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

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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.

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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 🙂

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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

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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 🙂

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Didn’t update yesterday — it was a super busy day and I had a lot going on. I finally received word from UCL in London that I’ve officially graduated so my degree has been certified and I can now apply for jobs based on having a masters degree, ha. It’s fantastic news, I can’t wait to have money again.

Additions
Mad World: Chapters 13-15
True To Your Heart: Chapters 6-7
Shadows: Chapters 2-3

I’ll be back sometime this week with an update for The Best Thing.

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The Best Thing has been updated with Chapter Sixteen. I haven’t done nearly as much writing on my in progress stories as I’d like for the last week or so, I’ve had a rotten sinus infection right after a crappy cold.  Story of my life.

I updated the Ebook page with the links to All I Want For Christmas — I aplogize for delaying on that in the last week. Please let me know if any of the formats I post don’t work.

I’ve also revised the release date for The Best Thing as a finished ebook (and as a finished story). By rewriting the ending, I added about, ha, ten chapters.  So rather than finishing up maybe midway through February, it’s more like sometime in March.

I know people might not pay attention to my Coming Soon page, but I mentioned on Monday that I had moved The Sisters to the Fiction Graveyard because I had decided to rewrite it. I had been playing around with some ideas on rewriting some things in 2002 and decided, instead, to combine those ideas with some of the elements I liked from The Sisters. That new story is Bittersweet, which is a massive rewrite of Jason’s return. I’m sure some people might be getting frustrated with my newer stories and not writing some of the previously planned ones, but I go where my muse takes me. I don’t post anything now unless I know I can finish it.

So will Bittersweet show before other, previously planned stories? Not before All We Are, but possibly along with Mad World or Burn in Heaven. The outline is working really well, but I’m only about a third of the way through it. We’ll see 🙂

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Hey! So this week’s update is a bit small. I only updated two stories rather than the customary four.  I’ve bitten the bullet and moved The Sisters to the graveyard.  I’ve disliked it almost since I finished it. It was a lazy rewrite of a badly written first attempt at fanfiction in 2002. I like some of the elements too much to let it languish in nothing. Plus I’ve always wanted to return to the summer of 2002 and rewrite the Luis Alcazar storyline 😛

Not positive about updates for this week just because I’ve been a bit stuck writing The Best Thing, so I don’t have a lot of chapters ready and what I do have isn’t beta’d yet. So I’ll keep you updated.

Your Graveyard Updates
– Mad World: Chapters 10-12
– True To Your Heart: Chapters 4-5

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Welcome to 2015! I’ve uploaded a new layout, but I’m still tweaking it. I’m still learning the ins and outs of designing for WordPress (particularly the comment section) but I’m satisfied with the way it’s coming along. I recently found my General Hospital CD with my picture collection dating from 2002-2005, which is fantastic, so I celebrated with a few old photos in the top layer.

Yesterdays is now the featured story until the beginning of March. It’s one of my personal favorite alternate universe stories so if you haven’t read it, please check it out.

I’ll be back on Monday with updates for the Fiction Graveyard 🙂

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Happy New Year’s Eve!

I added Part Eight and the epilogue to All I Want For Christmas, which draws that story to a close. The Best Thing, Chapter Fifteen has also been added.

There’s some housekeeping that has to happen with those — All I Want being moved to the completed section, some ebook links added and whatnot. I’ll take care of that today before I go out.

If you check out the ebook section, you’ll see I added an in progress section. If you’ve fallen behind on The Best Thing at all, you can now read in progress versions of the ebooks so you can catch up at your leisure. Every time I update the story, I’ll update those files.

Have a great New Year’s! I’ll be back at some point this weekend, hopefully with a new layout.

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