So it’s been about six or seven weeks since the last update. I wanted to give you guys some concept of how we’re going to go forward into the fall since I’ll be juggling five classes and a part-time work schedule (and baby-sitting nieces and nephews!)

Site Features

1. I want to add a new sort feature that will give better ideas on length. If you want a full-length novel (more than 50,000 words), you’ll be able to find that. If you want something shorter, you can go to novellas, which will range from 15,000 to 50,000 words. Everything else will be in that short story, ficlet range where it already exists.

I had contemplated reoganizing the site and moving stories around to reflect this change. For example, a story like Spinning On An Axis which has always been located in the Alternate History section would move to the novellas area, because it’s about 32,000 words long. But instead, I’ll just tag it with the word “novella” the way I would tag it with a character or couple featured, so if you wanted something that was mid-sized, you could get it.

Adding this feature may seem like a waste of time, but sometimes the chapter length doesn’t give you an accurate idea of how long something is. For example, Spinning is 15 chapters long. Shadows is only three parts, but it’s 20,000 words. You’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

2. On the subject of adding more usefulness to the sort features, I want to start working on adding summaries to the Sort By Title page. I think that this is probably the most visited page in that section, and while I do list where the story is located, it still doesn’t give you enough information to decide whether you want to read it. This is going to be kind of time-consuming, so I’ll be working on it on and off in a separate file. There are around 100 stories listed on the site at the moment.

3. I need to be better with ebook releases. I still haven’t added All We Are, even though the ebook for that is finished. It needs to be converted into two other formats. But I’ve been meaning to set aside one day a month to do ebooks so I can do a new release every month. I hope to fix that going forward, but we’ll see.

Those are the major site changes I’m planning. They go along with the normal stuff — I’m working on a fall layout, but it’s taking longer than I expected since I’m rewriting the WordPress theme code to better reflect everything I’ve learned.

Story Status

The Best Thing – So I’ve finished writing through Chapter 30. I’ve planned and storyboarded through Chapter 35, which with the addition of an epilogue, will complete the story. I’ve tentatively scheduled myself to finish the last five chapters this weekend and part of next week, but definitely by September 1. I’ll continue posting once week to give me a finish date (projected) of October 10.

Damaged – I have done a ton of work on this story this last week and have planned the major storylines through the end of Season 2 and Season 3, with some tentative work on Season 4. At the moment, there’s no plans to go beyond Season 4. I may do a wrap up Season 5 depending on how things unfold as I continue writing.

If everything continues to go to plan, Season 2 will finish on October 8. I’m not positive about when Season 3 will premiere. I took a month off between seasons last time, but it wasn’t enough time, to be honest. I’m thinking a premiere date of December 1 would be the best bet, but it might move up depending on how things move along.

For example, I’ll be finishing The Best Thing by September 1, so while I’ll be working on the next story, I might take the opportunity to write two episodes of Damaged a week. If I can finish writing the season sooner than October 8, I’d feel more comfortable bringing it back in early November.

I can’t make any promises since I don’t know how heavy my schedule will be.

Bittersweet – Because I’ve been concentrating on completing The Best Thing by September 1 and Damaged Season 2 by September 15, I’ve pushed Bittersweet to the back burner a bit. It’s the still the next story I’m working on, but I’m glad I decided not to start posting it this week. I’ms still looking at a mid-September, early October launch. I should know by the time I finish writing The Best Thing.

Other Stories

Up Next: Burn in Heaven, Mad World, and Feels Like Home are all on the roster to be written next. I know I’ve been saying this for a year, haha, but as I remarked before, I’ve been burnt out on writing Liason 2004-08 just due to the elements that have to be dealt with. I have no problem writing Sam and Courtney, I’m just tired of writing the baggage, and all three of these stories incorporate it to a certain extent. So I’ll be taing a break to work on Bittersweet, then coming back to these three projects.

These Small Hours – This story is still on my radar, make no mistakes about it. I’m eager to get back into it, but the outline is coming out right because it’s more ensemble than I had anticipated in the initial outlines. It was originally going to be straight Johnny and Nadine with Jason and Elizabeth as supporting characters, but I underestimated how much I would have to deal with Sonny and Kate, and when you deal with them, you have to deal with Jason and Elizabeth more.

So I’m trying to shift it so that it’s written more like The Best Thing, only in reverse with Jason and Elizabeth as the semi-main characters but it being Johnny and Nadine’s story. TBT has Jason and Elizabeth as the main characters with Sonny/Carly and Nikolas/Emily, with some Steven thrown in for good measure. Like Sonny and Carly, the Liason subplot will be fully fleshed out, but won’t steal the focus. That’s if I can make the outline behave.

Counting Stars – I’ve been tempted to sit down and just write this story because it’ll be less than a full novella. It’s kind of like All We Are with an even more narrow focus and less twists and turns. I could probably write it in about a week if I had no other distracts, and doing that and posting it would give me more space to work on more intensive story.

Any other stories not mentioned remain on the drawing board. 🙂