Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love – Part 11

Hey! So I started working on fixing links and images today. I didn’t get as far as I wanted to because I had to restart my computer. So far the In Progress and Alternate History pages are done. I’ll try to finish all the story pages tomorrow.

In other news – up until now, the Flash Fiction feature has been a site exclusive. I’d planned to revise the stories and distributed the finish products. Over the weekend, Laurie from Liasonites Gathering reached out to ask me if I’d be interested in posting daily flash fiction on their message board. I was ridiculously excited to be asked (I’ve missed posting on message boards). My normal stories aren’t very message board friendly because I use bold and italtics that take forever to format, but since flash fiction is unedited, I can post them with only one extra step.

So please check out the message board, Liasonites Gathering, join, and get to your 25 posts to enjoy the new sub forum: LissieLove’s Flash Fiction

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Okay, so the move was relatively easy because I wasn’t moving hosts or servers — which meant I didn’t have to do anything with the database. I updated URLS and moved files. Because I’m not moving databases, however, the old files at Dear Isobel aren’t going to be available. The old address now redirects here because the files aren’t going to work anyway.

I’ve already updated the links on the main page, the story sub sites (Bittersweet, Mad World, and For the Broken Girl.). The links are also updated on the Alphabetical List. What is broken is…ha, everything else. The pages under the “Stories” menu need to be updated, and there are going to be images broken throughout the site in random places. It’s going to take me about a week to get through them all because I’m going to do them slowly so I don’t miss anything. After this week, I’ll put up a form for anyone to report broken links or images in case I miss anything.

The good news is that because I’ve used a plugin to organize my chapter links, all the stories still work just fine. Please use the Alphabetical List or any links into the update blog this week. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as to what’s working when. Thanks for your patience!

I’ll see you guys tomorrow for the next round of Flash Fictions, and a special announcement about something really exciting happening this week 😉

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Your Update Links: Whatever It Takes, Part 10 & Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 6

Tomorrow, I’ll be moving the site (finally!) so with any luck, on Monday, Flash Fiction will be on the new site and I’ll be working on cleaning up links.

Here’s your update on Mad World — I’ve restructured the draft so that the chapters that I’ve already written are now going to be the second half of the book. Originially, I had planned to start the chapter numbers at 1 because we were going to pick up three months after Book 2. Instead, I’ll be picking up the story the day after Book 2, which means the chapters will be 51, 52, etc. I’m adding fourteen chapters in the beginning, and then there will be seven more chapters after the 17 already written.

I have 21 chapters left to write with 21 days left in July. No dates have changed, and I feel super great about the additions. I’ve saved myself a lot of time and grief in revisions by fixing the problems now and I’m excited to get going with it today!

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 10 & Desperate Measures, Part 10

Don’t forget that today and tomorrow are both a double update for Flash Fiction. I’ll be working on the site move on Sunday, and not having a flash fiction scheduled that day will make it easier.

In other news, I’ve got some interesting progress to report about Mad World. Yesterday, while working on Chapter 18, I was struggling with the chapter I had planned. Characters were feeling stilted, the situation felt a bit wrong–and it has felt that way a little bit all week. Not a lot — just a little. So I sat down for part of yesterday to figure out why.

I knew that the draft was messy and would need a lot of revisions when we got to August. What’s happened is that we’ve reached a point where my brain knows that the amount I have to rework and shuffle around is starting to feel almost overwhelming. This is mostly because the timeline isn’t working, and some of the characters are a bit off. That’s okay — it happens, and part of the problem is that while writing this draft, I discovered a lot more about characters and plot ideas that will make the final product even better.

That being said, I’ve come to a point where I have to actually stop and rethink. I have to think about how I’m going to revise so that I can plan the last third of the draft properly. There are two ways this can go — 1, I can sort out the ways I’m going to change, figure out what those changes mean for the rest of the draft, then save those changes for the revisions. I can then finish the full first draft and get to the ending. That’s best case scenario for me moving forward and finishing the story. 2. The amount of revision needed is actually going to change the characers enough that I need to write large parts of the revisions to properly envision the end of the story which means I need to leave the alpha draft process, go into beta for a bit, then come back to finish the draft.

The good news for all of you is that none of this changes my deadlines. I’m about 75% of the way through the original plans for the draft, which is a great place to be halfway through July. I would have likely finished this draft sometime next week, ahead of schedule. We’re still seven weeks out from general release — so starting revisions now isn’t a terrible idea and might actually be good in the long run.

Patreon deadlines are still scheduled to happen, and so is the general realease. I’m just having some interesting writing problems, lol. I’ll keep you guys in the loop and update you tomorrow how it’s going.

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Hey! Dropping a note to let you know I’m not working on Flash Fiction today. I’m feeling a bit tired, and running behind in a few things. I baby-sat for my sister yesterday, and of course, everything took twice as long and I didn’t sleep well. So I’m going to get caught up today.

I’m going to make life easier by doubling up on Flash Fiction tomorrow (so we stay on schedule) and again on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, I’ll complete the site move so that I can take the site down briefly and move things over without worrying that people haven’t had a chance to read that day’s update.

So I’ll see you guys tomorrow at 10:30 and 11 AM for your updates! Thanks!

