Your Update Links: An Everlasting Love, Part 12 & Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 7.

I just want to make a quick clarification about An Everlasting Love because I’m seeing the same comments over and over again about Cameron’s paternity. I’m not sure if I’m not not making it clear, but he’s Cameron Lewis’s son. There’s literally no chance that he is anyone else’s son, especially Jason’s. I’ll make it even more clear in the revisions.

In moving news, I’m going through the site page by page to not only check for links and broken images, but to clean up and make updates. Today, I said I’d be going through the subsites. I cleaned up all internal links on Mad World, For the Broken Girl, and Bittersweet. All links & images have been updated.  I also fixed the links on the In Progress page & Alternate History pages.  (I had accidentally linked to the .com address, not the .org).

I also started updating individual story pages. These are going a bit slower because I’m not just replacing links but updating character images. I also want to update other stuff — like adding banners where they don’t exist, and creating featured images for the story pages. When I first opened this site, I only had one set of character images, mostly from around 2008, the last time I’d updated my own collection. But over the last six years, I’ve added characters images for 2001, 2002, and 2012, so some of the stories taking place between 1999-2004 are going to be updated with those earlier images.

So far, these pages are done completely. I’m putting together a full to do list today that I’ll have for you guys tomorrow. Now that the site is moved, I can start getting to work on the rest of the facelist.

• In Progress – Links updated. Content organized.
• Complete: History – Images & Banners updated. Missing a few featured banners.
  • Bittersweet – Links & images completed. I still have some content to fill out.
  • No One Else Sees Me – needs a banner and featured image but HTML is cleaned up.
  • Spinning on An Axis – Images updated. Needs a banner.
  • Mad World – All updated. Book 3 Synopsis needs updating.
  • For the Broken Girl – Still some content work to be done, but mostly done.

Your Update Links: Desperate Measures, Part 11 & Whatever It Takes, Part 11

Hey! Sorry for not updating yesterday. I’ve been having a bit of trouble sleeping and haven’t been feeling quite myself the last two days. I took it easy yesterday and relaxed, but there are consequences to that 😉 Today and tomorrow will be double update to get back on schedule.

I am a bit behind in Mad World — I had 21 days to write 21 chapters. Now I have 18 1/2 chapters to write in 16 days. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with that — I think I might try and do an extra chapter on Saturday and Sundays to get caught up. I only wrote one scene on Tuesday, and then three more yesterday. I have two more scenes in the chapter that I would have finished yesterday, but my mother called me. She keeps forgetting that I’m writing between 1 and 4, and LOL. So I think I’ll finish Chapter 52 today, and start fresh with 53 tomorrow to get back on track to a chapter a day.

I don’t think I’ll miss my July 31 deadline quite yet. It’s harder to double up on weekdays, but weekends are more doable, so we’ll see.

In other news — I think I’ve finished updating most of the links and images, at least on the pages you guys use the most. The entire Story section has been updated as has  the Ebooks page. I’ll be looking at the subsites tomorrow, but I also think they’re updated as well. I’ll take a systematic approach to it going forward, but mostly — I’m going page by page to clean them up anyway. Let me know if you see anything broken that needs to be fixed sooner.

See you guys tomorrow!

Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love – Part 11

Hey! So I started working on fixing links and images today. I didn’t get as far as I wanted to because I had to restart my computer. So far the In Progress and Alternate History pages are done. I’ll try to finish all the story pages tomorrow.

In other news – up until now, the Flash Fiction feature has been a site exclusive. I’d planned to revise the stories and distributed the finish products. Over the weekend, Laurie from Liasonites Gathering reached out to ask me if I’d be interested in posting daily flash fiction on their message board. I was ridiculously excited to be asked (I’ve missed posting on message boards). My normal stories aren’t very message board friendly because I use bold and italtics that take forever to format, but since flash fiction is unedited, I can post them with only one extra step.

So please check out the message board, Liasonites Gathering, join, and get to your 25 posts to enjoy the new sub forum: LissieLove’s Flash Fiction

Okay, so the move was relatively easy because I wasn’t moving hosts or servers — which meant I didn’t have to do anything with the database. I updated URLS and moved files. Because I’m not moving databases, however, the old files at Dear Isobel aren’t going to be available. The old address now redirects here because the files aren’t going to work anyway.

