Hey everyone.  Once again, I am not dead.  I have been extremely busy with work as always and have been working like 15 hour days.  I just wanted to let everyone know that SRBS will be finished eventually but I have no idea where I stand with RBTL these days.  My interest in writing for Twilight is really starting to wane.  When I do have free time (which is almost never), I feel pulled toward my original writings or to a different fandom.  I've said so much about Alice and Jasper that Im running out creative angles to tell their story.

Even with all the suggestions I got after chapter 38, only a few spoke to me in a way that actually made me interested in writing them.  I might have to interchange RBTL with something for a different fandom because I am getting burrrrrned out on Twilight.

I have a couple more chapters of RBTL written so I know it will go to 40 and I'd still LIKE to go to 50, I'm just afraid it'll take forever.

SRBS is a whole other beast.  I have every chapter written but they all have to be cleaned up and scenes have to be lengthened and stuff before they are sent to the betas.  Chapter 9 is a hundred percent ready to go but chapter 10 and 11 are giving me fits.  It was all set to send them after Ch 38 of RBTL but I noticed an issue and just haven't found the time to work it out.

Anyway, other than a few strongly worded PMs, the readers have been incredibly kind and understanding of my long absences.

And now a question for you guys.  Do any of you read author's notes in stories?

I ask this because I swear to God, if one more person asks me to write a Nessie or Jacob chapter of Six Interruptions, I am going to effing scream.  I detailed pretty plainly in the author's notes that the story is SIX chapters.  SIX interruptions.  Just the Cullen kids.  And still...of the 160 reviews for chapter 6, I'll be 100 of them are a request to write the Nessie chapter.  Or even better, just a "You forgot the Nessie chapter!"  No.  No I didn't.

I get PMs from time to time asking me to write something Edward and Bella but I figure they just don't know that I am not a fan of Bella.  But the Nessie requests on Six Interruptions...I mean, come on!  Makes me want to punch the internet.

So it made me wonder, do you guys read author's notes?  I nearly always do unless they are really annoying or if they BEG for reviews.  Is there anything that bugs you guys in author's notes (I mean besides empty promises...like in mine)?  I get annoyed when authors issue ultimatums.  Nothing will make me not review faster than "I'll post the next chapter once I get 10 reviews."  In fact, it's liable to make me stop reading the story completely.

And on a final note, I know I have PMs, Emails, and comments to answer.  I will get to them all soon.  I have like 450 emails in my fanfic folder so if anyone emailed me anything important, PM me on ffn or here because it will take me awhile to wade through them all.

Thanks.

During my hiatus from posting, I got a little non-Alice/Jasper writing in. I might post this on FFN soon (along with 9 Crimes) but I thought I'd let you guys take a look at it first.

Title: Elsewhere
Author: brynna82
Rating: PG (or K+)
Character(s): Garrett/Kate
Summary: A little post-BD Garrett/Kate one-shot.
( Elsewhere )

Hey all, thanks for the one million messages, nudges, e-mails, reviews and whatnot. Real life got crazy and this stuff all had to be put on the back burner. In the last few weeks, I moved, started writing some new original stuff, and started working 14 hour days. It will still be a bit before I finish up RBTL and start posting on SRBS again but I will finish both.

I am finishing the last of the move this week (cleaning up the old house, turning over the keys, etc) and I should have internet in the new place by next week. Work should also start to settle down this week.

Thanks for your patience and kindness.

This year effing hates me. The chapter 9 file got oddly corrupted and I could only get the first line to restore, therefore, Some Rise By Sin will probably be late again.

Shoot me now.

Just wanted to let everyone know that today's update of SRBS will be a little bit delayed. I had a death in the family this weekend that kind of set everything back. Please be patient with me. My schedule is crazy busy and this week is going to be nuts.

The chapter is with the betas though and I will post just as soon as I can. Thanks.

I have been working through a lot of the Rosalie POVs in Some Rise By Sin and I love writing her. I think she gets treated pretty badly in most of the stories I've read. I don't think we ever got a clear picture of her since both the Twilight series and Midnight Sun were told from the POV of characters that didn't like her.

