Category Archives: Site News

November 18, 2017

Hey, just checking in another update. I wrote a ton this week (around 15,000 words) and I realized I had kind of…taken this story in a direction that didn’t quite work. It doesn’t really change much and I only have to go back and rewrite a few scenes in the last four chapters, but *fingers crossed* I should be around Chapter 22 by the end of the weekend, if not further along. I anticipate finishing through at least Chapter 30 during November, and finishing off the last four in the first week of December.

I’m currently at 39,826 words, so I’ll probably finish the 50,000 word goal sometime this week.

Since I had to delete some material, there are two snippets that aren’t going to be reused in the revised versions that I really liked. One of which is spoiler material, so I’ll that back until I post Chapter 19.

But this snippet with Gia telling a story doesn’t give anything away and was funny–at least I thought so 😛

“Hey,” Elizabeth said as she and Gia joined the group. She slid her arm around Jason’s waist waist, his went around her shoulders as she curled into a half-embrace. “Sorry we’re late. Gia got into an argument with the officer who gives out tickets in our neighborhood.”

“It was 9:01 and we were right in front of the car. She wants to write me a ticket, she’s going to have do it over my dead body,” Gia declared. “I threw out Marcus’s name, but of course she’s a bitter ex-girlfriend.” She scowled.

“She nearly got us arrested,” Elizabeth offered with a roll of her eyes.

Courtney managed a smile, and AJ had some amusement in his eyes. Which is why she had told the story.

“How’d you get out of it?” Bobbie asked, folding her arms rightly across her chest. “The last time Gia got into an argument with the parking officer—”

“By the way, when are you due in court for that?” Courtney asked.

“There is no way that she can get me for double parking. By the time she got there, the other car was gone, which means at best, I’m a shitty parker—”

“You keep getting cited for disorderly conduct, they’ll never let you be a lawyer,” AJ told her. “Right, Diane?”

“Well, if you have the right attorney…” the redhead produced a card from nowhere. “Diane Miller.”

Gia took the card. “Let me tell you, if my idiot brother keeps breaking the hearts of the female officers in the parking authority, I’m gonna kill him. You do criminal law, too?”

And this time, she saw a ghost of a smile at the corners of Jason’s lips which made her feel much better.

“Anyway,” Gia continued, tucking the card away, “I would still be there fighting for the common man—”

“You were parked illegally, Gia,” Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes.

“—but Elizabeth started to hassle me about places we needed to be. So I took the ticket. But I’m not happy.”

 

 

November 8, 2017

Hey! I just wanted to let you guys know how it’s going. We’re a week in and I’m at around 14,000 ish words which is great. I’ve written three chapters and I’m about halfway through a fourth. If I keep that rate up (four chapters a week), I might not quite finish Bittersweet, but I’ll only be a chapter or so away.

Had a bit of a setback today after writing 1100 word scene from Elizabeth’s POV that really needs to be from Jason’s POV. I had the same issue writing The Best Thing. My first draft of the opening scene was from Elizabeth’s POV, but TBT is definitely Jason’s journey and everything was easier once I started making his voice more present. So I have to rewrite it. But it’ll be better for it, I’m sure.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter or check out my Twitter feed widget because I’ve posted a few small snippets from Bittersweet thanks to the new 280-character limit.

November 2, 2017

While I’m working on NaNoWriMo (going great so far, added another 1100 words today!) I decided to add a workshop series with the various opening scenes I wrote for Bittersweet to kind of demonstrate how tough it can be to open a story and how if it doesn’t work, there’s nothing wrong with going back. None of these are bad — in fact, the deleted chapter is actually relatively good. But I wasn’t happy with my timeline or the tone I was setting for the Jason and Elizabeth relationship, so I kept going back until I found something that worked for me.

Some of the dialogue ended up being used, some of the prose as well. But they just weren’t quite right. That’s the beauty of NaNoWriMo — you can try out all the ideas until something clicks. Eventually it will.

  • Bittersweet Opening – Sonny and Elizabeth
  • Bittersweet Opening – At the Brownstone
  • Bittersweet Opening – At Kelly’s
  • Bittersweet Opening – Deleted Chapter

    • November 1, 2017

    I just finished the last NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) session for today and I clocked in at 5,022 words and three completed scenes. Pretty excited about that. I won’t be blogging everyday, but make sure to check my Twitter feed. Maybe I’ll check on once a month.

    To celebrate a really good first day, I’m giving you the finalized soundtrack for the story — the songs for each chapter to kind of give you some hints about the mood of the overall story.