I’ve already updated the links on the main page, the story sub sites (Bittersweet, Mad World, and For the Broken Girl.). The links are also updated on the Alphabetical List. What is broken is…ha, everything else. The pages under the “Stories” menu need to be updated, and there are going to be images broken throughout the site in random places. It’s going to take me about a week to get through them all because I’m going to do them slowly so I don’t miss anything. After this week, I’ll put up a form for anyone to report broken links or images in case I miss anything.

The good news is that because I’ve used a plugin to organize my chapter links, all the stories still work just fine. Please use the Alphabetical List or any links into the update blog this week. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as to what’s working when. Thanks for your patience!

I’ll see you guys tomorrow for the next round of Flash Fictions, and a special announcement about something really exciting happening this week 😉

 

Your Update Links: Whatever It Takes, Part 10 & Darkest Before the Dawn, Part 6

Tomorrow, I’ll be moving the site (finally!) so with any luck, on Monday, Flash Fiction will be on the new site and I’ll be working on cleaning up links.

Here’s your update on Mad World — I’ve restructured the draft so that the chapters that I’ve already written are now going to be the second half of the book. Originially, I had planned to start the chapter numbers at 1 because we were going to pick up three months after Book 2. Instead, I’ll be picking up the story the day after Book 2, which means the chapters will be 51, 52, etc. I’m adding fourteen chapters in the beginning, and then there will be seven more chapters after the 17 already written.

I have 21 chapters left to write with 21 days left in July. No dates have changed, and I feel super great about the additions. I’ve saved myself a lot of time and grief in revisions by fixing the problems now and I’m excited to get going with it today!

Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 10 & Desperate Measures, Part 10

Don’t forget that today and tomorrow are both a double update for Flash Fiction. I’ll be working on the site move on Sunday, and not having a flash fiction scheduled that day will make it easier.

In other news, I’ve got some interesting progress to report about Mad World. Yesterday, while working on Chapter 18, I was struggling with the chapter I had planned. Characters were feeling stilted, the situation felt a bit wrong–and it has felt that way a little bit all week. Not a lot — just a little. So I sat down for part of yesterday to figure out why.

I knew that the draft was messy and would need a lot of revisions when we got to August. What’s happened is that we’ve reached a point where my brain knows that the amount I have to rework and shuffle around is starting to feel almost overwhelming. This is mostly because the timeline isn’t working, and some of the characters are a bit off. That’s okay — it happens, and part of the problem is that while writing this draft, I discovered a lot more about characters and plot ideas that will make the final product even better.

That being said, I’ve come to a point where I have to actually stop and rethink. I have to think about how I’m going to revise so that I can plan the last third of the draft properly. There are two ways this can go — 1, I can sort out the ways I’m going to change, figure out what those changes mean for the rest of the draft, then save those changes for the revisions. I can then finish the full first draft and get to the ending. That’s best case scenario for me moving forward and finishing the story. 2. The amount of revision needed is actually going to change the characers enough that I need to write large parts of the revisions to properly envision the end of the story which means I need to leave the alpha draft process, go into beta for a bit, then come back to finish the draft.

The good news for all of you is that none of this changes my deadlines. I’m about 75% of the way through the original plans for the draft, which is a great place to be halfway through July. I would have likely finished this draft sometime next week, ahead of schedule. We’re still seven weeks out from general release — so starting revisions now isn’t a terrible idea and might actually be good in the long run.

Patreon deadlines are still scheduled to happen, and so is the general realease. I’m just having some interesting writing problems, lol. I’ll keep you guys in the loop and update you tomorrow how it’s going.

Hey! Dropping a note to let you know I’m not working on Flash Fiction today. I’m feeling a bit tired, and running behind in a few things. I baby-sat for my sister yesterday, and of course, everything took twice as long and I didn’t sleep well. So I’m going to get caught up today.

I’m going to make life easier by doubling up on Flash Fiction tomorrow (so we stay on schedule) and again on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, I’ll complete the site move so that I can take the site down briefly and move things over without worrying that people haven’t had a chance to read that day’s update.

So I’ll see you guys tomorrow at 10:30 and 11 AM for your updates! Thanks!

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.

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!

Your Update Link: An Everlasting Love, Part 9

Short and sweet. Will have more to say tomorrow.