I’m calling it, it’s summer. I know technically I should wait for the solstice, but if I’m having to use the aircon, then I think it’s worth making the call here. My health should start to even out with the good weather and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to enjoy more of the local events that the city puts on over the summer. I know the craft fairs have expanded to the outdoors and the farmers markets are in full swing, so I’ll have plenty of chances to enjoy the weather.

I also got myself a rollator so I can go out more! Still having some feelings about being so visibly disabled, but hopefully I will get over it and be able to enjoy the nice weather.

The Trilogy

I’m finding it hard to do much else besides the books these days, and for good reason! I’m getting close to finishing the rewrite of book 2 of the trilogy! It’s nice to have so much of the world building done, though I am going to miss all my fade to black chapter endings.

I am going to need at least one more pass on this before anyone sees it, but I’m still excited to have this pass almost done.

Audiobooks

I had a good upright day, so another chapter of book 2 has been recorded! Meanwhile, I’m working on editing chapter 7 of book 1. At some point, this audiobook will finally be out of my hands and I am excited for that day.

Alas, I spent another week crashed and so not a lot has been done. On the bright side, I learned what some of the different tax forms are called, so not a total loss. I do wish I was spending that time on something less stressful, but there’s no going back now. I’ve just been trying to ease myself back into things and not think too hard about the possibility that I did something wrong and this will be just the excuse insurance needs to kick me off.

I may have spent too long working with US healthcare. One insurance call and form has me very stressed.

On the bright side, I think they finished repairs to the roof. I may not have mentioned it last time, but I have been living directly under a construction zone and let me tell you! The sound of banging, power tools, and the walls shaking due to what’s happening directly above you for weeks does not do great things for your mental health!

The Trilogy

As much as I want to publish this trilogy like the rest of the books, I am hesitating now. I keep getting reminders from my private health insurance and also from the Canadian government that if I dare to make too much money from a series that has taken me years to write, I could get kicked off of my insurance entirely. $7,400 annually to get investigated, $21,000 annually to be removed entirely. That doesn’t even cover housing, much less is that enough to live on. Not to mention if insurance isn’t covering my medication, my expenses go up. It would be catastrophic for me.

On the other hand, I know what my traffic numbers are on this blog. I know my sales numbers of previous books. This is likely not going to be an issue.

Audiobooks

You know what a great test of noise cancelling headphones is? Roof construction! Stress meant that there hasn’t been as much writing, but I still wanted to get something done and getting the final edits done on another short was it. I know I can hear all the times my brain fuzzed out while I was recording, but I do wonder how much that is going to matter. I have heard a few audiobook samples now and I’m starting to think I’m being too hard on myself.

It’s another new month and, while I had another month without major crashes, it was another month of not hitting those maximums per day. The fatigue has just been kicking my ass, which means I just cannot spend more than 25 minutes a day on fun stuff. Some of this definitely is related to having to spend more time on housework ¹ but ultimately it means I am maintaining what I’m currently doing. Just a little every day and hopefully I get to cross off something else at some point this year!

But also I am kinda hoping that I can increase soon. My health tends to get better during summer, so wish me luck this month!

Also, way less this block. Unfortunately for me, insurance really wanted to reassess whether or not I was still too disabled to work which meant my energy had to be spent on filling out paperwork for probably not a doctor ² to look at and determine whether or not I can hold down a job. So I’ll see if documenting and celebrating what I spend 20 minutes a day on in this blog is a bad idea.

The Trilogy

I keep thinking I’m getting close with leaving the restructuring phase of this, but there’s so much world building. I am definitely going to need another pass on this to trim out some of the fat because I want to go into all the nuances of this world I created but is the audience going to care? Probably not. Then again, I may make my editor tell me what I need to cut out instead. Maybe.

Because Pretty Stuff

I finally published those listings! I really need to get better at editing the photos since they look hella dark but given the traffic to that site is mostly from China and the ability to purchase from the site is currently broken I am not in any rush to get that done.

This two week period started out so well until the major distractions hit. Unfortunately, that did end up taking away some of the time I would have spent on projects, but it had to be done. And luckily I have already set up most of what I need, so it’s been pretty smooth making the changes. The unlisting has been done, and now I’m taking my sweet time setting up getting the books elsewhere while focusing back on the things that I want to be working on.

The Trilogy

Slow and steady! Emphasis on slow right about now, but that happens when you’re restructuring.

Audiobooks

Nothing edited, but I did manage to get another chapter recorded! It took 5 days, 10 minutes a day, and I really hope my voice doesn’t sound too different between each recording, but another chapter recorded!

