A Peek At My Week! #55

Here are some things that happened in my life this past week:

News About Writing & Publishing:

New Articles On My Website

Two weeks ago, I posted an interview I conducted with Nigel Peever, who narrated Blachart and Demonspawn. Stay tuned for future interviews!

Twitter Censorship Leads To Closing Of My Twitter Account

On Friday 3 June, I commented on a number of tweets and attempted to share one on my Twitter profile. The tweets were news articles about billionaire Elon Musk sending an email to his employees at Tesla in which he set an ultimatum for them to cease working at home and to return to Tesla’s offices for work, or he would take it to mean that they’re no longer working at his company. He’s also quoted as saying, essentially, that they can “pretend to work for someone else”.

According to Musk, working at home and keeping his company afloat throughout the last two years of the COVID pandemics and lockdowns – and funding the massive bill for his otherworldly hobby of conquering Mars – is “pretending to work”. How fucking out of touch is that man really? How narcissistic – and how incredibly predatory? No wonder he joined the Republicunts – he fits right in. There is literally no reason why office workers should not work from home – especially in the face of rising costs and unemployment, and lower salaries. Tesla is supposed to be a high tech leader and this is the 21st century, not the Middle Ages.

Anyway, so apparently referring to Musk as an out-of-touch selfish “1%er billionaire twat” is “abuse” according to the Twitter notification I received, telling me that my account would be restricted and I wouldn’t be able to share anything to 12 hours, and that my tweets would be invisible to anyone not on my contacts list for the same period. Like most people, I react badly to being censored – especially by faceless AI bots owned by equally soulless crapitalist oligarchs.

It seems that “freedom of speech” only applies to Nazis (and potential future owners of Twitter), and not to their victims. I have since closed my Twitter account. Apologies to those who were following me on Twitter, for the inconvenience – you can still follow me on Farcebook and Instagran for the time being.

Panic! Horror In Space in Audiobook Format?

Last time I mentioned that Darla Middlebrook is keen to narrate the Panic! Horror in Space series! In the spirit of realizing this, I created an account with Audiobooks Unleashed and started investigating how that would work. Unfortunately, work got the better of me this last two weeks, so during that time, all I managed to do so far was read through the FAQ’s. Last week though, I found their requirements for submitting a new audiobook – and I have to say it seems they’ve set this up to reserve their services for the very famous or very rich! According to their website, in order to submit a new audiobook, it would have to have:

• At least 50 ratings on Amazon (HOW do books on Amazon get that many ratings?! I’ve been at this for 30 years and the most I have on one book is 8!)
• Quality cover art (got that)
• Well known author and/or narrator (got that).
• Reviews, Accolades, or Awards (NYT Bestsellers, IAA Finalist, SOVAS, Audies) (I have some reviews, but not from mainstream reviewers like the ones they list).
• Marketing plans (from an indie author?! My marketing plan is essentially to do it all myself!)
• Past sales figures (mine are guaranteed to not be very impressive by their standards)
• Author or Narrator’s past work.
• Social media presence (I AM everywhere!)

I’m surprised I don’t also have to submit to a blood test as well! It doesn’t look good at all, unfortunately. If anything else happens on this front, I’ll let you know!

A Few New Things…

I also posted the second in a series of promo images I made two weeks ago. Please feel free to share it about!

That’s all for this week!

With that, I’m all out of news. As always, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments.

Thanks a lot for all your friendship and support, I hope you know it is all deeply appreciated. Until next time, keep reading!