Anyway, yesterday, on the way home, 9 Crimes by Damien Rice came on, and my muses went crazy. I had a spare half hour today, so I jotted this down. I'm not sure I'll ever post this on ffn or anything but I thought you guys might enjoy it. It's simply a deeper look at Rosalie.

Title: 9 Crimes
Author: brynna82
Rating: PG-13 (or T)
Character(s): Rosalie
Summary: A character study of Rosalie
( 9 Crimes )

Negative reviews are an interesting thing. I don't get that many but it's funny how one negative review or PM can make you forget dozens of awesome, glowing reviews.

When I wrote the first draft of Some Rise By Sin, I wrote the story I always wanted to read. I pulled Alice and Jasper front and center and gave all of my favorite characters things to do. I meticulously thought out the powers and the conflict and the characters. And at the top of the document, in the header, I wrote "Take your time!" The story has a slower pace than my one-shots, true, but it is supposed to read like a novel. The action will pick up, but I have to get everyone and everything into place. I tend to be very detail oriented and I would never write like...Alice getting taken in chapter one, battle in chapter four. Unrealistic and just not my style.

Anyway, whatevs. I'm going to tell the story I want to tell.

OK, rant over.

I posted a new chapter of RBTL (finally!) but now I have to clean up the next few chapters of SRBS to send to the betas. At some point this weekend, I have to clean my house and do laundry. The clutter in this house is driving me nuts.

I made a decision to just cut back on the review replies and continue with RBTL whenever I can. I work for a huge corporation. I am the lead graphic designer/GUI developer for the websites team but we are all being impacted by the crazy economy. Because of that, work just takes precedence right now. I have strict deadlines to meet and if I don't meet them, I'll cost the company money and endanger my job. My writing time has been cut way back which means I either fill it with review replies, or I fill it with writing. For now, I choose writing. I hope everyone will understand.

So who is ready for spring? It's already getting warmer here (not that it was ever truly cold) and I kind of am dying for some hot weather and maybe a little rain.

OK, enough rambling...off to start laundry and clean up from breakfast!

FFN is still down. I'll post this chapter here for you guys and then repost when the site goes back up. Enjoy!

( All the Shattered Pieces )


And to those that were asking if it was all right to friend me, feel free. I love meeting new people and learning more about you guys. :)

Well, things are a little insane right now but I just wanted to drop a line to let you guys know that fanfiction.net's login/uploading is down and has been for a couple of days so that's why I haven't updated RBTL and that's why I won't be updating Some Rise By Sin today (unless you guys want me to post it here since we don't know when the site will be fully functional again).

I promise to respond to reviews and comments and everything soon. Work has kind of gone crazy since Friday. Crazy enough that I'm starting to consider the end of RBTL. I'd like to get to fifty chapters but I'm not sure if I can possibly get there, much less go beyond with my work schedule and everything else I have going on. Plus, now with Some Rise By Sin, the amount of review replies per week has doubled. If I post two chapters of each, I'll have 200 review replies to write in addition to writing RBTL chapters and cleaning up and editing Some Rise By Sin chapters. That's a lot of time devoted to fanfic.

I'm tired.

But I won our Oscar game! Bragging rights for 1 year. :)

Well, the new fic is up. Now the nerve-wracking part...waiting for the feedback.

I need to answer some PMs and respond to five pages of reviews but I thought I'd stall by rambling on here for awhile. It is amazing how chapter 34 can be one of the least reviewed chapters in a long time (which I was expecting) and still, somehow, I'm behind on replies.

I should also probably go for a run and make a grocery list (I am out of coffee!) and finish up the laundry and about one thousand other things but stalling seems like a better way to go.

Today, I switched from Pandora to last.fm for my I'm-sick-of-everything-on-my-iPod work music. Y'all, I'm in love. Unlimited skips? Firefox integration? A much larger library? Yes, please. I seriously got nothing done today. But I found a lot of new music. I also like that when you favorite a song and then mouse over the little heart on the Firefox player, it says "Thank you for loving this track." Makes me smile every time.

