday morning with the long overdue return of Signs of Life.

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