2026/058: Hidden in Snow — Viveca Sten (translated by Marlaine Delargy)
Apr. 21st, 2026 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth2026/058: Hidden in Snow — Viveca Sten (translated by Marlaine Delargy)
All these fucking men, exploiting vulnerable women. [p. 386]
First in a new series of crime novels set in the Swedish town of Åre, a quiet ski resort surrounded by mountains and forest. Hanna Ahlander's life has imploded, both professionally and personally: her boss has 'sent her home to think things over' and clearly wants her gone, and her boyfriend has broken up with her -- leaving her homeless.
( Read more... )
When we take on new bodies, I will scour the earth to find you again
Apr. 21st, 2026 02:29 amsovayIt was cold enough in the intermittent late sun that I should have worn gloves, but I walked out and photographed the flowering things of my neighborhood.
( I'll salt circle your brain if I have to. )
It was a delight to run into Elana Lev Friedland on North Street. We talked cosmic horror and capitalism until my hands stiffened up. I dove for the bag of bagels as soon as I got home and made myself one with cream cheese and lox, the latter eagerly shared by Hestia. She has taken to leaping onto the top of the washing machine at the slightest rustle that might suggest deli meats. I fell asleep in the evening, butspatch cooked me scrambled eggs and afterward rushthatspeaks and I talked over our days. I am fascinated by the blue-based earthtongue.
( I'll salt circle your brain if I have to. )
It was a delight to run into Elana Lev Friedland on North Street. We talked cosmic horror and capitalism until my hands stiffened up. I dove for the bag of bagels as soon as I got home and made myself one with cream cheese and lox, the latter eagerly shared by Hestia. She has taken to leaping onto the top of the washing machine at the slightest rustle that might suggest deli meats. I fell asleep in the evening, but
spatch cooked me scrambled eggs and afterward rushthatspeaks and I talked over our days. I am fascinated by the blue-based earthtongue.Punching Out the Nazis
Apr. 20th, 2026 06:48 pmstevenpiziksIn West Hollywood, right-wing provocateur Ryley Niemi and a cameraman harassed a gay couple who had a baby. He pretended to be a reporter and asked them disgusting questions designed to get them angry. David Vullin, one of the couple, finally lost his temper and decked Niemi a good one.
Niemi gleefully edited the video and posted it on Instagram, and it "went viral." (Based on what comes next, I'm not sure this qualifies as "viral," but keep reading.) He also filed assault charges against Vullin.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/04/gay-dad-punches-right-wing-commentator-after-being-tricked-into-a-homophobic-interview/
Me, I have the feeling the charges won't go very far. This is West Hollywood, a major gay zone. Even if the DA presses charges, Vullin will almost certainly get a kiss on the wrist. And a Nazi got punched out. I'm always happy to see that.
But there's a little more.
Four days ago, just after this happened, Nutjob Niemi put up a GoFundMe page asking for $9,000. For what, I'm not sure, since it costs him nothing to file charges. But he did go viral, right?
Well, as of this writing, he's gotten 15 donations that have raised $1,725. The most recent donation came in more than 8 hours ago, an eternity in internet fundraising time.
On the other hand, the Vullin family has started a GoFundMe fund of their own to help with legal fees: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-david-secure-legal-representation-vdesk
The campaign went up one day ago, and they're trying to raise $30,000. As of this writing, they've had 365 donations totaling about $24,200. Ha! Fuck you, Nazi.
You can still donate to the family. Hint hint.
UPDATE: The Vullin fundraiser got so much activity that they raised the goal to $55k. They have $52k as of this update. The Nutjob fundraiser has gotten two whole more donations and now sits at $1,800.
Niemi gleefully edited the video and posted it on Instagram, and it "went viral." (Based on what comes next, I'm not sure this qualifies as "viral," but keep reading.) He also filed assault charges against Vullin.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/04/gay-dad-punches-right-wing-commentator-after-being-tricked-into-a-homophobic-interview/
Me, I have the feeling the charges won't go very far. This is West Hollywood, a major gay zone. Even if the DA presses charges, Vullin will almost certainly get a kiss on the wrist. And a Nazi got punched out. I'm always happy to see that.
But there's a little more.
Four days ago, just after this happened, Nutjob Niemi put up a GoFundMe page asking for $9,000. For what, I'm not sure, since it costs him nothing to file charges. But he did go viral, right?
Well, as of this writing, he's gotten 15 donations that have raised $1,725. The most recent donation came in more than 8 hours ago, an eternity in internet fundraising time.
On the other hand, the Vullin family has started a GoFundMe fund of their own to help with legal fees: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-david-secure-legal-representation-vdesk
The campaign went up one day ago, and they're trying to raise $30,000. As of this writing, they've had 365 donations totaling about $24,200. Ha! Fuck you, Nazi.
You can still donate to the family. Hint hint.
UPDATE: The Vullin fundraiser got so much activity that they raised the goal to $55k. They have $52k as of this update. The Nutjob fundraiser has gotten two whole more donations and now sits at $1,800.