I got through some more Oscar nominees this weekend. I watched Doubt, Rachel Getting Married, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I'm immensely surprised to be able to say that I liked all three. I was convinced that Doubt was going to be horribly boring but I was riveted. Meryl Streep is a damn genius. Rachel Getting Married was very raw and Anne Hathaway's performance was unbelievably brave. All things equal, she should win the Oscar. I don't think she will, but that truly was the performance of the year. Benjamin Button was interesting and long and I ultimately really enjoyed it. But it was long. And yet it somehow still felt rushed in parts.

So does anyone else watch American Idol? Did anyone notice that I worked my posting schedule around episodes? I'm not sure what to think about this season. I don't really like anyone yet that much. And if Tatiana or Norman make it a step further, I'm done with the show. I mean, I realize that it's barely a singing competition anymore but...does it need to be a joke?

This weekend, I'm having some friends in town for various activities. I think there is a concert of some kind on Saturday, then we are going to try to hit up Gospel Brunch at House of Blues on Sunday and then, of course, Oscar party (seriously...I have to win our game this year) on Sunday night. Should be fun but I am contemplating taking off Monday since something tells me I'll be worn out. Of course, it's not like I'm a construction worker. I do just sit in a cube all day with my Wacom tablet and keyboard. I can do that with a wine headache.

All right, I've stalled enough. Review reply time.

( Essay about my trip from fan to fanfiction writer. )

--

And thanks to all that were concerned about the beta thing. The long fic is back on schedule and will include good grammar. I'm still kicking a title around but I will decide by the time I post chapter 34 of RBTL (later today). Now, coffee and writing time. It is Sunday, after all. :)

And tonight I find myself without a beta for the long fic. Not sure if I should fly solo or try to find another. It's not the grammar I most need help with (although you all probably know that I need some help with that too...haha), it's more knowing when to expand and when to pull back. I get too into the story and then don't realize that things don't make sense. Or that they need just a bit more time and explanation. I sent a PM to one of my more analytical reviewers but I don't even know if she betas so...I might be working on this one alone for a few chapters if I can't find someone soon.

I hope real life starts behaving for my previous beta. She was great and I wish her the best

Whether I do it alone, or with help, the first chapter is going up on Monday the 16th with a chapter every Monday and Thursday after that. RBTL will shift around it with a new chapter every weekend (for sure) and one during the week (when I'm inspired).

Check out how I used my Josh Holloway icon to make me feel better. Dreamy.

I have another question for you guys.

As you all have undoubtedly noticed, I like to use RBTL to experiment. I like to mix up my styles and tones and POVs. I like writing angst and fluff and family stuff and character studies and dialogue and no dialogue. Since the beginning, through 32 chapters and over 1000 reviews (I can't quite believe it), there is one thing that always makes me laugh.

Whenever I post angst, I get like fifteen reviews or PMs asking for fluff. And when I post fluff, I get feedback asking when I'm going to post angst. I can't really change the tone of what I post. When I'm feeling the angst, I write angst and when I'm feeling the fluff, I write fluff.

I don't really find Alice and Jasper to be a very cutesy couple and when I write fluff, I try to still maintain my characterizations and character development. I've read a lot of really stupid fluff is my point, so I may shy away from it a bit more as I don't want to cross that line. I don't really have a preference on what I like to read. As long as it's well-written, I can deal with pretty much any kind of fic.

So my question for you is...angst or fluff? Do you even have a preference or does it depend on your mood or the pairing or the author?

Bonus question: Why, when I post an angst chapter do people forget that the previous one was (often) fluff and vice versa?

:)

I just did 6 pages of review replies and wrote about 6,000 words on the long fic and wrote a chapter to post tomorrow for RBTL. I still have PMs to get through. I'm not complaining. It's obviously my choice to do this but...thank God I write fast. Looking forward to my birthday weekend. I might even leave the Mac at home.

