I have the new layout ready, but the colors aren’t quite there. I’m still playing with it, getting to know the CSS file that came with my theme. I hope to have it all ironed out by the end of the week.  I know it’s the second theme in a row that deals with old-school Liason from 1999, but that’s the only time they celebrated Christmas.

If you can’t see it, or are seeing a mismash of the new colors, old colors and the old image, please either right click and hit refresh or clean out your temporary files.

I updated the In Progress and Coming Soon pages with some status change. Life For Rent and All We Are have been removed from Coming Soon. Life For Rent is technically in progress as the first part of the story (Choose Your Moment) is completed and the rest of the story is storyboarded, I just haven’t written it yet.

As for All We Are, I’m putting the final touches on the scene breakdowns, but I’ve started to write it in preparation to post it simultaneously with The Best Thing after the New Year, so once I start writing, it gets moved over to keep me honest.

There are several other stories on the In Progress page that I hope to have ready for you after the holidays (Turning Points, Come On Eileen, Inside Your Fear) so they’re not posted there for shits and giggles.

I’ll be back Wednesday morning with the first part of All I Want for Christmas and Chapter 13 of The Best Thing 🙂

Update: So I won’t be playing with the colors any more than I already have, mostly because I have discovered how much I don’t like the way this theme is designed. It’s overly complicated, oy. So once I change layouts in January to a non holiday one, I’m going to teach myself to write my own WordPress theme if it kills me. I prefer streamline coding and I actually miss doing this.

This is not important to you, per se. Just an FYI: these colors will be staying, though I might change the background back to white.

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So before I head over to my sister’s to spend this holiday with my family, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who visits this site or reads my stories on any site I post. I was away for a very long time (six years) but the fact that when I returned, people not only remembered me, but actually remembered my stories and looked forward to reading more, I was blown away.  I hope the second year of CG’s resurgence is as good as the first.

I had a great writing day yesterday — not only did I creep closer to my NaNoWriMo goal (and today, I made it to 46,685. Only 3300 words to go!), but I also wrote a ton of fanfiction. I completed The Best Thing Chapter Fifteen, All I Want For Christmas Part 3 and the first part of All We Are, my next posting project when TBT is closer to completion. All in all, it was about 10,000 words. Not a bad day at all.

So I’m taking today off to read some books that have piled up and to enjoy my holiday. If you’re interested, I have an old Thanksgiving story, Lizzie Does Thanksgiving, written and set in 2002.

Have a fantastic holday and I’ll see you guys December 1 with a new layout 🙂

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I decided to post The Best Thing, Chapter 12 before I went to bed tonight because this process can often take almost a half hour (because I post simultaneously across four sites) and I want to get up tomorrow, take a shower and then write. I have NaNo to get caught up tomorrow because I’ve skipped the past two days, and I need to work on TBT and All I Want to stay on track.

So, yes, TBT is up and it’s probably the most important chapter so far for me, for those characters and I had a such a great time writing it so I hope you guys like it, too.

In other story news: All I Want For Christmas has an official posting schedule, which you can view using the new-spanking new Upcoming Schedule page. The link is located under “Readers” and the widget to the right on the sidebar shows my next three planned updates. So, All I Want will be simultaneously posted with TBT next Wednesday. Normally, I wouldn’t do that, but I wanted to end the story on December 31, and I worked backywards to post once every three or four days to keep the chapters regular.

In other news, I posted a new Story Status which gives you an idea where my stories on the coming soon page are in development. A story not yet on my Coming Soon page because it was not titled is actually likely to be posted after TBT is done — it’s the marriage of conveniece story which is a relatively straightforward story. By posting that (which ought to be written much more quickly) will give me some breathing room to continue developing the more complex stories. Also, it has a title now! All We Are, which means it’ll have a graphic soon. Because I suck.

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Your favorite kind 🙂

First things first: I added a FAQ page. I get questions sometimes on various pages, which I reply to but I’m never sure if someone has read gone back to see those answers. Plus, some questions get asked a few times, so I figured it was easier to add a page for all questions. Please feel free to ask any questions on that page using the comments.  I’m going through the comments to weed out questions posted by users, but if you have a question you’ve asked before, please ask it again so I get get the answer up faster.

Just an FYI. I’ll be doing some site work over the next few weeks, finishing up the process I began earlier this year. Some of the stories that are currently in Novels and Novellas ought to be in Short Stories, so I’ll be cleaning that up. It’s not a big deal except that those of you subscribed to updates for all posts will receive more than usual over the next few weeks.

Plus, NaNo is over after this week. I have just under 10,000 words to finish off and then I won’t be forced to juggle both. I’ll still be doing various projects, but NaNo creates this pressure to write, write, write, which is great, but it’s exhausting by the time you reach the fourth week.

I’m also juggling in my Christmas story, which has moved from outlining to storyboarding. I did already start writing just because scenes are in your head, so you have to do it.

