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.

All of the Melanie books have now been sent off to Smashwords and Google Play, so hopefully everything will be accepted at SW and sent off to Kobo/Apple/B&N later this week.

Which means I can return to Crystal Blade and get episodes 23 and 24 hammered out, edited, and uploaded to Vella for release on Monday and Wednesday, respectively. I also need to get on my stick and get the book finished ASAP because I no longer have a two week cache of episodes anymore and that makes me nervous.

I also really need to knuckle down and get the PayPal business account started this week so that I can add purchase buttons here. The thing that’s holding me back is that I would really like to have an EIN and a separate business bank account first, in order to keep the book money separate from my personal money. I’m just gonna have to get an EIN online, then go into my credit union and set up a new account. Ideally I would also prefer to have an LLC, but that will have to wait until I have enough money to file for one.

Crystal Blade Episode 19: At Her Majesty’s Pleasure is now live on Kindle Vella. Go read it already.

So yeah, Sunday is Mother’s Day, not that this has any real onus on me since my mother is currently sitting at the heavenly poolside dandling William Holden in her lap, but I know it’s an important day for a lot of mothers and their kids. If you fall into one of these categories I hope that the day is pleasant, stress-free, and provides you with everything that makes you happy.

In other news, all of the Olympic Cove and Two Thrones books, as well as Stealing Dmitri, are now officially out of KU and I fully expect to see my Amazon income crater until I can get Crystal Blade out. Still, I think I’m doing the smart thing by taking most of my series out of KU (I’m leaving the Paladins of Crystal books in there because KU is tailor-made for Why Choose readers). I’ve already seen a significant jump in wide sales of the Esposito County Shifters books and omnibus, better than they had been selling on Amazon, and I’m hoping that as I set the other novels wide I’ll see improved sales on all those as well. Maybe not enough to offset the KU income loss, but hey, that’s what Vella, audiobooks, and selling print books from my website are for, right?

Crystal Blade Episode 18: That Escalated Quickly is now available at Vella. Help a writer out and read the story, okay?

In other news I’m busily plowing through Shadow of the Swan in Vellum to make sure the formatting is accurate, and I have to admit that this story holds up well. I probably went a little overboard writing in a Victorian style but it’s still fun and engaging, and The Crimson and the Black is a pure romp. When I get around to working on To Love a Wild Swan I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with Louisa’s cousin Nessa and her unwilling Seelie Sidhe fiancé. I’m still toying with the idea of giving him a boyfriend who also takes a fancy to Nessa, but I’m not sure how that would fly with readers of this series.

Then again, Fyodora is pan and there was a FF love scene in Crimson, there are gay and lesbian couples in the supporting characters, and nobody’s complained about that. I think it might be fun for Nessa to join an icily handsome Fae and a (literally) hot djinn in a menage.