Link: Spotlight

In case you missed it, last week I launched a new feature where I’ll pick a short story and a longer story each month to revisit. I’ll do a few chapters at a time (sort of like a repost). I meant to update last night on Friday, but Taylor Swift launched her newest album (and I AM OBSESSED) and the Phillies were winning NLCS Game 3 (TWO MORE WINS TO THE WORLD SERIES!)

October’s story is The Witness.  I’ll be back tomorrow with a Flash Fiction update (I may or may not write it early, since the Phillies are playing at 2 and there’s no guarantee I’m not sobbing or freaking out because we either clinch or we don’t).

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I chose The Witness as my first spotlight story for a few reasons. One, it’s shorter than a lot of my other stories so it fits nicely to begin mid-month; two, it’s just a fun story. It was my first foray into playing with the Cassadine/Spencer feud and it has a lot of ensemble characters. If I were writing this story today, it’d probably be twice as long with a more definitive ending, but I just had so much fun writing and returning to this story.

• October 14: Prologue – Chapter 5: The premise for this story was a challenge at The Canvas where writers received a title and had to write a story around that. I didn’t plan any piece of The Witness, so the fact that I ended up actually making this worked is an accident. I honestly couldn’t tell you why I decided to go with this idea. Honestly, the final line in the prologue might be one of my favorite cliff hangers.
• October 21: Chapter 6 – Chapter 10: These are the chapters where I definitely leaned into plot twist after plot twist. Paternity secrets, shootings, back from the dead, blood feuds. I was having so much fun with this story, which I hope it shows off. I would never ever write this story like this today, but it still holds up pretty well. My favorite line is definitely the last one of Chapter 10 — it’s a one-liner I shamelessly stole from a 1998 episode.
• October 28: Chapter 11 – Epilogue

Update Link: Watch Me Burn – Part 11

Beginning to think I’d never get this one back! Hope everyone’s weekend is as good as mine. My Phillies clinched an NLDS series win over the Braves in an absolutely gorgeously played game with great at bats, stellar pitching, and all the excitement you want in the postseason. There’s no baseball quite like October baseball. They’re four wins away from the World Series! I don’t talk a lot my baseball obsession because, well, there hasn’t been much to write home about for a long time. It’s also been bittersweet since my grandmother passed in 2018. We watched the games together — this is my first post season without her.

Whether we get to the World Series or not, the dopamine rush of the last few weeks has been absolutely required to get myself back together. I definitely feel like I’ve been in a fog since August, not really on my game. Sometimes you just need the adrenaline rush and memories of better times to get through it.

I’ll see you guys later this week!

October Spotlight: Everytime & The Witness, Prologue – Chapter 5

Happy Friday! I write to you from my sofa as I watch my beloved Phillies in Game 3 of the NLDS. This week definitely got away from me — on Sunday, I woke up with a vicious head cold that lingered well into the middle of the week, putting me behind in literally everything (after I just got caught up, boo!).  AND RHYS HOSKINS JUST HIT A 3 RUN HOME RUN! LET’S GOOOOO!!!!

*coughs* anyway.

HOLY SHIT BRYCE HARPER JUST HIT A 2 RUN HOME RUNNNN

….i’m gonna come back and do this during a commercial.

Okay, I’m back. We’re in awesome shape. 6-0 and Aaron Nola is pitching like a champ. Let me get through this 😛

Flash Fiction Change

We’re cutting Friday night out of the schedule for a few weeks because I’m struggling to maintain it. I’m also cutting The Last Time out of Flash Fiction. The last few parts have felt really stilted, and I think it’s not a story that’s doing well as a Flash Fiction series anymore. I’m going to finish it in my off time, edit the first few parts and then post it.

Watch Me Burn WILL return this Sunday if I have to set myself on fire.

When Fridays return in November, I’ll be bringing back Invisible Strings.  I have two four day weekends in November which starts that run into December. I’ll be finishing up the second 7th & 8th grade rotation of 30 days and the 4th rotation of 6th graders which means (with any luck) I’ll be in a good swing of things.

Spotlight

I had a reader make a suggestion that I “repost” my older stories, mostly because they (and I) were surprised when neither of the sequels (Burn in Heaven and Malice) didn’t have much of an audience because the OG stories are pretty old at this point. Since it’s Crimson Glass’s 20th anniversary, I thought it might be a good idea to find a way to both revisit older stories and talk about writing them and give you guys something to read for the first time or revisit on days when I don’t post.