    Only Bother (Corey Taylor) is not available on Spotify, so I’ll have to upload that separately. I hope you enjoy this and I can’t wait for you guys to get to the material I wrote today. Because I love it!

    October 28, 2017

    It’s been about two years since I did a full status update of where I am in my site and writing projects. Mostly because I didn’t have much to update you guys with. That’s changed in the last four months (yay!) so I wanted to publish an official status update.

    SITE

    • I need to update the layout. This is on my list of things to do, but it’s low on the list of priorities.
    • I have the poll for the next ebook. I’m gonna work on it, but there’s no ETA on release.
    • Most of the site features I wanted to add have been done. I’m almost finished the By Title Page. If you can think of anything I can add to the site that you might want to see, let me know.

    STORY

    Current Projects

    • Mad World – I’ve been working on the revisions but it’s been slow going mostly due to my schedule and my own issues. I’ve struggled with a chapter structure, but I’m going to stop doing that for now and just finish revising the story and hope a chapter structure will come later.
    • Bittersweet – This story has been on hold for more than a year and I’m definitely ready to bring it back for NaNoWriMo 2017. I lost a bit of the juice to write it, but I’ve been recently refreshing myself on old-school Liason scenes and I’m excited to dig back into it.
    •  Damaged – Ugh. Where do I start? It’s frustrating because so much of this story is clear to me, but there’s on storyline that I started in the end of Season 2 that I ended up not really wanting to write. I have to figure a way to finish it without hating myself for being lazy. I don’t have an ETA for this but I’m hoping in December to go after the episode breakdown for the millionth time and to finally make some progress so I can write it in the first half of next year.

    Upcoming Projects 

    •  With Bittersweet and Mad World in the middle writing stages, my brain is always turning to what I might want to work on next. I have a lot of options for the next project. Here are some of them:
    • Collision is a project I started about a decade ago and then shelved after my hiatus. I had originally intended it to be like Damaged, an alternate version of GH but I obviously do not have the energy for a second go at that. It’s set in 2007 and intended to be about Helena’s final revenge on the Spencers. It would draw in a huge amount of the canvas. I posted some deleted material ages ago. I want to dust it off and revise some of the original ideas to make them better and streamline it to be a concrete story without more closure to the ending.
    •  Burn in Heaven is a sequel to A Few Words Too Many which would feature the return of Faith. I had two versions of it in Fiction Graveyard, both started back in 2004/2005. An updated version of that would include Faith teaming up with Anthony Zacchara to take on Jason and Sonny, and it’s set in 2007.
    • Feels Like Home is a re-take on Tangle, the first long story in Hand Me Down, my other alternate GH reality. It’s trippy realize we’re now closer to the year in which its set (2024) than I am to the year in which I wrote the first version (2008).

    Stories In the Pipeline

    • `There are some stories I haven’t really fleshed out as well as I would like. The stories above are basically planned out and plotted with scenes ready to write.  These are sort of in the middle ground — more than concepts, but I’ve been playing with all the elements. Here are some of the ones that are probably closer to going into full production:
    • For the Broken Girl is set in 2006 and the thought is to revisit the aftermath of the drug storyline. I love most of the summer of 2006 and into September, but I think the writers could have pushed it further instead of getting tangled up in the mob storyline and the paternity mess. I have a lot of ideas for it, but I haven’t quite settled on exactly where to pick up the show.
    • These Small Hours is set in 2008 and is the aftermath of the Sonny and Kate wedding disaster. The main struggle I have with this story is that Johnny Zacchara and Nadine Crowell are at the forefront and it’s been ages since I wrote them in a huge way. They’re supporting characters elsewhere, but they share the lead with Jason and Elizabeth in this. I have to track down scenes with them in it to get the cadence of their characters again. But I love this story and this idea and I’m gonna write it if it kills me.
    • Fallen From Grace is mostly plotted out but I’m torn on the ending. I played with the typical couples here (it is not straight Liason/Scrubs but rather them as well as Liz and Patrick, Nikolas and Robin, and also Lucky and Sam.) But I haven’t decided if that’s how I want the story to end. I don’t know. I’m still playing with it.
    • Counting Stars is set in 2000, before Lucky comes back but after Jason leaves. It’s going to deal with Elizabeth dealing with Jason leaving, Nikolas kind of getting in touch with his Cassadine heritage and some of the stuff. It’s not Niz by any means. I just haven’t really settled on how I want to write the story.

    That’s all the stories I have in my head, in outline status, or am currently writing. I’m throwing around other concepts (in the Workshop) but none of those are full-fledged ready to move into production either.

