So I know this doesn’t look look a whole lot different than the last theme (header and three columns) but you’ll notice the colors and design is a bit more evenly distributed. I’m not done tweaking it yet. One of the most difficult things about customizing a wordpress theme is the CSS (which controls the colors, the links, pretty much everything that makes your page pretty) because every theme and every element has a specific name.

I’m still playing with it, but it’s ready for wider distribution since it’s better than the old one. Let me know if something doesn’t work or you simply can’t stand something.

Update

As I remarked earlier, I’m continuing to tweak the site. I fixed the site images in the right hand side bar so that they’re showing side by side (or they will if your screen resolution is wide enough).

I will continue to work on this — adding styling elements and tweaking for future customization and layouts. So here’s what I already know needs to be done:

1. Comments — It’s pretty close, there’s still some work to be done.
2. The Sort Stories & Site links in the top menus. These are just short cuts to the areas that already exist in the sidebars, I’m just putting them in a more easily seen spot. The Stories and Readers sections are ready to go.  The Home link has been removed from the Story section because there’s a huge prominent one now.

I’m also working on updating each story page with a bit more organization, but that is an ongoing process and won’t likely all be done at the same time.

So other than those issues, if you have an issue with the site (if there’s a color not working for you, or something is just so ugly you want to set it on fire), please let me know!!

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First things first: The Best Thing, Chapter Thirteen has been added. I’ll probably continue posting it only once a week until it’s completed. It’s a difficult story to write due to the content and the type of subject I’m dealing with. If I finish it ahead of a schedule, I might bump up the posting, but only if I have another story ready.

That being said, I have a much more straightforward story I’m working on, All We Are, the marriage of convenience story I’ve been playing around with. I already have three chapters done, and I hope to be about halfway through by the end of the month. I can start posting that in late January/early February so I’m posting twice a week.

Once those two stories are done, I’m unsure what story will be next. I should work with Feels Like Home (the rewrite of Tangle), as it’s storyboarded and ready to go, but I also have Mad World, For the Broken Girl, and These Small Hours also in the wings.  I should have a more definitive idea once we get into the new year.

On the subject of Mad World, I’m still working out some plot details. If you’ve read the preview I posted in the spring, you know the PCPD is going to have a hand in this case.  Rather than creating original characters as police officers, I thought about bringing an old cast member back. Taggart’s already in the story.

I could either utilize Dante, Jesse Beaudry, Nathan, David Harper or Cruz Rodriguez. The latter two were Lucky’s partners in 2008 and 2006 respectively. Or I could go ahead a create an original character. Whenever I can’t decide these things, I turn to you guys.

[socialpoll id=”2235360″]

So please let me know what you think 🙂

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So I’m about go write the last part of this story so I can send it off to Cora, and decided, eh, I don’t want to wait any longer to post. I have amazing issues. I’ll be posting the next part Sunday (maybe Saturday, haven’t quite decided yet).  So here’s the kick off for Christmas:  All I Want For Christmas, Part One.

I also added another article in the Fanfiction 101 series: The Peaks and Perils of Pantsing.

I’ll be back tomorrow with The Best Thing, Chapter 13.

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I have the new layout ready, but the colors aren’t quite there. I’m still playing with it, getting to know the CSS file that came with my theme. I hope to have it all ironed out by the end of the week.  I know it’s the second theme in a row that deals with old-school Liason from 1999, but that’s the only time they celebrated Christmas.

If you can’t see it, or are seeing a mismash of the new colors, old colors and the old image, please either right click and hit refresh or clean out your temporary files.

I updated the In Progress and Coming Soon pages with some status change. Life For Rent and All We Are have been removed from Coming Soon. Life For Rent is technically in progress as the first part of the story (Choose Your Moment) is completed and the rest of the story is storyboarded, I just haven’t written it yet.

As for All We Are, I’m putting the final touches on the scene breakdowns, but I’ve started to write it in preparation to post it simultaneously with The Best Thing after the New Year, so once I start writing, it gets moved over to keep me honest.

There are several other stories on the In Progress page that I hope to have ready for you after the holidays (Turning Points, Come On Eileen, Inside Your Fear) so they’re not posted there for shits and giggles.

I’ll be back Wednesday morning with the first part of All I Want for Christmas and Chapter 13 of The Best Thing 🙂

Update: So I won’t be playing with the colors any more than I already have, mostly because I have discovered how much I don’t like the way this theme is designed. It’s overly complicated, oy. So once I change layouts in January to a non holiday one, I’m going to teach myself to write my own WordPress theme if it kills me. I prefer streamline coding and I actually miss doing this.

This is not important to you, per se. Just an FYI: these colors will be staying, though I might change the background back to white.

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So before I head over to my sister’s to spend this holiday with my family, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who visits this site or reads my stories on any site I post. I was away for a very long time (six years) but the fact that when I returned, people not only remembered me, but actually remembered my stories and looked forward to reading more, I was blown away.  I hope the second year of CG’s resurgence is as good as the first.

