Update Link: A King’s Command, Part 17

Hello! Reporting in from a very relaxing weekend. I did roughly ten minutes of work the entire weekend (going through email and just double checking everything was ready to go for tomorrow morning to post at 7 am).

I’ll be finishing up the beta draft Chapters 1-20 on Thursday, then plan to finish the posting draft over my four day President’s Day weekend since I have four straight days off, and I’ve made my notes for the first ten chapters. Then, the weekend between Feb 16-23, I’ll be getting the draft ready to publish here at CG and on the other platforms, and finishing the subsite. I’ll also begin the beta draft for the back half — doing a reread of those chapters, making notes for the edits — and on Feb 23 — the first 20 chapters go live.

Between Feb 23-Feb 28, I’m taking five full days off from editing and working on the soundtrack for Broken Girl. Starting March 1, I’ll be doing the beta draft for Chapters 21-38 of FMT and starting the alpha draft of Broken Girl 2. I plan to start small with the alpha draft (1-2 scenes a day), and I expect that the back half of FMT won’t be as stressful as the first half because I’m personally doing a lot better.

This week, for the Facelift, I’m also focusing on getting my YouTube section completed, at least for the in progress vlogs – Mad World, Broken Girl, and FMT. On Tuesday, my February Site & Story status post/video goes live. On Thursday, I have a FMT vlog going up. Next week, I’ll have two new series which I’ll talk more about when I’ve had a chance to edit them.

See you guys in the next one 🙂

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Update Link: Not Knowing When – Part 10

I can’t believe we’re getting more frickin’ snow tomorrow. The nerve of this winter, honestly. I am not looking forward to shoveling AGAIN. I just did it last week, ugh. Anyway 😛 We’re finally bringing back the third of my flash fiction stories. Very excited that this new schedule is actually getting things done, and I’m excited to be bringing this one back. Had a really good day today. Usually on the weekends, I wake up and work for a few hours in the morning, but today I played the Sims for like two hours instead.

GLORIOUS.

Also, I just bought new gorgeous rose gold velvet hangers and I now have enough hangers for all the clothes that need them, and that makes me feel very adult and mature, LOL.

Worked on editing FMT today — cleaned up four chapters. Five more to clean up, then I’m writing fifteen new scenes between Sunday-Thursday. Next Friday, I have a four day weekend from work and I’ll be working on the second round of edits — they should be done by next Monday. Very happy to be getting some work done. See you guys tomorrow!

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Update Link: A King’s Command – Part 17

Happy Friday! Today was such a crazy week! I started my new cycle with my students, and we had two half days in a row–which is the equivalent of losing an entire day of classes from my cycle, so I’ve been scrambling all week to get my students into their routine. Plus, meeting brand new students (I have 34 sixth graders in this cycle, yikes!) and developing new relationships takes such a crazy amount of mental energy. I’ve been dragging all week.

The great news is that I’ve finally reached the gorgeous moment I’ve been preparing for since October — my curriculum is written. All that I’m doing now is tweaks. I literally do not have to do a SINGLE piece of work this weekend because I have graded everything and even scheduled Monday’s post.

So with that done, I get to fully turn my attention to my actual life this weekend (and the four day weekend next week!) I’m finally scheduled for the vaccine in two weeks, so that’s awesome. We’re going back in the classroom next Tuesday (Feb 16), and I’m mostly okay with it, especially now that I know I’ll be getting vaccinated so soon. I’ll be working on FMT and a few other things that I’ve been pushing off for a few weeks.

I’ll see you guys tomorrow!

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Your Update Link: A King’s Command, Part 16

ICYMI –

• Saturday’s update was cancelled because I was having sinus issues.
• Fool Me Twice is being split into two releases: 20 chapters on Feb 23 and 18 on March 23. I’ll have the first chapter as a preview on Feb 16.

See you guys on Friday!

