I’m not even sure why I bothered to ask if you wanted updates earlier than scheduled. Ha. Maybe to hear myself speak 🙂 As stated earlier, I’ll be moving servers on Friday. This will likely lead to the site being down for at least a day while things are shifted around and reconnected.  I’ll retain the address to the page, so you don’t have to change any book marks. I’m basically upgrading the hardware behind the scenes. I keep getting 404 Page Found links when I’m doing updates so it’s bugging me.

So, The Best Thing, Chapter 14 and All I Want For Christmas, Part 3 is now online. I might not update next week mostly because I wrote myself a little close to my buffer zone, and Cora, without whom I could not live, has an actual life separate from being my beta reader. Ha. So my new chapters are not yet Cora-approved. I don’t want to have to change and edit typos later. So wish her good luck on her finals 🙂 We’ll probably only miss a week. (Though now that I think about it, I’m not even sure I sent her Chapter 15 and 16. Hm. Will have to get on that.)

In other site news, the media page has now been redesigned into the music section to reflect better organization. On that page, you can links to my Spotify and Grooveshark music profiles — if you’re going to follow one of them, I recommend Spotify because you can preview soundtracks that I’m building for upcoming stories and you have access to the entirety of 2000+ Writing Soundtrack.

The page also has an artist/song highlight and musical spoilers. Plus a Matt Hunter music videos. Good times.

In site customization news, I finished tweaking the majority of the stories on the Alternate History section so that they’re all styled with the new colors, character pages cleaned up, etc. I also added a Character Guide page under Extras to remind readers of the minor GH characters of old that I tend to throw into the mix, as well as my small stable of original characters.

The last few days, CG has had some loading issues. Sometimes you’ll click on a link and it might tell you the page hasn’t been found. That’s not because the page isn’t there, but because the site has exceeded my share of the resources on my hosting plan.  That’s not fun for anyone, haha, so I’m going to upgrade from shared hosting to a private server. It’s about $5 more a month, which isn’t horrible, actually.

I’ll be doing it at the end of the week, but it’s going to take sometime to migrate the site to the new server. I’m not sure how long but it’s likely the site would be down for a day or so. Since I’m scheduled to post The Best Thing, Chapter 14 tomorrow, and All I Want for Christmas, Part 3 on Thursday, that means the site would go down shortly within a day or so of posting them. Not my favorite option.

So I’m thinking about posting both of them today only at CG so there’s extra time to make sure you get to that material before the end of the week, so if the site is down all weekend, you still get to read it. I’d keep to the normal schedule on the other sites.

Thoughts?

So this is the last time I plan to post updates about this particular theme to the main part of the site. The majority of the tweaks that needed to be done are either completed, or are in the process. All that’s left is a few cosmetic changes.

The menu at the top of the page has been completed. The addition of the writing tab is also ready — the Fanfiction 101 series once located under “Site” is now there, with maybe more to come. But the Sort/Site section is now complete.

The media page is under construction — most of what was there were links to videos and soundtracks that been redistributed to their specific story pages (A Few Words Too Many, Daughters, and These Small Hours). What’s left will be reorganized into one Music page.

I also started to work on the various story pages to go with the new style design. Mostly just cleaning up character images, replacing the bolded words Characters/Background with styling for color changes.  There’s no point in listing all the specific ones updated so far.

The Fiction Graveyard section got a slight face lift — I worked on the way information is listed and continued work on the story pages in that area. I’m still gathering and formatting all the stories for this so that once I start posting, I can just do it in large chunks. Otherwise, it takes too long to format chapter by chapter.

The next time I bug you guys will be a story update on Wednesday with The Best Thing 🙂

I moved around my posting schedule for All I Want For Christmas in order to lessen the gap between a few parts. I’ll be posting the next part on Thursday, Dec 11 and then Part Four on Dec 16. I want to post often, but space it out so that Christmas Eve chapters are closer to that date, and finish it with New Year’s Eve.

Lisa asked about the angst content — when you compare it to A Few Words or The Best Thing, it’s practically pure fluff. But, haha, yes, there’s some conflict.

The response to that first part has been amazing, and it means so much. I post across five sites (here, Road to Nowhere, Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, and Liason Underground) and though it can often be a time consuming process, it’s worth it since I average closer to 15-20 feedback responses for everything I post. You guys are fantastic 🙂

My aim at CG is make it easier for you guys to find what you want to read and to find it fast. If there is anything I can do to facilitate this, to make it easier, please don’t hesitate to tell me. This site is for you guys, after all 🙂 

I had a breakthrough on Mad World, and I was finally able to iron out the ending. I think it’s so much better than the original story or the second attempt to plot it and I’m looking forward to outlining it in more detail. Thanks for the response to the poll.

I’m still tweaking the site so please bear with me 😀

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!!

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 🙂

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.

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 🙂

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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.

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 🙂

 

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.