Ok, no I won't.

This post won't be much in the way of excitement. As a matter of fact, here is just a random list of things I'm thinking about:

- Working on the long fic today while the rest of America watches the Superbowl. I took out the Bella and Edward POVs because they are the ones I always have to force myself to write. That means that this fic is all secondary characters all the time. Just the way I like it.

- Speaking of secondary characters, check out my sweet [title of show] icon. I went looking for icons that have something to do with writing and found some good [tos] stuff. [title of show] was the best play I saw on Broadway last year. It's closed now but if it ever has a revival or plays in your area, GO SEE IT. It is so inspirational and hilarious. My abs hurt when we left from laughing so hard.

- I am still behind on review replies and PMs but I will try to get caught up during The Office. Writing takes precedence currently.

- I have several outtakes from the long fic and I thought about collecting them to post on ffn in one collection but now I am thinking I will just post them here for you guys.

- This weekend, I powered through some of the Oscar nominees. I saw Happy Go Lucky, The Reader, and Encounters at the End of the World. I haven't been able to get my hands on all the documentaries yet (I'm dying to see Trouble the Water) but of the ones I have seen, it's a tight race. I give the edge to Encounters though. Even though I adored Man on Wire, Encounters was so original, such a beautiful look of the eccentric kind of person it takes to live and work in Antarctica. I nearly stopped Happy Go Lucky after about fifteen minutes but then I was just drawn it. Sally Hawkins was pretty genius in the lead role. I don't think it has a chance in the screenplay category, not against the likes of Wall-E and Milk but it was fun to watch. The Reader was another story entirely. I did not enjoy the movie. Kate Winslet was predictably great, and I think this may just be her year to finally win (although we should never count out Meryl Streep), but I kind of hated the movie. I have a lot more nominees to get through before the 22nd but I am determined to win our Oscar game this year. Determined!

- Work was crazy this week. Another deadline came out of no where and I worked seventeen hours on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, I had to drive down South for a funeral. It was exhausting. I feel better now but since next weekend is my birthday, things don't look to get any less exhausting anytime soon.

OK, enough stalling...back to writing.

OK guys, I have a question. I was reading through some parts of the books yesterday while working on the long fic and I have a question...

I know that when a vampire has their limbs pulled off, the limbs are still alive (thus the need to pull them apart and burn the pieces). Do you think those limbs can be reattached? Are they gone forever?

I'm to an actiony portion of the fic and not that I'm ripping any arms off, but it would be nice to know the stakes. I looked on the Lexicon and they didn't even mention that aspect of vampirism.

Did I miss something in the books?

I'm doing my (now) normal Sunday writing extravaganza. I am plugging away at the long fic and getting chapter 30 of RBTL ready. But yesterday, I got caught up on my review replies and then started going through my PMs. I noticed a few annoying trends.

People keep asking me to review their stories even though they have never once reviewed anything of mine. That's fine and all, no one is obligated to review anything I write but it certainly doesn't make me rush over like I would for one of my regular reviewers. The really annoying thing though -- most aren't even stories within the ships that I write for. I don't really want to read about Jake and Nessie or Alice and someone who isn't Jasper. Am I wrong for being kind of annoyed by that? Maybe it's just because I'm so busy so any reading time that I can find is precious. I understand that they want more reviews but I kind of feel like they are just PMing any author with a high review count.

So another thing that I know I'm justified in being annoyed by -- some people (again, not any of my regular reviewers) have been getting annoyed when I don't write their suggestions fast enough. I mean, what the hell? I try to be nice about it but...this is MY story and I write what I want to write at the moment. I welcome the suggestions whole-heartedly but I get so so many, plus I have my own ideas so some just won't get written and some are way too vague to spark my interest. I started having people clarify their suggestions in the last batch. I have a few readers who are brilliant at suggesting things in a way that makes me want to write it immediately. When Yvaughn asked for the baseball chapter, I could just see the moment in my mind. When someone asks for "something during Eclipse," it doesn't really get my mind working.

