Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 31

Hope everyone’s week is going well 🙂 My day is a little busy once I finish this up. The Phillies play early, and I have another vet appointment for my cat at 3. The Olympics have been really fun to follow, so that’s been getting a lot of my attention.

I’ll see you guys on Friday!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 30

We’re back, and in our old summer time slot! I’m writing at 11 and posting at 12, because it helps me remember to actually leave my office and stop working, lol.

I’m really glad I took off last week from scheduled writing. I finished summer school on Wednesday, and then spent the last four days relaxing, sleeping in, watching the Olympics, and playing the Sims 4. (The new expansion dropped on Thursday, and I am OBSESSED). I also got caught up on the last few assignments for my online class. All that’s left for that class is the unit plan, which is basically done, and the paper due in two weeks. I’ve even just about finished the content and materials for my first two weeks of classes! The goal for the rest of August is to finish the first units for both classes which would be AMAZING.

I did, however, do some really important writing work. I finally sat down and finished figuring out the changes for the second half of These Small Hours. The book is going to be about 70 chapters long with an epilogue, with 20 chapters edited. Starting today, I’m planning to work on editing at least 2 hours a day until I return to work on August 26. I don’t know yet how much will get done, but I feel fantastic about this second draft, and I hope you will too when you get to read it 🙂

Thanks for your patience as I navigated this summer and the changing demands on my schedule. It was so worth it to teach summer school and write curriculum — the extra financial resources are going to make so much about this upcoming year even better!

See you on Wednesday!

Hello 🙂

I’m going to be taking this week off from updating Flash Fiction. I haven’t really slowed down since school let out on June 13. As you know, I went straight into writing curriculum, completing 52 hours between June 14-June 30 in addition to prepping, then teaching summer school. I’m also finishing up an online class I need for my French teaching certification.

I was doing okay, but I really just hit a wall last week and struggled to get anything written or edited. I couldn’t even focus on my coursework. I really need to let my brain rest. Summer school ends this week (on Wednesday!) and the final three days are already prepped and scheduled. This is the last week for coursework for that class, and my final projects are about 2/3 finished (and I have until August 11 for the piece that’s the furthest away).

I’ll return for the final month of my summer break (Jul 29 – August 25) with regular Mon/Wed/Fri updates for both flash fictions. Chain Reaction during the weeks of Jul 29 & 12, and Warning Shots the week of August 5 & 19.

In other writing news, I’m planning to split These Small Hours into two releases. Not two books, lol, but two releases. It’s a super long book (we’re looking at around 60 chapters). Part 1 will be Chapters 1-32, and Part 2 will be Chapters 33 – Epilogue. Right now, I’m planning to spend this week finishing up the long overdue process of mapping out the second half of the edits and figuring out how many chapters I need.

I’m hoping to have Part 1 ready for release by mid-September, then Part 2 in mid-October. I’ll know more about those dates when I come back next week.

While you’re waiting for me to return, make sure you’ve checked out the Recent Updates page which has everything I’ve completed in 2024 (and it’s a lot!). Catch up with Chain Reaction and Warning Shots or check out my Crimson Swift collection. I’ve released folklore as well as two singles from evermore (“no body, no crime“) and Red (“The Last Time“). Oh! And I published an entire novel: Fool Me Twice, Book 2.

If you’re looking for something new to read, check out my rewrite of 2002, Bittersweet, or rewrite of 2006, For the Broken Girl. There’s plenty to tide you over until next Monday.

Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 28

Hello 🙂 It was a great Friday & Monday — first time in YEARS we’ve had back to back Liason scenes, and Monday’s scenes between Jason & Jake were gorgeous. You should definitely check them out if you can! Plus, the actress playing Charlotte has recovered from her medical issues which necessitated her temporary exit last winter, and I’m really excited for her to be back at the same time Jason and Valentin are going to be openly enemies. (If you’re not watching, Jake and Charlotte were dating briefly back last fall, and were super cute.)

I’ve been hard at work data analysis for next year — matching learning goals to state standards, and then to language standards from the ACTFL (national language association) and if that sounds boring — uh, it probably is unless you’re a nerd like me. It’s actually *really* fun, and I’ve had to argue with myself to STOP working on it, lol. It’s some I need to do, so I can rewrite my benchmarks.

