If you contacted me to let me know that you receive the site generated update emails, then I removed you from my manual update list.  My host support was basically useless on this point, so I still have no way of knowing who is receiving emails and who isn’t.

Again, if you are receiving the site generated updates (which will come from newsletter@cg.dearisobel.org), please let me know. I send manual updates from melissasuemchugh@gmail.com, so if all your updates come from the second email, you’re not on the list.

I added Chapter Five and Six of Poisonous Dreams. I had added Chapter Four yesterday but didn’t update the main page about it. Yesterday was…a difficult day. I was violated by a German final, proceeded to drink away my pain, and then fell down a short flight of stairs. It’s all good, because my ankle broke my fall.

Anyway. I also updated the media section with playlists from Spotify. My original Spotify playlist was over 500 songs, but only the first 200 showed on the embedded list, so I split the list into four sections, and then posted them all on one page, with a rotating embed on the widget. I also added links for the soundtracks currently available.

I updated the Story Status page (and readded the category which I must have deleted by accident at some point)  with the current status of things I’m writing, things I’m thinking about and stuff I’m ignoring. Ha. (I have too many ideas, it’s really sad)

 

 

Site News

– Despite paying $15 for a plugin to allow me to see who is receiving emails and who is not, I still have not the first clue how many of you guys are able to enjoy the services of what everyone on the internet tells me is the most amazing subscription plugin ever. I know this, because I have looked eight hundred times for something to replace it.

– I currently have an email into my domain host to see if it is not the plugin, but rather my server blocking some of the emails. I am still receiving the emails, and I’ve heard from one or two of you tell me you are receiving them. If you have received emails with post updates (other than the manual ones) please please reply to the email and let me know, so I can pinpoint the trouble better.

Ebook News

– I am currently converting I Shall Believe and The Witness to prepare for ebook form, but they’re not currently in any condition to be ready soon. I can have Aurora Dawning and Daughters up faster, if people are interested, because I had already saved them in t right format.  Let me know by replying to this.

– I may be updating A Few Words, the ebook, to correct some types I found at some point this week. I will keep you informed.

Story News

– I added Chapter Three to Poisonous Dreams.

– I added a preview of Illusions, an AU fic that’s on my backburner, but it’s someting you guys haven’t seen yet, and I’m trying to make you guys not hate me for the update nonsense.

– Chapter 1 of The Best Thing is done. I’m going to write five chapters before I send it off to my beta, which means the earliest you guys could could have the first chapter is maybe sometime next week, if these five chapters cooperate, and if I haven’t already harassed my beta, Cora, into quitting. (I have a gift for such things).

– I have a dissertation meeting tomorrow and a German final on Wednesday, so we’ll see what happens.  I’m about to stop playing around with plugins and updates to go write

If you haven’t received updates to this site since I changed the type of list I use, don’t fret. Apparently, I am the only one receiving them. Oy.

For now, I’m going to do a manual update list. (Absolutely no extra work is required from you to deal with this). I am reaching out to support to figure this out. Hopefully, it’s something fixable. Otherwise, I may just set the place on fire.

Again, with the oy.

Except apparently you don’t.

 

Have no fear, people. I’m on this. This will not beat me.

I added Chapter Two to Poisonous Dreams, which I accidentally labeled Chapter Three. Oy. I promise a new banner will come along soon for that story — I just have to wait on my DVDs, covering Liason from August 2002-November 2006, plus an entire DVD of Elizabeth’s return in 2004. Woot! Happy days!

Note: If anyone got this email three times like I did, please let me know. I’m…not sure what that’s about.

And to hold you over, here is the ending of my opening scene for The Best Thing, which I just finshed an hour ago (the scene, that is).

---

 

She was almost at the launch when she turned back, a mischievous smile spread across her delicate features. “You know the best thing about being home for Christmas?”

“What?”

“The smell of snow.”

He laughed, remembering that conversation in her studio all those Decembers ago. “Snow doesn’t smell,” he teased.

She arched an eyebrow and stepped onto the waiting launch. “Yes, it does.”

He got to his feet, feeling lighter than he had in weeks as he watched launch disappear into the mists towards Spoon Island. “Welcome home,” he murmured. 

NOTE: Hallelujah, prayer works! I received this email, and I hadn’t received anything since I switched over, which is how I knew it wasn’t working. Make sure you add this email to your white lists: newsletter@cg.dearisobel.org

Before I moved to Scrivener, where I keep everything in one binder (it’s effin’ fabulous for plotting and writing out of order, and flitting from one project to another), I used Microsoft Word and depended on my own folder navigation to keep it sorted. It doesn’t work. I’m always finding something I lost.

