Hey guys! I’m still working out the right schedule to work flash fiction into regular rotation, but honestly most of my energy has been focused on getting into daily writing with Mad World. I got off to a slow start thanks to illness and technical issues. I’m happy to report that, thus far this week, I’ve written three chapters clocking in at 13k chapters total. I’m up to Ch 33, with seventeen to go. If I keep up this pace at a chapter a day, I’ll finish the first draft on July 6, which puts me in decent shape for an August release. I’ll keep y’all posted on how that’s going.

As to flash fiction, I got a late start tonight so I decided against working on a wrap-up to Fool Me Twice. I’m trying to leave myself an hour to wrap up the loose ends and put it back into novel development. So instead, we have a weird little idea I played with a long time ago but never posted. I hope you enjoy. It was written in 23 minutes and the ending is a little weird because I ran out of time and I honestly didn’t know how to finish it, ha.

Surprise Visit

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When I was posting my new flash fiction yesterday, I realized how disorganized the Flash Fiction page had become. So I reorganized it by category and fixed it so that all the flash fictions I’ve posted have a place to go now.

I also went through and added all the Recent Updates from this entire year as well as finishing up December. I’m pretty bad at remembering to take care of that page, I know, heh.

In case you missed it, I did add a new flash fiction yesterday — an addition to the Desperate Measures flash fiction I posted back in March. That’s another idea I might take and push into a longer story at some point. I want to write a wrap-up flash fic for Fool Me Twice at some point so I can put that back into novel development.

Desperate Measures, Part 2

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I hope you guys like the new layout! It’s simplified and I think the colors are easier on the eyes. I mean, it was to the point I didn’t even want to click on my own site, heh, so I can’t imagine you guys were happy with almost two years of orange and blue. I hope you guys like it.

I know I have to update the Recent Updates page. I don’t think I’ve touched it in months. It’s one of the small housekeeping tasks that has been neglected around here. I’ve been writing but I have had serious tech issues as my six-year-old laptop started to finally die. It’s still functional, but it’s crashed a few times.

The new one arrived yesterday and I’m hoping this will let me finally get into the full writing schedule I wanted to. I have written two more chapters of Book 2, and am working on completing Chapter 30 as we speak. I set a tentative deadline for June 30 which means I’d have to write a chapter a day to get it done. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up that pace, but I’m going to try.

Anyway, I’m posting a follow up to Desperate Measures which I posted in April. I hope you like it! I really want to get back into a regular schedule of posting flash fiction, but to be honest, there are some days when I really don’t have any inspiration. If you have any prompts, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

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I’m cleaning out my Scrivener files and while going through The Best Thing, I found two small scenes I had cut when I made changes to the story. Seeing them reminded me that I had never posted all the planning material and plot outlines for that story. So I put up a small series in the Workshop with my outlines, my thoughts, and my back and forth with Cora over some of the finer details. It includes the entire custody battle I cut as well, so if you’re interested, check out the Workshop (it’s at the bottom of the page) or click on the first post: The Planning Stages.

I’ve also blogged about my writing process at Dear Isobel, so make sure you’re keeping up there.

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Hello! I’ve finally gotten a chance to edit and add my GHWhoDunIt mystery to the site. I had hoped to do it two weeks ago, but my schedule got away from me. And then my computer broke down over the weekend. I’m still not done reinstalling all my programs and settings from the reset so Death by Candelight doesn’t have a banner on the Alternate Universe page. Hopefully I’ll get that done later this week.

I’m starting a writing blog over at my other site, Dear Isobel, where I talk about my writing projects. I did that a little bit during the doomed NaNoWriMo from November 2018, so if you’re looking for any insights into what I’m writing or maybe even slight spoilers. I want to cut down on the “check in” posts here. I mean, they’re useful I guess, but I’m sure a lot of you would be happier if you only got emails from me with actual content updates. This is going to be a happy medium. You can sign up over there for blog updates. (You’d also get any other blog posts I make, though. Sometimes I write about Days or GH or post romance reviews.)

I’m setting a target date to complete Book 2 for Mad World by June 30, which would hopefully mean I could start posting it around August 1. Between now and then, I’m definitely going to be doing more flash fiction, cleaning up some old stories, looking at some of the older features and working on them. Maybe I’ll get back into doing the ebooks. I don’t know. I’ve got the time on my hands now. I’m officially done school and all I have to do now is going to work 😛

So check out the blog! If you read Death by Candlelight over at the Liason Haven, there aren’t any changes. I just cleaned up some grammar and spelling issues I missed the last time. I Iiterally wrote and posted a lot of that story while I was preparing for my orals and I think I was really stressed out about getting it edited and posted on April 15 before leaving for my exam that day. Crazy. But it’s done! If you didn’t read DbC because you didn’t want to join the message board, then here it is for you.

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Hey! I know you guys are probably looking for an update to one of my flash fiction series but I kind of wanted to play around in a new world, so here’s an alternate vision of how Jake’s kidnapping might have played out. An Answer to A Prayer. It was written in 30 minutes, and I don’t really know what I think about it, but I’m getting back into the groove.

In other news, all that’s left of my semester is to revise my large research paper and take one online final. That’s it. We’re almost done!

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Hey guys! I attended my final class of the spring semester on Monday which means I’m free at nights now, yay! I have three more assignments to finish, but they’re all due by Monday, May 14.  I will be completely done at that point. Words cannot express how much I’m looking forward to that.

