So as I sit here in Macroeconomics, which I had hoped would offer me space to write since the lectures are relatively useless because all the material and assignments are online — I’m struck by how difficult it is to write fanfiction when there’s someone sitting behind me and someone less than a foot away from me on either side. Ha. I can get some plotting done, but it’s been difficult to find time to actually write. (Plus, I have a Macro exam and two papers to write, one 5-7 pages on America’s new empire at the turn of the century and 8-10 on the influence of post-colonial thought on writing global history all due by next Tuesday.)

So I may not have as much this month particularly to devote to long chapter stories. But maybe I can carve out some smaller short stories.  Anyone have something they’d like to see in a story? This is a call to inspire me 🙂

The Best Thing’s final chapter is still scheduled by posted on Friday, so stay tuned for that 🙂

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Hey! So by now, you’ve noticed that I didn’t update The Best Thing yesterday. I finished the last two chapters, but I’m waiting for Cora to get back to me — I asked her to rip it apart and suggest any changes. She’s worked almost as hard as I have on this story, and I want the ending of the story to be as good as the first thirty-two chapters.

I started graduate school about two weeks ago and I’m taking a full load of classes. Two graduate level History reading seminars with about two hundred pages each a week reading, an undergrad Macroeconomics course I need for my Social Studies certification, and two online teacher education classes. I’m also auditing an American history class to help me write my research paper next semester. I’m getting tired just thinking about it, haha. Oh, yeah, and I’m working three days a week 😛

This is exactly the adjustment period I had anticipated last fall had I started on time. I should be on a normal schedule and routine after this week. My Macro class is being graded completely on online tests and homework, and the teacher is useless so far, but I have to attend those classes. That looks like my best bet to get some writing done during the week.

The good news is that Bittersweet already has nine chapters completed. I still have some editing to do on them, some scenes to revise before I give them back to Cora, but at some point, I will have enough buffer and beta’d chapters to deliver the fresh content I promised.

I’m not thrilled with the header image, haha, and the pink hurts my head. But I’ve been playing around some of the other editing. I’ve made the story lists on pages like In Progress and the completed Alternate History and Universe pages. I plan to leave this layout up just through Valentine’s Day. Changing won’t be much of a problem. This layout is much easier to change.

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Hey! So briefly, as you can see, CG has a new layout. We’ve switched to two columns. I removed some of the sections, but you can find everything up in the primary navigation bar below the header. If there’s anything you want me to bring back, let me know, but I think this looks a lot less cluttered.

I’ve made a lot of improvements–there’s still a few more I want to work on but this is as close to the best version of a CG layout as we’ve had since the site relaunched two years ago.

The only thing I didn’t do was the header image, haha, which is why it looks like that. That’s my temporary one until I finish it. I should have that up by tonight or tomorrow, but I didn’t want to leave the site down.

Let me know if you find anything wonky!

ETA: Header image is updated, though I’m still eyeing a change.

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I updated The Best Thing, Chapter 32 today, and barring any crazy rewrites that might be needed on the final two chapters (I’m expecting to have to redo a few scenes, maybe add some more) we’ll be wrapping this up on February 5, 2016 or maybe a week or so later.

At the moment, Bittersweet has eight chapters that are with Cora, but obviously our priority has been to finish up The Best Thing. I myself have made some changes to the first eight chapters, I’m waiting to hear her take on my first eight. I’ve started writing the next part of the story. I hope to have Bittersweet midway through February, but I’d rather push it to March and make sure that you guys get the best version of this story possible.

Damaged is still scheduled to come back in March, but it depends on how the next few weeks ago. I’ve started graduate school this week and it’s going to be another week or so before I’m able to really get an idea of how much time that’s going to take between attending classes and doing the work. My plan is for you guys to have new content every week, but I may miss one or two here and there. When I constructed that schedule, I really didn’t think I’d have bronchitis for the better part of December and January. Even now, it’s lingering and sucking my energy up.

