Your Update Link: Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 9

I’m excited to get back into my Flash Fiction routine! I had truly meant to update at 10 AM this morning and I was all ready, but, heh, I made the mistake of texting mom and asking her to call me when she was up beause I had a question and was too lazy to text. She called me at 9:15 AM, and well, if you know my mom, you understand why I didn’t start the timer until 10:30 AM. ANYWAY.

I’m feeling way more like myself — last was night was the best night of sleep I’ve had in over a week, and I can’t wait to spend most of the afternoon writing Mad World. I’m going to miss my August 3 deadline for the first draft, but that’s okay — it doesn’t change my Oct 6 release at all and Patreons are still getting the first 532 pages on August 1 & 2 so we’re all working out. I was working on the final chapters yesterday, realized I needed one more chapter and decided that I could either just add it or now or add it in revisions. Either way – I’d have to spend time with it so better to get it out of the way now.

I’m also working my way through an initial round of brainstorming for the Everlasting Love revisions, and I hope you guys are okay if I make big changes — the main storyline will still be the same in the sense that Liason are childhood sweethearts reunited after misunderstandings and stolen letters with Ric as the bad guy — but other elements are going to change. That’s one of the beauties of a first draft — you can find the pieces that work and chuck what doesn’t.

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love – Part 16

The first of my flash fiction series is wrapped up. While I enjoyed writing it, I definitely think it was the weakest of the four I launched — primarily because it’s a historical piece set in a time period that I’m not super familiar with and the story changed a lot as I wrote it.  That’s definitely something I’ll be fleshing out  and correcting when it goes into revisions. I should know next week how long it will take me to rework it and have a tentative publication date.

As for the Flash Fiction schedule, we’re shifting into a six day a week schedule –

Mondays & Thursdays – Darkest Before the Dawn

Tuesdays & Fridays – Desperate Measures

Wednesdays & Saturdays – Whatever It Takes

Basically — we’ll be back on the old schedule with Darkest Before the Dawn slotted into An Everlasting Love’s time and taking Sundays off.  also expect to be able to update at 10 again, starting tomorow.

In other news, I’m still plugging away at Mad World’s final section — what was going to be seven chapters is now eight, and that’s just because I plotted those seven chapters before I wrote the first 15 and I just need a bit more space to finish out some of the stories. Like I said — this is going to a MESS of a first draft so it should be interesting to see how revisions go.

See you guys tomorrow!

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 15

Hey! So I realized pretty quickly this morning that I wasn’t going to be able to get Flash Fiction up by 10, so I put up a Twitter message stating that we’d get to it — I just didn’t know exactly when.  I’m terrible at getting back on track when I get sick for a few days, but I’m just trying to concentate on what needs to get done and managing my own energy. Part of it is my own fault — I’m just not getting back into my sleeping habits which is throwing things off.

I’m continuing to plug away at Mad World’s first draft. A few weeks ago, I added fourteen chapters designed to go in front of the seventeen I had already written — and today, I finished that new beginning (which ended up being fifteen chapters) which brings Mad World to 32 completed chapters of a planned 39. I still have seven chapters left to write at the end of the story which I’m scheduled to finish around August 3. So far — this draft is 532 pages and 192k — which is, ha, INSANE. It’s longer than anything I’ve ever written, and sooo freakin’ messy because I wrote it out of order. Let’s just all be glad I’ve give myself two months to revise it — I’m gonna need it!

I’m hoping to get Flash Fiction back into a normal 10 am schedule soon, but I’ll just be happy if I can do them daily from now on!

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 14

Hey! So we’re finally back after taking most of last week off to get through some unexpected health issues. I’ve missed Flash Fiction, so I’m super excited to have it back. I had promised you guys we were going to wrap up Everlasting Love this week, and I definitely want it done before we get into August. Today, tomorrow, and Wedesday will be the final three parts of the story (I think there’s only three parts left — if I need one or two more days, I’ll take them, but we’re about out of story at least for the flash fiction part of this draft). Then, on Thursday, I’ll rework the schedule. I’ll let you guys know tomorrow or Wednesday which stories for which days.

Once Everlasting Love is done, I’ll be going into revisions on it so this week, please don’t hesitate to make suggestions — I want to flesh out the settings, revisit the relationships, and back story, etc — so let me know if you’re want to see something!

