“The Christmas Wish” Update

So one of my goals for 2019 is to self-publish this book by Christmas. Let’s see how I’m doing.

I am close to finishing Chapter 9. It’s the first part of what had been Chapter Seven when it was a fanfic, where Adelaide and Theo are starting to fall in love and celebrate their marriage with the rest of the town. Once I’m done, I’ll turn the second part into Chapter 10, which will focus on their first date and contains a lot of Theo’s backstory.

From there, we have an incident that sets Adelaide and Theo back before approaching the climax. The end is nearing and I expect this draft to be done within the next couple months, hopefully by spring.

Then what? Well, I’ll let you know as I get closer. However, I imagine it will be getting some feedback on the new draft.

I know there isn’t a lot to this update. I guess I don’t want to share too much even though it’s been around as a fanfic for two years now. Maybe I’ll have more as I get closer to finishing it.

As a reminder, you can get access to sneak peeks of “The Christmas Wish” as well as deleted material by supporting me on Patreon. Please consider doing so.

Have a good week everyone!

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Happy 2019 to Me!

So, it’s now 2019. We’ve wrapped up 2018 so it’s time to set some anticipations for the coming year. Here we go!

• Finish converting The Christmas Wish and ready it for self-publishing by Christmas
• Finish Better When I’m Dancing and start Soldier Verse’s proper story
• Try to get back to posting Comfort Food once a month
• Better plan out writing events and preparing in advance so I’m not in a rush or end up abandoning them
• Get back on my regular posting schedule here
• Regularly post recaps and reviews on my other blog
• Post more reviews on my book blog and on Goodreads
• Network with more writers

I’m confident I’ll be able to meet most of these anticipations and I believe you can as well.

I wish you well and hope you do the same for me.

Year in Review: 2018

So, 2018 has come and gone. At the beginning of the year, I made some “anticipations” for the year. Let’s see if how I did.

• • Work on The Christmas Wish with aim of self-publishing by Christmas

I have worked on The Christmas Wish all year long, though I didn’t manage to publish by this Christmas. Looking back, that might have been too lofty a goal.

• • Jump start the Big Project and work for self-publishing in 2019

I’m still focused on The Christmas Wish so the Big Project has remained on the backburner—for now.

The Christmas Wish Chapter 4: Christmas Eve

The sneak peeks of my fanfic-turned-novel, The Christmas Wish, return as Adelaide, Theo and the people of Stony Castle start to celebrate Christmas.

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Adelaide held Hugh’s hand as they entered the warm and brightly lit diner, Hugh bouncing by her side. Minnie had decorated more since they had been there that morning, pushing the tables aside to create more room in the middle of the diner so people could stand around. A Christmas tree now stood next to the jukebox and Christmas lights hung around the diner. Fake snow covered the windows and paper candy canes, snowmen, Santas and reindeer were taped up on the walls. Christmas music wafted over the buzz of the conversations and Adelaide paused, taking a deep breath to bask in the holiday spirit filling the place.

People greeted her and her son as she headed toward the back. She recognized most from her job at Town Hall, usually because they were lodging complaints for some reason or another. Tonight, though, she only heard good wishes for her holiday and New Year as everyone put aside business for this one day. Adelaide returned every greeting she got with a warm smile and Hugh waved to everyone like he was the mayor parading down Main Street.

“Adelaide! Hugh! Over here!” Maisie waved from the table she had taken for her family, rocking her baby son Daniel in one arm. She wore a festive red sweater with snowmen embroidered on it and had paired it with a nice black skirt as well as black snow boots. A red headband sat in her brown hair with silk holly and red beads mimicking berries attached to it. Daniel wore a Santa Claus onesie and together with his mother, looked like something out of a Christmas catalogue.

The Christmas Engagement

Did you know Hallmark Channel has a Fantasy Football type league made up of its Christmas movies? You choose the movies you think will be the most watched that weekend and then you are awarded points based on where they fall once the ratings come in. I’m playing and it’s kinda fun to weigh my favorites with what I think others favor.

And of course, it’s fun to watch the movies. Are they predictable? Cheesy? Pretty much cookie cutter? Yes. But I still love them. And clearly so do many, many other people. Admit it, you do too.