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First, thanks for understanding about last night’s postponement. As the day wore on, I actually started to feel worse, and was worried I was legit getting sick. Since I haven’t really been in contact with my students this last year, I haven’t really been getting sick either so I was completely out of meds. I did some storm shopping this morning, and grabbed some sinus meds. I’m already feeling better after one dose. I didn’t go grocery shopping last week and realized I literally had not gone outside in more then ten days. With the weather being so cold right now, I’ve been cooped up in my office working most of the time, and I think the air in my house just started to bug my sinuses.

I’m pretty sure at this point (at 10 AM) that I’ll be able to update tonight, but if that changes, I’ll let you know.

Second, and the reason I’m posting this morning is to give you some news about Fool Me Twice and that February 23 date.  I really, really wanted the entire story to be done by then so I could put it out of my head, take a week off, and then dig into Broken Girl. However, you guys already know that January was a bad month for me, and it didn’t really start to turn around for me until the last two weeks. I wasn’t ever able to really make up for those first two weeks and a half weeks of editing time lost. I should be at least halfway through the story by now, but I’m still on Chapter 12.  Yesterday, I started to feel like I was rushing edits so I could get them done and that’s not what I want to do.

There’s just no way to have 38 chapters fully edited and cleaned up to my standards by February 23.

So I have two options — I could postpone FMT entirely for about a month OR I could split it into two big updates. I thought about putting this to a vote, but I know you guys and I figured you’d rather read something sooner rather than nothing and waiting a whole extra month.  Plus, this is only the second time I would have released a book at once, so it’s not like you guys are used to this schedule anyway.

That’s my news — I’ll be publishing the first 20 chapters of Fool Me Twice on February 23, then the final 18 on March 23. This gives me time to do two full round of edits which the story needs to be smoothed out and preserve continuity.  I talked it over with Ang, and we both agree that Chapter 20 is a good place to leave you guys for a month and for me, it also feels realistic. I can get the next nine chapters done by the end of this week and I have two weeks for the second round of edits. Just making the decision makes me feel better.

Fool Me Twice is the last novel that was on the old production schedule where I really didn’t leave myself enough time for certain parts of the project, so I’m pretty sure this is the last time we’ll have this schedule crunch. I just want to give you guys the best product I possibly can and this book is REALLY important to me. It’s ambitious and rewrites a time period on GH that a lot of people didn’t watch or didn’t enjoy, so I want to do it right.

I’ll see you guys tonight!

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Hey, just a quick note — I’m skipping tonight’s update. Not Knowing When will be back next week. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here on the blog or if I’ve only complained on Twitter. Until this week, I literally had a thousand things that were stressful than this, LOL, but now we’ve cleared out the worst irritations.

In early December, I started having this weird muffled whooshing in my right ear. I went to urgent care, they gave me Prednisone until I went to my primary doctor which wasn’t until January. He told me it’s Eustachian Tube Dysfunction (which I can barely spell), and gave me *another* round of Prednisone. I finished my last dose on Thursday and, uh, the problem is back again. And it’s worse today and messing with my attention. It’s been all I can do to get some editing done, and even that hasn’t really been good. I’m calling the doctor on Monday.

I’m gonna try to get the rest of my editing done, then going to lay down because that seems to help. I’ll keep you guys in the loop. Should be feeling better tomorrow, I hope, but we’re also having a snow storm so who knows.

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Your Update Link: A King’s Command, Part 15

This weekend, we start the double updates of a King’s Command and Not Knowing When returns from hiatus. I think that A King’s Command should be done by the end of February — that would give us about 10 mor parts. After that, Signs of Life comes back from hiatus, and it’ll be nice for most of the Flash Fiction to be done. Once all of them are done, I’ll start Part 3 of Collect Your Regrets.