    In November, I’ll be doing NaNoWriMo again with the intent to get as close as possible to finishing Bittersweet. Best case scenario, I finish that story which means I can turn my attention to Damaged and Mad World in December. My plan is to have Mad World and Bittersweet with my beta by the end of the year and bring back Bittersweet first in January, post that twice a week for about three months. Then Mad World for three months, bringing us to about June.

    The idea is that the six months it takes to post both those novels will give me a chance to write Damaged Season Three and the next project, which I hadn’t settled on yet. I hope to not go more than a month without posting here once January starts. I’ve said that before but this is the first time I have a ton of completed material that mostly just needs refinement and revision.

    I will not be doing Workshop projects in November, but follow me on Twitter or check out the sidebar widget I added that has my Twitter feed in order to keep up with how things are going. I tweet a lot about GH and writing mostly, and I’ll be checking in daily on NaNoWriMo.

    October 20, 2017

    So when I started to revise Mad World, I added extra material. The first chapter was going to start right at the hospital after Elizabeth collapsed when finding Carly in the panic room. But after finishing this chapter, I realized I didn’t need all the material I was going to write — it didn’t really serve the story.

    But it’s 4200 words that don’t suck. So you can consider this a sort of preview since nothing that happens here really contradicts the rest of the story.

    Still hard at work, revising! Enjoy this preview.

    Mad World: Deleted First Chapter

    October 15, 2017

    I tweeted a few days ago about Danny’s paternity test — like did we ever do anything to confirm his paternity or did we take Todd Manning’s word for it?

    Couldn’t get it out of my head.

    So on a day when I have to write an entire paper and study for a quiz…I wrote a short story.

    You’re all going to scream at me to write more. I know this. And I love you for it.

    I shall not.

    Because I’m intrigued by the concept and how it might play into a larger narrative. So I might take this concept and go with it.

    Or, hey, if GH is really reading Damaged (and I swear if Drew ends up being a gaslighting con artist, I’ll know they are), maybe they’ll take this idea, too.

    So enjoy a ficlet, Blood Will Tell. I have to go write that paper and do laundry.

    October 13, 2017

    I need to get myself moving on making my older stories available in ebook format, so here’s a poll to pick the next one:

    I also did some work on the Sorting By Holiday page and added Alternate History summaries to the Sort by Title Page.

    October 11, 2017

    I went through and updated the Recent Updates page and fixed the workshop links for some the stories. I didn’t go further into July, but the ongoing stuff is done.

    I also added tags to Bittersweet so it now shows up on the Year Written and Year Set pages. I added Ghosts of Elizabeths Past to the Sort by Title Page, and I also added summaries for all Ficlets on that page. I’ve been remiss in finishing up that project. My hope is that that page serves as kind of as master list for you guys to keep track of what you’ve read any what you haven’t. (You could literally print it and check stuff off). Adding summaries, I think, helps.

    I spent a lot of time in my life doing the Sort Stories section so I hope you guys find it useful. If you haven’t been there in a while, check it out.

    A note about the Workshop pieces: They will not be tagged or listed in any of the Sort sections because that’s not what they’re meant for. They’re not supposed to be as good as what I post elsewhere (though I’d argue they’re slightly better than my 2002-03 work. They’re not edited for typos or content and they’re just a way to train my inner editor and work through some concepts.

    Case in point? The Homecoming series is me thinking through a storyline about magic. I got two parts in and there’s stuff I like, but there’s also stuff I wish I had done differently. Posting in the Workshop lets me get feedback but I don’t feel married to any of it. I can rewrite, revise, reuse at will. None of that stuff is permanent, so enjoy it but it’s not like any of my other work and I’m not going to apologize for its lack of cohesion or quality.

    You read the Workshop at your own risk, just as you read the Fiction Graveyard at your own risk.

    October 10, 2017

    An update that is not for the Workshop. That’s insane right? So I didn’t watch October 9’s episode yet, but enough of Twitter was livetweeting that I got the gist and had this idea this morning.

    If you’re currently not watching (and who would blame you? I’m watching for Steve), Elizabeth is dating Franco. Apparently, another magical brain tumor has swept in and fixed his insanity. Whatever.  Franco found out he grew up with Jason’s twin brother, Drew, who apparently died at the age of three. He initially lied to Elizabeth about it, and then came clean. And then asked HER not to tell anyone because, hey, lying about Jason never got anyone in trouble.

    So I wrote something that made me feel better. I haven’t watched the episode yet, so all I know is what happened above. I’m sure she agreed because destroying Elizabeth’s character is what makes GH go around these days.

    Ghosts of Elizabeth Past