I hope you guys enjoy this turn in The Best Thing. Super excited for you guys to finally see the end of the story. I hope to have the ebook giveaway up before the end of the story, but I will definitely be posting the various outlines so you can see just how different this story turned out.

See you guys next week!

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Hey! Just a small update to mention that I added Chapter 31 of The Best Thing on Friday. Remember to subscribe to the site using the link to the right under “Subscribe to this Blog” You’ll get brand-new chapters delivered to your emails seconds after they’re posted so you’re not always dependent on me remembering to add a post to the main page.

I also got around to updating the page that lists updates without chatter. I always forget to do that, sorry!

And in more important news — I finished writing The Best Thing. After roughly twenty-one months, I finished the last chapter (Chapter 34 to be exact) on Saturday. It felt weird to finally be writing the scenes I had been planning for ages. I’ve sent them to Cora, so I may not be quite done with the story, but the first draft is officially done, so that’s a major part of the battle. We might actually stay on an actual schedule after all. Now I can concentrate on Bittersweet 🙂

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So yes, The Best Thing has finally been updated after nearly four months. Unless there’s there’s some sort car accident in which I am immobilized, we are going to finish this story sometime in February. I have three chapters beta’d and ready to go and my plan is finish things this weekend. I know, I know, I’ve said it before but this time I’ve figured out why I’ve been stuck.

It’s my own fault, too. This story has been difficult to write all along because I’ve constantly challenged myself to write from Jason’s POV at least as often as I write Elizabeth–if not more–and to really explore Sonny’s illness. And that’s hard because it forces to get inside the head of a paranoid egomaniac suffering from bipolar disorder. It’s hard and it takes longer, but every time I stop challenging myself to write this story the way it should be, it suffers. I’ve stopped fighting it. I’m over my bronchitis, and other than grocery shopping tomorrow and seeing Star Wars, I have completely cleared my schedule for two and a half days.

As always, thanks to Cora, who with her invaluable feedback, helped me to stop pretending the end of this story could be written any other way.

I’m updating The Best Thing tonight. If I finish the last three chapters and get them to Cora on schedule, I’ll do another update on Wednesday, and then next Wednesday as usual. Thanks for your patience, guys, it’s about to pay off.

I’ll be posting The Best Thing in January, Bittersweet in February, and then Damaged, Season 3 in March. See you guys next week 😀

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So to make up for my general lack of being around this month, I went ahead and posted the second half of Tangle, up to and including the Chapter 17 that I don’t think I ever posted. Chapter 18 was about half finished when I abandoned that version of the story, so like the repost of Mad World, I posted what I had left. Unfortunately, the outline for Chapter 19 disappeared so I’ll have to look through my files with a fine tooth comb to locate it.  I don’t have an ETA for the rewrite, but I’m hoping sometime in 2016 🙂

I know that it seems that updates slowed downquite at a bit at Crimson Glass this last year between health issues and crazy mojo sucking real life issues, but looking back I actually completed quite a lot so I’m going to stop being hard on myself. You guys are fantastic, I’m the one who yells at me 😛

The Best Thing – I had a slow year on this one. I only wrote about fifteen chapters, with three more remaining. Still fifteen isn’t awful considering how much I didn’t write between 2009-2013 😛 With an average page length of 11 pages and word count of 4000 per chapter, that’s a 165 pages and 60,000 words.

All We Are – I completed seventeen chapters, clocking in at 162 pages and 63, 149 words.

Damaged – I completed Season 1 with an additional 96 pages and about 35,000 words and wrote all of Season 2, with 204 pages and 94, 665.

With taking into account several short stories, that’s 627 pages of content and 217,849 words in the last year. There are actual published authors who haven’t written as much as I did  this last year. So while, yes, that was a bit a slow down from 2014, 2015 wasn’t too bad, so I’m going to forgive myself for not updating as often as I’d like. I like to think I post quality material and taking a bit of extra time to make sure it’s good is not a bad thing 🙂

However, 2016 is going to be different. I’m doing a lot of writing and planning to stay ahead of myself so that updates will be a bit more even and frequent. I don’t enjoy going entire months without new content, so that’s one of my New Year’s Resolutions to myself.

