So not a lot of chatter today. I’ve added Chapter Two to All We Are. I still have to update the music and events page, I promise I’ll get to that at some point. Hope you guys enjoy.

0

So before I get into the updates, I have a bit of soap box thing for TBT. I post it here only because I posted it on FF.net and Road to Nowhere, so I’m just making it fair.

[spoiler title=’Soabox: Sonny Corinthos in TBT’ collapse_link=’true’]

I  know you guys are frustrated with Sonny. I get it. I know it can feel like Jason is still kind of worshipping at the altar of Sonny and Carly, and for those of you who feel that way, I can’t imagine the stuff in this chapter is going to cheer you up.

Here’s the thing: I don’t like Sonny as he is on the show. I have not truly enjoyed Sonny, except for brief moments with Kate, since roughly 2002. But when I write a character, I try to do with with an eye towards making his motivations clear and with a sense of empathy. I’m not writing the Sonny from GH today, I’m writing the Sonny I fell in love with once.

Please consider watching this youtube video of Sonny and Elizabeth at the garage fire in 1999 because this for me, sets the tone for the Sonny and Elizabeth relationship, one that predates the Liason connection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY8qBIpcREs Put yourself in this mindset because there’s a pretty lengthy Sonny and Elizabeth scene in this chapter that uses it as a foundation.

[/spoiler]

That aside, I have updated The Best Thing with Chapter Eighteen. The relevant chapter has also been added to the in progress ebook.

Regarding the concept of updating an ebook as I update the story — I did it for The Best Thing because it’s such a long and intense story that catching up can often be a pain. But would you guys be interested in having the same go for All We Are? It won’t be as long, but it still might be useful. Let me know. The ebook page in general has been updated to reflect some new release dates. I’ll be updating the music page on Friday.

In site news, I’m starting a new subset for my Fanfiction 101 series in which I write out my General Hospital bible (a word I mean in the secular usage as a set of authoritative materials). I’ll be doing articles on specific characters, couples, storylines, and even on Port Charles the town itself. I started with Sonny due to the soapbox nature of my rant above. So please visit Fanfiction 101 for more on that.

0

So for no reason whatsoever, I did not get to the Graveyard updates yesterday. I have no good excuse, ha. Anyway. I posted more of Shadows and Poisonous Dreams #1 as well as all of the material I have available for Slide, the original sequel to I Shall Believe. As of this update, the following stories are still left to add to the Graveyard section:

• Aurora Dawning #1 (Chapters 1-10)
• Fumbling Towards Perfection (Prologue & Chapter 1)
• Lupercalia (Prologue, Chapters 1-2)
• Inside Your Fear (Prologue, Chapters 1-3
• Poisonous Dreams #1 (Chapter 3-13)
• Shadows #1 (Chapters 10-15, Original outline)
• Sing Me A Lullaby (Prologue, Chapters 1-5)
• Shatter (Prologue, Chapters 1-3)
• Tangle (Chapters 1-16, Original Outline)

Poisonous Dreams #1 is being reposted much more slowly because it’s a messy copy — some punctuation and dashes were missing, so it’s jumbly and I don’t want to hurry it.

So there’s still a ton of material to add to the section, so your weekly updates in this regard will continue.

Graveyard Additions

• Poisonous Dreams #1, Chapter Two
• Shadows (Chapters 7-9)
• Slide (Prologue, Chapter One, Outakes, Plot Notes)

In ebook news, I’ve finally rolled out an update to The Best Thing‘s in progress version with the addition of Chapter 17. I’m also working on February’s release: Yesterdays. From now on, I’ll be doing ebooks for featured stories to hurry up the backlist. I have to do a cover and do a read through, but I anticipate having it next week.

The Best Thing‘s ebook has been formatted so that it’s much easier for me to just drop in future chapters, so if you open up the table of contents and find out there are some forty-two chapters listed, ha–there are not 42 chapters yet. (Yeah….I warned this was going to be a behometh).