In other news, I’m working on getting back into my routine. One of the worst thing about getting sick is just getting back into real life and what you were doing before– honestly, got up at my normal time today and have been doing half of what I normally do — and I’m already tired, lol. So just easing back into it — working on things that have to be done, like last week, but trying to put structure back into it, if that makes sense.

What I’m super happy about is that last week did not put me behind with Mad World whatsoever. I got sick just as we were going into the final few weeks of Broken Girl in early March, and I was so mad because I’d built up so much momentum and I was on track to finish EARLY. Between being sick and the Covid shutdown in my district, I ended up just barely finishing on time. It was just frustrating to me on a personal level so when I got sick last week — I was determined not to do it again. NOT TODAY SATAN NOT TODAY. 

But! I wrote seven chapters in seven days — staying right on track — the only reason I’m not finishing by or on July 31 is because of adding a chapter and also taking extra time the week before — I was three chapters behind my schedule before I got sick — and that’s literally still the same thing today so that’s great. I had a great writing day yesterday — I wrote 12,806 words! If you’re checking out the graph in the sidebar, you can see that spike, heh. Very excited to move into revisions on this book and make some sense of this mess.

I’ll see you guys tomorrow!

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Good morning 🙂 No fic updates for you but checking in with some minor Facelift news.  One of the things I’m doing as I move stories out of the Short story and Ficlet section is revisiting them, adding some introduction to them (timeline set-up, etc) with an eye to also adding graphics to them.  I want to do this more slowly than all at once because I want to make sure the stories are tagged correctly for length and characters.  Today I just started playing with some of the first attempts — I moved two Short Stories written and set in 2002 over to the Alternate History category, so the link had to be updated.  I also updated it on the Alphabetical List. It’s always fun to go back and look at some of my earliest work.

Back at Jake’s and Left Behind were written when I was 18 and still very early in my Jason/Elizabeth writing career. I can see rereading this older stuff that I didn’t quite have my handle on either of the characters or their relationship — what made them work, so to speak. It’s one of my favorite pieces of my own development — to have this early stuff as evidence of where I started and to look what what I’ve written now.

I used to really hate my older stuff, but this last year — I realized how important it is for me to be proud of it. I’ve been writing this couple for 18 years – 18 years THIS WEEK actually as July 29 marks my 18th anniversary of posting my first chapter of Deserving at The Canvas. I can still remember writing those early chapters in an AOL document, lol, and posting, hoping someone would reply and like it. I’d written GH fanfiction before (LL2 stories that literally no one ever saw, LOL) and I’d written Roswell fanfiction that was relatively popular — but writing for this show has always pulled me back — writing for this couple and Elizabeth specifically. I turned 36 this year which means, as of this week, I’ve been writing fanfiction for this couple for half my life. It makes me proud to look back at these older stories and see where I was and who I am today.

If you’ve never read either of them, take a minute and enjoy the silly, melodramatic writings of a high school graduate who saw these two characters on the screen in July while recovering from foot surgery and HAD to write my own version. Thanks for being with me this long 🙂

In other news — thank you for all the warm wishes and support in my recent Flash Fiction hiatus. I don’t update you guys to get sympathy or to apologize, but mostly to keep myself accountable. By setting deadlines and creating features that are time-sensitive, it encourages me to write. When I don’t deliver, it’s important to me that I keep you guys in the loop. I like the accountability — it works for me, and I hope it’s working for you.

Thanks for the last 18 years. Here’s to hoping we don’t need 18 more years before we get our couple!

ETA: I just wanted to clarify — I’m not changing any of my older stories — Left Behind & Back at Jake’s are still the same as they were when I wrote them in 2002 and reposted in 2014. The only thing that’s different is that I’ve added an introduction to the stories to give you background about writing them and when they’re set. I didn’t even edit for typos or missed word.

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Just dropping a note to let you guys know what’s up.  Even though I was hoping that I would only be feeling that bad one day, it turns out it’s lingering. I’ve been really trying to get Mad World done every day  (and I have — I don’t know how good any of it was, but at least it’s there for revisions). I wasn’t able to get a doctor’s appointment for almost two weeks (I’m going August 4) so I couldn’t even get a prescription to feel better.

This morning (Friday), I am feeling a bit more myself but now find myself stressed by everything that’s not done. I’m not referring to Flash Fiction, but really just real life stuff. I was already kind of procrastinating on househoold chores because I was rushing towards deadline on Mad World, but this week I almost missed my online classes — one of which I’m paying for. There was no way I was going to concentrate on a biology class, so it’s not like ditching Mad World would have helped.

