Update Link: Signs of Life – Chapter 39

Hey! This is a very late update because I wanted to do something first — I had a sneaking suspicion I’d hit 50k tonight on These Small Hours, and I did! This is the first November NaNoWriMo where I’ve completed the goal AND I have a pretty decent body of work to work with. I have completed 14.5 chapters out of 31 planned and while those 14 chapters need work, it’s a solid first half of an alpha draft.

I’ll be continuing to work on it in December, and hopefully finishing it during my winter break. See you guys tomorrow for the last chapter & epilogue of Signs of Life!

Update Link: Hits Different – Part 5

Ugh, the congestion from this cold is lingering and pissing me off, lol. Every morning, I wake up and want to yeet myself out the window. Hope everyone is having a better Thanksgiving holiday than me.

NaNoWriMo is almost over, and I’m about 9k away from finishing. I’m 12 chapters in — and I  think it’s going mostly well. I’m suffering a bit from having plotted and broken this down back in August of 2022 and not really looking at it again until I started writing. I had plans to look at it in September and October to refresh, but then I had that shoulder injury which held everything up. It’s nothing bad — there are just maybe some storyline elements I would have fixed, scenes I would have adjusted, etc. I’m doing it mostly on the fly, and it tends to hold me up a little bit inspiration wise. I ran into a sort of similar situation last year with Kismet, but instead of trying to reset in the moment, I just gave up. I’m pushing through, and I think that’s better. It’s especially easier when I know I have other content to release — both FMT Books 2 & 3 will be released before Hours, I think. I have to check my schedule.

I was hoping to double up on updates during breaks for Flash Fiction, but with the cold slowing me down, we’re sticking to the Saturday schedule. Remember, next Saturday is our last weekend update! I’ll be shifting to Wednesday updates starting December 6.

Update Link: Signs of Life – Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38

Whoops, another week, another set of forgotten chapters. I’ve been battling a cold all week, and the congestion is really lingering which is making it hard to sleep, and as always, I’m trying to prioritize the writing which is going along. I hit a bit of a snag this week only because I just…didn’t plot out a certain set of scenes and I should have, and now that I’m writing my planned scenes, I feel the lack.  It’s an easy fix honestly, and I’m taking care of it today. We’re still on track to complete NaNoWriMo with a story I can actually edit later, lol.

I think the biggest thing I’m dealing with is a little regret I didn’t get a chance to take a better look at the prepped story. I did all of the planning and chapter breakdown last year and meant to revisit it this fall before writing, but then I had my injury and never got to do it. I think I mentioned I was following the “Take Care of Maya” trial and story really closely and it’s really inspired me to think more deeply about the hospital part of this story. I’m tackling the fake drugs story GH half-assed in 2008, and I’ve gotten a really good look at how hospitals run while watching this trial, and some of the, uh, problems. So I’m working it in on the fly and plan to deepen it more in the beta draft.

Anyway, that’s just to say that I’m enjoying writing the story, and I hope you’ll like it too one day. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Update: Hits Different – Part 4
Patreon: Free Digital Shop – Collected Flash Fiction | Watch Me Burn – Shop

Hope everyone is having a good day. I’m still feeling a bit sluggish with the cold. Annoyed that it hit me on the weekend, but at least it was this weekend and not next when I have my four-day break. I did manage to hit my NaNo goal last night, and I’ll be finishing up Chapter 10 today, which puts me 33% of the way through the story and done Act 1. Really happy that I managed to get this far with a product I know is completely usable.

On Patreon, I’m working on offering PDF versions of finished flash fictions. These don’t have any changes from the published chapters (maybe a typo here or there but largely not). They’re just in one file for easier and offline reading. Ebooks are going to have to wait until I can get back to formatting issues, which is going to take some time, so PDFs are going to be the focus. I’ll be adding the bulk of the finished ones over the next week. Watch Me Burn will be available to paid Patreons members and as a paid perk until Hits Different is completed. Like I said, these PDFs don’t differ at all from CG versions. This is just for convenience.

A note on the Shop version: I’d intended to price this at $1 but Patreon doesn’t allow anything below $3, lol. It’s available to all paid members, and the lowest Patreon tier is $1, so feel free to sign up for a month to grab it much cheaper. It’s up to you. I’m a little annoyed, lol.

Hey! Popping in to remind you that I’m not tying myself to a Saturday schedule with Flash Fiction — I’ll update Flash Fiction either on Saturday or Sunday to give myself the maximum amount of flexibility with my weekends, so if I don’t update on Saturday, it’ll be on Sunday.

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I started to feel a cold coming on and I never refilled my cough meds (I’m an adult with a terrible immune system, you’d think I’d know better).  I ended up not getting any sleep until 4AM and then it was only 4 hours. Frustrating, ugh, and I want to try and nap this afternoon, so I can work on NaNoWriMo tonight.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to move Flash Fiction to the middle of the week so free up my weekends for other writing now, and I wanted to see how NaNo went. With it being almost three weeks in, I feel really solid about that one hour of writing time I’ve carved out (at least until baseball season, lol), so we are going to make that switch.

The weekend of December 1/2 will be the last weekend Flash update, then starting Wednesday, December 6, I’ll be setting the timer at 7:00 and posting at 8.

See you tomorrow!

