As always, these posts will be divided into parts. Please feel free to skip around to what you’re interested in. Thanks so much for your support and attention this year. It’s been a crazy one, and I have a really awesome community here. I’ve taken in the lessons of 2020 and 2021, and I’m looking forward to a safer and healthier year in 2022.

Note: I’ll be discontinuing the monthly status updates. Any changes to what’s going on will be on the Production Schedule and I’ll mention them in weekly Flash Fiction posts. So this post goes deep in depth because I won’t be really talking at length like this in the future.

ICYMI: Karma, Part 1 went live at The Liason Haven. Part 2 goes up tomorrow morning. You’ll have a week to guess who committed the murder, then I’ll post Part 3 on January 7 and Part 4 on January 8.

Topics

• General Status
• Site & Channel
• Writing
• Patreon

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General Status

• I’ve posted more than enough information on my personal life this year, lol, and I promise not to bog you down here with the details. I’m just really going to sum up and then talk a bit about the changes I want to make for next year.
• I struggled hard with anxiety and stress as well as a healthy work and personal life balance. For me, I basically have one and a half careers between teaching and writing, which I definitely let take over too much, not leaving enough down time to be with friends and family. I spent some time in therapy to work on my anxiety triggers. By doing a better job managing those triggers, it’s made it easier to allow myself the extra time I desperately need to recharge and be a better teacher and writer in the long run.
• I’m incredibly grateful to my Patreon community because their support made paying for therapy through Better Help possible during the lean summer months. I honestly couldn’t have done it with you.
• This upcoming year, I want to continue to work on that balance and to spend more time not “producing” content, whether it’s for my students or my readers. It’s important to remember that spending an entire day off reading and playing video games is perfectly acceptable, even recommended at times.
• I also want to create a schedule that allows time for those things but also creates a routine that my readers can depend on. I know my readership increases when updates are scheduled. I don’t plan to overschedule myself, but to create a happy medium. More on that later.

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Site & Channel

• Channel
  • Channel plans are mostly on hold. My laptop is aging (it’s now four years old) and can’t handle Adobe Premiere very well. I need to do a complete reformat at some point to give it some extra life.
  • Honestly, a new computer is going to be needed within a year. I have some financial issues right now (nothing bad, it’s just a tight budget and I have to plan for two months without a paycheck), but my hope is that next fall, I’ll be able to start saving for it. Hopefully by next Christmas, I’ll have managed it.
  • It’ll be mostly livestreams for the Patreon for a while until I can get my computer under control.
• Site
  • I’m still working on the Facelift plans.
  • I finished the Alternate History redesign and reorganized most of the content which was a huge goal. Alternate Universe still needs a similar overhaul, though less intensive.
  • Once the AU page is done, I’ll be working on Ebooks and organizing my graphic collection. That’ll be my big project for 2022.

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Writing

Overall

• I’ve updated the Production Schedule. You might notice that it’s pretty vague. It’s divided into seasons without any hard dates. That’s the big change. I’m not releasing anything other than soft goals. It also now includes Patreon perks schedule.
• This winter, I’m focusing on getting the new routine together. Things are super uncertain right now with my job — I’m good, but the pandemic is still an issue and it’s creating a lot of unrest and worry. Will we go remote? Will we be shut down? How many of my kids will be quarantined? It’s kind of insane. So basically, we’re just going to get through the winter.
• I have no specific plans beyond the Winter, and everything is subject to change.

Flash Fiction

• Thanks so much for posting in the poll! I really appreciate that!
• Between now and June 30, I’ll only be updating one story at a time.
• Flash Fiction is moving back to Sundays at 11 AM, starting first with Signs of Life, then Scars. I don’t know yet how long each one will be but I should soon. Sunday is the best day for this — I do a lot of prepping for the week so I don’t do a lot of writing or editing anyway. An hour in the morning is perfect.
• If I finish both before June 30, Flash Fiction will go on hiatus and it will return in July.
• During the summer, I’ll have a different schedule but we’ll figure that out when we get there.
• I’ll have different schedules for academic and summer, naturally. September 1 – June 30, we stay weekly. I might pop in on breaks but for the most part — that will be more doable than the last few months.

Smoke & Mirrors

• This is going back into Discovery. I don’t write a lot of paranormal/fantasy, and I need to do a lot of worldbuilding to make the magical stuff in here feel real.
• I made a lot of progress with the November version of the Alpha draft. Both April & November’s version are up now for Patreons at the Obsessed and Stalker tiers.
• I don’t really know when it’ll go back into draft. I have the large outline of the story together in my head, but there are plot details, character stuff, and worldbuilding I still need to feel confident in before I go back to into drafting.

