I feel like I do a lot of apologizing these days. I had every intention of doing a flash fiction marathon, but my holiday week off just got away from me. I’ve had trouble kicking the last cold I got right before Christmas (even now, I have some lingering chest congestion).

Since I finished Mad World last summer, I’ve really struggled with writing more.  I’ve only managed six and a half chapters of the sequel, a handful of flash fictions, and maybe one or two short stories. My NaNo project crashed and burned, and even my plans for the next season of Damaged can’t seem to get off the ground. You guys are probably used to this by now — I have these huge bursts of productivity, and then I can’t seem to relight those fires again for months.

I think I just really don’t know how to pace myself and recharge my creative fuse. I don’t really know what makes me go into those weird bursts or how to keep them steady over times. I want to pay more attention to my process this year to see if I can crack the code.

I also think I have to get used to just writing whatever my muse wants and not forcing myself into things because I made promises. So here’s what I plan for Crimson Glass this year.

1. I’m going to stop promising Damaged Season 3. I have all of the plots, I just can’t seem to write them and I hate going back on my promises. So I won’t give anymore dates. You’ll get Damaged 3 when it shows up and it’ll be probably a surprise.
2. I’m going to write at least two novels this year. I don’t know what they’ll be. I love the idea of having you guys vote on my projects, but I think I’m just going to have to let my muse direct me. I have something I’ve been thinking about all the time and I think I just have to let myself go and write it.
3.  I’m going to turn my attention back to getting ebooks up, including short story and novella collections. I may have polls to vote for that. I think they’re a great resource, particularly for people who like to wait until my stories are gone to read.

At the moment, I’m not sure when you’ll be hearing from me next because I don’t really have anything in the pipeline and my semester is starting in two weeks. It’s my last semester, and I am really looking forward to not juggling graduate school and a job at the same time. I also have a few possibilities for a full-time teaching position next year so fingers crossed that 2019 is my year 🙂

I really want to have the sequels to both Bittersweet and Mad World done this year, but Bittersweet is proving to be a bit tough in the plotting because all I know for sure is that Jason and Liz are going to return and I’m going to deal with Brenda.  I set up a lot of bread crumbs in the first story to give me a lot of options, and I’m not really sure which ones I want to pick up on yet.

The odds are that you’ll gt Mad World, Book 2 sometime this summer and the full-length version of Kismet, my flash fiction series set in 1997 with an aged Liz, but you never know what will happen.

Happy New Year 🙂 Make sure you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or subscribe for updates so you never miss anything!

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