Right now, they’ll be on Fridays, but once Flash Fiction comes back, I’ll put it on Wednesdays, I think. Or maybe Saturdays. We’ll consider it. First up are too older stories from my early 20s — check them out on the new Spotlight page.

Update Link: The Last Time, Scenes 34-36

Ugh, this week. My doctor changed my medicine, and wanted me to take two days off to clear the old script out of my system, so now everything hurts like hell. But I get to start the new meds tonight, so should be feeling better this weekend — and I have Monday off, so definitely yay for that.

I made some decent headway last week into being ready for this week, and I’m glad you guys enjoyed the chapters from Counting Stars’ beta draft. I’m digging into that this weekend, and with any luck, I’ll be finishing up sometime on Monday. A little off schedule, but that’s no worry. I’d love to have the whole thing completely done before I start posting, but as long as the beta changes are made, I’m pretty happy. I might still have it completely proof read and scheduled before November 7 — there’s a four day weekend the first weekend of November that should make a difference.

I really wanted to have started drafting Kismet by now, but my energy just hasn’t been there. That’s another project I’m planning to spend some time with this weekend.

I should be good to go to bring back Watch Me Burn on Sunday. I’m looking forward to getting back into that. See you then!

Update Link: Counting Stars – Chapter 2

I’m glad you guys liked the first chapter! I’m really happy with how this book worked out (and even more excited about the edits I’m still making). I really pushed myself in some areas, and it’s definitely a new territory for me in GH canon. I’ve only written Signs of Life, which didn’t really touch on a lot of characters. This is your second preview chapter to replace a Flash Fiction update!

While it definitely sucked to spend so much of this weekend doing work, I’m glad I did it. I learned how to write units in my school’s lesson planners, which means I just have to click one button to update lesson plans every rotation instead of rewriting them every single week. It’s going to save me so much time and energy. Plus, I finished writing my second unit yesterday, and I’m going to be doing a lot of prep today to get ready for this week (I have to create teaching slides and Google Classroom posts). I also got all my papers graded yesterday.

Next weekend is a three day weekend, and the prep work I’ve put it this weekend will mean I can spend most of the next weekend writing — and finish the beta draft of Counting Stars. I’m hopefully carving out some time this afternoon/evening to finish a chapter of Stars, and then begin working on Kismet, which is the new project for this fall.

As always, I appreciate all the support and patience! I Flash Fiction will be back as scheduled next week and we’ll be in good shape to maintain the schedule going forward. September is always a wild month, and I guess I should be happy that I kept as much of my schedule as I did.

See you on Friday night!

Update Link: Counting Stars – Chapter 1

I won’t be able to update flash fiction this weekend. We had testing this week (New Jersey has added a second round of standardized testing at the beginning of the year) and we didn’t realize it was going to happen (admin didn’t give us a lot of notice) until Thursday of last week. Testing always puts everyone behind because things get shuffled, classes get moved (I was literally told on Tuesday five minutes before classes started that my entire first block would be in a different room, and I wasn’t prepped for that, we needed to be in my room for that lesson). I’m also co-advisor of the National Junior Honor Society, and we launched our first fundraiser this week (which we would NOT have scheduled for testing week, but ugh). Absolutely EVERYTHING got away from me this week, including real life stuff, and progress report grades are due Monday night.

I’m tired just typing all of that.

Anyway, instead of just skipping, I thought I’d give you guys some preview chapters of Counting Stars. And I’ll do that every time I have to skip a Flash Fiction update, so at least I’m still around, lol.

These are beta chapters, which means they’ve been edited but some typos still exist, and these are not necessarily the final edit. I’ll be back tomorrow with a Chapter 2 preview.

Hey! I had a change of plans for my Sunday night that means I can’t write flash fiction tonight. I’m hoping to get it done during the week (Tuesday maybe). My niece, Isla, turned ten yesterday, and we weren’t able to have a party for her. My sister and her family literally just moved and their house is a shambles. So we’re getting together tonight to go out for dinner. I’m sure you guys don’t mind 😛

But! Just in case I can’t make a flash fiction update work this week because of school, I wanted to post something for you. Last month, I posted excerpts of possible projects and Malice ended up losing the vote by A LOT (huge surprise to me, honestly, lol), but I realllllllly loved the chapter I wrote, so I’m making the full chapter available to everyone. See you this week!