In regular story news, I had made some passing comment on possibily rewriting I Shall Believe. No one shrieked in horror, but that doesn’t mean some people didn’t roll their eyes. Ha. I’ve been playing around with some possible premises and realized it’s really not possible to do that because the way I would write that particular storyline today is so far removed from the original that there’s no point in calling it a rewrite, so we’re going to go with a revisioning of the panic room story and its fallout. ISB will stay where it is, but the sequel Slide has been shelved in favor of the new idea, so that’s my plan. Sorry for anyone really looking forward to more Slide, but the ideas I had for it will be incorporated into the new story.

And in other site news, I started a Tumblr for this page. Mostly because I get bored. So if you’re at all interested, please follow it. It’ll have story updates and occasionally I post photos and screencaps from the show that have inspired my stories.

0

I had hoped to begin posting this last week, but alas, things got away from me a bit. This story is unbeta’d at the moment, so if you notice any typos in the chapter, let me know ASAP so I can fix them. This story is about halfway finished, and I have plenty of chapters ready to go so there should be no lull in posting (save my own insane schedule)

So All We Are, Chapter One has been added and Friday is your official day for future chapters. 🙂

I still need to update The Best Thing‘s in progress ebook, I’m completely aware of that fact. I had planned to do it but then you know…life. I’ll take care of that and the events calendar later this afternoon after I run another errand or so.

You might have noticed that Life for Rent has been moved to the series page, as well as a bit of sprucing up on thatpage in general — All of Me now has a cute little featured banner image. I still have some more plans for that section but for now, it’s cleaned up as much as I can do at the moment.

I am still playing around with a Valentine’s Day story for next week, but I can’t make any promises. My entire writing schedule was thrown off when I got sick last week so if it gets posted it might be late.

0

I added Chapter Seventeen to The Best Thing, and promise we’re back on a regular schedule. I hope this chapter and the next several make the absense worth it, I worked hard on them 🙂

I’m still hoping to have All We Are by Friday, but maybe Saturday or Sunday. I should have it within the week. I’m mostly recovered so I’ll be back to writing again which I had to give up last week in lieu of pretty much being dead. Thanks for your everlasting patience.

The in progress ebook has not been updated yet — I have hopes of taking care of that later tonight or tomorrow.

I know I have to update the events calendar — I’ll take care of that tomorrow as well.

0

I could do without being sick again for a while. I caught a bad cold and sinus infection just before Christmas and because I didn’t have much down time between colds, I was pretty much laid low last week — I barely got out of bed. And then when I started to feel better, ear infection from hell. Good God.  So apologies for the lack of updates last week. I didn’t write, I didn’t post, I pretty much stared at reruns of Parks & Rec and That ’70s Show.

But I’m back. Mad World #1 has now been completed. All twenty-two originally posted chapters and the portions of Chapter Twenty-Three that I had written but never completed. I also posted the storyboarded scenes for the final four chapters so you can see how I had planned to end the story before abandoning it. So I hope that can help those of you who liked it put a period at the end of the experience. For me, I know that the second version of MW is going to be much better.

I also completed the reposting of True To Your Heart — all twelve original chapters I could find. There may have been one or two extra chapters lost to the Internet, but these are the ones I have.

Next Graveyard posting, I’ll post more of Shadows, more of the original Poisonous Dreams and probably one of the other shorter stories — Slide or Lupercalia.

I have The Best Thing, Chapter Seventeeen for Wednesday (yay!) and I have hopes of having the first chapter of All We Are for Friday. We’re a bit off schedule but I’m hoping that’ll change now.

Additions
– Mad World: Chapters 19-22; Rest of Outline
– True To Your Heart: Chapters 11, 12

0

Hey — though shouldn’t be a surprise at this point. Updates for this week are cancelled. I’ve been fighting a pretty nasty cold all week and it’s taking longer than I like to bounce back.