So is there a point to me talking about Hallmark’s movies? Yes, there is!

In the past couple posts, I’ve mentioned participating in the annual Outlaw Queen Advent calendar but couldn’t really explain what I was working on for it due to the rules. Well, my story went up already so now I feel comfortable sharing what it was about with you!

2018 Reading Challenge Update

Another year is about to come to a close. It’s amazing that it’s December already. So since it’s the end of the year, I figure it’s time to do my final Reading Challenge update.

My goal was to read 13 books. So how did I do?

I reached my goal! And I’ll most likely surpass it by one book. I’m currently reading three books but Wives of War is almost done as my Kindle says I’m about 90% of the way through it. According to Goodreads, I’m only about 38% through The Glass Ocean and 28% of The Impossible Girl. So I’m comfortable in saying that Wives of War will be my last finished book of 2018.

I am so proud of myself for hitting my goal. I worried there for a bit this summer but I made it.

How about you?

Getting Back on Track

Update: I was going to post this last week. However, my laptop decided to die on me…again. Turns out it wasn’t the AC adaptor (though I’m sure that was going too). Our IT guy at work did some investigating and found that there is a known battery issue with my particular Dell model. He found a fix and checked out a few things. Hopefully, we don’t have this issue again.

But I appreciate crossed fingers just in case.

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In last week’s post, I talked about why I had gone silent for almost a month. I also mentioned that I was working on my Advent story and it was consuming pretty much everything. Well good news—I’m done!

And it’s a relief to say that.

To review: For the past few years, the Outlaw Queen fandom puts out an Advent Calendar in December. Each day unlocks new gifts, which can be fanart, fanfics, fanvids, etc. They are all Outlaw Queen themed and all revolve around Christmas or winter. We enjoy getting these gifts and the team who designs the website each year does amazing work. Even the “404 Error: Page Not Found” page is a gift when it gets found!

I don’t want to give too much away about my story as it is one of the rules. It’s a fake dating AU that I hope everyone enjoys! But as I noted, I did change Robin’s backstory about a week before the story was due and had to scrap 9,000 words, essentially starting over.

Talk about a crunch, huh?

Mea Culpa

I know I’ve disappeared for almost a month. Let me explain:

So remember this post? About my laptop problems? Well, that was just the start!

The issues with my laptop put me behind, especially as I entered another theme week—Spooky OQ, all dedicated to Halloween-inspired stories. I didn’t complete it and it’s the first button I’ve missed out on because I just didn’t have the time due to a convention.

The weekend before Halloween was the last Once Upon a Time convention in New Jersey. I stayed at the hotel for the weekend and spent time with my friends and the cast of the show. It was a busy weekend but a fun one, even if I didn’t get much writing done.

I left the convention late Sunday night and after working Monday, spent the evening packing again. Because on Tuesday, my family headed to Disney World. (More on that later). We stayed until November 4th and flew back home later that night.

Apologies!

I’m sorry there was no new entry yesterday. If you follow me on Patreon (which is doubtful judging by all on the zeroes I see on my page), you already know why. My laptop refused to turn on this past weekend. I took it to work and it got diagnosed as being an issue with the AC adaptor. I got it to turn on and work but I definitely need a new AC adaptor before it conks out completely.

Hopefully I can get back on track, so stay tuned! And thanks for your patience!

“The Summoning” (October Short Story #1)

Luna gathered up all her shopping bags from the backseat of her car, kicking the door closed. She managed to press the lock button with her keys between her fingers as she hurried toward her front door, her arms starting to hurt. After some maneuvering, she got her house key into the lock and unlocked her door. It was a bit difficult to open the door with her hands full of grocery bags but she managed, almost stumbling into her dark and cool house.

She let the bags fall from her hands and land on the floor. As she wiggled her fingers to get the blood flowing into them again, she stepped outside to check her mailbox. Lifting the lid, she pulled out the envelopes inside before returning back to her house and closing the door behind her. It was time to relax at last.

Humming, she put away the frozen items she had bought but left the others for the moment. She padded through her house, up the stairs and into her bedroom. It was time to get out of her suit and change into comfy clothes for the night.