So have a happy holiday season, enjoy the rest of Tangle, or peruse one of my other holiday stories or hey, read last year’s All I Want For Christmas. See you guys in 2016!

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Sorry for disappearing the last two weeks. I caught a cold from either one of the germ-infested students I teach or the dirty children my sister gave birth too. It’s really a toss up at this point. Anyway, I’ve spent the better part the last week hacking up a lung and binging Grey’s Anatomy because that required no brain power. I stopped watching that show somewhere in the fourth season and I’d forgotten how good Season 1 and 2 was. Anyway.

I’ll be back sometime tomorrow or Thursday and catch up with the last two weeks of Fiction Graveyard. I hope to bring back The Best Thing in January, but my writing energy has been sapped. Every time I get a cold, I go down like death. I’m the worst sick person. See you guys in a few days. Have a great holiday!

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I’ve updated the Fiction Graveyard with three new chapters of Tangle. I’ve been asked if I plan to continue it or simply leave it unfinished as I move on to rewrite the story. I have the ending completely outlined, so for the moment, I’ll be posting the planned scenes in their outline form so you can at least visualize how I intended to end this version of the story. Whether I come back one day to complete that version, I can’t say.

Your Christmas throwback: Noel, a Jason-centric story set in 2005 as a response to a challenge to write a version of A Christmas Carol, and A Second Chance, a Christmas story set in 2002 where Elizabeth rewrites her past.

I’ll be back next week with more of Tangle, some more Christmas throwbacks, and possibly, a new site feature. We’ll see how my week shapes up.

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Well, here we are at the end of November, and I’m not sure where the days are going. It feels like just yesterday that I decided (very nearly on a whim) to see if I couldn’t finish some of the fanfiction I had abandoned six years earlier. I was only just beginning a year long sojourn in London for a masters program that wasn’t nearly as rewarding as the year spent living in one of the most amazing cities in the world.

So much of what I write now was plotted and planned as I walked the streets of London that year, listening to the soundtracks and writing dialogue in my head.  In fact, the very chapter I’m writing in The Best Thing this week — I can really remember exactly where I was when I came up with the scene — across from Euston Station, at the corner of Euston Street and Upper Woburn Place.

Anyway, the point of this is — I know the updates have been sparse since August, particularly if you’re not following Damaged, and I apologize for that. That’s not a situation that will be changing this month as I’ll only be posting Fiction Graveyard updates.

However, starting in January, the plan is to have at least one fresh update of something accompanying the Fiction Graveyard updates. In January, the final chapters of The Best Thing. Then Bittersweet starting in February, then Damaged, Season 3 in March, and so on. I mentioned that I was going to write Bittersweet during NaNoWriMo. I had hoped to finish at least half the story by the end of month, but I ran into some problems. I had to stop and start over, so I only finished eight chapters. Still, eight chapters is roughly a third of the way through, so not so bad.  I’ll be finishing up The Best Thing, then hoping to get to the rest of Bittersweet and in January.

So why am I bothering you all with a post? Updates to the Fiction Graveyard will restart next Monday, with Tangle and Poisonous Dreams #1. If you haven’t been following Damaged, Season 1 and 2 are now completed and posted at the website. Damaged Season 1 is 11 episodes long, Season 2 is 14 episodes long. Each episode is anywhere from 15-23 pages long, so if you’ve not been reading my version of General Hospital beginning with AJ’s murder and Jason’s return from the dead, you’re missing out on 600 pages of new material. 😛 It ought to hold you over until January.

Happy holidays! Every week, I’ll be highlighting one or two of the Christmas stories already posted here. So this week, I bring up an old favorite. Always An Angel, a particularly sappy story I wrote in 2003.

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