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Your Update Link: Whatever It Takes, Part 9

Hey — I’m delaying the site move a day so tomorrow’s flash fiction will be posted here, and I’ll start posting at the new address on Friday. My sister asked me to babysit for an hour today, and I want to make sure I still finish writing Mad World — that’s obviously more important. So just to be on the safe side, I’m going to start the big part of the move tomorrow. If you’re not sure what I mean, please check out yesterday’s post.

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Your Update Links: Desperate Measures, Part 9 & Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 5

Hey! I’m starting the move to the domain today, so it’s important that you guys read this update in case you have any questions about how it’s going to work and if there’s anything you need to do as visitors.

The Move – What I’m Doing

It turns out that moving the WordPress installation from one address to another is both simple and difficult. It’s simple in that there are only a few steps. It’s difficult because I have to do them in  a specific order to prevent data loss and minimize downtime.  I also have to do a lot of clean up after words to make sure all my internal links are corrected.

• One of the main things I’m doing until I clean up my internal links is leaving this address open. I won’t be putting up a redirect right away — if I have a link to a story here on the Dear Isobel address, you can still read it.
• That means that you won’t see updates reflected here, but older stuff will be accessible.
• Today, I am dowloading all the files for my site to my computer, then uploading them to the new folder on my server. This is basic and requires nothing from you guys. This is just the static files moving over.
• Tomorow, at 4 PM, I am exporting my database from Dear Isobel. This is where ALL the content is stored. The posts, pages, comments, plug in data, etc. After 4 PM, any comments or material posted here at Dear Isobel will not be moving over.
• I will be then importing all that information to the new site and updating the installation. All of that is happening tomorrow (July 8) between 4 and 6 PM.
• On Thursday, July 9, Flash Fiction updates will resume on the new domain. You will not be able to read Flash Fiction updates on the Dear Isobel address AFTER Wednesday, July 8.
• I will be cleaning up links for the rest of the month. I will be doing this systematically and will let you know in my daily update posts what’s been done and what hasn’t been. Like I said, all the stories will be available at the Dear Isobel site, but no comments will be available.
• By August 1, I expect to have the move completed

What You Can Do

• Update your bookmarks now to the new domain: http://www.crimsonglass.org. It is active and, for the most, redirects to the Dear Isobel address. I’ll be taking that redirect off Thursday morning as long as things go well tomorrow. If they don’t, this site is fine and backed up. I’ll have an update thread at Twitter to keep you in the loop.
• Remember the dates. July 8 is the last day to read Flash Fiction updates here on Dear Isobel. Tomorrow at 4 PM, all comments left on this site will not be moved over.
• August 1, I will be putting up the redirect for the Dear Isobel address.
• September 1, I will be deleting the the files for Dear Isobel. I’ll leave the subdomain active for a year, and then close it down in 2021.

As you can see — most of what you guys need to do is just update book marks and be patient. Other than that, it’s on me to take my time and do everything right the first time. I’m excited to make this move — I never thought CG would be big enough or active enough to warrant its own domain or I would have made the move back in 2014 when I reopened. That’s largely because of you guys — without you, I wouldn’t still be writing about this couple in 2020. #Liason20 as a great celebration, but I have a feeling #Liason21 is going to be even better —

And I’m kicking it off with daily flash fiction updates from August 1-August 24 to make sure all current flash fiction series are finished before I scale back the updates during the school year. I’ll see you guys tomorrow!

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 9

Short and sweet. Will have more to say tomorrow.

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Your Update Link: Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 4

Hope everyone’s weekends are going well and that those of you who celebrate Independence Day had a safe celebration. I spent a little time with my nieces and nephews (and had to wrestle the four year old into clothes because he’s a big fan of just wandering out naked, lol) but I got a lot of work done yesterday! I told you I was going to spend the weekend thinking about what I had written and planning the rest of the story. I have some great stuff planned for second half of the novel and will be getting back into writing again tomorrow. Today, I’m going to finalize the chapter breakdown for the next group of chapters.

In other news, this week, I’m also prepping for the move to the new domain. I haven’t updated the Recent Updates page with last week’s posts because I don’t want to create more links to fix. Because I’ll have a redirect, none of the links will actually be broken, it’ll just send you to the CG home page. I’m going to try to make the move as painless as possible. Crimson Glass might be down for a day this week — a few hours at most while I download the files, reupload them, and change links. I won’t do it until the afternoon due to Flash Fiction, so I’ll warn you the day I make the move.

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Your Update Link: Whatever It Takes, Part 8

Hey! Another short & sweet update for you. I finished Chapter 14 yesterday, and have hit about 17k for NaNoWriMo, and 85k overall. I’m taking the weekend off from writing so I can plan the rest of the novel because we’re about 40% of the way through (I think, lol). I hadn’t completed any chapter breakdowns past Chapter 14 because I wanted to stop, take stock of what was working, what wasn’t, and how I want individual story beats to go. I’ll let you know how it’s going when I do flash fiction tomorrow.

If you want to know when I start my timer for Flash Fiction, make sure to follow me on Twitter @crimsonglass. I generally write between 10-11 AM every morning. You can also check my Twitter feed in the sidebar around those times as well. I try to start very close to either the :00 or :30 minute mark.

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