Some family issues have prevented the Bittersweet update this week, guys. My apologies 🙂 I hope we’ll be back next week. I was trying to think of something I could post to make  upfor it.

I was looking through my files to see if there are snippets of things I haven’t posted yet and have been playing with. What I found is an un-posted chapter for a project I never finished writing: Collision.

I’ve mentioned it a few times and even posted a prologue a long time ago, but I never posted the rest of my material. So I thought as a hold over, I’d post Chapter 1. The prologue has the notes and context for the story–but it picks up the show after 2006’s virus storyline, and moves the story into 2007.

It was going to be an alternate version of the show (like Damaged) with huge umbrella storylines, but understandably, I haven’t gotten into it since I started writing Damaged. The main storyline is still something I want to revisit at some point, but there’s no harm in giving you completed material since most of it wouldn’t make into a revised version.

I hope to have Bittersweet next week 🙂 

In other news, Book 1 of Mad World, entitled Break Me Down, is now complete! I posted back in January (I think) that Mad World would be a trilogy. Book 1 takes place in late June-early July 2003 and rewrites the Carly in the Panic Room storyline. It ended up being ensemble story with the PCPD playing a starring role in a way I didn’t expect. It’s 19 chapters, 252 pages, and over 94,000 words long. And it is completely done.

Book 2 will start with Chapter 20 and go into October 2003. I’m starting that tomorrow after taking off today for a bit of a break. Break Me Down just has to go through the beta process, but I am tentatively scheduling it’s release date for October.

0

After around thirty months of Becky, pink, and blue, we’re moving on to a Liason themed layout with bright bold orange, red, and blue! There are a few kinks I’m working out. Let me know if you have any issues with any of the pages or if the colors don’t work for you. I’m excited to have a new layout finally! I don’t adore the header (I mostly like it, but I think I can do better) so it may change at some point.

I also figured out the alignment issues in my theme so that I can bring back these little themed photos. I used them for the first year or so you could tell at a glance what stories were updated.  I’ll be back this weekend I hope with either Smoke and Mirrors or maybe a Micro Fiction.

0

Welcome to another Wednesday! First, a quick update as to how Mad World is going. I’ve slowed down writing, as I said in my last post, but I’m still writing. I’m in the middle of Chapter 15, and I have the entire weekend mostly free so I’m going to get a lot done. I’m still writing an average of 3000-4000 words a day, I’m just not always finishing entire chapters.

I am also hoping to update Smoke and Mirrors this week. While I said I would be winging it and updating it whenever, I didn’t mean to let six weeks lapse between chapters! So this week or next, I want to spend some time updating that.

In other site news, I’m working on a new theme–this current one has been up since February  2016 and I think we’re all ready for a new look.

A few weeks ago, CG became affiliated with Stecky.org, the amazing Steve & Becky site! I just forgot to post about it. You can find their link in the sidebar.

And now what you came here for! Bittersweet, Chapter 24 is now live. We have seven chapters and an epilogue left, so as of right now, Bittersweet is scheduled to conclude in the first week of September.

I am working on getting it updated at Road to Nowhere now that I can post there again. I’m trying to do two chapters a day until we’re current.

0

Hey! If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve slowed down a bit writing Mad World. Not in a bad way–I’ve still written about 11 chapters in 16 days. That’s still a big improvement, so I’m not going to criticize myself because I haven’t written 12 pages every single day.

Back in December/January, as I worked to finish Bittersweet, I realized I had taken the story in a slight direction I didn’t think Jason would ever agree to. What happens in Chapter 23 was originally going to be something Jason planned with Sonny, and the real conflict would only be that Sonny lied to Liz. But I just realized as I was writing the fall out of the whole thing that I don’t buy Jason would do it. So I went back and rewrote Ch. 20-25 (which is why I ended up not finishing Bittersweet on schedule last year).

Now that we’ve finally gotten to the portion of the story I rewrote, there are some scenes here that I still really liked and I didn’t want to lose completely. There are about two chapters worth, so if you’re interested, here’s the first half, which covers most of Ch 20-23: Deleted Scenes.

In other news, I’ve been looking over my Fiction Graveyard notes, and obviously, you might be aware that I still haven’t finished re-posting all the material. Stuff the remains to be posted:

Poisonous Dreams, Version 1 (The OG A Few Words Too Many)
Shatter (a half-assed abandoned sequel to Jaded)
Aurora Dawning, Version 1
Inside Your Fear
Sing Me a Lullaby

And this is my yearly call for any missing stories I wrote in 2003. There are three long stories missing, two of which were complete, and one of which I’ve only recently remembered. There are a handful of shorts missing that I don’t even remember the name of anymore, sadly.  The first two of these were posted at The Canvas, and did exist in the archives at one point. The original board archives, not the separate ones created later.

One Day at Work – AU hostage situation.
In the Middle – AU Challenge response in which Liz played the Robin role in the Jason/Robin/Carly 1996-97 stuff.
Troubled Waters – a version of panic room fall out from fall 2003. It was going to be an alternate version of GH, and I was posting it on an ezboard site that was separate from TC, though I think I cross-posted it sometimes. My computer crashed, and the story got lost in the mix and fell off my radar.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with Bittersweet, Chapter 24!

0

So happy to be bringing Bittersweet back (and for the final time!) I appreciate all of the patience you guys have shown since I originally started writing and posting this story back in 2016, then took a year off, and then again a few months earlier this year.