Case in point: I clearly had this idea once, based on Nora Roberts’ Chesapeake Bay trilogy, and I wrote the following blurb:

Patrick, Johnny and Jason were adopted by Lee Baldwin and his late wife, Gail, as young teenagers damaged by their abusive childhoods. Johnny is private investigator who spends most of his time looking for cheating spouses, Jason is a mechanic who is content to stay home and Patrick is resident at the hospital. As they near the end of their twenties, Lee takes on another lost soul — Michael Benson. Rumors begin to swirl about Michael’s connection to Lee but before it can be cleared up, Lee dies in a one car accident which leads Michael’s guardianship precarious. The three sons step up on a promise to their dying father. Along the way to permanent guardianship, they come across Nadine Crowell, a do-gooder social worker determined to do right by Michael, Elizabeth Webber, a single mother making a life for her kids and Robin Scorpio, a doctor with an ulterior motive where Michael is concerned — not to mention Carly Benson, Michael’s junkie mother, who threatens their guardianship.

And now I find myself mildly intrigued. As if I didn’t have enough to do. I was going to give you a screenshot of my Scrivener binder, to show you what I mean, and I couldn’t fit it in one screenshot. Lord help me.

(Click to enlarge)

Anyway. The point of this post was to report that I think I finally fixed the update problem. I’ll know for sure after I post this. If this doesn’t work….I’m just throwing up my hands, taking all the emails from all the registered users and I’ll start sending personal emails. Because, life, dude.  The good news is that I don’t have to upgrade and spend more money because getting rid of that plugin cut out the problems I was having. So that’s a silver lining to this insanity.

And in good news, The Best Thing is officially storyboarded. I may adjust here and there, but it’s already slated to be 37 chapters long. I have never in my life written anything that long. Good grief.

I’ll be back later tonight with more Poisonous Dreams. Now I’m going to go wring TBT!

Last update for the night.

I sent a test update earlier, hoping that it works. I have the subscription updates set to email once a day a collection of all the updates, rather than six or seven separate emails. So for days when I update a story with two chapters and then added a site update, you get one email not three.

So if by tomorrow at 4 PM EST, you haven’t received my test email and you think you’re registered to do so, please let me know by replying to this post or any other on the site.

Second, I added the two extra sort archives: Year Written and Year Set. I think all the stories are tagged, but I’ll make period passes to be sure.

I decided to start reposting Poisonous Dreams, and added Prologue & Chapter 1. It’s not in the completed or in progress section, but is listed as an extra under A Few Words Too Many to prevent confusion later.

I added the story page for Turning Points finally.

And, mostly exciting — I moved The Best Thing from Stage 1 (Outlining) to Stage 2 (Storyboarding). That won’t take me more than the rest of tonight and part of tomorrow. I’ll be writing all week 😛

So I reorganized the way novels and novellas are set up in the menu. I had just two pages orignally — one for alternate universe and another for alternate history. This worked, but for me, I just wasn’t satisfied.

I’ve added two pages: In Progess and Alternate Realities.

Now the History and Universe pages only list completed stories. The Alternate Realities is for stories like Hand Me Down and Damaged, stories that end up being my own version of the show.  The In Progress page lists all the stories that are currently unfinished and in the immediate planning stages.

For example, even though, at current count I have Damaged, Turning Points and Come On Eileen being worked on, I am also storyboarding/outlining/thinking about fifteen other stories, all in various stages. Several are just inklings, some have been outlined in here’s my idea, maybe some scene ideas. Others have been outlined, but left alone for a while.

And those in the immediate planning stages have moved from general outlines to detailed outlines. Once they pass that stage, they become in progress to me. So The Best Thing and These Small Hours have moved to this place, as both are being worked on.

What is not on the in progress page at the moment is Turning Points and Come On Eileen. I hope to get that remedied later today when I get back 🙂 I also hope to finish Come On Eileen and toss it in the short story section.

In other minor updates: I went through my novels/novellas and updated tags so the character/couple pages should be more accurate now for those. I plan on going through the short stories to double check them. I added tags so I can list them by the year in which they’re set  at some point as well. I never want you guys to search more than one minute to find a story you want to read 😛

I also fixed typos on the online page and added some graphics for you to link to this site to if you so choose.

So first, I updated the Choose Your Adventure type story, Turning Points, with Part 5. Please head over to read the story and then answer the questions to choose what happens next. I take the most fun or most challenging suggestions.

On this site, I didn’t get much feature work changed. I finished the two sort by archives I’ve been trying to figure out for ages, and I’m pleased with these versions of them. You can now sort my stories by couple or by character. If a couple is in a story, however, they don’t show up separately in the character section.

For example, for Noel, the story shows up in Jason and Elizabeth’s character sections, but not in their couple section since they’re not a romantic pairing in that story.

I’m going to add a sort by year written section, and possible a sort by year set at some point.

I hope we’ve got the mess sorted out with registration. Please don’t hestitate to comment on this page or contact me in anyway if you have questions!

I’m working on the media section — but I can’t figure out how to get my Spotify playlist for Crimson Glass to show more than 200 songs. There are 521 songs on the song. You could follow the playlist on Spotify, if you have it.

Crimson Glass

I’m working on The Best Thing this weekend. I’ll be putting the finishing touches on the outline by Sunday, storyboarding all week and then digging in after that. I may start writing earlier. I woke up in the middle of the night last night because I had a line in my head that I couldn’t lose, so I jotted it down really quick. Haha

But now I’m heading out to dinner with friends and our visitor from NJ.