That story needed three parts because Tania originally asked for a rewrite of an Elizabeth storyline that took place before Steve’s Jason came back, so I either had to change the timeline of that story, keep Billy’s Jason, or fold the twins into the story. I honestly didn’t know the best way forward. Then I thought — well, I’ll set it at a different time period when Jason is still there–then Jake is still dead. Heh. So we got Part 1 reuniting Liason in 2012, Part 2 bringing back Jake, and then Part 3 — you might think we’re picking up on the Cassadines shenanigans, but we’re actually going to fast-forward to 2016.  I’m not sure what it looks like yet.

I finally updated my Recent Updates page and archived the 2020 updates. I actually do want to go back one day and complete archived pages for 2017-2014 because I think it’s fun for me to go back and see the growth of the site. But that’s a minor project far away in the future.

I had a pretty good week this week — the plumber ghosted me once again on Monday, but my BIL put me in touch with some guys who came out on Tuesday, and it’s been glorious not worrying about that. I also had great week at work, finishing up one cycle and prepping for the next. Just finally feel like some things have turned a corner. I’m editing Fool Me Twice, and that’s taking a bit of time for me to get into the groove. I’m not sure I really understand my editing process yet — every time I write, I learn more about how I work. I’ve managed to crack the Discovery and first draft process, but editing continues to be a crapshoot.

I won’t miss my Feb 23 deadline, I’m just not taking the twists and turns I thought I would. I’ll have some more on this on Sunday after a full weekend of sitting down with the project and figuring out where we are. Patreon supporters are going to be getting updates this week — Obsessed Tiers get new chapters as I edit, Adored Tier get weekly updates, and on Sunday, the Devoted Tier gets their first January reward — all 11 (hopefully more by then) chapters edited posted. Check out the support page for more information.  Those are still not the completed versions of the story, mind of you. But there is more new content.

I finished the ebook cover for FMT Book 1, I’m attaching it below. I’m not super sold on it, but it’ll do for now.  I’ll see you tomorrow for the return of Not Knowing When!

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Your Update Link: A Shot in the Dark – Part 18

Not a lot to report today. I spent this morning working on Fool Me Twice. After adding two brand new chapters and 10k, I had to look ahead to the next cluster of chapters to see how many much reworking they’d need to fit the new material, then I wrote the next flashback. I started working on the Fool Me Twice ebook cover, but I’m not much of a graphic designer and I hate everything, LOL, so I’ll try again tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to this week because I should be able to stop working outside of my contracted hours (well, at least by 3:30) and actually relax at night. Hopefully. I even prepped all of my meals — even the lunches. If the plumber would ever show up and take care of my pipes, this would be a good day.

This ended up being the last part of A Shot in the Dark, so I’ll be back next week with A King’s Command on Friday & Sunday and Not Knowing When on Saturday.

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Your Update Link: A King’s Command 14

I think we’ll be wrapping up A Shot in the Dark tomorrow night. I was able to get what I wanted done in last night’s part, and we’re just about at the end of the narrative with the Jake return story which was the point of this part in the Collect Your Regrets universe. We won’t entirely finish with the Cassadines just yet — this series has one more part which is the story Tania asked for in the first place, but I’m not opposed to revisiting the Cassadines in another part of the series. We’ll see how Sunday’s entry goes.

Next weekend, A King’s Command moves to double updates on Friday & Sunday. Saturday’s update will either be the final part of A Shot in the Dark or the return of Not Knowing When.

Today, I wrote two brand new chapters for Fool Me Twice. It was supposed to be one, but I realized as I writing that it was going to be around 9k (ended up being even longer at 12k) and that’s WAY too long for one chapter. That’s why Flash Fiction is late — I finished the new Chapter 8 at 6:55 and I just–needed a break, LOL.

In housekeeping news, I’ve made some changes to the Production Schedule for 2021 & 2022. Nothing crazy — just some adjustments to release dates and projects. I realized, looking over my original dates, that I hadn’t really built in a lot of breaks between projects, and taking those few weeks at the end of December just made my life so easier. If a few things in January had gone differently in my personal life, I’d be really happy.