I am slowly, but surely chipping away at These Small Hours. I’m nearly through the chunk of the story that needed that most work and material added, but I have this one huge story event to fix and then we’ll be in the second half of the book. The second half was much stronger because, by then, I knew what story I was telling and I understood the characters better. It just takes time to edit, lol, and I am really terrible at estimating how long it’ll take until I’m in the thick of it.

I’ll be back on Friday!

Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 27
Tracker: These Small Hours – Beta Draft

So I guess we liked Saturday’s update?

One of the fun things about flash fiction is just throwing things out there, and the final scene of Saturday’s Chain Reaction was one of those. I had sketched out that scene very briefly, just noting a character who shows up. But it wasn’t until I was actually writing it that I had to figure out what to do — so it really was planned in the moment, but I’m glad I did it!

If you fall behind in any updates, I’m doing pretty decent with keeping my Recent Updates Page up to date since I redesigned it to be organized by story, not by date. So always check that, then the update blog.

In other news, I learned how to make fancy digital trackers to track my students better, and I tossed together a better track for These Small Hours. The chapter count isn’t accurate — I’m not quite done breaking the story down, so I overestimated how many chapters I’m going to need.

It’s the All Star Break this week, and other than the Home Run Derby and All Star Game tomorrow, my nights are free. I’m hoping to get more writing done.

See you on Wednesday!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 29

Remember we’re moving to Mon/Wed/Fri updates next week for Warning Shots! See you then!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 28

ALERT: If you’re not watching GH and not keeping up, today is a Liason day! So check out the episode and engage on social media!

Apologies for just skipping yesterday. I felt like I just hit a wall with simply everything, and I literally just sat and watched TV all afternoon, then went to bed early. I feel better today, and we’re good to go for today and tomorrow. This is part of the reason I’m pulling back on daily updates. As always, I’ve spread myself a little thin, lol, between summer school, the college class (that’s nearly over!), and just general, you know, LIFE. I wish I could write as a full-time job, but it’s not feasible. I’m still nursing tendonitis in my elbow, so I’m also not pushing myself as much as I normally would.

I’m finally making some good progress on These Small Hours. I knew the first half of the book needed the most work, and it’s been a tough go of it with my scheduling issues and then the elbow soreness. I have to write two new chapters, and then I get into a chunk of already written material, so really hoping I can start making significant progress.

See you guys tomorrow!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 27

Hope your weeks are going well. Just a programming note that starting next week, I’m pulling back on updating daily, at least until summer school ends. I’ve been struggling with These Small Hours, and I want to give it more time and attention. I’ll be updating M-W-F, or at least three times a week, and those times will always be posted in the sidebar to the left. Again, that starts next week. I know a lot of people go on vacations during the summer, so I also want to make it easier for anyone catching up.

I appreciate your understanding!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 26

Do you know how many times I had to move the cat from laying directly in front of my keyboard just to get today’s update set up?

Anyway — we’re switching back to Chain Reaction so hope you guys are ready for what happens next!

I’m not updating tomorrow due to the schedule, so I’ll see you on Wednesday!

Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 26

Happy Saturday! I was taking a quick look at next week’s schedule, and it looks like we’re going to do another Saturday update next week. The Phillies play around 6:30 every day but Monday which makes the 3Pm slot easy, but on Tuesday, Sasha has a vet appointment at 2PM, and I really don’t see a good place to put Flash Fiction because I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, and I still have summer school this week. I’ll be posting the finalized schedule in the widget sometime tonight or tomorrow, but for now — expect Mon, Wed-Sat at 3 PM. I’ll be switching back to Chain Reaction.

I hope you guys enjoyed this week with Warning Shots. I know the story didn’t move very much, but I needed to do some work with the relationship. I’m looking forward to the next batch of updates which should be lighter and fluffier. I do think we’re getting close to wrapping this up — probably sometime in early August. I need to sit down and figure out the rest of the story. Ideally, I’d like to wrap up both stories before school returns in September, so I can take a little break to prep the next series, but we’ll see.

I got back into writing These Small Hours yesterday which felt really good. It was a brand-new chapter, so it took a minute to remember what I wanted, but these were scenes that happened off the page in the first draft, and I think the draft is going to be so much stronger having them on page, if that makes sense. I’m still hopeful to get the beta draft done by the end of the month because I plan to be moving a lot faster through the draft with most of my work-related tasks completed.

Have a great rest of your weekend and I’ll see you on Monday!