Hey! So I added Chapter 14 to All We Are, but I’m not posting it at the other archives because it’s not beta’d yet. I literally sent like 30,000 words to Cora over the last two weeks and haha, I think it was too much. So I’m keeping this chapter here until I hear from her, and then I’ll post it elsewhere.  It’s Chapter 14, and after this, we only have three chapters and epilogue left. I’ll have the giveaway up by Friday.

I’m also pretty excited–I was working on the outline for Bittersweet, and while the first half of the story has always worked really well for me, I had trouble ending it. And then, I had (if I say so myself) a pretty brilliant idea. So I can’t wait to wrap up the outlining and dig into this story.

A bit of a roundup update. The Best Thing, Chapter 22 was updated on Wednesday and I posted Damaged, Season 2 a few hours early. Not much chatter for a change. I hope you guys like the updates and please remember to leave feedback. I like hearing from my readers 😉

So, somehow, I have a few types of updates today. So first, I mentioned that I was planning to work on Bittersweet now that All We Are has wrapped up. (I’m done writing it, it just needs to be beta’d). Well, I was playing around with a few ideas for which story to work on once The Best Thing was done (and I should be able to wrap that up by the end of the summer–writing it anyway). So rather than Mad World as the next project, it’s time to put Hand Me Down back on the schedule. More specifically, the rewrite of Tangle I’ve been promising for more than a year: Feels Like Home.

So in honor of it finally being put back on the schedule, I’ve designed the Hand Me Down subsite in the same vein as Damaged and launched it. I’m super excited about this smaller site for a really dorky reason. For more than a decade, I’ve been using Dreamweaver MX 2004 and never upgraded to the newer versions. I did so last weekend and fell in love with it. So I actually handwrote the code for the theme and the style sheet from the ground up. It’s cleaner and better than even this site or Damaged.  It’s still a bit a work in progress, and I’m hoping I can get the comments moved over to that site, but it’s up and I love it.

And related to that, I’ve relaunched Fiction Graveyard by posting chapters from Tangle, the precursor to HMD. I posted the prologue as well as the first two chapters. I had plotted out through the finished product, so you’ll get the sixteen chapters I posted, then you actually get a seventeenth chapter I never posted, some scenes from Chapter 18 and then the outline for the last six chapters. I’m excited to bring this story to CG for the first time because I know you guys loved it and I might actually play around with writing the final six chapters to have it completed, but remember — I’m revisiting the concept and doing it better in Feels Like Home.

I’ll be back tomorrow with The Best Thing Chapter 22 and Friday with Damaged, the season two premiere. See you guys later!

I was getting impatient, haha. Chapter 13 of All We Are has been posted today because well, damn it, I couldn’t wait any longer. I wanted you guys to see the twist and I’ve had to keep it in for months after I decided to do the opening scene.

Additionally, I fixed the comment template here at CG. I’ve hated it for eons, but couldn’t quite make it do what I wanted. I’ve now adjusted it and will be taking it to the Damaged site later today once I finish editing those files.

Oh, and I added a missing title to the Sort By Title feature. And then I counted. There are 112 links on that page, which means there are roughly 105-108 stories on this site now. It’s not quite 112 since I’ve separated some stories that are part of a series and linked the series as well. And that doesn’t count the Fiction Graveyard. I have spent the better part of my 20s writing for GH. It’s sad 😛

And I added a new story status for the summer which gives you my status on in progress stories and previews what I’m working on elsewhere.

So enjoy your surprise update! We’re kicking off a great week here at CG. I’ll be back on Wednesday with Chapter 22 of The Best Thing, and then on Friday, you get a Jason and Elizabeth reunion in Damaged. (Oh, shoot did I give you a spoiler? Maybe.)

Two things really. The Damaged site has been relaunched, though I’ve only readded six of eleven episodes. The last five will be added by Friday so that you’ll have an opportunity to either reread, catch up, or check the story out for the first time. The site also has some reader feedback features so you can better shape the future of the story 🙂

Second, The Best Thing will be back next week. This is definite. I have the chapters finished, they’re beta’d, they’re ready. I’m holding off another week because it’s been almost four months since I’ve posted it, and The Best Thing is long–very long at this point. It’s twenty-two chapters, more than two hundred pages and 80,000 words. So! This week would be a good time refresh yourself on the story.

You can either use the website, you can check it out on Fanfiction.net or at Archive of Our Own, or you can sit with your ereader and enjoy it in the comfort away from the internet with the in-progress ebook. I try to provide as many options as I can for reading my stories. I really reccommend refreshing yourself with some of the earlier details. We’re hitting the ground running next Wednesday and we’re not looking back. I may be bumping it up to two chapters a week once I finish posting All We Are on August 10 🙂

Updated with All We Are Chapter Twelve.

So I’m not going to lie. About this time last week, I could see July 15 approaching fast. I had publicly announced The Best Thing would return at that point, but I hadn’t quite finished another chapter. I really didn’t want to push it back.

And then something magical happened. I wrote four chapters in four days, which gives me an entire month of posts. And I made a decision to cut a section of the story that might have worked, but I think it might have dragged the story out as well. And it was causing my writing to drag as well. If it’s not working, cut it. I think it’ll shave one or two chapters off the total count. I’m excited for you to read some of those chapters I finished over this last weekend.

