Your Update Link: Whatever It Takes, Part 9

Hey — I’m delaying the site move a day so tomorrow’s flash fiction will be posted here, and I’ll start posting at the new address on Friday. My sister asked me to babysit for an hour today, and I want to make sure I still finish writing Mad World — that’s obviously more important. So just to be on the safe side, I’m going to start the big part of the move tomorrow. If you’re not sure what I mean, please check out yesterday’s post.

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Your Update Links: Desperate Measures, Part 9 & Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 5

Hey! I’m starting the move to the domain today, so it’s important that you guys read this update in case you have any questions about how it’s going to work and if there’s anything you need to do as visitors.

The Move – What I’m Doing

It turns out that moving the WordPress installation from one address to another is both simple and difficult. It’s simple in that there are only a few steps. It’s difficult because I have to do them in  a specific order to prevent data loss and minimize downtime.  I also have to do a lot of clean up after words to make sure all my internal links are corrected.

• One of the main things I’m doing until I clean up my internal links is leaving this address open. I won’t be putting up a redirect right away — if I have a link to a story here on the Dear Isobel address, you can still read it.
• That means that you won’t see updates reflected here, but older stuff will be accessible.
• Today, I am dowloading all the files for my site to my computer, then uploading them to the new folder on my server. This is basic and requires nothing from you guys. This is just the static files moving over.
• Tomorow, at 4 PM, I am exporting my database from Dear Isobel. This is where ALL the content is stored. The posts, pages, comments, plug in data, etc. After 4 PM, any comments or material posted here at Dear Isobel will not be moving over.
• I will be then importing all that information to the new site and updating the installation. All of that is happening tomorrow (July 8) between 4 and 6 PM.
• On Thursday, July 9, Flash Fiction updates will resume on the new domain. You will not be able to read Flash Fiction updates on the Dear Isobel address AFTER Wednesday, July 8.
• I will be cleaning up links for the rest of the month. I will be doing this systematically and will let you know in my daily update posts what’s been done and what hasn’t been. Like I said, all the stories will be available at the Dear Isobel site, but no comments will be available.
• By August 1, I expect to have the move completed

What You Can Do

• Update your bookmarks now to the new domain: http://www.crimsonglass.org. It is active and, for the most, redirects to the Dear Isobel address. I’ll be taking that redirect off Thursday morning as long as things go well tomorrow. If they don’t, this site is fine and backed up. I’ll have an update thread at Twitter to keep you in the loop.
• Remember the dates. July 8 is the last day to read Flash Fiction updates here on Dear Isobel. Tomorrow at 4 PM, all comments left on this site will not be moved over.
• August 1, I will be putting up the redirect for the Dear Isobel address.
• September 1, I will be deleting the the files for Dear Isobel. I’ll leave the subdomain active for a year, and then close it down in 2021.

As you can see — most of what you guys need to do is just update book marks and be patient. Other than that, it’s on me to take my time and do everything right the first time. I’m excited to make this move — I never thought CG would be big enough or active enough to warrant its own domain or I would have made the move back in 2014 when I reopened. That’s largely because of you guys — without you, I wouldn’t still be writing about this couple in 2020. #Liason20 as a great celebration, but I have a feeling #Liason21 is going to be even better —

And I’m kicking it off with daily flash fiction updates from August 1-August 24 to make sure all current flash fiction series are finished before I scale back the updates during the school year. I’ll see you guys tomorrow!

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Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 9

Short and sweet. Will have more to say tomorrow.

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Your Update Link: Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 4

Hope everyone’s weekends are going well and that those of you who celebrate Independence Day had a safe celebration. I spent a little time with my nieces and nephews (and had to wrestle the four year old into clothes because he’s a big fan of just wandering out naked, lol) but I got a lot of work done yesterday! I told you I was going to spend the weekend thinking about what I had written and planning the rest of the story. I have some great stuff planned for second half of the novel and will be getting back into writing again tomorrow. Today, I’m going to finalize the chapter breakdown for the next group of chapters.

In other news, this week, I’m also prepping for the move to the new domain. I haven’t updated the Recent Updates page with last week’s posts because I don’t want to create more links to fix. Because I’ll have a redirect, none of the links will actually be broken, it’ll just send you to the CG home page. I’m going to try to make the move as painless as possible. Crimson Glass might be down for a day this week — a few hours at most while I download the files, reupload them, and change links. I won’t do it until the afternoon due to Flash Fiction, so I’ll warn you the day I make the move.

