Chapter 20 of One More Year is Out!

 Chapter 20 is out HERE (Nifty) and HERE (Literotica)

[Incomprehensible Swearing]

It has been a WEEK. Thanks to the pandemic, I'm not bogged down with full-time employment. But I am freelancing, doing various things, and for a bunch of reasons this middle stretch of November worked out to be my busiest time of the year - on top of me doing NaNoWriMo and the wrap up chapters of One More Year. 

So I did not have time for unprofessional behaviour. Not that it matters to the unprofessional, of course - who was happy to drop a 48-hour deadline on my head with no warning and no apologies, and felt free to complain to me (someone subordinate to them in a hierarchy) that this unnecessary work that they'd created for me (and everyone else, presumably) took them 12 hours. 

Sort of a "We're all in this together" message, where that is definitely not the case - if I have to listen to you, or be excluded from things, there is a power relationship there, and you're abusing it.

I won't mention them by name (or do anything else petty like boot them from a followers list of a protected twitter account, effectively soft-blocking - why yes, this is a specific example. Thank you for asking.) But I am not happy, and I will go out of my way to never work with them again.

*VIOLENT EXHALATION*

That being said, despite the extreme disturbance to my mood and my sleep schedule, and despite the fact that Chapter 21 (next on the way) pretty much required a full-rewrite (which I'm afraid is going to be the case for all the rest of them) I still got it done this week, and got my editing for Chapter 20 done in time.

I do worry that this novel has gotten a bit long, and I will be trying to address that in my final edit. (Since I'm gearing up to self-publish.) But I've kind of been happy with where the story is going, and hopefully my readers are too. I won't say too much about plot, because I feel like even talking about the comments I've been getting will open me up to spilling some severe spoilers.

So I won't. I'll just be talking obliquely about my process. You're welcome. 😉 (And/or Sorry.)

Doing Chapter 20 was quite interesting. It's been the first time I've worked on OMY in Scrivener. I've imported the project there so I could put smaller bite-sized chunks on Radish (which you should check out - it's where I'll be advance-releasing my next story) because the split function in Scrivener is awesome. (Many thanks to the reader who donated to me on BMAC for the purpose of buying scrivener.)

But for Chapter 20, I was able to break it up into its relevant scenes, and move them around as needed, which was pretty cool. Then some reworking happened, and I was able to put it all back together, and hopefully it works.

For Chapter 21, I did a similar thing, except I needed to rewrite most of those scenes, because (in the course of my editing) I've woven in a BUNCH of subplots, and some of them already need resolving, or to get on the road to being resolved. I'm going to have to do a similar thing to Chapter 22, but if this week has proven anything to me, it's that I am UP to that challenge.

Anyway, Chapter 20 has been received warmly (by the person who's been there for me for every chapter - Thanks Dora!) so I hope it's well liked by my Nifty and Literotica readers. (And, when it gets there, my Radish readers, but it's still catching up on that platform.)

We are in the home-run-stretch now, and I really hope I'm able to deliver on the ending of this story well. Or, at least as well as the rest has been. I'll be reworking it somewhat substantially for publication, but I still hope my Nifty and Literotica readers get a kick out of how this early version turns out.

Thanks so much for reading and enjoying! As always, I'm still not really sure that I expect anyone to read this blog - but someone last week clearly did, which is always cool! I've really enjoyed interacting with my readers, and although I'll possibly be a bit bad at it this month, I promise you I still see the comments and they lift my mood and make my day. So feel free to say hi! 😃