Nothing is always absolutely so.

That long-promised life update! Or a version of it!

Soooooo the full-time writing thing is on hold for the moment, I had to jump back into the working world (BOOOOOO WE HATE THAT FOR ME BOOOOOO) due to some family health issues that came up, like, a month or two after I originally posted about pivoting to full-time writing. On the plus side, the timing kind of worked out and my coworkers don't suck and it's totally normal hours (yaaaaaay we love that for me yaaaaay (genuinely not sarcastically)).

But I still want the writing thing to happen, more than you can imagine. I wanted to take some time to get settled in the gig first and figure out where to squeeze in the writing and make both work. So far it is, dare I say, not great? The health issues my family is dealing with leave a lot on my GD plate unfortunately, and on the worst days I feel pretty ragged because it takes a lot out of me and I'm not exactly a fount of energy to begin with. And on my better days I don't want to work on the original stuff! I want to work on uhhhhhh fic. Haha. Though I don't think anyone will complain about that here!

Honestly, I'm not complaining either. I love it and it's a nice escape for me. But it is its own type of mental work. Like, the other week I got super into the next spicy reds thing I'm doing, so I wrote that for a few days until I started to hate looking at it, and this week I'd been thinking of trying to get back into it but realized I was feeling the spy!au thing more. I've also gone back to thinking of the original novella I got a draft out of last summer. And, of course, I keep coming back to TEF intermittently. Can't help it.

That's what I got. I take it as a good sign that I'm thinking about the original piece again, since that signifies the first step in the life pivot I want to make, and I also don't want to be wholly dependent on a job physically based in the US for uhhhh pretty obvious reasons (god the health thing alone has been kind of a nightmare in this country). Things aren't completely stoppered on my end, just a little delayed. Cross your fingers for me that I'll work out the balance soon!

Thanks so much to y'all for the sweet messages and the support, and your endless, endless patience with me. I really appreciate it 💗

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At this point I assume most folks have read the most recent chapter, so this is probably good to share now!

Some background first (and I don't recall if I mentioned this in the past, but) - originally there was no party scene at all. It opened on a completely different scene, a day or two after the party (that will either get moved to another chapter or cut completely; depends on if I find an organic place to slot it in in the coming chapters). It wasn't until a reader (off the previous chapter I posted, almost two years ago) mentioned their excitement for a party scene that I realized: Oh shit. They're right. I set the stage for a party in the last chapter and it would be shitty of me not to deliver on that.

Not just shitty, but also, it wouldn't have made sense. Why spend any time talking about a party at all if the party isn't going to happen? There was room to do that, and besides, while they do involve a good amount of work and sometimes tricky navigation, I tend to like scenes with lots of people because it gives me a lot of room to play with different voices (beach chapter is probably the biggest example of this). While they can be a lot of work to write, they can also be a lot of fun in the process.

So I committed to writing a party scene as it's what the story naturally called for. And, because I'm constantly in my Reds feels, the first scene I wrote was for them.

( I was really, really in love with this idea of them sitting at a table across from each other as the clock struck midnight and a bunch of couples around them kissed while they just stared and fantasized about kissing each other. )

Anyway! Chilling in rb's stream now, at least for a bit. Also trying to figure out another old fic to port over to ao3. Maybe something from the old hub contest days.

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Just wrapped up my draft of the KU thing! WEIRD. It took me about 6 weeks to churn out a draft I'm happy with, which feels like flying, but I guess makes more sense when I take into account I wasn't distracted by a full-time job eating up all my hours. I'm at roughly 40k words, which feels a little low for a novel, but I do need to go back and flesh out some parts now that I'm through a version of the whole thing. Originally I was hoping to be done at the end of last month, then at the end of this month, but, well, best laid plans and all that, heh.

It does feel nice to be done with at least a draft of it, though. Now for editing and fleshing it out. I'd like to get it up to 50k words if I can, though it's not a hard commitment for me. Whatever fits the story best. It does need an epilogue still!

On the TEF side, I noticed some formatting things I missed when I was prepping it for upload (grrr) but those are fixed now. It is a relief that the errors I found were my own, though. Feels infinitely better than the random re-formatting FFN would do on its uploads. Man I do not miss that.

(For anyone who's interested btw, it sounds like rb might be doing a readthrough on Twitch this weekend? Not to call anyone out lol BUT THAT SAID preorders for the PpG/RrB zine close in like 3 days! That reminds me I keep meaning to take a pic of the greens page I love to post. Note to self note to self.)

Next goals for myself are to go through and start editing, as well as dig into the marketing side of things (yeek). I really do need to get that mailing list up and running, though. That'll be my baby goal for the next couple of days.

Thanks btw to everyone who's said such nice things about the endeavor so far! I feel so so supported and loved. I really appreciate y'all so much. Thank you and I hope to not disappoint 💗💙💚

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Next chapter is up on ao3, enjoy!

Also I can't believe I mentioned this on my ko-fi but not here: rb is taking preorders again for her PpG Zine! It closes in a week! If you ever wanted to hold the Greens kissing in your hands, NOW IS YOUR CHANCE

Taking a (very!) brief break from TEF to wrap up the draft for my Amazon KU thing, then spy AU chapter. So happy to be on a regular daily writing schedule now, though.

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Nothing extensive to report aside from I hit my writing goal for the day on another project and also got about three transitional scenes done on the next TEF chapter. I'm overlapping that work with an initial read-through so once I hit those points I can figure out what I feel is missing from the story so far. So far the read-through is also proving that the scenes I previously thought might need a rewrite... probably don't. I like the vibe they're giving off and I'm finding myself less bothered by the similarities in tone to the other sections, especially knowing where I want those moments to eventually land. Maybe the unwritten bit will be a tfr post in the future instead. So I'm pretty pleased with things overall today!

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