Imposing Poll Worker
Apr. 20th, 2026 04:33 pmstevenpiziks I'm retired.
This is an election year.
I'm a 6' tall, broad-shouldered white male with big arms, a shaved head, and a beard. In other words, when I draw myself up, I look imposing. My years in the classroom have also let me develop a scowl that makes people back up a step.
So I'm thinking I would make a good poll worker. It's the traditional hobby for retirees, after all, and I'm happy to play the heavy if someone tries to bully voters at the poll or interfere with the election.
Now I just need to figure out where to apply.
This is an election year.
I'm a 6' tall, broad-shouldered white male with big arms, a shaved head, and a beard. In other words, when I draw myself up, I look imposing. My years in the classroom have also let me develop a scowl that makes people back up a step.
So I'm thinking I would make a good poll worker. It's the traditional hobby for retirees, after all, and I'm happy to play the heavy if someone tries to bully voters at the poll or interfere with the election.
Now I just need to figure out where to apply.
Congratulations! (Aurora Awards)
Apr. 20th, 2026 11:27 amradiantfractureCongratulations to everyone who made the ballot for the Aurora Awards, but really mostly to Rachel A. Rosen for rocketing into three (3) (three!) (3!!) categories:
Best Novel - Blight, second book in the Sleep of Reason series
Best Short Story - “What If We Kissed While Sinking a Billionaire’s Yacht?“
Best Fan-Related Work, Wizards and Spaceships Podcast
Tribute to her excellent writing (and talking) and also to the uncrushable grit of small press publishing.
§rf§
Best Novel - Blight, second book in the Sleep of Reason series
Best Short Story - “What If We Kissed While Sinking a Billionaire’s Yacht?“
Best Fan-Related Work, Wizards and Spaceships Podcast
Tribute to her excellent writing (and talking) and also to the uncrushable grit of small press publishing.
§rf§
An AI Confession
Apr. 20th, 2026 01:40 pmstevenpiziks I confess. I did it.
I used AI in my classroom. Long before it became A Thing, in fact.
How did I use it, you ask with narrowed eyes?
Lots of ways. I used it to generate quizzes. To create sub plans and "oh crap, I have to fill half an hour" activities. To generate pacing guides for new material.
And to grade essays.
Really? You mean those essays that teachers forbid students from using AI to write them? Those essays?
Yep. And I'm not being a hypocrite, either. I'm also not the only one who did it--and still is doing it.
But why? How did it work?
Here's the why. One day I collected a set of freshman essays: "How does Shakespeare use light and darkness as images in ROMEO AND JULIET?" It's an essay prompt I've given many times before, and there'd be nothing new in this set of essays. I had a headache, and I had just come off grading a pile of essays from a different class. The last thing I wanted to do was go through more of them. If only there were a way for someone else to grade this stuff.
Hmm ...
I called up a chatbot and uploaded my essay rubric to it. I told it to evaluate essays using said rubric, give a letter grade, and provide commentary. Then I pasted the essays into the chatbot window. In a few seconds, it spat out a complete evaluation for each: letter grade, rubric, and commentary. Wow. Just ... wow. The two things I disliked most about my job were 1) having to get up at five in the morning and 2) grading essays. In a blink, AI had wiped out one of those awful aspects.
Some caveats, though.
I didn't trust the AI that much, and anyway I needed to know how my individual students were doing as writers, so I looked over the AI's virtual shoulder by reading each essay on one screen and scrolling through the AI's feedback on the other.
Why then even bother with the AI, you ask? Because this method was still way, way, WAY faster. I didn't have to stop reading every other sentence to make comments; the AI made them for me. I read insanely fast, and can pop through a 2,000-word essay in about 60 seconds—if I don't have to slow down for commentary. I also didn't have to mark up the rubric because the AI did it for me.
I did check the AI's evaluation and comments to make sure I agreed with them. In well over 90% of the cases, I did. In those cases, I just sent the rubric and comments back to the student. In the cases I didn't agree, I went back and read the essay more closely to see what the problem was and did the evaluation myself. This only happened with one essay in ten or twelve.
This method cut my grading time down to a quarter of what it was. And there was an added bonus: sanity!
High school is when freshman learn to write full-blown introduction-multiple body paragraph-conclusion essays for the first time. My method for teaching them was to walk them through the first essay practically word-for-word. For the second essay, I backed away a little, and for the third essay, I backed away even more. By the end of the year, I was able to give them just the question and no help whatsoever. This method worked great! The students left my class able to write an entire essay on their own. But grading those things was torture. The early ones were almost all exactly the same, and even the later ones were tediously similar because they had the same prompt and drew their information from the same sources. And since they were mostly at the same level of writing skill, the feedback and evaluations were very similar. By the time I was done with one class, I was ready to bite bricks.
Essays that were more original and less lock-step had downsides of their own. I had to read those closely and carefully, looking for errors in logic and argument as well as content mistakes.
AI made all this a breeze. What a delight!
