Update Link: Watch Me Burn – Part 13

Hope everyone had a good weekend! I know I said I’d planned to relaunch a Friday night update for Flash Fiction this weekend, but I ended up writing around 6k for Kismet that day, and was a bit burnt out. I had fallen behind in the NaNoWriMo count because the Counting Stars Beta Draft took longer than expected to complete (five weeks longer, whoops). I’m just about caught up now — four chapters and 20k completed.

Counting Stars is scheduled for release starting next Monday, November 21 *crosses fingers* I’ll be starting the promotional stuff this week — adding the banners and finishing the subsite. It’s up — I just need to fill out the rest of the pages. Really excited for you guys to start reading this novel. The edits I ended up making were worth the extra time:)

I forgot to post the Spotlight update last week, so including it below. Hope you guys are enjoying rereading Bittersweet for those that are reading along.

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Novel: Bittersweet (Set 2002; Written 2016-18)

I chose Bittersweet for November for a few reasons. One, I honestly love it, and I’m really proud of how it turned out. I discovered a lot about my writing process while working on it. Bittersweet was also the final project that Cora and I worked on together. Cora was my beta reader for this novel as well as The Best Thing, and a lot of the story beats and themes were improved upon due to her guidance. I also have a sequel in the works for Bittersweet that I nearly chose this time around, and I thought it might be fun to reacquaint you all with the first story.

• November 3: Chapter 1 – Chapter 7: I wrote several different openings for Bittersweet, really struggling with the tone I wanted to set for the Jason/Elizabeth relationship. I’ve posted all the novel’s deleted and unused material on the Workshop. I very much wanted to establish the universe and the characters in this first section of the story, particularly the friendship between Elizabeth, Gia, and Courtney. I also spent a lot of time filling out the mob storyline, figuring out how to make that storyline pop. I love the early Zander material with Nico and Lenny. Some of my favorite mob stuff. I’m most proud of my Jason/AJ scenes and forcing them both to look at each other in a new light.
• November 9: Chapter 8 – Chapter 14: Chapter 8’s bar fight had a Liason moment that was in my head almost from the moment I began thinking about this story back in 2014. It’s one of my favorite scenes I’ve written for them. And the final scene in Chapter 8 used to open the story, but I moved it to trick readers into thinking they were reading one kind of story, and then delivering a second one.  This chunk of chapters is the important character stuff with Jason and AJ, and developing the Liason relationship before the story takes the twist. Gia’s dialogue in Chapter 14 at the end has one of my favorite lines, I’m only sorry I got to write it once.