Note: I’ve updated the registration page with a more thorough explanation on registering and then making sure you’re receiving emails.

 

So as the first part of my site overhaul, the following changes were made to the site

1. I redesigned the short stories section. They used to be in four categories, but that wasn’t really helpful because what did you guys care if they were episode tags or not? So I merged all the categories together and then split them according to length. Ficlets are stories up to 1500 words, and Short Stories go from 1501 – 9,999. Anything over that will be novellas or novels.

By the way, the short stories section alone has 64 stories. Holy crud. Factor in around twenty novellas and novels, and…wow. That’s a lot of fanfiction.

2. I streamlined some of the menus. The Readers section is now the Extras section, and the Lost Stories page has been merged into the regular short story pages. The Fiction Graveyard remains for now until I figure out how to get better at that. I’m going to be doing a lot more with that section, so stay tuned in the future. Right now, it’s mostly bare.

3. The site section now has the online, about and distribution links. I also added the links for logging in and registering. This is the first post since I changed over my subscription list, so please don’t forget to register for the site and then set your subscription options. I have to overhaul the online and about section. That will happen at some point.

4. I have some more ideas planned (converting some stories into novellas, for example) but the short stories section was annoying me the most. I hope you guys find this slightly helpful.

5. And for being so understanding about my neuroses, I’ve updated with three stories.

+ Traditions: Set in 2010. Nominally in the Hand Me Down Universe, the Morgan/Jacks clan celebrate the Fourth of July with other prominent families in attendance.

+ Come On Eileen: Set in 2006. A fluffy fic in which Elizabeth, Robin and Brenda plan an 80s bash to support the Stone Cates Foundation.  The first part is posted, but I need your help to post the rest!

+ Turning Points, Parts 1-4: Set in 2006. I write a part and ask you guys some questions. You respond, and I pick the responses I like the best or think will be most difficult and write the next part accordingly.  I haven’t set up a story page for it yet, so more information for now, is on the first part.

6. An update to where I think I’ll be going next fiction wise. Thanks to Cora and her amazing input on The Best Thing outline, I’m ironing out some of the kinks, adding some layers. But at some point, I’ll be storyboarding it, and it’ll probably be that and These Small Hours as my next projects. I’ll be finishing the Mad World plot sketch at some point over the next two weeks, and hopefully Tangle will be speaking to me then (and will have its new name).

Oh, so the last two months, I’ve been amusing myself by purchasing  DVD edits. I usually order four at time. First, I ordered Patrick &  Robin,  2005, 2006, 2008. Then I ordered Lucky & Liz, 1997-1998 and Jason & Liz, 1999-2001. Now this month, I’m debating because I actually need to do some research for some of the stories I’m writing, so I’m leaning towards the edits for Elizabeth that go from June 2004-December 2004, which includes some stuff with Jason, as well as the Liason DVD edits from November 2002-November 2006. But ugh, I want the 2002 edits from summer 2002, even though I can’t justify the need through fic writing.

Ugh. It sucks being responsible.

Sorry for the rambles, but admit it, you missed my long updates in which I pretend this is my blog.

Hey! If you’ve subscribed to this website via the widget to the right, then this post is crucial to you!

I’ve become aware that the plugin I’m using to power that subscription service is quite bloated and using too much of my resources on the server. I’m looking into upgrading, but I have to bring down my memory usage. If I only have to bump up my hosting plan from $10 a month to $15, I’m not too worried, but if I have to go higher than that, it’ll be out of my budget.

So, if I’m moving away from the Jetpack plugin, and trying to replace the functions I received from that plugin in other ways. The most important thing was the subscriptions.

So! If you’re a registered member of this blog already (you’ve registered and you log in to comment), then you’re covered by my new service. In fact, you can log in and look at some amazing new options for receiving updates. How often (you can even ask for them once every few hours if you’re insane, haha). You can subscribe to a category (like Site News, which is where I summarize all major updates). It’s kind of nifty and I think, works a bit better than the old one.

I thought about adding everyone who’d subscribed to the site, but it looks like some of you signed up twice (through registering and then signing up separately), and I don’t want to accidentally sign you up again for possibly a third email.

I receive a ton of spam users every day, and I’m never sure if I’m deleting real people. So, I’m going to set up a page for registering, so I can make it easier on myself to make sure actual readers get through.  I also want to go through and figure out if I have any spam users registered, so anyone who hasn’t activated their accounts will be deleted. It’s the best way to do it.

Registering At This Site

There is a new widget to the right that replaces the old one. If you are already logged in, you’ll see that it gives you the option to manage your subscriptions from your profile. If you don’t see it, you can subscribe below without registering, but being registered makes it easier to adjust your preferences, I think. We’ll see how this works out.

This post is the first in a series of changes I’ll be making to this site to make it better for you guys in the long run. Most of it you won’t even notice, except things may move around and links may occasionally get broken. Please bear with me 🙂 I always planned to get back to site functionality once I had finished writing for a while.

 

I will be disabling Jetpack tomorrow. Until that point, you may receive extra emails. I want to make sure everyone sees this message. 

 

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