A few things today. One, my first few weeks back have been extremely stressful, mostly because the bookstore messed up an order on a book I couldn’t get anyway else so my entire study schedule was thrown completely out the window. So I’ve been scrambling to get back on track. If everything goes right during the next two days, I can get back to my plan.

This matters because I literally have not been able to open Mad World since classes started, and I have a few revisions on Bittersweet that have to be done before I can focus on Book 2. So what that means is that I might have a gap in new content. I thought I’d ask for your feedback on exactly how to proceed here.

The options are

1. Post 2 chapters of Mad World a week, finishing in December, and then waiting maybe 1-2 months for Book 2.
2. Post 1 chapter of Mad World a week, with no gap in new content.

Please reply and let me know which works better for you guys.

The second thing is that there are two more days to vote in the NaNoWriMo Primary Poll — I posted seven projects and you guys can vote for your top 3 choices. If you clear your cookies, you can always vote again if you want. Right now, the top 4 choices are insanely close, so I might have two more polls with one vote. It closes September 15.

Third, Death Becomes Her, the novella I wrote for GH Mystery Weekend at The Liason Haven is posted there. It’s about 18,000 words so it’s a good long alternate universe murder mystery. I’ll be posting it here at some point this weekend or next.

And last, the thing you all came here for: Bittersweet, Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sorry to spam your inbox today, but Death Becomes Her has been completed over at The Liason Haven, so head over to find out who murdered Ava Jerome!

I also messed up the link in this morning’s post, so if you haven’t voted for the NaNoWriMo story this year, you have until Friday to pick your top 3.

Hey everyone! Thanks for the response to last week’s chapter. I’m so excited for Bittersweet to be back! While going over the final revision notes, I realized I needed to write more one more chapter. This isn’t a big deal — I probably won’t even push back Mad World — but it does mean you get to look forward to one more chapter of Bittersweet!

I’m posting Chapter 26 today. If you go to the Bittersweet story page, you’ll notice it looks like the next chapter has already been posted and has the word “Protected” as part of the title. This is because it’s password protected and available for Patreon supporters. I also plan to post a few more chapters this week to make schedule a bit easier next week, so don’t worry if you see that pop up more often going forward. All chapters are released to the general public.

Read Bittersweet, Chapter 26.

Catch the first part of #GHWhoDunit, Death Becomes Her at the Liason Haven before I post Part 2 later today at 3 PM.

Don’t forget to vote in the November NaNoWriMo poll before Friday! After that, the top two or three choices will be available for a run-off!

So excited you guys are finally getting to read this story! The way this works is that I post the first half today which presents the mystery, you guys reply and guess the guilty party, and then I post the conclusion on Monday afternoon.

Death Becomes Her – Part 1

Head on over to Liason Haven to participate! I’ll be back on Monday with a new chapter of Bittersweet (Chapter 25 was posted yesterday in case you missed it.)

Voting to choose the next NaNoWriMo project is still open until September 15. Don’t forget to vote!

Hey! I am so sorry — usually I have this update scheduled but my entire schedule got away from me over the last two days with going back to graduate school yesterday and arguing with my student accounting and financial aid offices. College bureaucracy is super frustrating.

Anyway, thanks to Angela stepping into help me finish beta reading the last few chapters, Bittersweet is returning this week! This is the first day of the next three or four months of steady updates. I know I said I would be posting two chapters of Mad World a week but my writing has really slowed down over the last week or so, and I’m not sure I’ll be finished Book 2 before November. I might still hit a good stride and start churning out chapters, but you may just be getting one update a week just to make sure I still have new content often.

Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I’ve posted Bittersweet, Chapter Twenty-Five, so go enjoy and let me know what you think! Stay tuned for tomorrow — around 4 PM I will be posting the first part of my #GHWhoDunIt at The Liason Haven. I’ll update here that I’ve posted it, but you’ll have to go to the board to read it at least for a few weeks. I won’t be posting it here in its entirety for a little while 😛

See y’all tomorrow!

