Fan Fic Recs and the New Story....

Okay, so I'm posting this Valentine a little late, but I do love you all and appreciate your support of my stories!! Thank you sooooooo much!! <3 <3 <3

At the beginning of this month I received a very pleasant surprise: Pinned but Fluttering was selected as one of the selections for the Top Ten Fics Completed in January by TwiFanFictionRecs. It's up against some incredible fics--ones I've read and enjoyed so much--written by the likes of CullensTwiMistress, TheFicChick, Chloe Masen, LyricalKris, PrettyKittyArtist, iambeagle, TallulahBelle, FictionFreak95, pattyrose, and Tardis19. So I doubt that Pinned but Fluttering will make the Top Ten, but it's nice to be nominated for something. 

Here's the direct link for voting, and you may vote every 24 hours through the end of February: Top Ten Completed Fics for January.  I would be sooo grateful for your vote(s)!! 

In other news, I am finally past the worst of my grading frenzy. In January I taught two online courses concurrently, something I will never do again; the stress was incredible!! Especially when one class was a Literary Analysis course which means tons of posts--nine per week per student, and multiply that by 15-20 students.... Yeah, it can get crazy!! Plus, Literary Analysis courses also require a final writing project, so I had to grade all of those essays as well. 

In addition, our home school group's semester grades were due on February 14, so I had to not only gather and grade my own three boys' work for the semester, but I also had to finish grading essays and post semester grades for my co-op high school expository writing class. I actually pulled two "all-nighters" last week, up grading essays until 6:15 AM one morning and 4:30 AM another morning. 

So now that the major stressors are behind me and I'm only teaching a poetry writing workshop online, plus home schooling the three boys (two in high school) and teaching my co-op class, I think I'll be able to start on my next writing project. I hope to start next weekend and be posting the first chapter by March. We'll see how it goes; with my chronic illness, I also need to rest after putting in crazy hours since the beginning of January. 

This will be my first AH (all human) story, and when I polled my readers on Wattpad, asking if I should write it as a fan fic or as an original story (Wattpad has tons of genres available besides fan fiction), the fan fiction readers won handily by a two-to-one margin. But it should also edit quite easily into a non-Twilight story as well. I have a couple of approaches I'm debating in setting up the story, and, as usual, I have a premise but no real plan or outline for how this story will proceed. 

That's the fun part of writing for me: not knowing what's going to happen any more than my readers do, LOL!! :) 

So thanks again for reading, for voting (I hope!!), and for waiting patiently while life settles into a vague semblance of order so that I can start writing again. You all are the BEST readers a writer could ever want!! :) 

Warmly,
~Cassandra :)
xxxooo