RBTL has been getting more and more hits and reviews with each chapter which is great but having been in the fanfic world since the days of the Star Wars 'zines, there is some degree of etiquette that should be followed. I write because it's fun for me and the only reason I'd stop writing is if it isn't fun anymore. Luckily, most of my reviewers keep it fun and interesting and challenging and make me forget about the ones that don't.

Anyway, rant over. I got past my big deadline at work, took a day off and slept the day away. This weekend, I started getting caught back up on everything fanfic related. I'm actually excited about RBTL again for the first time in awhile. I have a lot of ideas in the works. I'm definitely in for the next ten...we'll re-evaluate at 40. :)

I just caught up on review replies, emails, PMs, and posted a new chapter of RBTL. My eyes are tired but I am supposed to have the next chapter of the long fic off to the beta tonight so I will keep writing. Blerg.

I love interacting with the readers and reviewers but working on a complex story while maintaining my update schedule on RBTL is exhausting.

Anyway, crazy weekend this weekend. My freaking car broke down on Friday. I have to have it towed to the dealership tomorrow. I swear I'm seriously considering just buying a new one. Then I went home, posted a chapter, and watched Battlestar. It was crazy. It was so crazy that my adrenaline was pumping and it kept me from falling asleep.

This week I have deadlines and meetings and I think there's a baby shower somewhere in there and to top it all off, I have a guest visiting this week. I'm tired just thinking about it. Maybe I'll take Thursday off since it's the only day that I don't have meetings.

I think that when I finish the draft of this fic, I'm going to have to take a couple of weeks off of writing. It won't work but planning for it makes it easier to push through these times when I feel a little burned out.

So has anybody read any good books lately? I have a stack on the to be read pile but I'm looking for a good audio book for my commute.

1) I just got caught up on review replies. I think deciding to do them was the right choice. It takes a while but people take the time to read and give feedback, I can at least take the time to send a nice reply.

2) So, I somehow stumbled onto the forums at ffn today. Holy crap, y'all. Not my scene. I felt incredibly old just reading the posts.

3) I spent a couple hours early this morning reading Jacob/Leah fic. I always thought that if I wrote any Twilight couple besides Alice/Jasper or Carlisle/Esme, it would be Garrett/Kate. But, man, I think I have to add Jacob and Leah to that list. If I ever decided to break away from canon, I could really see writing them. There is a lot of interesting territory there.

I got a new project at work this week that has zapped my time. I am a graphic designer but I also wear a developer hat when I must. This week, I was called upon to create an application so I shut down Photoshop and started coding again. I can always feel the coding days acutely. My eyes hurt, my brain hurts, and oddly, I can never seem to put the work down.

Extra work means that I got behind on my writing. I intended to do more on RBTL this week but only was able to produce two hastily written chapters. I'm going to try to get a jump on chapters this weekend so I can get back to my usual three next week. But the rest of today is going to be devoted to the novel-length fic. I am determined to start posting in February so I have to really get to writing. I just made a big pot of coffee and a delicious soy cheese pizza and I'm going to get to it.

But first, when I was writing chapter 24 of RBTL, with the shifting POVs, I got to thinking about characters and what makes a good character. I make no apologies for the fact that I have issues with Bella. I don't really get her. I feel like she was well set-up early on and then toward the end of Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, everything I believed about the way she would act was changed.

I nearly always find the supporting characters more compelling. There is always a story left to tell, always moments we didn't see. I loved Alice immediately and that could also be some of my issue with Bella. She says she loves Alice and that she misses her when she's gone but she nearly constantly acts annoyed with her.

I think the best characters are the heroes of their own story. If you can get inside their head and see the path they are on and their motivations, then they are a good character. I always use Scorpius from Farscape as an example of a good character. He was a nasty villain made all the more nasty because from his point of view, everything he was doing was right and with purpose. He was the villain in John's story but the hero in his. That makes for some fascinating and complex story telling.

So I'm curious...what do you guys think makes a great character?