Hello! Today the May 2020 Site & Story Status Video went live on YouTube. I’m linking it below. Here is your text version!

General Writing Update

• The plan for April was to finish revisions for Broken Girl and work on the first draft of Mad World, Book 3. I’ve learned a valuable lesson – NEVER try to do that again, LOL. It was just too hard to juggle a first draft and revisions at the same time, particularly with the challenges of working from home.
• I had some mental health issues, particularly in April. Just a lot of stress from worrying about family I can’t see, news I can’t change, and starting a brand new curriculum teaching double the amount of students I’ve had literally all year. I went from 80 students in ELA/Science to nearly 170 in Spanish in three grade levels. It’s…been interesting.
• Last week was a bad week for that — I kind of hit a breaking point. But I took a few days to get myself together, and this week has been so much better in all ways. I’m looking forward to taking this energy into May and making sure I pay attention to self care.

Site & Channel Update

• Starting the process of changing the site over to a new active story. I changed the widgets, got the For the Broken Girl story page ready to go. I still have some pieces to work out.
• On the channel last month, I completed two vlog series: Revising Broken Girl and Camp NaNoWriMo. They were a lot of fun to film.
• This month, I’m launching a new vlog, Discovering Mad World. I’ve filmed the first three parts — that will start next week. Basically, it’ll be like the BG series — taking you through the process.
• If you’re interested, I can create text highlights of my videos to post here. I do this for my Patreons already, and I’m happy to do it here if you’re not someone who has time/interest in the videos. Let me know by replying!
• Right now, Mad World exists on its own domain. I’ve been thinking of moving it back over here before the next book comes out. I can’t remember now why I put it on its own site. Any thoughts?
• Thanks to a free trial and Patreon support, I now have a subscription to Adobe Creative Suite, which means I get to use Adobe Premiere to edit my channel videos. This summer, I’ll be working on organizing my videos and making promotional videos.

Story Updates

• For the Broken Girl, Book 1:
  • I finished the beta draft on Monday, April 27. I’ve been working on the posting draft this weekk. The alpha draft is available to Patreon supporters at the $3 level, the beta draft at the $5 level, and the posting draft & ebook will be available at the $7 level.
  • I’m hoping to finish the posting draft tonight, the ebook tomorrow, and then start scheduling chapters on Sunday. $1 supporters will get that week’s chapters on Sunday.
• Mad World, Book 3
  • The first draft has had a bumpy road, but we’re getting back into this week as I finish up BG. The plan now is to finish the first draft in June, edit in July, then post in September.
• Fool Me Twice, Book 1
  • We’ll be working on discovery off and on throughout Mad World, B3’s production process. If revisions for MW are done on time in July, we’ll get into the first draft of that sometime in August.