Malice – Chapter 1

Flash Fiction: The Last Time – Scenes 30-33

Made it to another Friday. This week was so exhausting. I know I say that every week, but man, I really feel like I just managed to crawl into the weekend. Wrapping up my first rotation of six graders and finally almost finished writing the content for the first of the new two new units this year.  I’d hoped my 7th graders from last year would calm down since I have them in first block as 8th graders, but they’re insane in the morning, too. Chaos demons, honestly. We kicked off our first NJHS fundraiser, and that was a lot of fun. The kids are selling shout outs they can send to friends, and stickers for their binders and water bottles. Busy. Exhausting. Overwhelming, lol.

I literally never touched Counting Stars this week, so I have a lot of ground to cover this weekend. I’m glad I did my major cleaning project when I got home from school today because I’m gonna be spending most of my time this weekend working on Act 2. This is going to be a really fun act to edit 🙂 Can’t wait for you guys to read it in November.

See you on Sunday for the return of Watch Me Burn!

Update Link: Scars – Part 25

Today is the last day of Scars! Thanks so much for the support in this story, and your patience as I left it on hiatus for almost a year. Tania asked me two years ago to write it and waited patiently as I created the universe with Darkest Before Dawn and A Shot in the Dark, so I could write the Tom Baker story properly.  And because I left a lot of loose ends with Cassadines, secret sisters, and twins, you never know. It might get another entry in the universe.

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Hope everyone had a great weekend 🙂 As we get into the school year proper, I’m making an adjustment to the Flash Fiction schedule by eliminating the Saturday update.  The first three months of the school year are going to be a bit overwhelming as I get through my first two cycles. I spent a lot of time last year experimenting with my program — how to deliver the content, what kind of notes for the kids, the exercises, etc. — and at the end of last year, I had mostly figured it out. But I basically had no content written for my eighth graders. I planned to do it in August but, uh, we know how my August went.

I’m spending a lot of extra time that I wish I didn’t have to outside of contract hours. My content is completely teacher driven — the academic teachers get books and resources ready for the kids that need tweaking — my department literally has to create everything from scratch, and doing that for world languages is exhausting. I have to write the units and create the exercises for two more units, then create the teaching slides and the grading rubrics. And that’s in addition just everything else. Luckily, my other two grade levels are pretty well set, and I’m happy with the program. It’s just time-consuming.

I really want Saturday for writing — I finished the draft of Mad World last September-October because I concentrated from 10-2 on Saturdays. I’d hoped to do both, but so far it’s not working out. We can definitely revisit the schedule in the new year once my new units are written, and I won’t be doing so much work at home.

The new schedule is updated on the Canva calendar. The Last Time on Fridays and Watch Me Burn on Sundays. Once The Last Time is done, Invisible Strings returns.

Update: Scars – Part 24

Hope everyone had a good week! Feels so strange to go so many days without posting. I don’t think I’ve gone five days without an update since May. Sorry for dipping out on Sunday’s update — I woke up with an insane TMJ migraine and I couldn’t quite focus on writing. It was a really rough week — our first full week with the normal schedule, complete with a faculty meeting, Back to School night, a doctor’s appointment and I had a night even on Tuesday. Lauren’s services in August were private, just close family and friends, but her husband always planned a larger dinner/get together for us all to get together. That was this week.

Plus, this month is the ninth anniversary of Lauren, Mike, and me moving to London for a year to attend grad school (London is where I started writing fanfiction again and got Crimson Glass back online), so my TimeHop and Facebook memories are just kind of throwing a lot of Lauren at me right now. They’re all amazing memories, but they’re feeling just a bit raw honestly. It was hard on Tuesday to get together — her parents were always so warm and lovely to us, and they’re just barely keeping it together. You just want to make it okay for them, and it’s not possible. I got into the car on the way home, and Coldplay came on — Lauren’s favorite band. Her prayer card had the lyrics to The Scientist on the back, and I started crying in the car.

Anyway. It’s Friday, we got to the end of the week, and I can sleep until 6:30 tomorrow morning. I’ll see you tomorrow for an update for The Last Time, and *crosses fingers* the conclusion to Scars on Sunday.