I used AI grading for about a year and a half before my retirement loomed. Now, barely nine months later, we're seeing AI leaping deeper into education in some horrifying ways. For example, a student can let an AI program log into the student's online classroom account, go through all the reading, lectures, slides, and videos, and complete every assignment in minutes. There are also programs that get around AI detection. Google Classroom, you see, has a widget that lets the teacher watch a fast-forward recording of a student's keystrokes as they wrote an assignment. The abrupt appearance of a big block of text tells you that the kid pasted in work generated somewhere else. I used this widget often—very handy when a kid vehemently denies using AI. But now there's a competing widget that will paste in text slowly, letter by letter, and make it look like it was typed in by a human. I'm sure there'll eventually be yet another widget that will detect this, after which there'll be still another widget to duck it. It's an arms race, and one I'm glad to sidestep.
The solution to this problem is obvious: have students do assignments with pen and paper. No way to use AI there! Teachers are already doing this, in fact. This method does have weaknesses. You can't give such assignments as homework, for one thing. I myself gave hand-written assignments as homework, and discovered more than once that a student had fed the thing into an AI and just copied the AI's responses by hand. This means losing a lot of class time to in-class writing. It's also not practical to have students complete research papers or other long assignments by hand. But this does work for in-class stuff, especially final exam essays.
Was I being hypocritical, forbidding my students to use AI when I was using it myself? Nah. For one thing, I'm not a student, and student rules don't apply to teachers. (It's weird how many people think otherwise.) My students also got the same feedback they would have gotten if I hadn't used AI. Finally, my students needed practice writing essays, but I definitely didn't need practice grading them.
Still glad I got out of the arms race, though.
It's amazing how high a number you can get to with a deck of cards!
Apr. 20th, 2026 03:57 pmandrewduckerWould you like your mind blown?
To imagine the number of ways a standard pack of playing cards can be uniquely shuffled, follow these simple instructions:
Go to the equator with a deck of cards and start shuffling them. Shuffle them so that every second you produce a new and unique ordering of cards. Keep shuffling them over and over, a new ordering, every second, for a billion years.
At the end of a billion years take a single step forward.
Keep shuffling.
Every billion years keep taking a single step forward.
Once you have circumnavigated the Earth, take a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean. Keep shuffling. Keep taking a single step every billion years. Keep taking a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean each time you walk around the Earth.
Once the Pacific Ocean is dry, refill it and place a single piece of paper on the ground.
Keep shuffling.
Keep taking billion year steps. Keep taking a drop out of the Pacific Ocean with each return to your start point. Keep refilling the Pacific Ocean once dry. Keep building your tower of paper one sheet at a time.
Once your tower of paper is as tall as Mount Everest, throw it away and place a single grain of sand on a weighing scale.
Don't stop shuffling.
Don't stop taking a step every billion years.
Don't stop emptying the Pacific Ocean and refilling it to build an Everest of paper.
Don't stop throwing your paper tower away to place another grain of sand on your weighing scales.
On the other side of your scale is a bull elephant. When it raises off the ground you will be half way done.
To see the maths behind this, click here.
(With thanks to my brother Mike, who saw a version of this which wasn't as good, rewrote chunks of it and did the maths.)
To imagine the number of ways a standard pack of playing cards can be uniquely shuffled, follow these simple instructions:
Go to the equator with a deck of cards and start shuffling them. Shuffle them so that every second you produce a new and unique ordering of cards. Keep shuffling them over and over, a new ordering, every second, for a billion years.
At the end of a billion years take a single step forward.
Keep shuffling.
Every billion years keep taking a single step forward.
Once you have circumnavigated the Earth, take a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean. Keep shuffling. Keep taking a single step every billion years. Keep taking a single drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean each time you walk around the Earth.
Once the Pacific Ocean is dry, refill it and place a single piece of paper on the ground.
Keep shuffling.
Keep taking billion year steps. Keep taking a drop out of the Pacific Ocean with each return to your start point. Keep refilling the Pacific Ocean once dry. Keep building your tower of paper one sheet at a time.
Once your tower of paper is as tall as Mount Everest, throw it away and place a single grain of sand on a weighing scale.
Don't stop shuffling.
Don't stop taking a step every billion years.
Don't stop emptying the Pacific Ocean and refilling it to build an Everest of paper.
Don't stop throwing your paper tower away to place another grain of sand on your weighing scales.
On the other side of your scale is a bull elephant. When it raises off the ground you will be half way done.
To see the maths behind this, click here.
(With thanks to my brother Mike, who saw a version of this which wasn't as good, rewrote chunks of it and did the maths.)
larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
A Sapphic Dream, George Moore
I love the luminous poison of the moon,
The silence of illimitable seas,
Vast night, and all her myriad mysteries,
Perfumes that make the burdened senses swoon
And weaken will, large snakes who oscillate
Like lovely girls, immense exotic flowers,
And cats who purr through silk-enfestooned bowers
Where white-limbed women sleep in sumptuous state.
My soul e’er dreams, in such a dream as this is,
Visions of perfume, moonlight and the blisses
Of sexless love, and strange unreached kisses.