Because Pretty Stuff

Before all of the Draft2Digital nonsense, I finally got some photos taken! The plan was to list some things, but hopefully that can happen next week.

But then there was the Draft2Digital update.

The problem

A previously free platform deciding to charge an account activation fee is never going to go over well. $20USD for the ability to publish through a number of channels that you might not be able to otherwise is worth the risk for some people. They let you publish your books to libraries, which was the biggest draw for me. It is where I get the second most sales, after all.

The larger issue was that they were going to start charging $12USD annually if you did not make $100USD in royalties per year. If you’re a new author just getting started or writing in a niche that isn’t terribly popular, that’s a whole lot of sales. Most of us make most of our money via Amazon, with all other sales channels together adding up to a fraction of those Amazon sales.

Add onto that the royalty split with Draft2Digital. They take typically 15% of the royalty of each book already. Not the sale price, the royalty that is being paid out by the sales channel. So if you have to earn at least $100USD after Draft2Digital takes their cut or pay an extra $12USD annually, well, that’s too much for a lot of people, especially given that this seems to be yet another change making it harder to get paid by the platform. ¹

The explanation

The explanation for all of this was ultimately uncovered via a post on Facebook in the 20Booksto50K group. The optics of giving an interview that is published on a Facebook group instead of making a public statement on any of your own public social media platforms, blog, or via email, is not good.

What was stated in the post about this all being to keep AI publishers from taking advantage of the platform is also pretty questionable. The account fee seems reasonable in that regard, but the maintenance fee does not. From what I’ve seen, there was no consideration given to alternatives like checking the tax or banking information is only attached to one account, or even putting limitations on the volume you can publish until you are verified as a non-AI author.

My thoughts

I think that if it were either an account fee or a monthly fee, that would be reasonable. The implementation of both is what makes this look like a cash grab, or that they are hurting for money. Adding in that they are reportedly not paying out authors below the threshold when they close their accounts and this looks a lot like a service that hopes that you forget you have a subscription in order to bolster their finances. Given that you also cannot delete your account on your own, it reminds me of Adobe’s practices.

Looking at this as a business decision that is being framed as an anti-AI strategy, $12USD annually for wide publication, or just a dollar monthly, is a pretty amazing deal! One that is better in the long term for the company than an account activation fee. PublishDrive charges far more, but they do not take anything from your royalties. They also charge per book rather than placing the fee on the whole account, which is a better deterrent for the mass publication of AI slop that Draft2Digital purports to be implementing these fees as a result of.

I’m no expert and have been very out of the loop on many things, but I do think this is a business decision and not something to help authors. Tech companies are running into the need to increase revenue as investment funding becomes unstable or dries up. In the same way the mass layoffs in tech are being blamed on AI, I think AI is providing a convenient excuse for something else happening behind the scenes and is likely only one of several issues, with the larger problems being related to cash flow in some way.

The great migration

Naturally, a lot of authors are now leaving Draft2Digital. This is not the first time authors have made a grand exodus from a platform, nor will it be the last. Whether it’s the mass exit from Amazon in protest, or leaving PublishDrive when they implemented their fees, this is a thing I have seen a lot over the years. The reasons change, but the result is that authors are now going to have to spend a lot of time and efforts moving their books to some new place and hoping that their audience follows them.

Ultimately, this is a lot of time, effort, and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. With the constantly changing landscape of the internet, the wisdom we all got about mailing lists can be echoed here. In the same way that you need a way to own your audience independent of platform, you also need a sales channel that you own independent of platform as well. Hopefully this will be the time authors set up store fronts, or even just an order form, that they can direct their audience to as a first line sales channel so that the next time something like this happens they can take their time dealing with it.

Some authors are already doing this. There’s a list being maintained at Bear Mountain Books of authors you can support at this time!

What I’m doing

I’m also withdrawing my books from Draft2Digital. My books sell almost exclusively through libraries and, after the D2D cut, I’m only making 20-30 cents a sale. ² I have around $5 sitting in my account that I will never see as a result. It sucks, but ultimately I am not in a position to do what I need to in order to at least ensure I hit $12USD a year to cover the cost, much less the $100USD threshold to not incur the cost at all.

I already sell direct through my own site and, beyond libraries, I only ever really sold through Amazon anyway so that isn’t a big change on my part. If you want one of my books, you can get it directly from Scrap Paper Entertainment.