What this means is that I get to put writing back in my daily schedule — even more importantly, I get to make it the focus of my daily schedule which I haven’t been able to do since 2015. This is great news for all of us!

This weekend, I’m going to post Death by Candelight here and at the other sites. Then, next week (or maybe this weekend), we’ll be bringing Flash Fiction. I’m also going to write a few shorts and ficlets I’ve had floating around.  I’ll also dig back into my novels.

I’m not positive exactly which novel I’m going to work on first. I’m going to play with three of them — Counting Stars, Mad World Book 2, and For the Broken Girl to see which one the muse likes. I don’t anticipate having any novels for you before August – I definitely want something regular to post by then since August is the beginning of Liason’s 20th anniversary year and I’m sure the fandom is going to go all out.

We’re in the home stretch guys! Thanks for your patience and support!

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Hey! I posted Part 2 of Death by Candelight at the Liason Haven yesterday, so make sure you go check it out. As always, the story remains exclusive to the forum for at least month (I can’t remember if I waited that long to post Death Becomes Her at CG, but going forward, that’s the policy I’ll adopt). So look for the story to be posted here at CG in May and elsewhere.

I actually can’t believe I managed to finish and post it at the same time I was preparing for my orals. True story: I actually didn’t even start writing Part 2 until Saturday. I had written out the script and beats, but it wasn’t converted into prose until this last weekend. My schedule just kept collapsing on itself until I had just this last weekend. I work well under deadline, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

I had my orals yesterday and I passed. It was not enjoyable for a lot of reasons, so I don’t even feel that celebratory about it. I still have one major paper to write — a 35 page journal article whose rough draft is due on Monday, April 22. But that’s the last major assignment. Everything else is kind of run of the mill. I’m looking forward to being done. All course work is turned in on May 15, so that’s the date I’m circling on the calendar to get back to writing on a more regular basis. I go back to work full-time at that point as well, but I don’t have to come home and study anymore so that’s going to be great.

My goal is start to posting new chapters of whatever is next by August, whether it’s Counting Stars or Mad World, Book 2.  Between then and now, you’ll have some flash fictions or anything else I can whip up, but I don’t anticipate returning to regularly scheduled story posting for a few more months.

Thanks for your patience! Go check out Part 2 of Death by Candelight at the Liason Haven.

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Hello! Sorry this is so late — I posted Part 1 on Thursday afternoon and my schedule has been crazy since then. I was so excited to be asked to do another mystery, and as always, I went overboard. This is the same length as Death Becomes Her (around 40 pages) which means part 1 is about 19. Right now, it’s exclusive to The Liason Haven, which you will need to join to read. I’ll be posting at CG sometime in May.

Part 2 is coming on Monday around 2. I hope you enjoy it!

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Hey, it’s your (monthly, I guess) check in from me! It’s April and time for Camp NaNoWriMo — a month I’ve never been able to participate in since it always falls during that terrible time of a college student’s life — the last month of classes. Everything is due this month — my major research paper (April 22) and my orals (April 15). Oof. But we have a deadline in sight! All of my work is due May 15. That’s it. I’m done my academic career, which means I pretty much get 85% of my life back.

I imagine I’ll take about a week after courses are done to recharge and clean up my entire life, haha. I’ve let so much slip–laundry, cleaning–everything is kind of organized chaos and I’m looking forward to getting that sorted.

BUT I’m also going to be going into writing overdrive, so I’m super excited about that. I decided to take a low-key writing project for Camp this year — I’m going to finalize plot sketches for six projects I’ve been playing with for a while so that they are ready to go. Some of them are in decent shape, and some of them need to be rethought.

I’m going to doing my sketches for Mad World, Books 2 & 3.  Book 2 is mostly planned, but I want to work in some bread crumbs for Book 3 and some characters aren’t doing much in the second half of the book, so I finally figured out how to deal with them.

I’m also going to be doing sketches for For the Broken Girl, Kismet, and Malice. Broken Girl is my rewrite of the Lucky drug addiction in 2006, Kismet is the flash fiction series turned into a novel, and Malice is the sequel to Bittersweet. Burn in Heaven (sequel to A Few Words) rounds out the six projects — it’s actually mostly done but I have no ending yet.

Counting Stars doesn’t need to be plotted — it’s actually ready to go for writing so I might finish that one first and then dig into MW Book 2 or maybe even write them at the same time. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes.

The plan is to have one of those ready for July — I want to be able to content being posted for the Liason 20th anniversary this August.

I am super excited about being done graduate school — even if I get a full-time job next year (crosses fingers), I still won’t have to juggle classes and classwork like I’ve been doing. For the last three years, I’ve been working two jobs, going to graduate school, and writing. Really excited to just have one job and writing on the side in my future.

But you don’t have to wait until July for new content! I’m working on an entry for this month in the GHWhoDunIt over at the Liason Haven. I was originally going to have it done for April 4 (today) but I caught one of those awful colds that just laid me out flat as I was editing it, so it’s been moved to next Thursday. I’ll make sure to keep you guys updated and I’ll post the link here then so you can go read it.

I’m hoping to mix in more flash fiction updates. You won’t get any until after April 23, when my rough draft and orals are done, but after that, I’m hoping to go back to once a week.

Thanks for your patience! I’ll see you guys next week!

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