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Your Update Link: Whatever It Takes, Part 8

Hey! Another short & sweet update for you. I finished Chapter 14 yesterday, and have hit about 17k for NaNoWriMo, and 85k overall. I’m taking the weekend off from writing so I can plan the rest of the novel because we’re about 40% of the way through (I think, lol). I hadn’t completed any chapter breakdowns past Chapter 14 because I wanted to stop, take stock of what was working, what wasn’t, and how I want individual story beats to go. I’ll let you know how it’s going when I do flash fiction tomorrow.

If you want to know when I start my timer for Flash Fiction, make sure to follow me on Twitter @crimsonglass. I generally write between 10-11 AM every morning. You can also check my Twitter feed in the sidebar around those times as well. I try to start very close to either the :00 or :30 minute mark.

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Your Update Link: Desperate Measures, Part 8

A short update post for you today! I finished Chapter 12 for Mad World yesterday, adding another 6131 to my total. The chapter I’m writing today is going to be insanely wild, and I can’t wait to see how next week’s chapters unfold. By the end of next week, I ought to have a firmer idea of exactly how many chapters I need to get through the story. We’re a few chapters away from the midpoint.

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Your Update Links: An Everlasting Love, Part 8 & Darkest Before The Dawn, Part 3

Other Links: Bittersweet | Ebooks

Yesterday was the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo and it was also my single best day for writing. I wrote 7139 words and completed Chapter 12. It’s pretty much the exact first day I needed to set the tone for next thirty days to come. I’m continuing my Mad World vlog and in the video embedded at the bottom of the post, I talked about how writing went in June and my hopes for the next month. I filmed it on June 30, so it doesn’t talk about yesterday.

In other news, I completed work on Bittersweet’s sub-site and uploaded the book. I’m going to be redesigning the cover, so you might need to redownload the ebook at a later date. I just forgot that Broken Girl was also a purple cover, and I like Broken Girl’s cover better. I tried to change the color, but it just didn’t work and I hate it now, lol. I continued working on the redesigning the Ebook section. The table layout has been updated and is hopefully a bit nicer to look at. It’s still not quite right, but I’m working on it.

I registered the new domain for Crimson Glass (http://www.crimsonglass.org). It looks like moving the site over is actually going to be easier than I thought it might be, but the site will be going down for a few hours sometime this weekend so I can do it all at once, then set up the redirect.

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Your Update Link: Whatever It Takes, Part 7

Going to keep this short and sweet today because I have another post going up around noon — the Site & Story status post.  I also don’t have a lot to say here. I stayed up a bit too late reading, and I just don’t seem to function well when I sleep past eight anymore. I’m dragging a bit and didn’t get much done before it was time for Flash Fiction.  I’m still hoping to get Bittersweet’s ebook up today, but it honestly might be tomorrow. I’m just…I’m really tired and I need to do something when I’m done flash fic to get myself going because today Camp NaNoWriMo starts and I really want to start it off well.

The overall Mad World goal remains at 175k, but the word count for NaNoWriMo is 108,000. I might be adjusting that goal as we get further into the month and I get a sense of how much story is really left. This has been a really interesting experience for me to not even really know how many chapters I’m looking at. I’ll keep you guys updated on how the project’s going with each flash fiction.

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Your Update Link: Desperate Measures, Part 7

Other Links: Crimson Glass Survey | Ebooks

Hello! I’m continuing my work on the Crimson Glass site, and I’ve relaunched the Ebooks page with the updated links for the ebooks I’ve published in June as well as organizing the older books.  There’s still more design I work I want to do, but it’s far enough along that I can give it to you.

One of the suggestions I received in the survey asked me to talk about the benefits of ebooks so I added a section for that as well. There are some instructions for using Calibre, the Nook, and the Kindle for the books but these are external links at the moment. I’ll be working on writing my own with screencaps or maybe even a video.  Honestly, the biggest benefit to using the books I’ve published is having offline access. One of my regrets is not saving enough of my older favorites and just trusting they’d always be online. For a while, Crimson Glass was offline and my stories were inaccessible.

The other reason I like making ebooks is that I’m treating myself like a traditional writer. Writing fanfiction, particularly of the length and (in my opinion) quality that I do, is a second career for me. I even make a little money from it. So making ebooks allows me to feel like a real writer and it treats you guys like a traditional audience. I love the idea that some people might have my books on their ereaders stored with other more traditional authors. My stories will always be available with the chapter by chapter posting, but as I move to releasing them in full at once, I want you guys to have the ability to read on planes, in bed, and away from your computers or iPads.

I hope that explains why I’ve been putting energy into ebooks. I always wanted to do this kind of scale with them and have them available, but until I started using Scrivener to format them, it was a lot harder to do.

In other news, I’ll be publishing the Site & Story Status post and video tomorrow. Camp NaNoWriMo kicks off tomorrow, and I’m really excited to finish Mad World this month. I’ll see you guys tomorrow!

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