Mad World

• This is my number one priority. My soft goal is an April 1 release. I’ll post a chapter daily until it’s completed.
• Right now, I’ve started rereading the draft. I ended up finishing the first draft in October, and then literally didn’t look at it again until this week which allowed me a really fresh look at it.
• The first half is in decent shape which makes me super happy since I know the back half will need work. I’m at Chapter 91 out of 111, so I have about twenty more chapters to read. I’ll make my notes.
• Soft goals
  • Read completed by January 2
  • Beta draft constructed by January 9 (this is a new outline of the entire story with any additions, cuts, or reorganizations sketched out)
  • Beta draft completed by February 28
  • Posting draft by March 31.
• I’ll keep you guys in the loop, but so far so good.
• I’m also working on rereleasing the first three books. My hope is to have each out by the end of a month — Book 1 in January, Book 2 in February, and Book 3 in March. I was doing a full reread and ran out of time. I wanted to do another sweep for typos and any minor inconsistencies. I finished marking up Book 1 and am slowly editing that. I’ll be updating chapters here, Fanfiction.net, and Archive of Our Own.

Fool Me Twice

• My hope was always to have Books 2 & 3 done this year, but after going back to back with Mad World, Book Three; Fool Me Twice, Book 1; and Mad World, Book 4, I’m a bit burnt out on these massive ensemble pieces that have a ton of moving pieces. Editing them is hard, too.
• Right now, I have FMT still listed as discovery project because I do largely know what I want to do, it’s just making things work in the right order and organizing it. Once I have a general plot line and narrative, I’ll decide whether I want to put it aside for a while or dig into it.
• I don’t have a soft goal other than one day, lol. But hopefully not terrible far away.

Other Projects

• As I mentioned above, I feel a bit burnt out on ensemble projects at the moment, and I still have to actually write the beta draft for Mad World, Book 4. That means I might be looking through my on deck projects to see if I’ve got something a bit simpler. What I’ll likely do is play with all of them to see if anything sticks.
• On Deck Projects — Synopses on Future Projects.
  • For the Broken Girl, Book 2 – the subject matter might keep this on the drawing board. the one bright spot is that it’s largely ready to go and broken down so it could right into drafting.
  • Malice, sequel to Bittersweet – it might be fun to play with this in discovery but it also has a few moving parts which puts it lower on the list
  • These Small Hours – near the top of the list because it’s a fun time period (Fall 2008), includes my catnip couple Johnny/Nadine, but it’s a bit ensemble in nature. Be fun to play with in discovery.
  • Burn in Heaven, sequel to A Few Words Too Many – near the bottom of the list only because it’s ensemble and needs to be dusted off and reworked.
  • Counting Stars – I originally shelved this a few years ago because I didn’t think I had enough material for a full project, but honestly, I reread it a while ago and I liked what I wrote. I think it might be worth dusting off and taking a look since it would be a shorter project and has a lot of the stuff already out of the way
  • Feels Like Home – Ensemble pieces, not happening, lol. Bottom of the list.
  • Kismet – I just played with this December 1997 time period for Karma, so I don’t know if I want to go back right now to it since it retreads some of the same grounds. Still, might be fun to play with in Discovery.
  • Life For Rent – This keeps being pushed off the list and added back, lol. I have no idea where this ranks.
  • Sky is Falling – Alternate Universe, might be fun.
• Another option is go back to completed Flash Fiction pieces and edit them into full projects which something else I’ll be looking at.

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Patreon

In addition to creating a more generous and reliable writing schedule for myself, I’m also planning to completely overhaul my Patreon this year. The tiers are getting one last update for rewards and perks, I’ll have an organized schedule, and I’ll be reposting the content in a new format to make it easier for new Patreons to get their perks.

New Tier Perks & Rewards

• Crimson Fan $1
  • Monthly Q&A Live Stream
  • Crimson Check – weekly status updates posted on Sundays.
• Crimson Love $3
  • Short Stories & Ebooks a week before they go live.
  • Updates on Sunday for chapters going live that week.
• Crimson Devoted $5
  • Posting Draft Updates on last day of the month
  • Ebooks when completed
• Crimson Adored $7
  • Beta Draft Updates on last day of the month.
  • Voting on next Flash Fiction project
• Crimson Obsessed $10
  • Posting Draft updates on last day of the month
  • Crimson Discovery – A blog going into deep dive discovery, with hopes for some brainstorming. Monthly at first, then gradually increasing to weekly.
• Crimson Stalker $15
  • Posting Draft updates each Saturday.
  • Suggestion thread for Flash Fiction and Short Story ideas