Update Link: Watch Me Burn – Part 6

ETA: As you guys know, I prep these posts in advance. Halfway through writing, Lauren’s husband called me. He wants me to speak at her service. We spent about a half hour talking about what’s happened, how we’re doing. And I had to press pause, obviously, on the writing. So it’s a bit late and I don’t know how long it’s going to take. I have a set amount of scenes to do today, so I’m just going to write until they’re done.

Moving into the final two full weeks of summer vacation, which is a bit sad, honestly. Thanks to the doctor appointments and tests, I don’t really feel like I’ve had a lot of time to relax. Every single week, I had something scheduled. And then, of course, last week felt like a fog. Once again, thanks for the kind words. Writing really helped me process and tune out when I needed to.

I’m planning to update Scars three times this coming week to get back on track. I’d wanted to update yesterday, but I didn’t sleep well, and woke up late with a migraine. I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to write anything.

This upcoming week might be a bit wonky, I’m probably going to update early in the morning for Flash Fiction Mon-Wed, and there’s a chance I’ll miss Thursday. Having an early lunch with my mom (we haven’t seen each other all summer because it’s too damn hot to leave the house), I have orientation with my school on Tuesday, and then my wisdom teeth on Wednesday. I’m only getting one tooth pulled, so it shouldn’t be the insane recovery that you’d get with all four, so we’ll see.

Mad World is scheduled and goes live at 7 AM on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sat until August 25 so if I miss posting an update to the main blog (which triggers the emails), you can come to the site and check the sidebar for the most recent chapters.

See you tomorrow.

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Update Link: Mad World, Book 4 – Chapter 110

I was going to do Flash Fiction today, but I’m honestly not up to it. I didn’t sleep well. See you tomorrow.

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Update Link: Scars – Part 15

Hope everyone is having a good Friday.

I fixed the chapter listing for Mad World, Book 4 — Chapters 97 & 98 weren’t properly showing up, but we’re all good. The WordPress plugin I use to power the entire site was called OrganizeSeries, and eight years ago, it was free with some plugins you could purchase. Since then, the publisher has switched over to a paid version and the free version doesn’t get a lot of support anymore. It’s pretty glitchy. I’ve been putting off upgrading because it’s not exactly cheap, and it’s a yearly license, but I’m probably going to add it into the budget. It’s not the first time we’ve had issues with the stories showing up correctly.

I’ll be updating Scars again tomorrow to get my updates back on track, and next week, I might need to switch out to another Saturday update because my school has orientation on August 16, and my NJHS kiddos are helping out. I might do an early morning update, but we’ll see.

I don’t know yet when Lauren’s services are, so we’re also going to be working around that because, obviously, if they’re not private, I’ll be going to that. I’m also having a tooth pulled next Wednesday, so we’re going with the flow for the schedule. It’s one of the reasons I left Saturdays open so I could make up any missed updates.

Remember to check the site a few times a week this month as there will be updates every day until August 31.

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Update Links: Watch Me Burn – Part 5 | Mad World, Book 4 – Chapter 109

Hope everyone is having a good week so far. I’ll be posting a Flash Fiction on Saturday, making up for the Scars update I missed on Tuesday. I want to stay on track so that I can finish the majority of my summer flash fictions by the end of the year. We’ll try to do a better job of planning next year, but it’s been fun.

Thanks once again for all the kind thoughts I’ve received — especially to those of you who’ve reached out privately. I guess it’s also helped that I write a lot about grief in some of the stories, so I kind of understand what I’m going through. The way it sneaks up on you, the guilt for the few minutes or even hours that you don’t think about it — or you remember when you wake up, so it happens all over again.

There are definitely some hard moments ahead of me — Lauren and I were French students together (I majored, she minored), so a lot of the memories I share with my students are memories that Lauren is a part of. There are some jokes and stories that I won’t be able to manage for a while, or maybe I will some of the time. Grief is funny that way.

I scheduled the final chapters for Mad World this morning, making the final edits. That story concludes two weeks from today on August 25 with Chapter 115 and an epilogue. I’ll be doing a final read through this fall to clean up typos and fix an inconsistency (I mention Kelsey’s mother coming to Port Charles just once, and that was before I developed the Kelsey story in Book 4). Please let me know if you find any by commenting or messaging me on Twitter.

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Update Link: The Last Time – Scenes 11-14

Yesterday: Mad World, Chapter 108

Thank you so much for all the kind words and thoughts on yesterday’s post. It was a really hard morning, but I worked on a few projects and actually wrote the epilogue to Mad World (better late than never), and it kept my mind pretty distracted. Sleeping was hard, and I didn’t really want to get out of bed, but here I am. I’m writing this post before I actually get started today, so I don’t even know how this is going to go since today’s scenes set directly after Alan’s death. That may or may not be a good thing.

