Category Archives: Site News

May 11, 2020

Your Update Link: For the Broken Girl – Chapter Three

I scheduled all the chapters through the end of the month as well as a template for the main post so that even if I get tired and forget to add text the night before, you guys still get the link emailed to you. And that’s pretty much what’s going on right now — I’m really tired, and it’s late on Sunday night so enjoy this chapter and I’ll see you Wednesday!

May 8, 2020

Your Update Link: For the Broken Girl – Chapter 2

Hey! Not much to say here. My posting draft editing hasn’t progressed since Wednesday’s update — I’ve been fighting a nasty headache for most of the week. I spend a lot more time in front of my computer screen than I used to, so I’ve been trying to get away from it after I finish working. My district recently started requiring us to teach Zoom classes at least once a week — and I have to teach six classes tomorrow to accommodate my 160+ students so I’m not sure how much I’ll get done tomorrow.

This doesn’t effect the general public in anyway — I’m edited through Chapter 12, and I’m going to schedule those chapters this weekend. That takes us through the rest of the month. I’m actually working on planning the rest of my lessons right now and writing the plans next week. I only have three weeks of instruction left.

I’ll get back to it this week (probably) and finish up soon. The tweaks I’m doing now don’t take long to do, it’s just hard to concentrate with my headches these days.

May 6, 2020

Your Update Link: For the Broken Girl, Chapter 1. 

Hey! Thanks so much for the great response to the first chapter. It was great to see that you guys picked up on the awkwardness between Jason and Elizabeth — that was the reason I added the Prologue. I wanted a transition scene between the basic lack of contact during 2005 and the scene you’ll read in Chapter 1.

I’m working on the posting draft — that’s my cleaned up and tweaked version of the story. I’m done through Chapter 12, but hit a bit snag today. Just had kind of a blah day and couldn’t stand being at my desk any longer. I’m going to get back into it tomorrow and try to be done by the end of the week.

We found out yesterday at NJ schools are going to be closed for the rest of the year and, even though I was expecting it, I think I was hoping we might be back anyway. I just wish I’d known March 16 was the last day with my kids. I don’t have a job with the district next year yet, so I might not even get to see them again. So just trying to wrap my mind around it.

Being able to look forward to you guys reading this after all this time is keeping my spirits up. Thanks to everyone who read the prologue and left a review!

May 4, 2020

After months of planning, writing, rewriting, and editing — For the Broken Girl, Book 1 is finally here! Today, I am posting the Prologue — but I won’t be linking that first chapter directly. I’d prefer if you went to the story page and read the background & setup.

Thanks to everyone for all your patience as I delayed Fool Me Twice to write Broken Girl, and THEN delayed Broken Girl three months. I feel like it was worth the wait, and I’m glad I took the extra time.

I’ll be posting new chapters on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. All the chapters for this week have already been scheduled, and I’ll be working on scheduling the rest of the chapters this week so that even if I got really busy, the story would get updated. Hopefully, I’ll remember to put up the main update post but if I forget, never fear — updates go live at 7 AM the day they’re scheduled so bookmark the story page and come on back on the day.

I hope you enjoy it!

For the Broken Girl

May 1, 2020

Hello! Today the May 2020 Site & Story Status Video went live on YouTube. I’m linking it below. Here is your text version!

General Writing Update

  • The plan for April was to finish revisions for Broken Girl and work on the first draft of Mad World, Book 3. I’ve learned a valuable lesson – NEVER try to do that again, LOL. It was just too hard to juggle a first draft and revisions at the same time, particularly with the challenges of working from home.
  • I had some mental health issues, particularly in April. Just a lot of stress from worrying about family I can’t see, news I can’t change, and starting a brand new curriculum teaching double the amount of students I’ve had literally all year. I went from 80 students in ELA/Science to nearly 170 in Spanish in three grade levels. It’s…been interesting.
  • Last week was a bad week for that — I kind of hit a breaking point. But I took a few days to get myself together, and this week has been so much better in all ways. I’m looking forward to taking this energy into May and making sure I pay attention to self care.

Site & Channel Update

  • Starting the process of changing the site over to a new active story. I changed the widgets, got the For the Broken Girl story page ready to go. I still have some pieces to work out.
  • On the channel last month, I completed two vlog series: Revising Broken Girl and Camp NaNoWriMo. They were a lot of fun to film.
  • This month, I’m launching a new vlog, Discovering Mad World. I’ve filmed the first three parts — that will start next week. Basically, it’ll be like the BG series — taking you through the process.
  • If you’re interested, I can create text highlights of my videos to post here. I do this for my Patreons already, and I’m happy to do it here if you’re not someone who has time/interest in the videos. Let me know by replying!
  • Right now, Mad World exists on its own domain. I’ve been thinking of moving it back over here before the next book comes out. I can’t remember now why I put it on its own site. Any thoughts?
  • Thanks to a free trial and Patreon support, I now have a subscription to Adobe Creative Suite, which means I get to use Adobe Premiere to edit my channel videos. This summer, I’ll be working on organizing my videos and making promotional videos.