Lastly, I am getting some rest and getting back to writing. Hopefully everyone else can do the same soon.

I’m doing my best to take things a day at a time. I’ve had a few odd spikes in motivation, but as is the case with chronic fatigue, I cannot act on it without pretty severe consequences. It does mean I’ve spent a lot of time working on things outside of projects, like baking or cleaning or generally crossing off to do list items relating to chores around the house that have been sitting there for ages. Using that extra motivation on things that I don’t lose track of time on, you know?

The Trilogy

These first drafts require a lot more work than I thought. Every time I think that I’m getting close to the parts where I got the story pretty close, I realize just how little is actually salvageable. Which, like, not terrible for me. I am having a lot of fun reworking the story and finding out I get to do some fun things with it. ¹ It’s still fun, even if I’m a little frustrated with just how much longer it takes me now to write something.

Also, decided to get the tablet out and figure out some stuff with the covers! I still don’t know what the titles of these books are, but I think I have a general idea of what I’m doing with the art for each of the covers will be. I am leaning toward a long title this time around, though, albeit with a different font.jrwi

Audiobooks

I got another one edited! Two of them, actually! The second one was a lot shorter so it felt almost like cheating, but it’s still another one! I am going to need to start signing up for all the services to distribute the audiobook at some point, and figure out what to charge, but it’s getting closer ever so slowly. Please tell me what services you use for audiobooks so I can get that done.

Twisted Eden Stuff

I have a journal full of journaling prompts. I had plans to create some guided journals for Twisted Eden, but I didn’t want to do that without actually trying the prompts out myself to see which ones I found value from, or without figuring out how to modify those prompts so that they were actually helpful. After around a year, I finally picked it back up again to continue journaling with it. Not because it’s awful journaling, but because if I only have 20 minutes a day to spend on fun stuff, I am going to spend it on creative works than self improvement stuff, but I had a rough writing day and needed a break.

Because Pretty Stuff

If there’s one thing I don’t like writing, it is product descriptions. When I finally get these products actually and fully listed, you will see just how much I do not want to write these descriptions. But that part is at least done, so there’s that.

The return to normalcy has been slower than expected. Life does not stop throwing punches just because you’re already having a bad time, it seems. Still, the brain is getting back to normal and I am getting back to distracting myself with projects again. As much as less than half an hour a day on projects cam do that, but I take what I can get these days and I am damn happy about it.

I have already decided, however, that I won’t be increasing my time to work on projects next month. Between the medication stuff and everything else, I just wasn’t able to actually use my increased time in March anyway. If I don’t use it, then I don’t know if I can handle it, much less if I can handle an increase. That’s just the way things go sometimes!

The Trilogy

The more I write this book, the more I realize I have a very definite pattern to how the pacing of these books go. Book 1 feels like a stand alone, book 2 feels like a whole different thing where all of the world building happens, and then book 3 is the fallout from the chaos after the twist at the end of book 2. This is the third trilogy I’ve written and the second one that has followed this pattern. It is very much a second book slump, but narratively it works out better this way so I’m not entirely mad about it. It is weird how different the first book in the trilogies turn out, but maybe I can just claim it’s a style thing?

White Noise Game

I had a moment of nostalgia remembering old escape room games. I’ve made one or two in my day back when Flash was a thing (and in Figma as part of my day job) and started thinking about puzzles. Then looking into what engines supported making escape room games. And then realizing I had notes for a backstory that I never got into for White Noise. It could be a lot of fun, provided I figure out how to draw well enough to create all the art assets, by which I mean the human faces and bodies.

I really have to start drawing more if I keep picking up these game projects.

Audiobooks

The number of times things crashed because I tried to export and import files was honestly frustrating. I didn’t get any actual stuff done, despite how much time I ended up spending on just getting the files in place. For something that’s going to turn out to be under 3 hours ¹ this process is taking a damn long time.

Because Pretty

I started getting a whole lot of errors from the sites, which I ignored because that started a couple weeks ago. Turned out that there were a few things going wrong, so Because Pretty should be working again now. While I was at it and because I was having a good day for being upright, I did manage to finally price a few of the new products that I haven’t gotten around to listing yet. We’ll see when I feel like writing product descriptions, taking photos, and the rest of what I need to do to list these!

This has been a couple of weeks. Cat had her appointment with the specialist which… last time we were there she stopped breathing during what I thought was a routine procedure and ended up in the ICU so I have been stressed as a result. She is doing fine, though, which somehow did not make that stress lighten up even remotely. Turns out the new medication that’s doing great things for my energy is causing a whole lot of mental health issues. ¹ The fun of chronic illness, folks!

