Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 7
Recent Updates: “no body, no crime”

I am so ready for Friday, I can’t even tell you. I am dragggiiing this week. And it’s probably because like 60 out of 73 kids are testing — I’m not seeing around 20 of them at all, and the other 40 are coming to me dead behind the eyes after being in state testing for three straight periods, so I’m really letting them relax — and I thought, yay, great — I get prep work done, but the days are impossible, lol. Glad to be back to normal next week for the last push through the end of May.

I’m really excited about where Warning Shots is going–I’m so glad I tossed my original outline and went with it something different. Sometimes you just gotta go where the story tells you 😛 I’ll be back tomorrow for Chain Reaction and then the conclusion of “no body, no crime” on Saturday morning. THEN NOTHING ON SUNDAY.

(probably)

See you tomorrow – I’ll be posting around 6 because the Phillies are back at 6:40 and your girl can sleep like a normal person tomorrow night.

Update Link: “no body, no crime” – Scenes 16-30 added!

I know tonight’s a flash fiction night but I am exhausted! As you guys know from the absolutely unhinged updated post Monday night/Tuesday morning, the Phillies are on a west coast trip and last night was another late game. I went to bed before it was over (and typical missed a comeback tying home run from my favorite player) but I didn’t sleep well. It’s been hot in NJ and I don’t have the AC on yet because we’re going to have another chilly spell before it’s time for that. Between that and the awful days at work with worn out and exhausted students who are coming to me after testing, I’m just dragging really hard.

Tomorrow’s an off day, so I’ll be posting at my normal time — writing at 7, posting at 8. I had a real inspiration strike today while at work and I sketched out the next 10 parts of Warning Shots. I hope you like where it goes 🙂

I’m really glad you guys like “no body, no crime” so far, and thanks for the compliments for the AU version of them. I’m planning to make evermore an Alternate Universe collection because originally Taylor Swift said this album and folklore were inspired by more by stories about other people, so I thought it’d be fun to try that out. Let me know if there’s any songs you have ideas for! This story was a prompt from Tania, so I take requests!

There’s one more part — scenes 31-45 — to be posted on Saturday morning. See you tomorrow for Flash Fic!

Update Link: “no body, no crime” scenes 1-15
Recent Updates page is up to date which is nice!

It’s after midnight and I just watched my elite Phillies bullpen shit the bed (as I type this it’s 6-4 and Phillies are down to their last two outs — but Harper is up with a runner on–I’ll let you know). Technically it’s Tuesday. So let’s just post this and move on with our lives, lol.

Wednesday’s update will be later than normal, around 9 PM. The Phillies are playing at 4, so who knows when the game will be over, lol.

What follows is me living through the top of the ninth, feel free to skip

Okay — so Harper hit a ground rule double. Tying runs are in scoring position and Alec Bohm is the hottest hitter in MLB right now — sooooo…..you know what, lemme chill and let you know how this all works out.

Bohm has a full count, 3-2. YOU GUYS I AM SO TIRED. Okay, sac fly. one run game.

MARSHY IS UP MY MAN GOT TRADED FROM THE ANGELS REVENGE TIME GET ‘EM’

welp. we lost. but so did the braves so fuck it.

enjoy the story. love you guys. see you in like 48 hours for more flash.

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 11

Well, the votes are in! With 52% of the vote, you guys chose “The Black Dog” collection  for the first release from The Tortured Poets Department! The first eight songs from the surprise album dropped at 2AM. I knew it was going to win most of the weekend, lol, so I already started doing the more in depth plot sketching. It looks like “The Black Dog” is the featured story, and will be the longer novella 20-50k, and then “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” will probably be somewhere in the 10k length, and the other six will be shorter. I’m going to spend the rest of this week sketching them all out and working them into the schedule.

I’ll be posting “no body, no crime” in three increments. It was going to be two, but I was editing today for typos and consistency and whatnot, and I found three natural places to split it that work really well, so I’ll post Tuesday, Thursday, and Sat, and then you WILL NOT HEAR FROM ME UNTIL MONDAY. I am taking Sunday off, damn it. I also have no choice — my nephew is making his communion.

See you on Wednesday!

Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 6
Poll: Which Tortured Poets Collection To Write First – POLL ENDS TONIGHT

Last weekend update! We go into the May schedule tomorrow 🙂 I will be back with some Flash Fiction tomorrow at 8PM. The Phillies are on the West Coast until Tuesday, so the games are on late.

For Warning Shots, I basically tossed my entire outline so after this part? I have no idea where to go. (Well, I have *ideas*) but feel free to weigh in and let me know what you want to see next!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 10
Poll: Which Tortured Poets Collection To Write First – POLL ENDS TOMORROW NIGHT

The plan was to alternate the stories, but I skipped a night and then forgot to update my posting schedule doc, and then I figured — well given that I left you on TWO Liason cliffhanger conversations, I know which one you want to read more. I’ll do Warning Shots tomorrow. I was planning to take off tomorrow, but a few things in my schedule cleared up.

The posting schedule for Flash Fiction M/W/F is going to pretty fluid for the next six weeks as I schedule around the Phillies 😛 Once I know my summer schedule I should be able to more fixed. If you ever want to know what story is getting updated when, I have a Google Doc set up.

I finished my evermore featured story last night! “no body, no crime” runs about 20k and 60 pages. I wanted to let it sit today, then read it over for typos. I have to put together the evermore subsite theme (it should be pretty easy since I’m going to use the same layout for all the albums) but I have to set the colors and create the graphics. I’m hoping to do that tonight while I watch the Phillies.

