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. 

 

[subscribe2]

So I know that the majority of my audience are Jason/Elizabeth fans, so you guys would prefer to have a handy list of the stories have them together as a pairing. On this site, I’ve written stories for more then fifteen other couples and usually include anywhere from three to twelve extra characters in the story.

So I’ve been trying to find a way to sort my stories so you guys can view them based on the couple or character, and also the year it was written to avoid ending up with the not so good story. I’m not hapy with my first pass at it — I want to work it out a bit more, but here is my first effort: Tag Archive: Stories Sorted by Couple, Character & Year.

There’s also some reorganization I want to do on the site — adjust how some of the stories are posted (some are in two-four parts and could honestly be just one. I’m going to go through and adjust them, just to make browsing the site more user friendly. It’s my aim to include extra material wherever possible, and I want to make sure it’s actually listed in a way you guys can find it.

If there’s anything exta on this site that you guys might be interested in, please let me know.

So I said I’d probably come back tonight with the last chapter of FWTM: Chapter 24. It’s tonight for me 😛 And it’s exclusive to CG until I have time to post tomorrow night at RTN, Fanfiction.Net and Archive of Our Own. Please enjoy the end of the story, and let me know what you think.  Thanks so much to Cora for proofing the last four chapters 😛

I also decided to post the two plot sketches of this story so if you’re interested in how I intended to write the story (most of the good stuff made it into the finished version) but some things are really different — check out the original plans for the ending! But make sure you read the chapter first.

The first plot sketch — the original one in February.

The second plot sketch — after I finished the first nine or ten chapters and had to really think about the rest of the story.

I also took the password off the ebooks, so please go ahead and download. If you find any typos, please let me know immediately. I can edit them at any time!

So we’re edging closer to the end, my friends.  I may post a second chapter tonight (which I wouldn’t post at RTN until later tomorrow because they tend to conslidate my stuff without warning when I post too close together, because..whatevs) because of the Tube strike in London. Normally, these things don’t affect me because the area will I live is super convenient — my grocery store, my favorite places to go are all really close. But a friend is arriving from the airport tomorrow, and we’re going to go get her. I have to get up early, take a bus to meet my friends to take one line to another stop, where we’ll get the train to Heathrow. So…I’d have to get up before 6 to post this.

I’m not doing that. I love you guys, but not nearly that much.

So you may get the end of this story a little earlier than everyone else. Because I love you guys too much to make you wait more than twenty-four hours for the ending 😛

I’m still not sure which story is going to come next. I finished my term work, but like I said, our friend is coming in from New Jersey for a bit. She’s here until May 11, then another friend is here. And I just found out last night that my birthday present from my best friends is a trip to Ireland next month. It’s going to be a busy couple of weeks.  I’m still holding out hope that I’ll have some breakthroughs on Hours and Tangle, but The Best Thing might come first. I had a major breakthrough on that, and rewrote my plot sketch, and I’m excited about it. I’ll keep you guys posted.

A Few Words Too Many: Chapter 23

I updated A Few Words Too Many with Chapter 22. RTN stopped being cranky, so here’s the link to Turning Points I promised yesterday. It’ll be on this site in a better way sometime tomorrow. I’ve got a long day ahead of me, complete with actually delivering this German presentation. So…light a candle for me, I’m gonna need it.

I had a minor breakthrough on The Best Thing yesterday, which isn’t helpful since I need a breakthrough on Tangle, but, eh, life. What’re you going to do? Hopefully I’ll have something for you guys to read once May hits.

You know, I so often get reminded why I didn’t post at Fanfiction.net in the old days. Oy.

Not much to say today — I updated A Few Words with Chapter 21. Oh…I’m also doing a Choose Your Ending type thing at RTN, where I write something, and you guys help write the next part. I’ll be posting it here eventually, but it’s just easy to keep the responses in the same place, so the link at RTN for Turning Points. I think most of you guys have a Yuku account, so hopefully you’ll check it out and respond there. I’ll be back with a link to it, Yuku is being a bitch this morning.

I’m working on Tangle and These Small Hours, but it’s taking some time to really dig into these stories. They may not be ready when I said they would be. I don’t want to force it, honestly. I may play around with the sequel to Words, Burn in Heaven, at least sketch out a more detailed plot. Play around with some other stories, to see which one feels like it’ll happen. I’ve been thinking about The Best Thing and Mad World, so maybe those will move up sooner. We’ll see.

Oh, and I updated the layout last night, so if you’re still seeing the old Elizabeth one, refresh. It should be a loverly old-school Liason. I miss these bastards. I miss this Jason. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU MAN?

So even though I had intended to only give away one copy, I’m a sucker, and decided to increase it to three. So many people commented, I just felt awful about only three people winning. You guys almost ALL won, haha. But thanks to the plugin, I randomly selected three winners: Aradia, Nicole and Kristina. I’ve emailed you guys with information on downloading the ebooks.

Thanks again to everyone that entered. The ebook will be made generally available on April 30 when I post the last chapter.

 

 

Sorry for the quick post earlier. I had to leave to have lunch at 1, it was already 12:3o, and it’s a twenty minute bus ride and ten minute walk to The Diner 😛  I finished this morning, and also updated the cast page. So head over to Damaged to read more.