Update Link: Dear Reader – Part 3

Happy holidays 🙂 I finally made it to winter break! It was pretty cold in NJ (11 degrees when I left for work!) but we managed to get through our half day, and I’m done for basically two weeks.

I’ll be updating Dear Reader every day until Friday. Tomorrow and Wednesday, I’ll be updating in the morning because I have some family events at night, and then back around this time on Thursday and Friday. Next week is up in the air because I’m contemplating putting Masquerade on hiatus. I don’t write a lot of alternate universe and it just doesn’t seem like there’s much of an audience for this story right now. I’ll probably work on it in the background and just publish it as a standalone at another time. I’ll probably update Monday & Tuesday & Thursday, then switch back to Tues/Thurs.

Working These Small Hours over the break and hoping to settle on a release date sometime before I go back to work.

See you tomorrow and have a great holiday!

Update Link: Masquerade – Part 12

I was planning to update on Friday, but I started to develop a cold Thursday evening, and it just tanked most of the weekend. I slept most of yesterday and late this morning, and I feel a lot better. I usually get sick this time of the year because my immune system always gives up around the break. I’m glad it happened this weekend and not this coming week. I have a half day tomorrow and then I’m done for almost two weeks. Love how the break fell on the calendar this week. Our half day will be basically a blip for me — we’re completely done content, the classes are like 20 minutes long, and I don’t have any classes after 10:30 because I have two periods off for lunch and prep. It’ll barely feel like work.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be updating flash fiction every day M-F for the next two weeks. This coming week is Dear Reader updates, and next will be Masquerade. Updates will mostly be in the evening either at 7 or 8, except Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, which will be more in the afternoon around 2-3pm. Let’s finish 2024 strong!

I hope you guys have a great holiday season wherever you are in the world, and I’ll see you tomorrow night!

Update Link: Dear Reader – Part 2

I very much need this to be Friday.  The children were sent here to destroy me and I never consider quitting my job more than I do the week before winter break.

I’m moving Thursday’s Flash Fiction to Friday. I already know I need tomorrow to rest and go to bed early, and my winter concert is this Thursday. I’ll see you then!

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!

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!

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!

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 🙂

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!

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!

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!