Cora, whose praises I often sing, managed to beta the entire story and return it to me this morning so we have clear sailing through the rest of the month to finish posting on schedule. Seriously. I’ve had a ton of a beta readers before, but she’s the best.

All I Want For Christmas – Part Four is now online. A quick glance at the schedule for the final half of the story:

Part Five – 20 December 2014
Part Six – 24 December 2014
Part Seven – 27 December 2014
Part Eight & Epilogue – 31 Dec 2014

I’ve tried to set it up so that the updates correspond to the same day of the month they take place in the story . Because I’m a complete dork.

I’m going to skip posting The Best Thing this week. I’m working on Chapter 17, and I’m stuck on the way it’s supposed to unfold. It’s not working the way it did in my outline, so I have to revisualize it, and I got a little stuck. I took a break for a few days to come back with a fresh mind, but I don’t want to run out of chapters. I’ll post the next chapter on Christmas Eve 🙂

I finished the outlines for Burn in Heaven and Mad World and broke them down into rough chapter outlines. They’re both ensemble stories so I’m trying to make sure they’re pretty balanced. Once I do the same for These Small Hours, I’ll be posting the first chapters from Burn in Heaven, Mad World, These Small Hours, and Feels Like Home (Tangle re-write) so you guys can vote on what’s going to be next after The Best Thing and All We Are.

On the subject of All We Are, I’ve added a small snippet from Chapter One 🙂

And hey! Comments are free and easy. If you like the chapters, feel free to take a few seconds and tell me 🙂

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And that might be the weirdest title I’ve ever written for this site. Ha. So I finally finished gathering all the Graveyard stories into one Scrivener project for easy editing and posting. I plan to post a bunch of it on Mondays — smaller stories with fewer chapters and then some chapters from some of the longer abandoned stories.

For this week, we have both previous versions of Burn in Heaven. The first version is a prologue and four chapters, the second version is one completed prologue and a partial chapter one that cuts off halfway through a scene, haha. I talked a bit on each page about I stopped writing each version — the first, because I didn’t really like the way I had set it up, and the second became defunct once I rewrote Poisonous Dreams #2.

I also posted all of Secrets Kept, which is a prologue and three chapters. I allowed Cheri (romantic at heart) to continue writing this story, and if my memory serves me, Cheri wrote at least twenty chapters to this. I don’t know what happened to her board or any of her stories. I didn’t locate it in the old Liason Underground. If anyone knows if her version survives, please let me know! I’d love to post a link for you guys to continue reading.

I have several long stories that were rewritten halfway through the first version, including Aurora Dawning, Mad World, Tangle, Shadows, Poisonous Dreams #1, etc. So I’ll post a few chapters from each of those once a week until completed. None of the first versions of these stories were completed (the only completed story in the Fiction Graveyard section is Poisonous Dreams #2), but some have already been rewritten and others are on the schedule for next year. I do, however, have the rest of the outlines for those stories and will be posting them once all the chapters are up so you can get some closure.

So without further ado, here are your additions for this week:

– Burn in Heaven #1 (Prologue – Chapter 4)
– Burn in Heaven #2 (Prologue & Part of Chapter 1)
– Secrets Kept (Prologue – Chapter 3)
– Mad World (Chapter 1-3)

In site news, I upgraded the hardware as promised last week and I’ve already noticed a great difference in speed and functionality so I hope you guys have as well. I’ve been working on cosmetic details — tidying up the story pages and the series pages.  I’m still planning on moving some of the stories under the Completed pages to Short Stories due to length and word count, but that’s a future development.

You might notice the new floating social links on individual post pages. I’m not thrilled with it and might swap it out for something else.

Also, the server move last week enabled me to go back to the updates mailing list that worked so well when I first opened the site. That list was powered by a WordPress plugin that utilized too much of my shared hosting resources. With my own private server, I can use it again. That being said, some of the emails might have been lost so I emailed all the registered users over the weekend. You can subscribe in the top right hand sidebar — make sure your email is on the list!

