Crystal Blade Episode 30: Family Feud is live at Kindle Vella. Things are getting good now, heh.

Or at least they would be if roofers would stop knocking on my door asking if I want to get my roof inspected. Since the big hailstorm last week we’ve been getting door-to-door roofers knocking on the door daily to ask if we would like a free inspection (we checked, everything looks good and we don’t have leaks, and if any do pop up we’ll call the roofing company that installed the roof in 2012). It’s to the point where I don’t bother answering the doorbell anymore.

Except that apparently today’s roofing company rep decided that if he rang the doorbell and knocked and there was no response, he should continue to knock until someone came to the door. I was upstairs hip-deep in a scene when I heard the doorbell and ignored it. Then heard the knock and ignored it. A good minute later I heard another knock and stormed downstairs with the wrath of an author disturbed. I’m afraid I opened the door, glared at him as he said, “Hello, ma’am—” snapped that we weren’t interested and closed the door forcefully. I don’t like being rude but dude, read the lack of response.

What I wanted to do was put up a No Soliciting sign after that, but apparently Plano changed their rules last year and those won’t stop someone from knocking on your door (the solicitor can claim that they’re not soliciting, they just want to tell you all about their church/service/what have you). I need to put up a sign that says NO TRESPASSING (unless you’re a Girl Scout, Boy Scout, or under 16 and selling something for your school). For them, I will answer the door.

Crystal Blade Episode 29: Hello, Grandmother is live at Kindle Vella. No, don’t thank me—noblesse oblige, don’t you know.

Oh, I am tired as hell. We had quite the loud storm roll through around 4 AM, so loud that neither Ramón nor I could sleep through it. He gave up and went into his office to do a little work while I kept the J Crew company and reassured them that they were safe, Thor didn’t hate them, and the sky was just growling.

Net result: no damage, no hail, some rain but that was about it. Unfortunately, in the process of opening the door to check on things I must have let some mosquitos in because I have been bitten in at least six places, all on my right thigh and, ahem, bikini area.

Ow. Did I mention ow?

I don’t even know how the hell the mosquitos accessed one particular spot, but they did. Luckily we have a really great anti-itch gel but still, not the most enjoyable place for skeeter bites. And I’m tired, and my left leg is still experiencing a bit of sciatica pain, and it’s going to be humid as hell here this week. Whee.

Crystal Blade Episode 28: Happy Father’s Day is live at Kindle Vella. Go forth and enjoy the start to the weekend.

I can tell that I’m falling into a rut. My dreams are all about organization and setting things up, which makes it very obvious in the morning that I’m boring myself silly.

Part of it is that there’s not a whole hell of a lot of differentiation in my days, and won’t be until I get all the books reformatted and published wide. I wake up, feed the cats, get to work on Crystal Blade, then switch over to formatting once I get the day’s word count in. Somewhere in between all that I do my time on the treadmill, go out to the store and pick up necessities, make dinner, cook and clean, and if the weather is bearable in the garage do some jewelry work.

And that is hella better than it could be—I’m grateful to have to freedom to do all that. But it’s also the same stuff day in and day out, and that’s not good from a creative standpoint. I need to refill the creative well with … I don’t know, something. New experiences, new places, something to get my imagination working again.

What I really need is a vacation. Which will be a possibility this year if this contract work comes through. In the meantime, I need to find little ways to break up the day and have some fun. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments.

Crystal Blade Episode 27: Eureka! is live at Kindle Vella. You know the drill.

I have noticed something fascinating with Kindle Vella. As you know, Bob, some of my stuff can get rather steamy and Episode 26 was one of those zesty episodes. I named it Down Mexico Way because that is an amusing nickname for the activity that happened in the episode (and if you don’t know what the term refers to I suggest you read the episode and find out).

Usually when I post an episode, it gets approved within a couple of hours and goes live. But when I posted Down Mexico Way it took a full eight hours to get approved. I then had to edit it slightly (wound up adding a bit to the last paragraph that I needed to delete and move to Episode 27), and resubmitted it. It took another eight hours to get approved. When you release episodes on Vella you are warned that they can take up to 72 hours to be released, presumably so that if a reviewing bot stumbles across something “questionable” in the ep it can be put in a holder until a human reviewer can get to it). I can only assume that either the reviewer bots know what “Down Mexico Way” means or found some key naughty words in the episode that caused them to put it on the, “Yeah, we need a grownup here” list.

Which is good to know for future episodes because there will be more zesty scenes coming up in Crystal Blade. Being aware that it will take at least eight hours for them to be released gives me a more accurate timeline of when I should click the Publish button.

By the way, I’m not complaining about the extra hold. I’m playing in the ‘Zon’s sandbox and I have to abide by their rules, and they will not publish anything that contains certain verboten topics (and with good reason) so they need to check what’s published through them. But it amuses me that some human had to spot check my little episode of languissement.