Update Link: Watch Me Burn – Part 23

Happy Friday 🙂 A couple of housekeeping announcements, so I’m tucking them under the Read More tag.  There are some notes about Fool Me Twice, how and when everyone gets to read, and some really awesome Patreon news for anyone interested in some free perks. I go into more detail in that section, but all Patreon support goes to into supplementing my paychecks, so I can put away more money during the summer. As a teacher, I don’t get paychecks in July & August. I used to have a part-time job, but I was able to quit it in 2018 due to the year round support 🙂

Fool Me Twice – Writing Status
For Your Information

I ended up not being able to make up Wednesday’s Flash Fiction yesterday because I hit a snag in Fool Me Twice, and I wanted to focus on ironing that out. The first draft of that is a MAJOR priority, and I’m really trying to get through to the finish line as quickly as possible so that I can dig into the bulk of the edits this summer.  I go back to work starting August 28, which means these next two months are my best opportunity to put together content to publish during the school year.

The goal is to get Fool Me Twice through at least the big second round of editing where I do most of the rewrites, which keeps that October publication date in sight.  My secondary goal is to get Signs of Life completed this summer so that I can post it in September.

Fool Me Twice – Publication
Feedback Request!

As I stated above, the target for this novel is October. I’m thinking about how I want to publish. Over the last few years, we’ve experimented with a few types of release. In 2020, I published For the Broken Girl and Mad World Book 3. With Broken Girl, I posted the first half in installments over about six weeks, and then dumped the second half on you at once. Mad World Book 3, I published the whole book at once. In 2021, Fool Me Twice Book 1 was posted in two chunks — the first half over about two months, then we took a break, and then the second half in installments. Mad World Book 4 was in installments over a period of five months. Counting Stars, in 2022, I posted a chunk of chapters every week.

I’m going to be doing a more formal poll as we approach October, but I’m definitely interested in which type of release works better for your reading level and if there’s anyway I can make reading the chapters easier, but for now, if you  have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Patreon Changes
For Your Information

Patreon, the service I use for readers to support my work, released early access to some tools that I’m excited to use because they let me share more features with everyone. It creates a new “free” type of membership where you can be on a “tier” but it doesn’t cost anything.

This is useful because, as you might have noticed, we’ve been having some downtime issues at Crimson Glass. I suspect that it’s due to the type of plugins I use on WordPress, so I’m going to be looking to move the most intensive resource plugins over to a different service, and now I can do that on Patreon. Also, if we have some serious downtime the way we did a few months ago, I’ll have a way to communicate readers. I’ll be moving the polls and downloads over there, so when I drop excerpts and previews, you’ll get an email from Patreon. I won’t post them on the website. This site will be just for the reading.

If you’re interested in joining the free tier over at Patreon, please head over and look for the button to “Join” the community, which is typically below the different tiers.

The other really cool feature they’ve added a digital shop. Last year, we experimented with offering Patreon perks for a one time purchase (like the upcoming Fool Me Twice draft!), so you can just pay once instead of offering monthly support. I’m hoping this will let me also offer “free” digital items like ebooks, so I can move downloads off the site entirely, so look for those later this summer as I launch the digital store.

All Patreon support goes towards boosting my budget during the summer. Thanks to my amazing Patreons, I was able to quit my second job in 2018. I used to tutor at night and in the evening, so if you’ve noticed a lot more writing since 2018, that’s why! I don’t get paid in the summer, so I have to save extra money from my paychecks to work on the bills. It really helps to not have to worry about any of that and just write full-time for two months every year! I love and appreciate everyone who’s ever donated or support me these last six years 🙂