Anyway, long story short — being behind and stressed about things has just made me decide to take a few days, concentrate on things that have to be done (dishes, basic chores, Mad World, biology) before trying to get back into my old routine.

I’ll be back with Flash Fiction on Monday and a new schedule for it. I still want to finish An Everlasting Love, so I might do that all at once so it can be off my plate, then I’ll get back into a routine for them.

For anyone worried, what’s wrong isn’t serious — at least not that I know of, lol. It’s just not resolving itself, and NJ is far enough along in the pandemic response that I feel comfortable going to a doctor. It just honestly drains all of my energy. I’m tired right down to my bone and the simplest things have been a struggle. It’s frustrating because I’ve been working really hard to eat well, get a lot of sleep and take care of myself, but that’s 2020 for you.

I’ll see you guys on Monday with Flash Fiction.

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Hey 🙂 Not a lot to say here today. I wasn’t able to make any headway on the facelift yesterday beyond finishing up edits and organizing screencaps. I had to babysit in the morning, then got my haircut in the afternoon. I think I mentioned a few months ago in my site and story status post that I’d been having some minor health issues since May that occasionally messes with my energy and ability to write for long periods of time. This is the third month in a row that I’m having the same problem, so I’m hoping to see a doctor soon to get it sorted out.

Without getting into details (I want to wait until I see the doctor before I speculate on what’s wrong), it basically just means it’s hard for me to sit for long periods of time and I need a lot of breaks. I’m also really tired. With the Mad World deadline looming, time in front of the computer really needs to be focused on that draft. Today is particularly bad day — instead of feeling better as the day continued, I actually feel worse so I’m going to take a long break before coming back to work on MW in the afternoon.

Normally, in other months, I only had one really bad day where I couldn’t push through and get things done — so hoping I can come back tomorrow. I love writing Flash Fiction, and it’s killing me not to have the energy for something I enjoy particularly when I’ve been on a roll, word count wise.

I started looking at revisions for An Everlasting Love, reworking the setup and how the story unfolds. It’s been kind of fun to spend a lot of time on the setting, making sure it feels like a historicanext l romance. Once I’m finished the discovery part of the revision process, I’ll let you guys know when you might be able to expect the revised novella. The story will conclude Thursday.

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Your Update Link: Desperate Measures, Part 13

Hello 🙂 Another day, another update. This one is earlier today because I’m babysitting from around 9-11 this morning. Once school starts, and I go back to work, I won’t get to see my nieces and nephew all that much because I’ll be isolating myself from family members just in case so I’m taking all opportunities this summer. As a substitute I might be forced to switch back and forth between districts and schools to make the full paycheck, and we just don’t know what the situation is going to be or if NJ is going to continuing to stay on the positive trend.

Anyway – most of the Facelift stuff is happening between the scenes. As I wrote in my update yesterday, my edits came and I spent most of yesterday ripping them to my hard drive and then screencapping. I’ve basically screencapped 1999-2008, which is great. None of it is organized, lol, outside of August 2002, but I’m going to tackle 2003 first since those are the images I need for the redesign.

The Working Alternate History page is still visible for you guys, and I’m also adding a Content Warning page with a general warning as well as individual story triggers so that you can see them if you need them and skip if you don’t. I’m working on writing copy and filling out details for the Short Stories/Series merge page, then I’ll be tackling Ficlets. Once those new details are done, I’ll start updating the stories. You’ll see what I mean once we get into it. I’ve been rewriting summaries for all older stories to make them more descriptive — they used to be pretty general and vague.

It’s been a lot of fun reorganizing the History section, I think I said this yesterday that it made me realize where I have some deficits in my writing. I haven’t written literally anything you can read set between 1999-2001 which is some of our best Liason stuff. I have things planned for 1999-00, but nothing for Jason’s return in August 2000 or his 2001 run on the show. I’m going to be brainstorming some ideas for flash fiction series and I have something planned for the Liason anniversary next month but I don’t want to get into it because I can’t really properly attack it until next week.

In Mad World progress news, the story just keeps growing. I was working on a really emotional, important chapter yesterday and a scene I thought might be around 1000 words ended up being 2600, and I had to add a few scenes to that chapter to build on what I’d written — which means Book 3 has grown from 35 chapters to 38 — and is now 40 chapters with a double epilogue planned. It’s kind of crazy, lol. Revisions should be interesting next month. You can always view my daily progress using the graph at the side — if you click on it, it takes you to a site where you can see each day broken down.