I wanted to share another memory because it’s helping to go through all our old pictures. Lauren and I met in college, and we majored in History together. I had a second major in French, and she had her second major in Political Science. She took French as a minor, so we had a lot of classes together. One summer, we took French together, and we used to write notes in each other’s notebooks in the margins. Our professors both loved and hated us. There was a kid in our class who annoyed us (I can’t honestly tell you why after like 11 years to be honest), and we used to make jokes about throwing our water bottle at him. We never would, of course, but it would defuse our irritation to make notes like this.

We got through French together by the skin of our teeth (she found it hysterical when I got hired to teach it). We took a class where we were reading The Phantom of the Opera in its original French. We bought the book, opened to the first page, and we literally started crying in the Rutgers café because it looked like complete gibberish to us.  We ended up buying an English translation, so we could read it in English, then read the French, THEN read the English again. Somehow, we earned As.

We survived French, and German Lit. And Dr. Soll. And all the other classes that came later. A lot of Starbucks from the café and pints from the bars after classes. Absolutely never would have survived without her.

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I had the posts started for Flash Fiction today but um, I can’t right now. At 9:25, I found out my best friend died from cancer. It was sudden. The symptoms just hit and she was in the hospital and intubated before her family started telling friends. I only found out Sunday night, and then she died last night at 2:58.

We went to college together. We traveled. We did insane and crazy things that we shouldn’t have survived. She was in London for grad school with me. And now she’s gone. And I can’t even process it.

I usually bury myself in work at times like these. It’s the only thing that really distracts me. So I’ll probably keep my schedule for the most part. I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.

Um, Mad World is mostly already scheduled so that goes forward. A new chapter went up today. The world is just a suckier place right now, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this.

This is a picture of Lauren and me in Prague in 2013. She was unapologetic history nerd, and we were standing at the window where the defenestration of Prague happened, kicking off the Thirty Years War. There might no one else in the world except for the two of us that were more excited to take a photo there.

I’m going to miss her for the rest of my life.

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Update Link: Invisible Strings – Part 8

Well, we’re moving into the final weeks of my summer vacation — three full weeks left, and I have to have my wisdom teeth out halfway through that time. Boo to the world, lol. I’ve started to work on content for the school year — finished revising last year’s units and am starting on the new units I have to create for my eighth grade class. I’d rather get it done now than trying to do it during the limited prep time once we get back to school.

Finally scheduled that MRI I need to start treatment for my neck issues, so fingers crossed we’re going to get some relief on that.

I ended up switching Discovery projects this week — instead of Malice, I’m going to work on Burn in Heaven. I just had some thoughts and visuals for that story and it’s always better to get it out while you can.

See you tomorrow for another update of Mad World and flash fiction 🙂

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Update: Watch Me Burn – Part 4

Happy Sunday! I just got word that my insurance company finally approved my MRI after a month of arguing with them. Once that’s done, I can finally start treatment for my back and neck pain. Better late than never.

I’m finished planning both These Small Hours and For the Broken Girl, Book 2. The only thing left for both projects is to finish the soundtrack, and that’s obviously not a priority. That means out of six total projects I’m planning this month, two are already finished. We’re about 30% of the way through this crazy month. I’ve never done a complete Discovery process in six days like I did with These Small Hours, lol.

Having a ton of different projects broken down is (hopefully) going to make it easier during the school to draft projects.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the next Flash Fiction update 🙂

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Update Link: Scars – Part 14

I hope everyone is having a good Saturday morning 🙂 I’m feeling pretty productive. Yesterday, after my back started feeling better, I grabbed my laptop and worked from the sofa to finish the Plot Sketch for These Small Hours, the first of the projects I’m planning. Then, this morning, I broke down the entire story in chapters in about an hour. I thought it would take a lot longer, but my plot sketch was so detailed that it was simply just creating the scene cards and deciding where chapter breaks would be.

At the moment, Hours looks like it’ll be around 30 chapters — probably a few more as we get into it. I still have to soundtrack it, but this is a great start to the month.

Next week, I’m working on the discovery for Malice, the sequel to Bittersweet. For the Broken Girl, Book 2 is almost finished Discovery (I’m breaking down chapters and soundtracking). Fool Me Twice, Book 2 is in Plot Sketch stages, but as you can see — the longer I take with sketching out the plot and scenes, the easier it is to break them down.

As a reminder, I’m doing all this prep work this month so that we can spend a week writing sample chapters to better pick my next project which I’ll start drafting in September.

Counting Stars goes into editing on September 1, and will be released November 7,

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Update: Mad World, Book 4 – Chapter 107

Very sorry about missing Flash Fiction this morning. I went to my niece’s pageant last night and the auditorium seats did a number on my back and neck. I should have put ice on them when I came home, but instead, I woke up miserable and spent all day on the sofa, watching Sandman. (brillant btw). Last dose of ice and meds started to make me feel a bit better, and I didn’t want to miss a daily update, so I’m switching up the schedule.

Today, you get a Mad World chapter, and then tomorrow, you get the Scars update for Flash Fiction you were meant to get this morning. There’s a chance my nephew is coming over tomorrow, so that might not be precisely posted at 11, so we’ll see what happens.

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