The biggest change is that I’m not starting Broken Girl’s first draft until March. I’m editing Fool Me Twice in February, and releasing on February 23. I’ll be working on that really up until release day, so BG won’t be getting my focus anyway. Better to push it off, give me time to finish soundtracking and then have a week between release of FMT and BG alpha draft. I’ll be writing Book 2 on March & April, editing in May and June, then releasing June 15.

Then I go into production on Mad World 4, writing the alpha draft in July & August, the beta in September, then releasing October 19. I’m actually going to work on Books 2 & 3 of Fool Me Twice at the same time. I’ll do discovery for both, then write the alpha for both and edit them separately. You’ll get those in February 2022 & June 2022. And the final release of 2022 is Book 1 in my Hand Me Down series, Feels Like Home, a future fic that is set in 2024, but picks up the show in 2008.

I gave myself two weeks between each of those projects as vacation time — which I realized I hadn’t done this year. I went from one project to the next. If I want to start early, that’s fine, but I also have the space to say no.

I also worked more on the Facelift. All the 2002 stories are good to go on Alternate History. They’ve been moved over and their Inspiration & Timeline information has been edited to hopefully give you more context for when the story takes place. All the stories have a Featured Banner — you might have noticed that some of the stories are now 150×150 and not 125×125. I’m not going back to change the older ones, but I like the bigger size for creativity issues.

The only thing I’m not doing right now is working on the banners for all the stories. Those take a bit longer and will be easier once my screencap collection is done, which I’m not touching until the summer.

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Your Update Link: A Shot in the Dark – Part 17

Hey! So it’s been one of those insane weeks. It started out rough — you guys know that, based on my post last Sunday where I thought I’d really reached the end of my rope, mental health wise. And then my week continued to go off the rails until Tuesday when I just felt like…insanely exhausted by the whole prospect of the world.

And then Wednesday happened. Lots of good happened in the world that day–the new administration came in, Amanda Gorman’s gorgeous poem, and I also had a MAJOR breakthrough at work. I’ve been working on digital content for my class for the last three straight months, writing digital textbooks and creating interactive notebooks and videos for my students while we’re on remote/hybrid instruction. It was insanely time-consuming and over the last few weeks, I actually chucked a lot of what I’d done in the fall and rewrote it as my ideas and vision for the program changed. It’s literally eaten so much of my time and energy, and just made me feel like I was never going to get to the end of it.  But on Wednesday, I finished. And over the last two days, my entire life feels so different.  I’ve been able to use my prep for grading and getting materials for the rest of the week ready.  I feel so much better and able to take on things.

Today, I learned my district is staying out an additional two weeks. We won’t be returning until February 15, and that’s also a relief. So just a lot of things went better for me this week, and lifted me out of that rock bottom situation I felt like I was in on Tuesday.

So let’s get to the good news!

This is the first time we’ve had facelift news in months! I had some time today (what a strange concept!), and finished some 2002 materials on my Facelift page. Specifically, I finished moving over a cluster of episode tags and challenge responses I’ve gathered on a series page called Take the Chance. I realized I had a ton of short stories set around Elizabeth’s departure from the penthouse that were all very similar and written in 2002. So they’ve all been moved officially into Alternate History (the links are updated on my Alphabetical By Title Page), and they’ve all been updated with timeline information and YouTube videos for any song fictions. I did not update the links on the Ficlet page because eventually, I’ll be deleting that page.

Fool Me Twice is going well. I’m working on Chapter 7 now — Chapter 7 & 8 are new chapters I’m writing tonight and tomorrow. It was just supposed to be one new chapter, but after I revised Chapter 6, I knew I needed more and I’ve added an extra Liason scene, a new Liz/Felix scene, some Cameron scenes — I’m really excited by the changes I’m making. I’ll have a vlog up at some point to talk more about it. I started the subsite for Fool Me Twice. It’s under construction, but you’re welcome to check it out.

That’s it for now! I’ll see you tomorrow!

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