Hey! My original plans for the evening didn’t work out (I was gonna play my Random Legacy Challenge on the The Sims 4 but the gallery and I are having a fight so it’s not working out) so I decided to finally update Fool Me Twice.  So here is Part 11.

Also a note about next week: Bittersweet is going to return on Wednesday. Chapter 25 will be posted at 7 AM. If you are a Patreon supporter, you will get that chapter on Monday at 7 AM. Every supporter at the $1 tier and above will get two day early access to new chapters. So Wednesday updates on Monday, and Monday updates on Saturdays.

I haven’t decided exactly how to do this yet — whether to password protect the entries here at CG or upload the files straight to Patreon. Keep tuned and if you’re a supporter, you should get an email when it gets posted.

Thanks for the response to Kismet, Part 1! I actually have a rough outline kind of mapped out for where I want this to go. I’m going to get some other series updated in the next few days, particularly Smoke and Mirrors and Fool Me Twice. And here is Part 2.

Here is the gif that inspired Kismet in the first place:

First touch #Liason19 pic.twitter.com/u8wv5dzwPD

— Shayma Shahshah (@Shaymashahshah) August 29, 2018

 

Inspired by a gif on Twitter from @Shaymashahsha during the #Liason19 celebration, I recreated the shooting at Luke’s when Jason cut into Nikolas’s throat to help him breathe back in 1997. I kept Jason’s history, and changed Elizabeth’s age by about four or five years (depending on how you age her — technically, she was 15 that night because she turned 16 in 1998, but then she turned 18 in 1999, so yeah, anyway, she’s 20 in this, and Jason is about 24).

Kismet – Part One

On this, the anniversary of the day Jason and Elizabeth came crashing into our lives (August 27, 1999), I wanted to do a recap of what’s happened at CG this summer and what you can (firmly) expect from CG in the fall.

First a word on Liason
When Lucky died in that fire in April 1999, I was not yet an Elizabeth Fan the way I am now. I loved her, don’t get me wrong, but she wasn’t yet my favorite character on the show. I had watched Jonathan Jackson grow up on GH, and while I really really liked Liz when she first started, I probably paid her more attention because she was part of JJ’s group on screen. I liked her better than Sarah, and definitely wanted them together. Liz & Lucky were my first love, and it was so hard to let go of that. When they killed Lucky off, I was pretty inconsolable, and like Liz, I wasn’t really sure how to go on. (I was 14 and VERY dramatic.) Liz became my spirit animal and whatever she wanted, I wanted it for her.

Soap Opera Digest previewed the Jason and Liz scene from that August, and I remember rolling my eyes, because seriously? No one was ever going to replace Lucky.  I didn’t really watch a lot of OG Liason because I went back to school, I was super busy with activities, and I tuned back in briefly the next summer only to learn that my beloved Lucky had been RUINED by Jacob Young. (I will NEVER forgive GH for casting him as Lucky.) I saw a few scenes with Jason and I was mildly intrigued, but then summer was over and I left GH behind again.

In the summer of 2002, I was recovering from foot surgery, and I watched Jason rescue Liz from the crypt. I watched their scenes, went to the web, found The Canvas, and because I was stuck in bed for a month, I devoured fanfiction. And I will say, my love for Liason began first as fanfiction, and then as I gradually watched clips and really got to experience 1999 and 2001, I fell in love. I started to write fanfiction that summer, and since then, no other couple has grabbed my attention.

I’m not really sure why this is the Liz pairing I’ve stuck with. I’ve liked her other pairings — I didn’t love Liz and Ric, but I liked the material it gave Liz. I loved Liz and Lucky with GV in the role, but I was okay with them exploding. I didn’t get into Niz because I was sorry that the lovely platonic friendship was lost. I loved Liz with Jake Doe, and I adored Liz and AJ.

But nothing has ever made me as happy or given me so much anxiety like Liason, and for me, the anniversary of falling in love with them happened last month with the sixteenth anniversary of the crypt rescue, but it’s hard to deny that August is a special month for our couple. So happy nineteenth anniversary and let’s hope our twentieth happens with our couple and GH still on screen next year.