Follow that up with starting taxes and learning that being so disabled that I cannot hold down a job means I now owe more in taxes and this has been a very unfortunate couple of weeks for me.

Hopefully life lightens up. Until then, I at least tried to distract myself with projects.

Audiobooks

This is turning out to be more of a pain than expected to work on. I’ve been moving more and more to working on the Linux side of my computer ² where I just haven’t gotten things set up yet. Adding to that, it’s also a struggle to get some of the files moved between the different parts of the computer and there’s some things that I can’t install on this side of things and I have spent a lot of time figuring out how to get my workflow duplicated.

Which, honestly, kind of fine? I still managed to finally finish the first pass edit of Syndicate after months, so now it’s just all the manual stuff that takes forever. Yay…

The Trilogy

While some people use bad moments in their lives to write great things, I am not one of those people. The writing happened, but it definitely slowed down while I dealt with life. It’s also a little slower in general because it turns out that, even though I am back in the part of the story where I can keep some stuff, I need to heavily restructure this part of the book still. I’m still setting up a bunch of foundational stuff for this new world, but at least things are happening alongside it so hopefully that makes sure the pacing doesn’t suffer and the audience isn’t too confused by the way this world works.

I am happy to announce that I made it through February without any major crashes, or even minor ones, as a result of working on projects! This means that I can increase my time on projects every day from 20 minutes to 25 for the month of March. I still can’t really handle more than 15 minutes at a time, so it will be split up into a 10 minute block and a 15 minute block, but I am super excited because the split has worked out pretty well. I am more often than not getting a chance to work on two things a day, which is pretty great for me. I don’t have to choose!

The Trilogy

This has been going slower than usual, but that makes sense. I’m still in the brand new part of the book where I am actually trying to do the world building. There’s been a lot of doubling back and rewriting things I just wrote, which is not something I usually do but feels right for this one.

Chronic Fatigue Activity Tracker

I finished this! To be fair, I did create this spreadsheet a couple years ago and have been refining it as I used it over the last couple years. I thought there was a lot more to do, but ultimately I realized I didn’t use a lot of it and stripped it down to just the bits I used. Most of my time was spent on writing a guide for it.

And despite the last post, I do still want to talk about it more. Specifically, I want to talk about how it works so people can better customize it. I don’t know if people even want to use it, but you know. Just in case.

Needless to say, there’s a reason I’ve spent the last several years either bed or housebound.

Knowing that I didn’t have a good way to feel when I was going overboard, ¹ I ended up figuring out a way to externalize things. Back when I first got into my first Long Covid Clinic, a nurse send me a handout of activities with point values assigned to them and told me to only spend 20 points a day. This handout formed the base of the spreadsheet that I have used to get myself to a place where I am now stable.

I’ve spent some time over the years refining the formulae and figuring out how to make it work best for me. And now I’ve cleaned it up a bit so that it can now also be used by anyone else who needs something to help them figure out how to manage their activity when dealing with chronic fatigue, myalgic encephalomyelitis, or long covid.

How long have you been using this?

Around 2 and a half years.

How did you use it?

At the start of the day I used it to determine how many points I had to spend for the day, then I planned my day based on how many points I had. This didn’t always work as things would come up ² but it definitely helped keep me in my energy envelope.

Did this activity tracker cure you?

No. I am now stable, which is a lot different from being cured. What it did was ensure that I did not push myself into a crash and, when I did, I kept my activity low enough during recovery so that I was not back in bed due to feeling better and increasing activity when I still needed rest.

Are you still using it?

Not at the moment. Thanks to using it, I’ve managed to rest myself into increasing the threshold to hit PEM enough that I am able to stay within my energy limits. Unfortunately, I’ve also developed a few other health complications that also ensure I don’t hit the threshold.

Are you charging for this?

Absolutely not. I’ve been in this community for long enough to see how many people are out of work as a result of this illness and I will not be adding to the financial stress by charging for a tool which may not work for everyone. If you want to give me money, I have a Kofi link and plenty of other things like books available that you can purchase from me.

Are you asking for anything in exchange for this?

Nope! Not even an email address. This is not the top of a sales funnel. I have no course or coaching services to offer you. I am just a person who still has long covid and would like to help out other people.

Can I offer this to others?

Provided you are not charging for it or putting it behind a paywall and give me credit, go for it! If you’re part of a clinic dealing with a patient population that could find this useful, please do send it out.