Today, September 19, is the anniversary of the day I opened a small General Hospital fanfiction archive on my old website. Back then, it was just called Mellissa’s General Hospital Fanfiction and it would not be named Crimson Glass until 2004 when it moved to its own domain.

A site crash eliminated around 20 stories, though I’ve been able to resurrect almost all of those save a few short stories and two longer chapter stories. One Day at Work and In the Middle are still missing. If anyone even has access to partial chapters (both were once archived at The Canvas), I would love to even have parts of that story.

I’ve written a few retrospectives about the site over the last three years since we moved to our permanent home.

A Look Into Crimson Glass Past

Banner Retrospective #1

The first is a look at the oldest version of the site I could find in the Internet Wayback Machine, which is a cute look into my haphazard design skills and the stories I had at the time. The second post is old banners for stories when I posted primarily on message boards.

For this, the fifteenth anniversary of my fanfiction archive, I thought I’d just kind of look what where I was then as to where I am now and give you some links to the oldest stories from those days, and also give a bit of a status update on the site and the writing.

I was eighteen and starting community college the fall I opened my website. I spent more time writing than I did on my studies and dropped out by that spring. I kept writing until my first hiatus in in 2004, which lasted about year until late 2005. I had started a job which meant I couldn’t watch General Hospital live anymore. Then I got a DVR in November 2005. That’s the longest period I watched the show and wrote — 2005-2008. I was still watching into 2009, but not writing.

And then I took a break until 2012 watching. I started watching for a long time, but didn’t feel the juice to write and didn’t really have the time. I had gone back to school full-time in 2008 which part of the reason I stopped writing. I got my bachelors in May 2013, and then went to London. I had more time on my hands and in January 2014, I began moving my site to this domain. Mostly because the old site had expired and I didn’t have any archive for about two years. I felt bad about it and I didn’t want all my work lost. So I moved it to a temporary home and then started to build the WordPress site from scratch.

I still didn’t think I would return to writing, but then I wrote The Things You Can’t Undo, an episode tag for Elizabeth and Britt. And then…I rewrote Shadows. And on a bus trip to Wales, I rewrote Poisonous Dreams in my head as A Few Words Too Many, and we were off and running.

In the nearly four years since I built this current incarnation of the site, I’ve tried to gather almost all of my writings, even as much that had been lost. Thanks the Internet Wayback machine, I was able to find a ton of old short stories. And then a few enterprising readers sent me old stories. Stories I didn’t remember (Silent Reverie), stories I had lost in crashes (No One Else Sees Me and The Ends of the Earth), and stories I genuinely thought were lost forever (Surviving the Past). Now, to the best of my knowledge, with the exception of One Day At Work and In the Middle, every story I wrote with chapters is here in some shape or fashion. Some might be missing chapters. Some are unfinished, but there’s a lot to read here.

I’ve done my best to organize the stories in ways that you can find what you want easily in my Find Stories menu link. This link allows you to sort stories by the year they’re set, the year they’re written, which couples or characters are featured, by title, by length, and even if there’s a holiday in there. I haven’t been as great lately tagging the stories, so I have to go through and do that. But there’s definitely a way to get there and find what you want. I’m working on adding summaries to the Title page, but it’s slow going.

So here’s where we talk about story status. Most of it you know — I’ve had a lot of changes in my life since 2014. I’m working two jobs, going to school full-time, and my family has grown by six kids. My cousin has one boy, my brother has one of each, and my sister gave me two nieces and nephew. I’ve also had health issues. Creativity issues. The list goes on. I’ve also had trouble making writing a priority.

That changed this summer. I gave you guys a few flash fictions and micro fictions, but I also wrote a huge chunk of an novel, Mad World, which I hope to finish this month given some time and energy. I’m at a point in the story where I think if I could just get in the zone, I could probably finish it off in three days. So it’s about finding time for that zone.

For the site, almost everything I wanted to complete is done. I still have to finish adding summaries to the sorting by title page, and add tags stories added in the last year or so. I want to finish the Fiction Graveyard, but the stories left require heavy editing which is time better spent writing in my opinion. I also want to get more older stories available in ebook form, but that also takes time better spent for writing. So I know where you guys would rather my energy go.

While y’all are waiting for Mad World, Bittersweet, and Damaged, I want to make a concentrated effort to do more shorter stories. More Micro Fiction (20 minutes) and Flash Fictions (up to an hour). I’m making some tentative plans and you might see some of that later today or tomorrow. We’ll see.

I had thought about posting the first chapter of Mad World but it’s not ready — the scenes need editing and some even need rewriting. So I looked through what I’ve been working on, and I do have a few things for you to celebrate this anniversary.

I put Bittersweet on hiatus for personal reasons last year and then kind of lost the thread in writing it. I’m going to tackle that as soon as I get Mad World done. What you guys don’t know is I actually wrote more than the eight chapters that are posted. So what I’m going to do is give you a scene from a later chapter in Bittersweet as well as a scene from Mad World. Neither of these are beta’d beyond chapter content (no line editing). And I’m not gonna give you a lot of context for them. But it’s just a preview and an assurance that these things are here and I’m writing.

Bittersweet Excerpt

Mad World Excerpt

A while ago, I created a post with my favorite stories, so I’ll link that here for some recommendations to read. If you’re looking for my older stories, Surviving the Past is probably the oldest story I’ve written that I would probably would not set on fire. You can also check out the Year Written sort page to get a sense of my evolution as a writer.

I’ll wrap this up by saying thank you so much for the last fifteen years. I may not get paid for my writing and I may not be a “real” writer, but I feel like one because you guys are still here, still patiently (or impatiently, haha), waiting for what I do next, and I cannot articulate what that’s meant to me. Here’s to another fifteen more 😛

I hope to be back later today with something else for you, but I don’t want to promise it before I know for sure.

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