Moore (1852-1933) is best known for adapting French naturalism into English fiction, but before he turned novelist he was a poet under the influence of French symbolists. (He was also a childhood friend of Oscar Wilde.) This is from his first collection, Flowers of Passion (1878). After all the preceding orientalist imagery, that “sexless love” gets some heavy sideeye. Commit to the bit!
---L.
Subject quote from Hotel California, Eagles, and yes colitas are cannabis buds.
A Sapphic Dream, George Moore
I love the luminous poison of the moon,
The silence of illimitable seas,
Vast night, and all her myriad mysteries,
Perfumes that make the burdened senses swoon
And weaken will, large snakes who oscillate
Like lovely girls, immense exotic flowers,
And cats who purr through silk-enfestooned bowers
Where white-limbed women sleep in sumptuous state.
My soul e’er dreams, in such a dream as this is,
Visions of perfume, moonlight and the blisses
Of sexless love, and strange unreached kisses.
Moore (1852-1933) is best known for adapting French naturalism into English fiction, but before he turned novelist he was a poet under the influence of French symbolists. (He was also a childhood friend of Oscar Wilde.) This is from his first collection, Flowers of Passion (1878). After all the preceding orientalist imagery, that “sexless love” gets some heavy sideeye. Commit to the bit!
---L.
Subject quote from Hotel California, Eagles, and yes colitas are cannabis buds.
Interesting Links for 20-04-2026
Apr. 20th, 2026 12:01 pmandrewducker- 1. Looks like later kids get sick from their older siblings giving them diseases, decreasing their achievements in later life
- (tags:family disease achievement )
- 2. Putin has sailed 121 tankers off Britain's coastline. None of them were seized
- (tags:UK Russia shipping )
- 3. The seven programming ur-languages
- (tags:language programming history )
- 4. Plans for huge new Edinburgh neighbourhood south of the Royal Infirmary
- (tags:Edinburgh housing )
2026/057: You Dreamed of Empires — Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer)
Apr. 20th, 2026 09:49 amtamaranth2026/057: You Dreamed of Empires — Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer)
It never occurred to them, of course, that half the sauces of the dishes they had just eaten were moderately hallucinogenic, and thus their delectable sense of relaxation was in truth a welcome to the esoteric between-place where the Colhua permanently resided. [loc. 278]
I had been expecting a fictionalised account of Hernán Cortés' 'conquest' of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the so-called Aztec empire. ( Read more... )
There's more room on the basement couch
Apr. 20th, 2026 02:55 amsovayIt was very nice to be told by the ophthalmologist this afternoon that I do not need surgery on my eye. I had been given some reason for concern. It was aggravating to be told that I should persist in spending hours of my time with a warm sheep, i.e. the cereal-filled microwaveable hot pack that lives in our freezer applied to my face, but at least it's working.
I read like a medical diary. Yesterday had social interludes in the form ofrushthatspeaks and selkie and genarti who dropped unexpectedly by with a lifetime supply of bagels and other heymishe staples from Mamaleh's. I paused Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (宮本武蔵 完結篇 決闘巌流島, 1956) in order to show spatch that Kōji Tsuruta lived up to his character's billing of looking more like an actor than a swordsman, which had sounded self-referential until he stepped onscreen as if exactly out of an ukiyo-e print. This evening I felt so set on fire that I curled up in bed for an hour and Hestia snuggled herself under the covers and pushed her head kitten-fashion against my knee. I made myself a sesame bagel with chopped liver and watched another of the Warners B-pictures written by Raymond L. Schrock that TCM has been running to more than fast-cheap effect so long as they do not contain Ronald Reagan. I feel as though I measure my time by what I can do in between managing my health.
I cannot manage the state of the world and it remains exhausting. Nearly a decade of my life seems to have folded itself like a tesseract of the Echthroi and it is hard at the moment not to feel that all that happened in the interval is that people died.
I read like a medical diary. Yesterday had social interludes in the form of
rushthatspeaks and selkie and genarti who dropped unexpectedly by with a lifetime supply of bagels and other heymishe staples from Mamaleh's. I paused Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (宮本武蔵 完結篇 決闘巌流島, 1956) in order to show spatch that Kōji Tsuruta lived up to his character's billing of looking more like an actor than a swordsman, which had sounded self-referential until he stepped onscreen as if exactly out of an ukiyo-e print. This evening I felt so set on fire that I curled up in bed for an hour and Hestia snuggled herself under the covers and pushed her head kitten-fashion against my knee. I made myself a sesame bagel with chopped liver and watched another of the Warners B-pictures written by Raymond L. Schrock that TCM has been running to more than fast-cheap effect so long as they do not contain Ronald Reagan. I feel as though I measure my time by what I can do in between managing my health. I cannot manage the state of the world and it remains exhausting. Nearly a decade of my life seems to have folded itself like a tesseract of the Echthroi and it is hard at the moment not to feel that all that happened in the interval is that people died.
Bridge Building
Apr. 19th, 2026 06:38 pmranunculusWe should all build bridges in our lives, metaphorically and in real terms. I was working on the latter today.
