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.

Update Link: The Last Time – Scenes 27-29

ETA: Sunday, 11 Sep 2022: No Flash Fiction tonight. Woke up with a terrible TMJ migraine, and have been struggling through things today.

Hope everyone is having a great Saturday! I slept in this morning, and decided to push Flash Fiction until this evening. I’m definitely not going to let myself feel tied to a time on the weekends — sometimes I might update in the morning, other times at night. As long as I update, no one will complain 😛

Spent today relaxing, and just getting myself together. Trying to prep for next week, but not pushing it so that I spend all weekend running around, and then I’m tired going into the week. See you tomorrow for another part of Scars!

Update Link: Scars – Part 23

Welp, we made it to the end of the first week. It was a rough one, honestly. My supplies haven’t arrived, including the new class set of headphones, so that’s going to make my life difficult if they don’t show up in the next two weeks. I pretty much dragged myself through this week — it was a tough one on my foot — I’ve been putting off dealing with it because of the neck and TMJ issues I was trying to resolve (not to mention the tinnitus), but it’s really been difficult.  I know what it is — I strained my Achilles tendon, and they’re going to recommend rest and ice which is impossible as a teacher. I’m constantly on my feet between the classroom and duty.

Haven’t done much at home — literally ordered out every night. But next week will be better — we’re in our normal schedule, and I’ll be able to stay off my feet a little bit more.  Haven’t touched any writing since Monday, but going to enjoy working on it this weekend and more next week.

See you tomorrow for the morning update!

ETA: Saturday’s update will be in the evening. I overslept, lol.

Update: Scars – Part 22

I feel like I’ve been running around all day, lol. I had so much last minute stuff to do to get ready for tomorrow (first day back with the kiddos!) and I still had to do some writing related stuff. Everything got done, and this is literally the last thing on my list — except for the towels I have to get out of the dryer.

Counting Stars is off to a great editing start — 6 chapters done, 28 to go. I can’t wait for you guys to read this one, I’m super proud of some of this Liason stuff, and it’s my favorite Laura writing so far. I started to work on the subsite. Let me know how it looks!

See you guys on Friday for the next round of Flash Fiction.

Flash Fiction will be updated tomorrow night — starting at 7 and posting at 8. I woke up this morning and didn’t feel all that well, so I rested this morning and then edited some Counting Stars. Still a bit tired, so I’m going to write this post and then go back to sleep. Patreon perks will be up tomorrow sometime.

Poll Results

With 92 voters and 117 votes, Kismet & Fool Me Twice tied (each received 31 votes). For the Broken Girl and These Small Hours were in second and third, separated by a few votes. Then, rounding out the results, Burn in Heaven and Malice received less than 10 votes.

When I opened the voting, my head was kind of pulled towards Malice and Kismet, thinking that Fool Me Twice, while ready to write, is a really intense ensemble story that might be better suited for the winter because the fall is so crazy on my schedule. I was curious to see where the readers fell in their interest. I’m not entirely sure why Malice got so few votes considering it’s a sequel to a story that a lot of people have told me was one of their favorites, but it might have been the scene I posted. I wanted to post a Liason scene for all the options, but that story might have been better served if I’d given you the Zander/Brenda scene that ends the chapter.  Maybe that scene was just too sad.

Either way, Kismet and Fool Me Twice are my next writing projects.

Fall Writing Schedule

Kismet needs a bit more work before I start drafting — I have the Plot Sketch for Act 1 done. I have to finish Act 2 & 3’s Plot Sketch, then do the chapter breakdown. September is super demanding on my time and my energy. It always takes some time for me to shift back into the grind of teaching, so I wanted to be sure I picked a project where I could make progress without losing momentum. I kind of always knew I wasn’t going to pick Fool Me Twice, especially once August got away from me. I didn’t get enough of my school work prepped (I have to write two units — the student materials and the teaching slides) to really dive into FMT.  But I still wanted everyone to read the samples, and I wanted to dip my toe back into writing this world, since it will be next.

Here’s the schedule for the next four months (I’ll have a video out later this month).

• September: Editing Beta Draft of Counting Stars (Deadline: September 30); Discovery Draft, Kismet (Deadline September 20).
• October: Editing Posting Draft of Counting Stars (Deadline: October 31); Alpha Draft, Kismet (Deadline December 31).
• November: NanoWriMo
  • I have two four-day weekends in this month, so the hope is to really push Kismet writing. Ideally, I’d like to finish the draft, but it’ll depend on what October looks like.
• December: Completing Kismet.

Flash Fiction continues on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. At least for now. We’ll see if we need to adjust.

In 2023, tentatively —

January – March – Fool Me Twice Alpha Draft, and editing Kismet.  Also prepping a project for April NaNoWriMo.

Release Schedule

• November-December 2022: Counting Stars
  • Firm Publication Date: November 7. 3-4 Chapters a week until completion. Should take most of these two months, might go into January.
• April-June 2023: Kismet
  • Depends on writing/editing.
• Summer 2023: Fool Me Twice, Book 2

Thanks to everyone who voted and read the samples! I wish I could write them all right now, lol. There are definitely times when I miss those old days when I would write, then post and had a few stories going at once. I think, overall, we’re all happier that I don’t start posting until the book is complete.