It should be up one day this week. I’m aiming for Tuesday or Thursday — I might actually just split it into two pieces and then you still get daily M-F updates to ease you guys back into my normal workload. April was absolutely INSANE for how much content I wrote (and it’s still not over!)

Between finishing up These Small Hours (62k), writing “no body, no crime” (20k), finishing Hits Different (17k), and starting Chain Reaction (24k) and Warning Shots (16K), I wrote 141,485 words — and there are still three days of updates planned (I haven’t written tonight yet).

I–I don’t know what happened lol. But it’s been nice and I hope you’ve enjoyed this ridiculous burst of energy. I always kind of figured that the regular writing of Flash Fiction would absolutely train my brain to start writing when I told it to. I’ve been mostly regular since September, and I feel like it’s finally paying off.

See you tomorrow!

Update Link: Chain Reaction – Part 9
Poll: Which Tortured Poets Collection To Write First

Finally made it to the weekend. It was a long week. Next week should be a bit simpler. We’re testing, but I lucked out — about 75% of my students are freshman, and they’re testing Tuesday-Friday. My juniors, about 10% of my kiddos, are testing on Tuesday, and Thursday. This means in my first two classes, I have maybe 1-2 kids for four straight days. If testing spills into fourth period AT ALL, that’s all freshman and 1 junior.

Basically, the majority of my students are spending half their days testing. So we’re reviewing and playing games all week, lol, and my seminar kids are just going to relax with a basic project. Anyway, that’s all to say I’m going to have A LOT of downtime next week at work to prep and get work done DURING the day, so nothing at home, yay!

I’ll be updating one more time tomorrow, then we return to our normal M/W/F flash fiction schedule for the rest of the school year. I’m going into edits on These Small Hours, and prepping Fool Me Twice Book 3‘s alpha draft, so I need those Tuesday/Thursdays back 😛  Plus, May 6, I kick off the summer class I need for my cert. I might need to rework my schedule a little once I get the syllabus and see how much time is needed.

I’m juggling a lot of things — as usual — but I’m really set up well in my classes to be able to actually use my lunch break to do something productive in my real life instead of working through it, lol.

The vote for the TTPD story collection ends on Sunday! Get your votes in now!

 

Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 5
Poll: Which Tortured Poets Collection To Write First

You know, Jason and Elizabeth are really annoying, and let me explain why. I had a plan for this story. Short little episodes that sort of slip in and out of Elizabeth’s first year of college and depict the growing gap in the Liz & Lucky relationship (how does Liz handle the obvious problems when she doesn’t have the added pressure of a miracle returning to her?).

And I planned to just write the VDay episode and just move on to the Spring Break. That’s the outline. But something funny happened between outlining the dialogue and actually writing it (it happened in Chain Reaction too) something always happens in the transformation. Sometimes it fits exactly what you planned, and then other times — you just have to stop and either delete so ir fits your plans or see what happens.

This part and the next planned is me seeing what happens on this little detour for Warning Shots. Does it end up being a detour or a complete derailment? I guess we’ll find out 😛

When I write Flash Fiction, I always come up with at least the plot sketch for the first half of the story to at least give me something to write towards, then I let the feedback and the story itself shape the rest of it. So I always write the actual prose during the timed 60 minutes, but I always have a plan for what I want to do. It’s part of the reason I can write between 2500-3500 words in an hour. If I were just pantsing it, parts would be half as long, lol.  If you’re curious, here’s what that angsty Liason breakup scene in Part 7 of Chain Reaction looked like before I wrote it:

Update: Chain Reaction – Part 8
Poll: Which Tortured Poets Collection To Write First

Skipped last night — my day was absolutely ridiculous and today honestly was only mildly better. I’ve thrown kids out of my room pretty much every day so far this week, and, uh, that’s literally my least favorite part of the job. But you know, you chase a kid around the room and put him in a chokehold, I don’t really have a lot of choices. Then I had a meeting, THEN I had grocery shopping, and just like — bleh.

Anyway. Here we are.

I broke down The Tortured Poets Department into 4 separate short story collections, each with its own featured story that’ll be novella (25-50k) in length. You can vote for which collection I write first in a public post over at Patreon.

See you tomorrow at our normal 8PM posting — the Phillies are playing in the afternoon, around 1PM so I’ll be free to go to my usual schedule.

Update Link: Warning Shots – Part 4

Happy Monday 🙂 I think we’re all in the mood for a small break from the angst, lol. I hope you guys are strapping in because I’ve been breaking down The Tortured Poet’s Department, and like, the angst level is off the charts. I also am getting lots of inspiration for what *might* be somewhat longer stories than the snippets of folklore. I think the longest story there is 4k (“exile”). I broke down the first 16 songs with some thoughts about what I might write. I think I’m actually breaking the album into four short story collections because otherwise I will be writing 31 stories until I die and will drown in the angst, ha.

A note on Warning Shots – this first part of the story is very episodic because I really just wanted to create a backstory that would launch us into the real chunk of the story. I’m probably going to give the second part of the story a new title because that one will feel much more like a traditional story, with a more linear narrative. There are eight “episodes” and then I’ll be moving onto the second part. It will still be much lighter than Chain Reaction, just because Liason at this point is just lighter. They’re not bogged down in everything that complicates them later.

And in my last piece of good news — I am making huge strides in my evermore feature, “no body, no crime” which was inspired by a prompt from Tania 🙂 It’s written in the style of “The Last Time” with 45 scenes. I’ve written 21 of them and it’s at about 12k, so I think maybe another 10-12k for this. I’m hoping to have that for you by the first week of May! If you have any ideas for any Crimson Swift stories, please don’t hesitate to let me know!