( Read more... )
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: A review
Apr. 19th, 2026 03:39 pmandrewduckerI'd been hearing talk about how good Frieren was for a while. It seemed to have come out of nowhere to instant acclaim, and to actually be about things. So a month ago, when I was looking for something to watch during the occasional 20 minutes when I get lunch alone, I thought I'd give the first episode a go. And while it didn't make me cry it came very close, and it had an atmosphere I hadn't encountered anywhere else, so I was completely grabbed from the beginning, and now that I've finished the first season I feel somewhat bereft.
It is, in background, a bunch of totally standard fantasy tropes. But it does something interesting with them, which is to base itself after the point most stories end. This is the story of what happens to Frieren, an immortal* elven mage, after her adventuring party defeat The Demon King. And how she lives in a world where the friends she makes live much shorter lives than her, how she connects with the people around her, and what she does when she realises that this matters to her.
There is plot, and action**, but mostly not that much of it. The point is the people, and watching them orbit each other, learn from each other, or completely fail to. The characters are interesting, and I love feeling that there is much more to most of them than is obvious on the surface. I particularly loved the first few episodes, which set everything up, but even once we get past past these in to the ongoing arc*** I have found myself looking forward to the next episode more than in almost any TV I've seen in the last decade.
I suspect some people will get put off by some of the tropes, both the ones taken straight from fantasy/roleplaying and the ones that are stock anime conventions. But I could happily look past those and enjoy the meat of the show, which was excellent. I eagerly await season 2. The only nervousness I have is that the original manga has been on hiatus since October, and the creators have clearly struggled with the production schedule, so I don't know whether it will ever be completed. But, frankly, it's not (at this point) the kind of show where I need an ending, I'm delighted just to be along for the ride.
* It is not clear how long elves live. But it is clearly at least thousands of years.
** And when it happens it is gorgeously animated
*** I'm not sure it's a plot, as such. Things are happening, but I'm not convinced that it's going somewhere in particular more than it is just following characters around to see what they get up to.
It is, in background, a bunch of totally standard fantasy tropes. But it does something interesting with them, which is to base itself after the point most stories end. This is the story of what happens to Frieren, an immortal* elven mage, after her adventuring party defeat The Demon King. And how she lives in a world where the friends she makes live much shorter lives than her, how she connects with the people around her, and what she does when she realises that this matters to her.
There is plot, and action**, but mostly not that much of it. The point is the people, and watching them orbit each other, learn from each other, or completely fail to. The characters are interesting, and I love feeling that there is much more to most of them than is obvious on the surface. I particularly loved the first few episodes, which set everything up, but even once we get past past these in to the ongoing arc*** I have found myself looking forward to the next episode more than in almost any TV I've seen in the last decade.
I suspect some people will get put off by some of the tropes, both the ones taken straight from fantasy/roleplaying and the ones that are stock anime conventions. But I could happily look past those and enjoy the meat of the show, which was excellent. I eagerly await season 2. The only nervousness I have is that the original manga has been on hiatus since October, and the creators have clearly struggled with the production schedule, so I don't know whether it will ever be completed. But, frankly, it's not (at this point) the kind of show where I need an ending, I'm delighted just to be along for the ride.
* It is not clear how long elves live. But it is clearly at least thousands of years.
** And when it happens it is gorgeously animated
*** I'm not sure it's a plot, as such. Things are happening, but I'm not convinced that it's going somewhere in particular more than it is just following characters around to see what they get up to.
Pivoting in the Indie Writer Life (A reaction to the Draft2Digital announcement)
Apr. 18th, 2026 10:17 pmjreynoldswardWarning: this is a book business rant.
Talk about a rude awakening. Draft2Digital’s announcement that they would charge a yearly $12 maintenance fee to accounts netting less than $100 per year—allegedly as a means to counter AI slop—made me sit down and look at my records. I’ve had the perception over the past few years that my sales at D2D have gone down. I attributed that status to lack of a new release last year, the economy, the state of the world overall, and the need to change covers. I’ve been running regular promotions, sales, and talking up my backlist, both on social media and my newsletter.
Then this announcement happened.
I was already annoyed at D2D because they were slow to confirm the publishing of my new February release, Vision of Alliance, at Barnes and Noble, which has been my best selling vendor, by TEN DAYS. I had been checking my clicks at D2D’s Books2Read app because I was using their universal links and noticed that—hmm, clicks aren’t happening for a new release, what’s up?
Eh, I figured it was the wackiness of the economy and our current political situation and not so much the publishing issue. Plus it was not a particularly cozy fantasy (look, I’m really bad at cozy, though maybe I should give it a try. One of these days. Though I do have one book that I occasionally call a “cozy apocalypse.” It’s…kinda sorta cozy). Nonetheless, the results for the Vision of Alliance book launch were disappointing, given that I’d lined up what I thought was a good set of promotions, plus I had featured it on my new website that has specific book landing pages. The lack of sales didn’t make sense AT ALL, unless it was the slowness of the Barnes and Noble link to show up on D2D. But I just figured that my readers weren’t interested in a return to the world of the Seven Crowned Gods, so I would need to pivot. I put the second book of the trilogy aside and began working on a new project.