Story Updates

  • For the Broken Girl, Book 1:
    • I finished the beta draft on Monday, April 27. I’ve been working on the posting draft this weekk. The alpha draft is available to Patreon supporters at the $3 level, the beta draft at the $5 level, and the posting draft & ebook will be available at the $7 level.
    • I’m hoping to finish the posting draft tonight, the ebook tomorrow, and then start scheduling chapters on Sunday. $1 supporters will get that week’s chapters on Sunday.
  • Mad World, Book 3
    • The first draft has had a bumpy road, but we’re getting back into this week as I finish up BG. The plan now is to finish the first draft in June, edit in July, then post in September.
  • Fool Me Twice, Book 1
    • We’ll be working on discovery off and on throughout Mad World, B3’s production process. If revisions for MW are done on time in July, we’ll get into the first draft of that sometime in August.

April 27, 2020

Mark your calendars! Next monday, we’re going to launch For the Broken Girl, Book 1: Reflections of You! I finished the beta draft this evening and have uploaded it for my Crimson Devoted Tier at Patreon. From here, I need to do last minute typo and spelling checks, but we’re as close to done as one can be. So excited!

For the Broken Girl is, I think, the longest story I’ve written. Before this, it was Book 2 of Mad World which was about 170k and The Best Think at 168k. Broken Girl is 178k. I’m actually pretty excited about this because before January, I didn’t have a single word of this particular draft done at all. I wrote all of that in the last four months.

I posted a lot about it on Twitter and Patreon, and since I started the revisions, in a vlog on the channel at YouTube, so definitely check out those places for updates more often.

I’m going to be working on promotional stuff to get the site ready — it’s been about six months since I was updating regularly. I’ll be posting this book three times a week, from May 4 through around July 11. Can’t wait for you guys to read it!

April 9, 2020

This is a text version of a video I posted on the channel last week, but I know not a lot of people can watch the videos.

Life

  • I’m working from home like a lot of people but with an added twist — a week and a half into remote learning, my district decided that there was no point in paying me and the teacher I’ve been subbing for since November to be at home, so they brought her back. What a time to nearly be out of a job!
  • Luckily, my principal found a spot for me and I took over Spanish. It’s an elective, so it has a bit of a smaller workload than my ELA/Science classes. I’m just happy to still have a job!

Site & Channel Updates

  • Ebooks are the big thing I’m hoping to get sorted out next week. I’m going to be using Scrivener for my ebook output, but I have learn how to use the format. I’m on spring break starting tomorrow, so it’s something I’m putting on the list.
  • Channel – I’m running two video series right now – Camp NaNoWriMo & Revising Broken Girl. Both are windows into my current projects, Broken Girl and Mad World, Book 3, so make sure you’re subscribed!  I’ve linked the most recent videos below.They’re almost always less than ten minutes.

Story Updates

  • Alpha Draft of For the Broken Girl was completed on schedule on March 28, and I dug into the revisions for the Beta Draft over this last weekend. I’ve started the rewrites and revisions, and hope to be finished them by April 19.
  • If you’re a Pateron Supporter at the Crimson Devoted ($5), you’ll get the Beta draft by that point. The Posting Draft/Ebook is scheduled be ready any day between May 1-5 for those of you on the Crimson Adored ($7) tier.
  • Book 1 will be published three times a week, starting Monday, May 5.
  • I started Mad World, Book 3‘s alpha draft last week. I set a soft deadline of May 15 (boy, it’d be great to be done by this date!) and a hard deadline of June 15 (any later than this, and we have to move the September publication date)
  • The next project is Fool Me Twice. I’ll be starting that discovery draft on June 1 and going into the alpha draft for Camp NaNoWriMo in July.

Recent Videos

March 29, 2020

Hey! It’s Sunday morning here, and I just slept for eight hours after spending most of last night finishing up For the Broken Girl, Book 1. What I’ve completed is the alpha draft — the first pass at the story. I haven’t reread large portions of it, and there are a lot of typos, inconsistencies, and plot holes. So the next step is to go into the revision stage.

I don’t know how much work needs to be done until I do a full reread, so that’s going to determine the final publication date. At the moment, I know that there are characters and subplots that need fleshing out, and I expect to add two or more chapters at some point in the story before we get to the end. At the same time, I’ll be going into Camp NaNoWriMo on April 1, working on the alpha draft of Mad World, Book 3.

I’ve updated Production Schedule with these dates, but here is what the next six weeks looks like:

28 March 2020: Complete For the Broken Girl, Book 1 – Alpha Draft & Patreon Release for Crimson Love tier

29 March 2020: Complete Mad World, Book 3 – Outline

30 March 2020: Complete Mad World, Book 3 – Plot Sketch

31 March 2020: Begin Mad World, Book 3 – Chapter Breakdown & Soundtrack

1 April 2020: Begin Camp NaNoWriMo – Mad World, Book 3 Alpha Draft is chosen project. Goal is 50,000 words.

4 April 2020: Reread For the Broken Girl, Book 1 – Alpha Draft and make revision notes.

5 April 2020: Begin revising For the Broken Girl, Book 1 – Alpha Draft

19 April 2020: Complete For the Broken Girl, Book 1- Beta Draft & Patreon Release for Crimson Devoted tier.

30 April 2020: Complete Camp NaNoWriMo and assess Mad World, Book 3 production schedule.

1 May 2020: Complete For the Broken Girl, Book 1 – Posting Draft & Patreon Release for Crimson Adored tier.

5 May 2020: Publish For the Broken Girl, Book 1 ebook for Patreon Crimson Adored tier & begin publishing chapters on Crimson Glass.

Note: Depending on revisions, everything Broken Girl releated after April 19 is subject to change, but the absolute latest publication for Broken Girl is May 18.

I’ll be posting three chapters a week — Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays — which should take us through August. And then in September, I’ll begin posting Mad World Book 3.