Damaged is still on schedule to return on July 18, so next week will be a return to constant posts from me. You have All We Are on Mondays, TBT on Wednesdays, and Damaged on Fridays. All We Are will be wrapping up by the end of the summer, I’m working on Chapter Fourteen now, and only have four more after that’s finished. If I can manage to finish it all by some time week, I’ll get the ebook formatted and put it up the way I normally do–with a giveaway.

The site was running slow for a while but I made some changes in hopes of maximizing performance. I did some upgrades and my host, Dreamhost, was actually super quick in making the biggest change — a database had to move servers or something. If you’re ever looking for a webhost, Dreamhost is amazing. Their basic plans are super cheap, and even my plan around $15 a month. Give them a looksee if you’re in the market. I’ve been with them since 2006 and can’t imagine going anywhere else.

Oh, and another thing! I was working on a scene for Chapter 14, All We Are, and I wanted to confirm a detail. So I turned to my trust Liason DVDS to help me out. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned CurlyQGrl’s DVDs. I’ve been buying GH DVDs from her since 1999, with my set of Lucky and Liz on VHS, ha. They were amazing, but lost in a housefire. While I was in London, I invested in replacing that set as well as obtaining my own Liason DVDs, some Scrubs edits, and a 2004 Elizabeth Returns DVD which has her interim storylines between the end of LiRic and the beginning of LL2.3 (which is my own personal code for her storyline with Greg’s Lucky.)

Her collection is vast and immense and goes back into GH history waaay into the 1980s. You should check her out.

Hey! Just a note for Damaged readers. When I posted the final episode for Season One a few weeks ago, I mentioned I would be taking the site offline in order to redesign it for the next season, add more content, and reformat the previous episodes to better fit the format. Damaged is offline as of today, but will return on Monday, July 13, 2015 so everyone can get accustomed to the new layout. Damaged, Season Two: Prodigal Son will be posted Friday, July 17.

However, with the help of Cora, I’ve taken the initial group of episodes, edited them, and reformatted them into eleven episodes that compromise the new season. You can wait to read them in their new format when the site reopens or check out the ebook I’ve created for that purpose.

I know the site may have been slow over the last week, maybe even longer. I get a decent amount of regular visitors every day and with the site being powered by WordPress, I’m using a lot of processes on my server. It was an issue about six months ago and I moved servers. Apparently, we’ve outgrown our old settings and I’ve had to upgrade again.  I’ll know in about a week of it’s been a good use of the money. Hopefully 🙂

Hey! I know a ton of you guys read the updates  when they’re emailed to you, which is why I include the title of the story with the update (All We Are, Chapter Whatever). Well, it was early this morning and my internet is being extremely bitchy, so I posted the wrong title for some reason. The chapter that was delivered is clearly All We Are, Chapter Eleven.

Sorry for any confusion!

I was so bored with the blue! I’m still not completely sold on the header image, but I wanted to get this up. Let me know if the greens and yellows are problematic for anyone and I’ll darken them.  This layout is based on the winner of the poll a few weeks ago.

In addition to the new summer layout, I also finished the Sort By Title feature, updated the Featured story with If I Don’t Try With You, and cleaned up some of the columns. No one seems interested in the music/artist section in the columns, so I’m letting it go. I’ll clean up the music page at some point.

The social media links have been moved to the About page.  I have to go through some of the stories and edit the soundtracks to get rid of the Grooveshark links. That site shut down a little while ago, sadly. I’ll continue linking to Spotify, which you can listen to for free if you sign up for an account.

I picked If I Don’t Try With You as the featured story because I personally love it and if I say so myself, it’s one of the best pieces I’ve written since I came to writing last year.  It’s part of the Hand Me Down universe, but it stands alone since it picks up directly from Michael’s shooting in 2008. Please check it out if you haven’t yet.

I also decided to do a separate page for just listing basic updates, so if occasionally you miss something in the chatter, you can bookmark the Recent Updates page. I’ll update everything there in a basic list format without any frills. All the facts, none of the nonsense 🙂

I’ll be back on Monday with a new chapter of All We Are 🙂

Well thanks to those who responded to my survey call 🙂 My responses doubled and I have some great feedback so far. I still don’t have a ton, but I saw the same type of suggestion/complaint a few times in a few places, so I jumped on it because I think it’s something I can offer a solution to in the short-term while I work on incorporating it into the new layout in a better way.

Under the Sort menu (where you can sort stories by the year they’re set, the characters, or the couples featured, and even find specific holiday-themes!), you can now sort By Title, which is an alphabetical list of the stories on this site. It’s not yet complete–I still have to add Ficlets and Short Stories, but all longer stories are now listed.

So if you’re looking for Damaged, you can find it under D rather than remembering I list it under the site as an Alternate Reality story or if you want Daughters, but can’t remember it’s an Alternate Universe, you can also find it there under D. Hopefully that helps the site be a more friendly.

It’s a manual list at the moment, so it’s a bit time-consuming but I haven’t ruled out maybe adding story descriptions to it at some point. We’ll see.

I hope that helps!

I also have heard your calls about making updates easier to find. I tend to get very chatty as I update so sometimes they’re lost.  I’m working on something that will be easier, but for the moment, there’s a a section in the colum on the right-side of the page where I have Updated Novels and Recently/Completed New. This will be the majority of the new additions but it’s not as organic as it could be. I have an idea for that I may launch later in the week.

So please check out the Sort By Title page and please keep responding to the survey! I want you guys to be able to find a story to read within a minute of clicking on the home page, so anything I can do to make that possible, I’m willing to look into!