Meanwhile, as a result of the listing delay of Barnes and Noble links for Vision of Alliance, I had put direct links to Barnes and Noble for all my books on their respective landing pages. About half of the Barnes and Noble links on D2D’s universal links were not working. I ended up pulling up my listings on B&N directly to get the page links I needed. Thankfully, part of my preparation for releasing Alliance was changing websites to a setup designed specifically for authors, so it was easy for me to plug in those links. It definitely saved me a lot of energy and angst.
At the same time, I kept hearing mutterings on various indie author social media sites about issues with D2D overall. Poor customer service. Problems getting listings approved. Smashwords authors having more complications during the transition with books not appearing on D2D, or their books getting mangled. Glitches with the ebook catalog getting uploaded to Bookshop. Concerns about censorship. Broken links. I didn’t get into details because at the time I was working with my spouse to help close down part of his retirement side business, which involved a lot of physical labor, and, well, I’m getting up there in years. I don’t have the energy I used to have.
D2D’s announcement made me angry enough to start looking at my books and their links. Good grief. Some links worked. Some didn’t. Some worked one time, but didn’t another. What’s worse, the link to a book I recently had put on sale didn’t work AT ALL. Then it did. Then it didn’t. Up and down over the course of several hours.
That was when I really got angry, and made the decision to leave D2D rather than pay them $12 a year. If I’m going to pay for a service, then I expect things to work. If they’re providing me a universal book link, well, that link should come up consistently—and that apparently wasn’t happening.
But with 32 books, changing this stuff takes time. As a temporary stopgap while I went through the process of going direct once more, over the course of several hours I added links on my website’s book landing pages to every vendor that I was selling with through D2D. Couldn’t trust the usefulness of those universal links, obviously. Back to individual listings, which I had done before.
Then I sat down and crunched the sales numbers for the last five years.
Yikes.
I have not had a good sales year on D2D since 2023. That was about the time I went to universal book links through them, rather than listing the Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, and Kobo links separately. Meanwhile, my Amazon sales have been fairly steady, except for a big surge in 2022 and 2023, when I was part of Kindle Vella. My Ingram sales for paperback editions have been consistent as well, although I got hit with returns in 2025 which impacted payouts for that year.
$12 for account maintenance doesn’t look so good after all. Especially since the numbers keep falling.
All right, then. Time to do something new—and right away, part of that for me means moving my catalog off of that site. One challenge I face is that my previous accounts with Barnes and Noble and with Kobo are tied to an email address that no longer exists. I apparently opened a Google Play account, then didn’t do anything with it. I need to open an Apple account and get that set up. So there’s a lot of business setup to do.
That’s the first piece.
The next one is uploading everything to these assorted sites (32 books!) and getting the word out that yes, I have stable links available for my books now.
After getting a request for Kindle epubs on Itch, I’m going to put those up there, as well.
Additionally, I’m adding hardcover editions to my catalog to supplement already-available ebook and paperbacks. I’m seeing a rise in hard copy sales and want to take advantage of that opportunity. Fortunately, that’s an easy process because I just need to take my paperback interior and upload it, then revise my paperback cover for hardback in BookBrush…which is actually quite easy to do. Hello, Bowker (the service that distributes the US book identification numbers used by the industry), I’m finally forking out for a block of 100 ISBNs. At least I shouldn’t need to buy any more for quite some time.
Finally, I am getting serious about finding a means to sell direct. I’ve done the Ko-fi store in the past, and I may do it again with a different payment processor than Paypal. But I also need to find a better means to do direct, one that covers taxes and processing. I somewhat have the direct option for my paperbacks and hardcovers through Ingram Spark’s Share and Sell link, which…I get a better return than I would through Ingram’s regular distributors (alas, this is only a US option).
Arrgh. It’s a lot of work when I’d much rather be writing. Nonetheless, it’s part of the business and…it has to be done. Sigh. But that’s the life for any writer, indie or traditional—it just happens faster to indies. And if I want commiseration, I just need to pull out an Anthony Trollope book that talks about the publishing business (The Way We Live Now, An Editor’s Tales, Autobiography) and soothe myself with the notion that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Trollope and writers of his era had to hustle to be recognized.
Sounds quite familiar.
Meanwhile, you can find my books at https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com. Sales and specials are at the top of the listings. I write a variety of science fiction and fantasy. Or drop a tip at my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward
And oh hey! It’s Indie April! I have a bunch of ebooks on sale, starting with my Resistance and Romance! Itch bundle featuring six of my books heavy on relationships in the face of corporate and political turmoil. That will go for all of April. Plus I have Vision of Alliance and The Cost of Power Omnibus edition both available in ebook at $3.99 throughout April.