I hope to post All I Want For Christmas and The Best Thing on schedule this week, but they may be a day or so late. Over the weekend, I completed outlines for Burn in Heaven and Mad World, which I’m super happy about. I’m writing The Best Thing and All We Are, but I’m trying to settle on my next project once they’re both finished. Finishing those outlines helps me visualize both stories better in order to pick one. I’ll see how I feel once I finish the outline for These Small Hours.

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I’m not even sure why I bothered to ask if you wanted updates earlier than scheduled. Ha. Maybe to hear myself speak 🙂 As stated earlier, I’ll be moving servers on Friday. This will likely lead to the site being down for at least a day while things are shifted around and reconnected.  I’ll retain the address to the page, so you don’t have to change any book marks. I’m basically upgrading the hardware behind the scenes. I keep getting 404 Page Found links when I’m doing updates so it’s bugging me.

So, The Best Thing, Chapter 14 and All I Want For Christmas, Part 3 is now online. I might not update next week mostly because I wrote myself a little close to my buffer zone, and Cora, without whom I could not live, has an actual life separate from being my beta reader. Ha. So my new chapters are not yet Cora-approved. I don’t want to have to change and edit typos later. So wish her good luck on her finals 🙂 We’ll probably only miss a week. (Though now that I think about it, I’m not even sure I sent her Chapter 15 and 16. Hm. Will have to get on that.)

In other site news, the media page has now been redesigned into the music section to reflect better organization. On that page, you can links to my Spotify and Grooveshark music profiles — if you’re going to follow one of them, I recommend Spotify because you can preview soundtracks that I’m building for upcoming stories and you have access to the entirety of 2000+ Writing Soundtrack.

The page also has an artist/song highlight and musical spoilers. Plus a Matt Hunter music videos. Good times.

In site customization news, I finished tweaking the majority of the stories on the Alternate History section so that they’re all styled with the new colors, character pages cleaned up, etc. I also added a Character Guide page under Extras to remind readers of the minor GH characters of old that I tend to throw into the mix, as well as my small stable of original characters.

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The last few days, CG has had some loading issues. Sometimes you’ll click on a link and it might tell you the page hasn’t been found. That’s not because the page isn’t there, but because the site has exceeded my share of the resources on my hosting plan.  That’s not fun for anyone, haha, so I’m going to upgrade from shared hosting to a private server. It’s about $5 more a month, which isn’t horrible, actually.

I’ll be doing it at the end of the week, but it’s going to take sometime to migrate the site to the new server. I’m not sure how long but it’s likely the site would be down for a day or so. Since I’m scheduled to post The Best Thing, Chapter 14 tomorrow, and All I Want for Christmas, Part 3 on Thursday, that means the site would go down shortly within a day or so of posting them. Not my favorite option.

So I’m thinking about posting both of them today only at CG so there’s extra time to make sure you get to that material before the end of the week, so if the site is down all weekend, you still get to read it. I’d keep to the normal schedule on the other sites.

Thoughts?

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So this is the last time I plan to post updates about this particular theme to the main part of the site. The majority of the tweaks that needed to be done are either completed, or are in the process. All that’s left is a few cosmetic changes.

The menu at the top of the page has been completed. The addition of the writing tab is also ready — the Fanfiction 101 series once located under “Site” is now there, with maybe more to come. But the Sort/Site section is now complete.

The media page is under construction — most of what was there were links to videos and soundtracks that been redistributed to their specific story pages (A Few Words Too Many, Daughters, and These Small Hours). What’s left will be reorganized into one Music page.

I also started to work on the various story pages to go with the new style design. Mostly just cleaning up character images, replacing the bolded words Characters/Background with styling for color changes.  There’s no point in listing all the specific ones updated so far.

The Fiction Graveyard section got a slight face lift — I worked on the way information is listed and continued work on the story pages in that area. I’m still gathering and formatting all the stories for this so that once I start posting, I can just do it in large chunks. Otherwise, it takes too long to format chapter by chapter.

The next time I bug you guys will be a story update on Wednesday with The Best Thing 🙂

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I moved around my posting schedule for All I Want For Christmas in order to lessen the gap between a few parts. I’ll be posting the next part on Thursday, Dec 11 and then Part Four on Dec 16. I want to post often, but space it out so that Christmas Eve chapters are closer to that date, and finish it with New Year’s Eve.