Update: Signs of Life – Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35

Eek! I didn’t mean to miss two days. On Tuesday, I was busting ass to get things done — grocery shopping, ACTUALLY cooking LOL, paying bills, and by the time I got that done — it was almost 6:30 and time to write for NaNoWriMo, and honestly, I’m doing really good at meeting my goals. I prioritized it over posting the chapter. Then on Wednesday, I had a late meeting, had to hit the store again (because I forgot cooking spray, ugh), and the day just got away from me.) So I decided to catch and just post the whole week at once.

On the NaNoWriMo front, I’m keeping pace. I’m not writing a lot every day, but the goal is really just 1667 words a day. Outside of 1 day when I wasn’t feeling well and wrote 624, I usually get between 50-300 words over the goal which keeps me on pace and really helped on that one day. This is also the first year where I’ve gotten this far into the month and wrote every day. These Small Hours is only planned at 30 chapters, and I’ve completed 8 which puts me at 26%. That’s actually really great for only two weeks! That puts me on pace to complete by December 31 with just slow and steady pace.

I know I can write 5-9k a day when I’m focused and have the time, but I struggle with remembering that I don’t have to do that and that it’s actually more beneficial to all of us if I just focus on making this slow, incremental progress and keep writing every day.

Update Link: Hits Different – Part 3

First, I need to tell you that Becky — as in REBECCA HERBST AKA MY QUEEN — has tagged me on Twitter thanking our Twitter group for sending flowers to her studio which Kim did (and graciously put all our names on the card) after the event last Sunday. This happened last night and I nearly lost my mind. Literally made my whole weekend.

In other news, today is the last day of my break (sad face) but I only have to work for 7.5 school days before ANOTHER four day break because November is the best month of the year. Our Thanksgiving break is just a week away.

I did some light housekeeping last night — finally updating the sidebar to make it a bit more navigable. I kept the widgets that list individual updates for Flash & Signs of Life, but also added links in for the story pages. A friend of mine had trouble finding Signs of Life (the non-Flash version), and I realized it wasn’t actually linked anywhere.  Plus, I updated the header to move the images because they felt like they were clogging things. AND I updated the Alternate History page so that Counting Stars is listed as completed, Signs has a link, and I added a link for the new Flash. (I need to do some more updates, but we’ll get there).

Update Link: Hits Different – Part 2

Hope everyone is starting their weekend off well 🙂

I always enjoy the first four day weekend of the year, but there’s this one minor irritation in it. My niece’s birthday is Nov 3, and my sister-in-law ALWAYS schedules her birthday party for this weekend — which means family members who are mostly teachers/parents can never schedule any vacations. Like I get why she does it for her own schedule — in NJ, all teachers get the second weekend as a four day weekend to attend the NJEA convention, but we’re not contractually obligated to go. And our second November four day weekend is Thanksgiving. It’s just frustrating to have TWO required family events on both weekends off. Not that I could afford to take a vacation, but honestly? I adore my niece, but I don’t want to deal with kids after spending all week with them. Does that make me a bad person?

Anyway, that’s just me whining because I have to go to that today, and I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys a child’s birthday party once those kids are old enough to invite screaming kids that you’re not related to. At least this year, our winter break doesn’t have us in school on December 23 so that we’re diving RIGHT into Christmas Eve. We’re done on Dec 22 this year.

That being said, I’m making really good progress in getting prepped for the rest of the school year. I have all my content prepped for the month of November, and I’m going to start working on December next week. This really frees up my evenings and I’m mostly in the routine of writing from 7-8 PM every night which is great for when NaNoWriMo ends.  NaNo is going well — I’m at just under 18k which is right where I’m supposed to be at this point. Most days I write to the target which I think is making it all more sustainable. This is the first NaNo event where I’ve written every day so far.

I’m planning to do another Flash update tomorrow but if I don’t post by noon, I changed my mind 😛 Enjoy!

Update Link: Signs of Life – Chapter 32

I know I said I’d do a double update for Flash Fiction today, but I’m going to shift that to Sunday. I overslept today, and by the time I got up and moving, it was just a little too late to get myself in the right frame of mind. Plus, there’s a few work-related tasks I just need to get done every day, and I got really off track yesterday. I was following the Maya Kowalski trial and the jury came back with a verdict yesterday (such a sad case — there’s a great Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya” if you’re interested) and it ended up going all afternoon. Anyway — I basically took yesterday afternoon off, lol.

I’ll update Signs today, then Flash Fiction tomorrow and on Sunday to get that double update.

• Update Link: Signs of Life – Chapter 31
• Patreon Digital Shop: Fool Me Twice, Book 2: Ashes to Ashes (Beta Draft)

Finally made it to the first big break of the school year — the four day weekend. I’m actually feeling strangely good about the next few weeks. My lessons plans and content are done, it’s a new marking period so I’m on track with grades — just feels like work has finally calmed down.

I posted last night’s update on Twitter, and was so happy to see how many people were excited for FMT to finally be finished. You’ve all been so patient — it’s been three years this fall since I finished the alpha draft of Book 1. I’m just glad that Book 3 won’t take nearly as long since it already has a first draft. I had honestly wanted to write the next two books back to back, but didn’t actually plan on doing it.

I posted the beta draft in the digital shop for anyone interested in picking up a copy of the beta draft (remember it’s still in edits and will have lots of changes before final!). It’s available for the same price as the Devoted tier, $5.  The final version will still be posted for free late this winter/spring, but anyone who doesn’t want for me to finish polishing it or wants to see early drafts is welcome to enjoy.

Just a reminder that on my break I will be writing double Flash Fiction updates on Friday & Saturday morning.  See you tomorrow for another Signs of Life update!