Like Never Before chapter 8 has now been posted on ff.net. I finished it Friday night, had my sister read it (she’s my unofficial beta), who told me that it wasn’t as good as my other chapters but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Eh. According to her, my Paris was out of character, which really worries me because I spent so much time making her believable. All I had was one episode to go off in showing this side of Paris. One episode–“The Big One” from last season, where Paris has her breakdown. Yeah, not a lot of inspiration.

Ugh.

So, I went back and edited. Big time. I think it’s better now, but… I’m really nervous about posting it. Meeting the groom on the day of the arranged marriage kind of nervous. I don’t want to be tarred and feathered here! I tend to lean on the freak-out side, so hopefully things aren’t as bad as I fear.

Chapter 7 was rewritten too, to attempt to get more of Jess’s voice. My biggest fault, I think is that my characters tend to become as verbose as I do and I struggle to rein them in. But it’s so difficult to convey conversations in monosyllables as Jess demands.

Chapter 9 was done and I was going to post it in a couple of days–I had that one written a year ago, when the idea first came to me–it honestly was the reason that I wrote this story. But it was only 4 pages long and after this last chapters’ record of 8958 words on 17 pages, it was way too short. So, I’m rearranging, combining some chapters and other housework before it’s read to be displayed. I am aiming for Christmas/New Year’s. We’ll see how well I succeed. At least I like the chapter more!

The weather forecasters promised me snow and I got . . . gray clouds and no snow. Am quite bummed.

On the other hand, my parents promised me a washer and dryer and I got . . . a washer and dryer!!!

Most people probably won’t understand why this would cause such glee, but until you have to go to a laundry mat that is four blocks from your house and is apparently the hangout for the mentally unstable (buses and laundry mats… Those are the two places that I get hit on. Bleh.) and charges you $2.50 per load and your clothes still aren’t dry. Yeah. It really was the bimonthly entertainment. And that was the good place that closed down for no apparently reason a month ago.

So my parents brought the unit and spent most of the day installing it into my little apartment. I was in a bit of a mood, as in cranky for lots of little reasons. Chauffeuring my sister to work four blocks away (which with the badly timed lights means a seven minute journey in each direction) because she refuses to try to carpool, trying to clean my house so that we could move things around and having my roommate just sit there and read, even though she promised to help, my study partner NOT calling to say when/if we were studying today. Not that I had time or interest today–big believer in procrastination and the test is two weeks away–but it still would have been nice to get a phone call to say that he had decided to go skiing instead.

But my parents thought that I was in a mood because they were taking me away from my studies, so I got out of it soon. Relationship with parental units is so strange as an adult. It’s much better now than when I was in high school, although I never really had any major problems with them. But they still treat me like a kid one minute, and the next I’m supposed to have all of the problems figured out because I’m independent now.