Lisa asked about the angst content — when you compare it to A Few Words or The Best Thing, it’s practically pure fluff. But, haha, yes, there’s some conflict.

The response to that first part has been amazing, and it means so much. I post across five sites (here, Road to Nowhere, Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, and Liason Underground) and though it can often be a time consuming process, it’s worth it since I average closer to 15-20 feedback responses for everything I post. You guys are fantastic 🙂

My aim at CG is make it easier for you guys to find what you want to read and to find it fast. If there is anything I can do to facilitate this, to make it easier, please don’t hesitate to tell me. This site is for you guys, after all 🙂 

I had a breakthrough on Mad World, and I was finally able to iron out the ending. I think it’s so much better than the original story or the second attempt to plot it and I’m looking forward to outlining it in more detail. Thanks for the response to the poll.

I’m still tweaking the site so please bear with me 😀

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So I know this doesn’t look look a whole lot different than the last theme (header and three columns) but you’ll notice the colors and design is a bit more evenly distributed. I’m not done tweaking it yet. One of the most difficult things about customizing a wordpress theme is the CSS (which controls the colors, the links, pretty much everything that makes your page pretty) because every theme and every element has a specific name.

I’m still playing with it, but it’s ready for wider distribution since it’s better than the old one. Let me know if something doesn’t work or you simply can’t stand something.

Update

As I remarked earlier, I’m continuing to tweak the site. I fixed the site images in the right hand side bar so that they’re showing side by side (or they will if your screen resolution is wide enough).

I will continue to work on this — adding styling elements and tweaking for future customization and layouts. So here’s what I already know needs to be done:

1. Comments — It’s pretty close, there’s still some work to be done.
2. The Sort Stories & Site links in the top menus. These are just short cuts to the areas that already exist in the sidebars, I’m just putting them in a more easily seen spot. The Stories and Readers sections are ready to go.  The Home link has been removed from the Story section because there’s a huge prominent one now.

I’m also working on updating each story page with a bit more organization, but that is an ongoing process and won’t likely all be done at the same time.

So other than those issues, if you have an issue with the site (if there’s a color not working for you, or something is just so ugly you want to set it on fire), please let me know!!

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First things first: The Best Thing, Chapter Thirteen has been added. I’ll probably continue posting it only once a week until it’s completed. It’s a difficult story to write due to the content and the type of subject I’m dealing with. If I finish it ahead of a schedule, I might bump up the posting, but only if I have another story ready.

That being said, I have a much more straightforward story I’m working on, All We Are, the marriage of convenience story I’ve been playing around with. I already have three chapters done, and I hope to be about halfway through by the end of the month. I can start posting that in late January/early February so I’m posting twice a week.

Once those two stories are done, I’m unsure what story will be next. I should work with Feels Like Home (the rewrite of Tangle), as it’s storyboarded and ready to go, but I also have Mad World, For the Broken Girl, and These Small Hours also in the wings.  I should have a more definitive idea once we get into the new year.

On the subject of Mad World, I’m still working out some plot details. If you’ve read the preview I posted in the spring, you know the PCPD is going to have a hand in this case.  Rather than creating original characters as police officers, I thought about bringing an old cast member back. Taggart’s already in the story.

I could either utilize Dante, Jesse Beaudry, Nathan, David Harper or Cruz Rodriguez. The latter two were Lucky’s partners in 2008 and 2006 respectively. Or I could go ahead a create an original character. Whenever I can’t decide these things, I turn to you guys.

[socialpoll id=”2235360″]

So please let me know what you think 🙂

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So I’m about go write the last part of this story so I can send it off to Cora, and decided, eh, I don’t want to wait any longer to post. I have amazing issues. I’ll be posting the next part Sunday (maybe Saturday, haven’t quite decided yet).  So here’s the kick off for Christmas:  All I Want For Christmas, Part One.

I also added another article in the Fanfiction 101 series: The Peaks and Perils of Pantsing.

I’ll be back tomorrow with The Best Thing, Chapter 13.

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