On to Crimson Glass

Believe it or not, this was a very productive summer. I reorganized the Workshop and revived Flash Fiction, of which ten new entries have been posted. I also briefly brought back Bittersweet and wrote a new short story.  For Camp NaNoWriMo, I wrote Mad World, Book 1.

Going forward, I have official posting dates for two of my projects: Mad World, Book 1, and Bittersweet‘s final eight chapters. On September 5, Bittersweet will return. I will be posting two chapters a week until it’s completion on October 1.

Also in September, I am participating in the GHWhoDunIt at The Liason Haven. On September 6, you will get the first part of a mystery, then guess the guilty party. On September 10, I will post the second part at the Haven. After that, the full story will be posted here.

And then on October 3, 2018, you will be getting Mad World, Book 1. I will be posting two chapters a week (Mondays & Wednesdays) which brings us into the first week of December.  At that point, I’m hoping to start posting Book 2.  I’m scheduled to finish writing that by the end of October, but if this graduate semester takes a lot more energy than I anticipate, we might push posting Book 2 back until January.

In November, I will start a new project for NaNoWriMo. You still have a chance to choose the project. I’ve posted seven options in a poll that will continue until September 15. At that point, the top two options will go into a run off until October 1. Right now, Signs of Life and Life for Rent are leading.  In December, I will change gears and start writing Damaged, Season 3 which is scheduled to be posted in February 2019.

Starting today, synopses from Patreon are now posted as part of the poll, so if you’ve already voted and now want to change your vote, I think you can if you clear your cookies 😛

And along with those planned updates, I will continue with Flash Fiction a few times a week. I’ve tried to schedule them, but sometimes I get an extra 20 minutes so we go with it.

Starting September 5, you are guaranteed two updates a week for at least three months. I’m pretty excited about that because all of that content is ALREADY written. I’ve been trying to get myself into this position for years, and I finally got there.  At least for now.

Thanks guys for sticking by me and thanks those of you who have supported Crimson Glass at Patreon. I’m glad that beta drafts of Mad World and Bittersweet were good rewards 🙂 If you can’t support the site, don’t worry. You support me every time you click and read something I write. Leave a comment to let me know–feedback is always the best way to show appreciation!  There is no content at Patreon that will not be eventually posted here at Crimson Glass, so don’t worry about that.

Thanks for sticking it out for so long, and I’m glad that Fall 2018 is almost here! I’m so excited for you guys to read the rest of Bittersweet and Mad World!

 

I’m trying to get into a routine of writing Flash Fiction on Fridays, but just when I was going to start writing last night, I had an asthma attack. Apparently, I am more sensitive to my scented candles than I was a week ago. Ugh. Growing old is stupid.

Thanks again to everyone who signed up for Patreon this month. I didn’t have the account set up so that you were charged as soon as you pledged so you don’t get charged until September 1. I don’t know if that means you can’t get access to any of the benefits. Can someone let me know if that’s true? Because maybe there’s something I can to fix that.

I wrote Smoke and Mirrors, Part 4 today as part of my first Flash Fiction. I had set my timer for 20 minutes, but then I was writing the scene and couldn’t quite finish, so I kept going. I finished in 35 minutes which is still under 60 minutes which is my maximum. I’m going to try to get to Fool Me Twice tonight.

I don’t yet have a date for Bittersweet’s return but I really don’t want to wait longer than the first week of September, so hopefully I’ll be able to figure out something. I may just post un-beta’d chapters here and then repost when they’re beta read. We’ll see.

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, then you probably don’t know how Mad World, Book 2 is going. It’s a bit slower than Book 1, but it’s possibly because I wrote 77,000 words in July and my brain is still recovering. I’m still writing every day — I’m just not writing entire chapters every day. I’m on Ch. 26 (which means I’ve written 5 1/2 chapters in Book 2), and I hope to get some of my mojo back next week. My goal is to get through 10 chapters a month, which puts me at a finish line of the end of October. We’ll see 😛