So, lots on my plate and even better — I finally cracked the color code so I can change the backgroud of the whole page from white to something else (which is why it appears to be greyer, because I was playing with it) so that new layout is coming the same day I launch the Christmas story on December…ish. Haven’t settled on a premiere date.

I’ve put up the story page for my Christmas story, All I Want For Christmas. Should begin posting in the first week of December. More information is located there.

A status update for The Best Thing: I’ve personally written through Chapter 14, which means I have enough chapters to post through December 10. So finished TBT 14, opened up TBT 15 to start work and realized some how…my planned scenes for the rest of Part 2 (Chapters 8-20) are…somehow wrong. Now I have to restructure it a bit, haha. S’okay. We’re in the meat of the story and I’m so freaking excited for it.

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I added Chapter Eleven to The Best Thing.  I’ve been writing the last few days, so updates to other things have mostly fallen off the priority list. Right now, I’m managing to juggle both NaNoWriMo and The Best Thing, so once November is over, I’ll be able to get back to some of the site plans I have.

Still working on the marriage of convenience story, which looks like it might shape up to be the next story I work on. All my other planned stories have some aspect of difficult research (drug abuse, domestic violence, serial rapist, etc.) as well as elements of ensemble, so that would be more straightforward.

If I could just settle on a title 😛

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I posted a preview of Chapter 12, but forgot to link it. I wanted an excuse to use the new banner for The Best Thing, but then I realized I don’t like the new featured banner I created for it. Then my computer turned off so I wasn’t able to change the font. Story of my life. Anyway. That was posted.

I didn’t get back to Fiction Graveyard mostly because I was writing all weekend. For NaNoWriMo, I wanted to hit 30,000 by the end of the week and I managed it tonight, so I’m not only caught up, but gave myself some padding for the next two weeks. Yay 😛

Also, Chapter 13 for TBT came together and I’m working on TBT 14. I’m also thinking of trying to make a go at the marriage of convenience to try for a Christmas story. I can fiddle with it and move up the timeline to make it more holidayish. It’s still untitled, so we’ll see. I’ll make a final decision by the end of the week.

Anyway. I also posted a spoiler on the Facebook page with the song that I plan to use in TBT 14 to give you an idea where things are that point. I often post little bits and asides there as I write if you’re interested.

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If there are Christmas commercials on television, I get to listen to Christmas music. That’s the contract I have with the society at large, so I decided to go throuh and tag the stories that either take place during the holidays or feature a Christmas celebration. There aren’t a lot, as it’s never been something I do often, but there are some.

I’m also toying with doing a Christmas story this year. I’m not sure whether I’d do something set in a few years ago, something set this year or an alternate universe story. I was considering doing one for this year but I don’t know if I’m ready to write the new Jason.  The new marriage of convenience story I’m playing around with begins October 2006 and has a Christmas celebration, so maybe that’s something to think about. (Or maybe I’ll do both. I don’t know where my brain ends up.)

Anyway.  Working on both the novella ebook and the Fiction Graveyard stuff, but I keep getting distracted by writing, which I am sure no one is arguing with. Here’s your Christmas selection:

Christmas Stories (including one Thanksgiving story)

The current featured stories expire 11/30, so I’ll be replacing them with Noel and Lizzie Does Thanksgiving (or I might do that earlier, depends on my life, haha.)

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Hey. I know I promised an update to Fiction Graveyard, but I’m getting a late start to the day so I figure you guys would rather I spend my time writing than formatting old, abandoned chapters, haha.  So If I can finish my planned writing (3000 words for NaNoWriMo and two scenes for TBT), I’ll be back with more updates.

In the mean time, The Best Thing – Chapter Ten is available.

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So someone asked if I would adopt out a story from the Graveyard section since they are, for the most part, unfinished and abandoned. I replied to the comment, but in case the author doesn’t see it or someone else is curious, the answer is maybe. It would depend on the story. Several of the stories have already been rewritten or are in the process and some are sequels to previously completed stories. Those that are left are either abandoned for good or under consideration for being revised or rewritten.

For example, Silent Reverie is probably a good candidate for at least portions of the concept to find its way into a new story. I’m toying with wrapping pieces of it up into Mad World, which is still being outlined, but Bring Me to Life is as good as dead to me, haha.

So if you’re interested in a story from the Graveyard, just drop me a note or comment on the page to ask for sure. Any story that would be adopted, I’d have to ask you to use the concept rather than my own writing with credit to me for the idea.

– Silent Reverie is updated through Chapter Three, which constitutes what I had written for it.

– Poisonous Dreams #1 has the Prologue and Chapter One posted. I had competely forgotten the existence of this story as well as a song used in the first chapter, “Fiction” by Nik Kershaw which is fantastic 😛

Tomorrow, I’ll continue with PD and probably start one onf the versions of Burn in Heaven, if not both of them.  I actually forgot to list one of the stories that I’m rewriting, Inside Your Fear, which will I’ll get to it eventually.

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