I had a great writing day yesterday — not only did I creep closer to my NaNoWriMo goal (and today, I made it to 46,685. Only 3300 words to go!), but I also wrote a ton of fanfiction. I completed The Best Thing Chapter Fifteen, All I Want For Christmas Part 3 and the first part of All We Are, my next posting project when TBT is closer to completion. All in all, it was about 10,000 words. Not a bad day at all.

So I’m taking today off to read some books that have piled up and to enjoy my holiday. If you’re interested, I have an old Thanksgiving story, Lizzie Does Thanksgiving, written and set in 2002.

Have a fantastic holday and I’ll see you guys December 1 with a new layout 🙂

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I decided to post The Best Thing, Chapter 12 before I went to bed tonight because this process can often take almost a half hour (because I post simultaneously across four sites) and I want to get up tomorrow, take a shower and then write. I have NaNo to get caught up tomorrow because I’ve skipped the past two days, and I need to work on TBT and All I Want to stay on track.

So, yes, TBT is up and it’s probably the most important chapter so far for me, for those characters and I had a such a great time writing it so I hope you guys like it, too.

In other story news: All I Want For Christmas has an official posting schedule, which you can view using the new-spanking new Upcoming Schedule page. The link is located under “Readers” and the widget to the right on the sidebar shows my next three planned updates. So, All I Want will be simultaneously posted with TBT next Wednesday. Normally, I wouldn’t do that, but I wanted to end the story on December 31, and I worked backywards to post once every three or four days to keep the chapters regular.

In other news, I posted a new Story Status which gives you an idea where my stories on the coming soon page are in development. A story not yet on my Coming Soon page because it was not titled is actually likely to be posted after TBT is done — it’s the marriage of conveniece story which is a relatively straightforward story. By posting that (which ought to be written much more quickly) will give me some breathing room to continue developing the more complex stories. Also, it has a title now! All We Are, which means it’ll have a graphic soon. Because I suck.

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Your favorite kind 🙂

First things first: I added a FAQ page. I get questions sometimes on various pages, which I reply to but I’m never sure if someone has read gone back to see those answers. Plus, some questions get asked a few times, so I figured it was easier to add a page for all questions. Please feel free to ask any questions on that page using the comments.  I’m going through the comments to weed out questions posted by users, but if you have a question you’ve asked before, please ask it again so I get get the answer up faster.

Just an FYI. I’ll be doing some site work over the next few weeks, finishing up the process I began earlier this year. Some of the stories that are currently in Novels and Novellas ought to be in Short Stories, so I’ll be cleaning that up. It’s not a big deal except that those of you subscribed to updates for all posts will receive more than usual over the next few weeks.

Plus, NaNo is over after this week. I have just under 10,000 words to finish off and then I won’t be forced to juggle both. I’ll still be doing various projects, but NaNo creates this pressure to write, write, write, which is great, but it’s exhausting by the time you reach the fourth week.

I’m also juggling in my Christmas story, which has moved from outlining to storyboarding. I did already start writing just because scenes are in your head, so you have to do it.

So, lots on my plate and even better — I finally cracked the color code so I can change the backgroud of the whole page from white to something else (which is why it appears to be greyer, because I was playing with it) so that new layout is coming the same day I launch the Christmas story on December…ish. Haven’t settled on a premiere date.

I’ve put up the story page for my Christmas story, All I Want For Christmas. Should begin posting in the first week of December. More information is located there.

A status update for The Best Thing: I’ve personally written through Chapter 14, which means I have enough chapters to post through December 10. So finished TBT 14, opened up TBT 15 to start work and realized some how…my planned scenes for the rest of Part 2 (Chapters 8-20) are…somehow wrong. Now I have to restructure it a bit, haha. S’okay. We’re in the meat of the story and I’m so freaking excited for it.

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I added Chapter Eleven to The Best Thing.  I’ve been writing the last few days, so updates to other things have mostly fallen off the priority list. Right now, I’m managing to juggle both NaNoWriMo and The Best Thing, so once November is over, I’ll be able to get back to some of the site plans I have.

Still working on the marriage of convenience story, which looks like it might shape up to be the next story I work on. All my other planned stories have some aspect of difficult research (drug abuse, domestic violence, serial rapist, etc.) as well as elements of ensemble, so that would be more straightforward.

If I could just settle on a title 😛

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I posted a preview of Chapter 12, but forgot to link it. I wanted an excuse to use the new banner for The Best Thing, but then I realized I don’t like the new featured banner I created for it. Then my computer turned off so I wasn’t able to change the font. Story of my life. Anyway. That was posted.

I didn’t get back to Fiction Graveyard mostly because I was writing all weekend. For NaNoWriMo, I wanted to hit 30,000 by the end of the week and I managed it tonight, so I’m not only caught up, but gave myself some padding for the next two weeks. Yay 😛

Also, Chapter 13 for TBT came together and I’m working on TBT 14. I’m also thinking of trying to make a go at the marriage of convenience to try for a Christmas story. I can fiddle with it and move up the timeline to make it more holidayish. It’s still untitled, so we’ll see. I’ll make a final decision by the end of the week.

Anyway. I also posted a spoiler on the Facebook page with the song that I plan to use in TBT 14 to give you an idea where things are that point. I often post little bits and asides there as I write if you’re interested.

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