Chena
Apr. 18th, 2026 09:27 pmranunculusYesterday Chena went from her usual interactive, happy self to the picture of an unwell dog. She was wobbly on her feet, flinched away from people and really, really didn't want to be touched. She lay down in the living room around 9am and hardly moved until 4pm. Not interested in food or drink. I almost took her to the emergency vet last night, but it looked like she was beginning to be a little more alert, so waited. At 3am she consented to lapping a little water. At 7 am she zoomed out the front door and began barking noisily at Mr Raven who was sitting on the power pole. Happily ate breakfast and slurped up water. Charged up Fairview Hill running happily next to the car. She happily rooted around in the leaf litter where the fallen limbs had been, using her nose like a pig. She was following the scent of a vole. My only guess is that somehow she got into some marijuana and spent the day yesterday extremely stoned. 1 gummy would have done it, but WHERE would she get such a thing? Whatever the case I'm glad she has gotten back to normal.
Busy
Apr. 18th, 2026 08:51 pmranunculusThis morning I met Dave and Ray at Friedman's. We bought lumber, screws, and rebar so I can build a bridge. We hauled the stuff up to the house, cut the lumber into 5' pieces and then hauled it out to Duck Lake. The three of us then switched gears and cleared the fallen tree off the old road above Duck Lake. Lots of twiggy stuff, but unnerving because three trees were involved. The biggest tree had fallen hitting and breaking two smaller trees. All of the bases were hung up (read the trees had snapped partway up and had not fallen all the way down. Instead the heavy trunk of the tree was suspended in the air. When the lower branches are cut back it changes the way the trunk is supported and can cause one or more of the trunks to roll and fall. This was on a steep sideslope, so I kept a sharp eye on everything as I cut, I really didn't want anything rolling down on top of me.
Our third task was to clear two massive limbs at Deer Camp. The two were hung up, and leaning on each other. There was probably 1,000 # waiting to fall on us. Fortunately those two limbs were pretty stable and on flatter ground. Once we cleared all the twiggy "brush" and cut back any branch that was not supporting weight we considered the problem. Geez, hundreds of pounds 10 feet in the air.... We put a tow strap on the smaller limb and pulled it sideways a little. It obligingly fell down with a thump, leaving the larger limb hanging by nothing much. I tried a cut to see if it would roll down, but no luck. So we put the tow strap on it and pulled it the opposite direction of the first limb. It fell with almost no real pressure on the strap. Whew! Very scary work. Lots of thought about how to keep fragile human bodies safe. With the limbs down Dave and Ray left as they had late afternoon appointments.
I returned to the house and feverishly sorted out ribbons. We mark the trail by tying surveyors tape; bright orange or bright pink; to clothespins. The clothespins can then be clipped to branches, fences, wands or pretty much anything else. To keep the ribbons and clothespins tidy and easy to access the pins are clipped to a circle of rope that can be worn over one shoulder. Here is Carrie and Juno last year.
The flags with the blue in them are to mark turns or other places where the trail might be confusing. They mean: STOP, find your next flag before you go any further. It will be in sight! Helps keep people from getting lost. I am desperately trying to make more flags. Somehow an entire, large box of flags, neatly clipped to ropes, has disappeared. Probably at least 200 flags just gone. Hopefully now that I am replacing them the old flags will re-appear.
Tomorrow is a bridge building day with Glenn.
Our third task was to clear two massive limbs at Deer Camp. The two were hung up, and leaning on each other. There was probably 1,000 # waiting to fall on us. Fortunately those two limbs were pretty stable and on flatter ground. Once we cleared all the twiggy "brush" and cut back any branch that was not supporting weight we considered the problem. Geez, hundreds of pounds 10 feet in the air.... We put a tow strap on the smaller limb and pulled it sideways a little. It obligingly fell down with a thump, leaving the larger limb hanging by nothing much. I tried a cut to see if it would roll down, but no luck. So we put the tow strap on it and pulled it the opposite direction of the first limb. It fell with almost no real pressure on the strap. Whew! Very scary work. Lots of thought about how to keep fragile human bodies safe. With the limbs down Dave and Ray left as they had late afternoon appointments.
I returned to the house and feverishly sorted out ribbons. We mark the trail by tying surveyors tape; bright orange or bright pink; to clothespins. The clothespins can then be clipped to branches, fences, wands or pretty much anything else. To keep the ribbons and clothespins tidy and easy to access the pins are clipped to a circle of rope that can be worn over one shoulder. Here is Carrie and Juno last year.
The flags with the blue in them are to mark turns or other places where the trail might be confusing. They mean: STOP, find your next flag before you go any further. It will be in sight! Helps keep people from getting lost. I am desperately trying to make more flags. Somehow an entire, large box of flags, neatly clipped to ropes, has disappeared. Probably at least 200 flags just gone. Hopefully now that I am replacing them the old flags will re-appear.
Tomorrow is a bridge building day with Glenn.
A Chill on Ice Cream
Apr. 18th, 2026 02:28 pmstevenpiziks Ice cream isn't always ice cream.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/psa-favorite-grocery-store-ice-160000887.html
"Ice cream" has a legal definition, based on the amount of cream and fat solids in it. You have to check the label carefully. If it doesn't specifically say "ice cream," it isn't legally ice cream. It has too little cream or too much air in it. (Yeah, food companies whip air into their products to make it look like there's more food in the package than there actually is.)
