Be back around 10:30 with Flash Fiction update and Mad World video with text highlights. 

 

Life & Writing Updates

• So, July was interesting.
• I’m joking, it was even more boring in my house than June.
• Teaching is over, I barely leave the house, and I even stopped shopping for groceries at my local store when I kept seeing people wearing masks. I stayed inside, did a lot of reading, watched a lot of television and wrote. A LOT.
• I got sick towards the end of July which really messed up the structure I’d put into my day to maximize writing. I took a few days off, tried to relax, but I’m still not quite up to the speed I was before I got sick.
• You guys, I discovered drama channels on YouTube after the Shane Dawson stuff, and I am not proud of how much of my life I’ve wasted now, lol.

Site & Channel Updates

• There’s not much to report here. The channel was mostly dormant because when I get really into writing, I don’t have a lot of time to film and edit. I started the channel to maintain communication with you guys in an easier format but with flash fiction, I’m posting daily and that’s serving a similar purpose.
• I do want to get back into my Mad World vlog, particularly during revisions because that really helped me when I was revising Broken Girl.
• In Facelift news, I was moving along at a pretty steady pace in July. I had reworked sub-sites in June, moved to a new domain in early July, and was working on an Alternate History redesign project that included cleaning up the design of all my History rewrites, reworking the organizing, adding new graphics, organizing screencaps and clips — but then I got sick and I haven’t gotten back into it.
• For August, I want to finish reworking Alternate History. The graphics might not get completely done, but I’d like to see the rest of it completed because that’s the largest portion of the site and needs the most work.

Story News – Mad World

• When I wrote the last status page, I had written 10 chapters. Now, it’s 23 chapters later and the story looks VERY different.
• Not only did I write a lot, I also changed the order of the story — wrote a whole new first half of the story and added a lot of things I hadn’t planned to.
• I had hoped to be done the first draft on or by July 31, but the addition of 15 chapters in the beginning of the story, and then writing everything out of order (I wrote the middle 17 chapters, then the first 15, now I’m working on the back 8), it’s kind of messed with me a bit, lol.
• I’m a very linear writer so it’s been a struggle to accomodate all of this — and this first draft is incredibly messy and will a lot of revising. How much? I won’t know for sure until I read through the first draft.
• Patreons will still get the draft on time — I’m posting the first 15 chapters on August 1 (today!), the middle 17 on August 2, and the final leg of the story sometime next week when it’s completed. I’d honestly like to be done by August 6 because that is probably the limit of how much revision time I can afford to use without pushing back my release date.
• At this point, we’re not doing that — October 6 is still the general site release. I’ll keep you guys in the loop as I move through revisions. It depends on how much time I can spend in September on the story. I don’t know what my job situation is going to look like because of COVID.
• It’s really important to remember that the story is currently at 196, 362 words. When I did the site and story status last month, the story was at 61k. I’ve written 130,000 words since then. There’s a lot to go through, lol.
• There’s a slight chance Mad World might get divided into two books — with a release in October and December. I should know whether that’s going to happen once the full draft is done and I’ve read it over in full. If I feel like there are two separate main narratives, I will. If it’s just a reallllly long book that isn’t going to get cut down much in editing, I still might do a split but you won’t get “official” books and the releases would be closer together (half in Oct and half maybe 1-2 weeks later.)

Story News – Flash Fiction

• Flash Fiction plugged along relatively well until last week when I took off Wednesday – Sunday to make sure I stayed mostly on track with Mad World and didn’t lose time.
• Flash Fiction returned on Monday, and I finished An Everlasting Love. That story is going into revisions and I should have more information soon on when you might be able to expect it.
• I still have three series in progress, and at this point, don’t plan to add a fourth. I’ll finish the ones in progress and begin a new schedule with new series sometime later this month or early September.
• Hopefully, we’ll be back at 10 AM schedule for August. Once I’m back to work, it will likely decrease from daily to 2-3 times a week and be moved to the evening. We’ll see what happens once we get there.

Story News – Other Projects

• Once Mad World goes into revisions, it’s time to start thinking about what’s next! Fool Me Twice goes into discovery today. I had thought about waiting until the first draft was completely done but honestly — I need a bit of a break from Mad World and looking at FMT for maybe 20 minutes a day will help.
• Right now, the production schedule for Book 1 of Fool Me Twice is Discovery in August and September, then alpha draft in October & November, revisions in December & January, and release in February.  Based on the length I think this is going to be, I honestly think this schedule is fine the way it is.
• I also have some thoughts about what I want to do in August to celebration Liason 21 — my plans got a bit derailed when I got sick so I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it after all. I’ll let you guys know once I can really devote more time to it.