This chapter is kind of special to me for  two reasons — I really like the Liz and Gia stuff, but also the song at the beginning of the chapter, “In this Room” by Leslie Tucker, is one of my favorite GH song memories. It played back in the Fall of 1998 after Brenda had “died.” Jax got her test results, burned them, and then a montage played of Jax and Brenda in his old penthouse at the Port Charles Hotel. This was during some twilight of GH’s second golden age in the late 1990s when Elizabeth and Lucky were first together.

Someone on a Liz and Lucky mailing list put together an unofficial Liz and Lucky soundtrack which we bought and shared through snail mail. Those were the days, haha. I still have that soundtrack 😉 It has some lovely old memories — a recording of Lucky’s “Elizabeth” song, the Luke and Laura Theme. Performances from the 1998 Nurse’s Ball by Liz, Lucky, Dara, and Taggert — it’s just sweet snippet of my OG ship, Lucky and Elizabeth (the first go around 1997-99).

Anyway, this song was on that soundtrack and I’ve loved it ever since, so when the subject of this chapter came up, I knew immediately which song I would choose.

I’ve also been hard at work on Mad World. I checked in on Saturday with the good progress I had made. I’ve slowed down a bit because I was feeling a bit poorly, but I’ve still written a lot of the story and I wanted to post a small snippet here for you guys: Excerpt, Chapter Nine.

And here’s the link y’all are here for: Bittersweet, Chapter Twenty-Three

0

Hey, we’ve finished our first full week of #CampNaNoWriMo and if you’ve followed me on Twitter, then you know I had a GREAT week. I took a minute to add up the words I wrote this week, and here’s where we are.

At the beginning of the week, I had written three full chapters and one scene from Chapter 4. Today, I finished Chapter 10.  I’ve written seven chapters, around 90 pages, and 31,702 words JUST THIS WEEK. Y’all, I cannot even tell you how excited I am by this program. I’ve written a chapter a day in less than two hours. This isn’t even a huge chunk of my overall day , so I should be able to maintain the pace most of the month.

I’ve actually almost gotten about halfway through the first book, probably a little more. Pieces of the second book are already written, they just have to be revised to fit the revised narrative. What I wrote this week, I thought would be the hardest stuff to write, but once I got going–I just GOT GOING.

I’ve got some even better news — I anticipate being able to post Bittersweet sometime this week, so I can start updates again. The last chapter I posted was Chapter 22, so we have about nine chapters left. This should take us through the summer and a bit into the fall. Hopefully, I’ll be able to bring you Mad World in October or November.

I can’t believe my muse finally decided to stop screwing around. This is so much better than I did even last year during NaNoWriMo in July and November. I’ll keep y’all updated. Thanks for your patience!

0

If you’re following me on Twitter, you know that I finished my beta draft of Bittersweet yesterday. I cleaned up the last eighty pages and sent them off to Cora to beta read. I’m really hoping to be able to come back with the rest of the story in about two weeks, but we’ll see. I am soooo excited to have that finished. I wrote a ton this week and I feel great about what I turned out.

So now, today being July 1, we’re digging into Camp NaNoWriMo. My goal is take what I already have of Mad World and write/revise until I have a draft ready for beta. That’s the plan for the entire month–at the end of July, I want to be absolutely done with the first draft. I won’t post progress updates here, so follow me on Twitter @crimsonglass for news.

0

Unsurprisingly, Mad World won the Camp NanoWriMo poll, though it was really close — I think at the end only about five votes separated Mad World from Broken Girl.  As you might remember, I worked on Mad World for last year’s July event and finished a draft of it in September. It was an okay draft, but I had some ideas to really do something interesting with Elizabeth’s story and do more with the panic room storyline.

So my goal this summer to get that rewrite finished. To get the story through the panic room story, and then spend August combining last year’s draft with this year’s, and put together something you guys can read this fall.

Bittersweet should be returning sometime in July. I’ve written through Chapter 29 and plan to finish the last few chapters this week. I’ll keep you guys in the loop and I should have a return date sometime soon. Thanks for your patience there.

I should also return to updating Smoke and Mirrors either this weekend or next week. I’m still kind of working on a routine and it’s hard when my work schedule is all over the place.  Writing is back in my daily schedule but not always the way  I want it to be.

This year, during Camp NaNoWriMo, I’ll be tweeting about my progress and maybe even posting small snippets on Twitter. Follow the hashtags #crimsonglass and #cgmadworld to make sure you don’t miss anything if that’s something you’re interested in.

In extracurricular news, I’ve started a Summer Reading Project to boost my novel reading numbers. I’m rereading my favorite romance series and then reviewing them. Check out my personal blog for more information. I’m also writing a weekly post about how I would write current GH storylines, and I plan to add some other content later this summer.

0

If you haven’t voted in the poll yet to choose my Camp NaNoWriMo project, I decided to give some small previews. I have an entire chapter from Mad World, and an opening scene from For the Broken Girl. I’ve been writing Mad World longer, so I had an entire chapter. I had to write the scene for Broken Girl, that’s why there’s less.

Mad World – Chapter One

For the Broken Girl – Opening Scene

Please make sure to vote by June 26!

In other news, I started a GH commentary series over at my boring blog where I basically rewrite ongoing GH stories in the form of a plot sketch. It’s called If I Wrote GH, and I launched it with a recounting of how I would rewrite the gaslighting story of Carly and Nelle.

I’ll be back this weekend with some story updates!

0