There are also legally-defined graduations of ice cream. SUPER PREMIUM is the best, followed by PREMIUM, REGULAR, and ECONOMY.
And the companies do try to trick you.
Breyers, Blue Bunny, and Edy's all carefully mislead you, for example. The label says BREYERS CHOCOLATE or EDY'S TRIPLE FUDGE BROWNIE or TURKEY HILL MOOSE TRAKCS. Do you see the words "ice cream"? Nope! They let the flavor and the shape of the package and its placement in the freezer lead you to believe it's ice cream.
I admire the way Breyers touts TWO EXTRA SCOOPS on their label. Wow! What a deal! Um ... how big is a scoop, anyway? And how did they fit these two huge extra scoops into a package that's the same size the package has always been?
Equally fun is Turkey Hill's penchant for touting "Made With FARM FRESH Milk," drawing your eye to FARM FRESH (which has no legal definition) and away from the fact that it says MILK, and not CREAM (which does).
What about the companies that make high-end stuff? The gourmet stuff? The specialty stuff? They're ice cream, right?
Well ...
Ben & Jerry's has fallen from grace, if they ever had it. Their label doesn't say ICE CREAM at all. They do the BEN & JERRY'S CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH trick that Breyers and the other do. Oh, Ben! Oh, Jerry! What happened to you?
Häagen-Dazs does put ICE CREAM on the label, but despite their carefully-constructed reputation for being a high quality specialty treat, you'll notice it's not labeled PREMIUM. It's just regular ice cream.
Stroh's, on the other hand, has a reputation for being regular, workaday ice cream, but their stuff is all labeled PREMIUM ICE CREAM.
So if you want real ice cream, with a minimum of air and a maximum of actual cream, you need to check the label carefully. Stroh's is probably your best bet.
Are the other ones bad? Well, they don't TASTE bad. I guess it depends on how much it bothers you that companies try to cut quality and pretend they haven't.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/psa-favorite-grocery-store-ice-160000887.html
"Ice cream" has a legal definition, based on the amount of cream and fat solids in it. You have to check the label carefully. If it doesn't specifically say "ice cream," it isn't legally ice cream. It has too little cream or too much air in it. (Yeah, food companies whip air into their products to make it look like there's more food in the package than there actually is.)
There are also legally-defined graduations of ice cream. SUPER PREMIUM is the best, followed by PREMIUM, REGULAR, and ECONOMY.
And the companies do try to trick you.
Breyers, Blue Bunny, and Edy's all carefully mislead you, for example. The label says BREYERS CHOCOLATE or EDY'S TRIPLE FUDGE BROWNIE or TURKEY HILL MOOSE TRAKCS. Do you see the words "ice cream"? Nope! They let the flavor and the shape of the package and its placement in the freezer lead you to believe it's ice cream.
I admire the way Breyers touts TWO EXTRA SCOOPS on their label. Wow! What a deal! Um ... how big is a scoop, anyway? And how did they fit these two huge extra scoops into a package that's the same size the package has always been?
Equally fun is Turkey Hill's penchant for touting "Made With FARM FRESH Milk," drawing your eye to FARM FRESH (which has no legal definition) and away from the fact that it says MILK, and not CREAM (which does).
What about the companies that make high-end stuff? The gourmet stuff? The specialty stuff? They're ice cream, right?
Well ...
Ben & Jerry's has fallen from grace, if they ever had it. Their label doesn't say ICE CREAM at all. They do the BEN & JERRY'S CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH trick that Breyers and the other do. Oh, Ben! Oh, Jerry! What happened to you?
Häagen-Dazs does put ICE CREAM on the label, but despite their carefully-constructed reputation for being a high quality specialty treat, you'll notice it's not labeled PREMIUM. It's just regular ice cream.
Stroh's, on the other hand, has a reputation for being regular, workaday ice cream, but their stuff is all labeled PREMIUM ICE CREAM.
So if you want real ice cream, with a minimum of air and a maximum of actual cream, you need to check the label carefully. Stroh's is probably your best bet.
Are the other ones bad? Well, they don't TASTE bad. I guess it depends on how much it bothers you that companies try to cut quality and pretend they haven't.
Authority, by Jeff Vandermeer
Apr. 18th, 2026 10:13 amrachelmanija
This sequel to Annihilation takes an unusual approach. Rather than returning to Area X, almost the entire book takes place outside of it, focusing on the scientific/government agency, the Southern Reach, which has been sending expeditions into it.
Most of the book is bureaucratic shenanigans with creeping horror undertones. The main character, unsubtly nicknamed Control, is slowly losing his mind trying to figure out what the hell happened to his predecessor and why she kept a live plant feeding off a dead mouse in her desk drawer, what is up with the bizarre incantatory literal writings on the wall, and what's up with the biologist, who has seemingly returned from Area X but says she's not the biologist and asks to be called Ghost Bird. There's parts that are interesting but also a lot of office satire which is not really what I was looking for in this series.
About 80% in, the book took a turn that got me suddenly very interested.
( Read more... )
I kind of want to know what happens next but I'm not sure Vandermeer is interested in giving readers what they want.