If you want to say happy birthday to my kiddo (after she wasn’t let into the Rhys show on her birthday😭) she would like you to toss some money at the trans youth emergency fund!!
southernequality.app.neoncrm.com/forms/60
Why does boiled water taste sweet? Am I just starting to taste-hallucinate after being able to drink nothing but for the past six weeks 🥲
Copy of Spring in the City showing a small white dragon in a pink blossom tree overlooking a riverside path. In the background is trees and the river and suspension bridge in Chester, UK.
It's been a beautiful spring day in Chester, the setting for my story in Spring in the City from
@ruadanbooks.bsky.social - available at your favourite bookshop.
Or visit: 🌸 links.ruadanbooks.com/spring 🌸
#BookSky #HorrorSky #FolkHorror #Chester
Yes to this. Get kids (and adults) off the algorithm-poisoned screens & apps and back into real - fact-checked, edited, written by human beings - books, newspapers, magazines, academic journals. Thinking for yourself and making your own reading choices is good.
BBC will fire people like Robin Ince for being decent humans, yet will happily keep blatant transphobes on the payroll, but yeah, tell me again how 'neutral' the BBC are. So glad we cancelled our licence ages ago. Scum.
Enough is enough.
Starmer must go.
And life just goes on around you. And you're expected to still just carry on producing and getting on with things like a good drone. I just want peace of mind and a cup of tea and to not be in pain and afraid. It doesn't feel like much to ask. I don't know if this will ever end this time.
It's impossible to even try and get private because you still need an NHS referral from doctors who don't care that an inconvenient number on a page is suffering. I had 2 years off from this. Last year was (relatively) so good. I was free. Now I'm back in the cage of illness and I have lost hope.
What people and doctors don't seem to realise is you don't get a second off from this. When you're in constant pain with a worsening condition and the NHS is moving at a glacial pace because they don't care if you're not literally at death's door, quality of life isn't a concern to them.
I am currently living my worst nightmare health-wise and I don't want to wake up in the morning any more. So please bear with me if I'm a little bad tempered or drop the ball on work sometimes.
By trying to equate low sales with low quality, which is absolutely false.
It bloody deserves a rant 😩 you're bang on with how they're just trying to force out all of the authors they can't easily profit from.
I would happily decant you a bit and send it if I could work out how to do that..!
Logged back into my personal Insta and posted for the first time in a year. Struck by 1) how much I miss it 2) I am now shown 2 random posts for every person I follow even on desktop 3) it stopped being fun at precisely the moment I got an author page on it and it became just more work
The struggle is real. I found Rook by Rook in 2020 and it is perfect for me but also I found it in 2020 so that is a very unfortunate specific scent memory association 🥲 They do some super nice ones though. Pricey, but not outrageous if you find a coupon.
There really should. If you ever wanna exchange any samples, hit me up (although honestly I don't think I'll be purchasing any more for a while now, gonna try and find them in the wild!)
Thank you, I'll try it if I'm ever in London - I've had enough not-great experiences now I'm not spending money to try any more 😅
I tried Encre Noir years ago and that didn't agree with me either (actual ink smell) but I do want to retry that one if I can find a tester somewhere!
Great article. Sums this whole mess up better than I did.
The part I liked best about Draft2Digital was being in the library systems. I've only sold a couple books through D2D, but I'm really proud of the library loans people have been able to get.
But I'm sure as fuck not paying *them* to list my shit and take a cut.
A screenshot of Draft2Digital's payment fees and thresholds for releasing author royalties.
🤔 I'd like #Draft2Digital to review minimum payment thresholds. US authors now risk paying a significant $41.99 to D2D before seeing ANY royalties, while for international authors it's $51.99! $20 setup+$12 annually+$19.99 payment threshold.
💰That's REALLY starting to add up!
#WritingCommunity 📚💙
📚💙 Indie authors & those who love us!
✨SIGN THE PETITION: Eliminate Unfair Draft2Digital Fees for Indie Authors.
We have 60+ signatures 😀 100 signatures sends an alert to the CEO. 1000 gets attention. 10,000 makes real change happen.
Please RP. Thanks so much!
Petition & Info:
c.org/GZYvHtZgpj
Received a response from Draft2Digital saying that if you have no books listed then you won't get charged the fee just for having an account/unlisted books. Which would've been helpful if they'd stated that initially, completely incompetent company.
I've got Binet-Papillon 'No 10 Night Warrior', Barre 'Outlaw' and BeauFort 'Vi et Armis' left to try but I'm not getting my hopes up tbh. I think after this little adventure I'm just gonna go back to Rook and try and work past how it reminds me of 2020 🙃 6/6
- smell like birthday cake, which I don't.
Recap:
BeauFort:
Lignum Vitae - yellow Fondant Fancies
Couer de Noir - Mr Sheen
Terror and Magnificence - pot pourri
Tonnere - Cif cleaner
Pierre Guillaume:
Anti-Blues - Play Doh
Have not found a 'smoke scent' that smells like smoke on me yet 🥲 5/
Anti-Blues by Pierre Guillaume at least lasted. Big projection and sillage. Started out a nice dry dark nutty chocolate, very quickly became Play Doh, then around 2 hours became sugar (like BPAL Antique Lace) and stuck around forever. Can still smell the fabric swatch. Lasts forever if you wanna- 4/
Terror and Magnificence was also weak re projection and sillage on me. Started out generic hippie shop incense, after about an hour if I REALLY huffed my wrist I got some damp church stone. No smoke. After 2 hours it died to a lingering sort of sweaty pot pourri, very feminine. I kinda hated it. 3/
Was dying to try Tonnere, but got zero smoke or leather. Just lime with tiny hint of wood smoke, quickly disappearing into a kind of chartreuse-and-rain scent. No projection, no sillage. Partner says it smells of melon. I sprayed it on a cloth swatch and it was straight-up Cif cleaner 🥲 2/
Given that I've not been able to have caffeine or alcohol for two months now, I gave myself a treat and ordered a few scent samples and oh boy I cannot catch a break lately, or perhaps my sense of smell is just broken too 🙃 I wanted to love BeauFort SO MUCH but everything I've tried has been awful.
Exactly this. I can avoid Amazon, but I'm still stuck with stuff like Gmail, Instagram, Substack, Paypal for various reasons, not least I'm not healthy enough to have the energy to migrate all of it. Being able to ditch everything that's problematic is such an aspirational privilege.
Right?