0

Hey! Just a quick note that I’m looking for another beta reader. I still love Cora to pieces, but I know I’m definitely too prolific for just one person, ha, and if I could afford to pay her I would. That being said, you can tell from my story statuses that I often have several projects going on at a time. I’m usually writing two actively with about six or seven working through the development process.

While I am looking for someone to do a basic read through of chapters before I post looking for typos, I’m also looking for someone who’d be interested in story development. I often create really elaborate outlines to begin my stories and then break them down scene by scene to facilitate the writing. I’m looking for someone to read them with a critical eye — if a character is missing or maybe some subtext, or just an element that isn’t present, I want to hear that.

I like to think this isn’t a time consuming thing — particularly since you wouldn’t be responsible for anything I’m currently writing (The Best Thing and All We Are are in Cora’s hands at the moment), but I also try really hard not to bug anyone who’s doing me a favor.

If you’re interested, just reply to this and I’ll contact you by email 🙂

0

First things first: I know The Best Thing is a bit late. I’m waiting on Chapter 17 to come back from Cora, and it’s been a crazy couple of weeks for everyone involved. I like having a buffer zone between what I’m posting and what I’ve written — and I completely eliminated that in December, so I’m working hard to get ahead of myself again. At the moment, there are four chapters that I’ve written and haven’t posted. I hope to double that this week which puts us in a good position. I’ve mostly decided how to end the story — but I’m contemplating a sequel. I still have to do some thinking on that, so we’ll see.

On to the Fiction Graveyard updates 🙂 Next week, I’ll be posting the last chapters of True To Your Heart and Mad World, so I’ll be posting a few shorter stories for a couple of weeks rather than the longer ones. I still have about nine stories to post, two of which are ten chapters or more, so Fiction Graveyard is still going to be with us into the spring.

Since I’ll be finishing the repost of the first version of Mad World, I’ll also post the outline for how I would have finished that version and talk a bit more about why I didn’t continue that version. I know plenty of you like that story, and that’s fine. I may try to finish it up one day, but I hates it a lot. True To Your Heart had no such planned outline, so I have no idea how I would have ended that, so once I post the twelfth chapter next week, that’s all she wrote on that.

As for housekeeping: I’m working on a system that would speed up the creation of ebooks for my backlist, as well as creating collections of my short story and novellas in ebook form. But in order to best serve you guys, I was hoping you might respond to this post with following information.

1. Have you downloaded any of the ebooks on the site? If not, why?

2. Which format do you find most useful? Is there another format I could utilize?

3. Would you be interested more specific instructions for using Calibre to put the ebooks on your ereader?

I’d appreciate any feedback 🙂

That being said, would you guys kill me if I thought about rewriting I Shall Believe? I know, I know, I swore I wouldn’t. But I was contemplating why I’m struggling with writing a sequel so much and I think it’s either two reasons: 1. I don’t think it actually needs a sequel and therefore, there’s no point, or 2. We’re dealing with a Burn in Heaven situation where I couldn’t write the sequel because I didn’t like the way I had written the first story. I don’t know. I might be overthinking it.

I have issues. This is not news.

And before I go and leave you alone, I’m working on a short story set in my All I Want for Christmas universe for Valentine’s Day, but I make no promises 🙂

Your Graveyard Additions
Mad World: Chapters 16-18
Shadows: Chapters 4-6
True To Your Heart: Chapters 8-10

0

A couple of housekeeping notations. On the series page, you’ll notice the Liason companion series to The Adventures of Lucky and Lizzie has disappeared. I’ve mixed those six stories into the existing thirteen and rearranged the listing so it works in chronological order. It’s part of my overall plan to revamp the series page. Good Associations got an updated banner image.

I added a new Story Status update — the most complete one I’ve posted in a few months. I also added the plot sketches for Heaven Forbid since I decided to discard the story — its also been removed from the Coming Soon page.

I’ll be updating The Best Thing as soon as Chapter 17 comes back from the beta 🙂

0