If you’re a Patreon supporter, I released an unedited Chapter 51 for all tiers. I’ll be releasing 52 on Thursday, and then 53 and 54 next Monday & Thursday to get ready for the alpha draft release for Patreon Supporters at the $3 and above levels. If you’re interested, check out Support for more details.

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 13

Hey! So next week, I expect to finish up Everlasting Love — which is great because it means I can slot Darkest Before Dawn on Mondays & Thursdays in just time for revisions to start on Mad World, Book 3. I can then take Sundays off again from writing because revisions are a pain in tush, lemme tell ya. An Everlasting Love will go into revisions, and I’ll let you know when you can expect the fleshed out novella.

In other news, a chapter misnumbering error has left me a few days behind  in my own self-declared deadline of July 31 for Book 3’s first draft. No big worries — I’ve pushed the date to August 3, but that doesn’t change the release date of October 6 at all so you guys won’t even see a difference. The only people slightly inconvenienced are my Patreon supporters on the Crimson Love tier, who were due to get the alpha draft on August 1. They’ve been super awesome about a few delay so far, so I’m happy to say I’m not stressed about it all. At least until we get to revisions, and I want to set the whole thing on fire, LOL.

I haven’t made any real progress in my Alternate History design since yesterday because I spent the entire afternoon writing Mad World (added 9k yesterday!). A lot of the images I need to make are from a time period I hadn’t screencapped yet. I did those this morning, so I’ll be working on them this week. Rather than having the History page changing all the time, I created a temporary Alternate History work page so I can play with it and update it so I can see changes, but it’s not crazy for you. You can see the work in progress page here, and I’ll be reporting on that as we move through the week.

I’m actually really excited because I just ordered some new DVD edits — I’ve finally got May-July 2002, and I’ll have more of 2008., as well as padding out my early Just Jason edits. These are great for me for graphics as well as inspiration. I was screencapping my 1999 DVD last night and got inspired to look at some of that time period — and I noticed my 2001 lack of story when I was making the History page so I’m going to see if I can work on that this fall with flash fiction.

UPDATE: After making this post, I ran out to my sister’s to drop off some earrings I’d bought for her, and she asked me to babysit tomorrow morning for my nieces — right around the time I normally do flash fiction. To give my sister credit, once I mentioned this, she offered to call someone else because she respects my deadlines but I told her I could reschedule around it. So tomorrow, flash fiction will be earlier — at 8 AM.

Also, I got back from the store, and my DVDs arrived! Stacey even tossed in a Steve interview DVD from 98-02 which is great because I’m going to be writing a lot from that era in some upcoming projects and I’m excited to have more Steve candid caps to work with. I also got my Liason 02 and 08 DVDs AND my Jason 97 edits. So excited to check them, rip them to my computer, and cap them. I get so much inspiration from these.

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Your Link: Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 8

Hey! I started working on the Alternate History page. I’m going to slowly merge the novels with Short Stories and Ficlets. I actually like the way it looks so far. I haven’t linked any of the short stories yet, and I’m only done rewriting the section from 1997-2003. I wanted to also update the older stories with better summaries and give more descriptive details. Let me know what you think so far.

I’m slowly organizing my screencaps at night. A year ago, all of my screencaps were lost when my hard drive failed. I’ve been recreating them and organizing them so it’s easiy to find the ones I wanted. I’m almost done with August 2002, so I’ve added a featured image for Back at Jake’s, one of my, uh, lesser efforts in Short Stories. It’s actually a story I wrote in August 2002 that was centered around the August 27 anniversary of the third year since their fateful meeting.

Kind of insane that we’re almost at the 21st anniversary. This link will change when I move the story into the Alternate History section but if you’re interested in what 18-year-old me wanted to say about this day, go for it. I think this was probably the third or fourth story I’d written for GH. I’d only started writing fanfiction for Liason at the end of July 2002.

I’m going to use the redesign of Alternate History to work on the stories. I’ll finish that section first because it’s the largest one on the site. I’m going to finish rewriting the History page this week, taking it slow and making sure it looks good. Then I’ll start on the individual stories — cleaning up images, content, and moving some things around. Like I said, none of the site work ever takes away from my writing time. I write at 10 AM and 1 PM without fail every day.

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