Monday 4 November 2024: Publication day!

Before I carry on, I’d just like to say IT’S PUBLICATION DAY! Paper Roses, a Wordsworth short, is out today! You can buy it from Books2Read/DianeWordsworth.

Right, after I posted Thursday’s post, I did a few more things before calling it a day. 

I updated November on my 12-project spreadsheet, I created the November graphics for Hello November and November Wrap-up, I wrote and scheduled Friday’s post, and I sent an email to Dean Smith to let him know I was starting the Great Novella Challenge today. I’ve allocated 4 full weeks, which gave me Friday to finish off my pre-writing.

The poet didn’t have band practice on Thursday. They were going to, but then the drummer called him to say he thought the poet ought to rest his voice for as long as possible if he could, so they’d have more chance of making Saturday’s gig. So they cancelled the rehearsal and the poet sent Saturday’s venue an update.

They were really sweet about it, saying if he wasn’t right then he had to concentrate on getting right, and if they had to cancel again, that was fine, they’d reschedule again. (This is the venue that kindly rescheduled before.)

Friday morning dawned early when the scaffolding crew arrived for next door. Their chimney is unstable and in danger of falling, probably on my car, or at least our drive. So they’re having it repointed or taking down or making safe or something. And for that they need scaffolding and the only place they can build the scaffolding is on our drive. So we were up early with the scaffolders, and the poet moved both of our cars out of their way.

It meant I was at my desk on time too, which is a good thing.

I started the day by sharing a load of posts on Facebook, from free-to-enter short story contests to writing awards to free books. Then I went onto BlueSky to share Book 7 of my 20 Books in 20 Days challenge. This is where I share the covers of 20 books that have stayed with me or influenced me in any way. These can also be seen on my personal FB page. 

An email came back from Dean Smith saying ‘wonderful!’ and reminding me to have fun with the writing. Another email came in from him with this month’s requirement for Pulphouse Magazine submissions for November.

When I shared Friday’s blog post to Medium, I had a quick trawl of the latest stories and had to stop myself running down a rabbit hole about robots and chat bots scraping websites. I need to schedule that in if I want to go there again, just as I need to remember to schedule in rabbit holes in general. 

One of the stories was a short read about book reviews, and it set me off on a bit of a rant. I started to write it in reply to the story (in support, not against), and then I thought I should make it my own story. So I opened up my Scrivener binder for Medium stories and rattled off 150 words. I’ll revisit it, choose an image, and submit it some time this week. I didn’t have time on Friday.

The poet’s sore voice seemed to have turned into sore bronchial tubes. He hadn’t tested his voice yet, but he was tempted to all week. Finally he got around to it and… nothing. He couldn’t reach any of the higher notes, even the non-shouty lower octave ones. He got so far, and then it was a squeak, and all the same note. 

He tried to make an appointment at the doctor’s but was told he had to make it via a website now, and when he went there they said they’d reached capacity for the day and the next time he should try was 6:30pm on Sunday. If it was urgent, he could call 111 (NHS), and if it was an emergency, he had to go to A&E. 

It meant another cancelled gig, and to say he was upset and disappointed is an understatement. The band have things to pay, like road tax and van insurance, and if he cancelled both of November’s gigs, that would be 2 months they hadn’t paid, reaching 3 months in December. If he can’t do December either, they’ll all be paying it out of their own pockets.

And that meant I had to stop what I was doing to create another Monkey Dust poster, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. I have to find the file, duplicate the poster, stamp CANCELLED across it, download the poster, and on this occasion send it to the poet. I did all of that, then realised I’d done POSTPONED instead of CANCELLED, so I had to do it again. At least it was quicker this time.

Or it would have been had our internet not been crawling along in slow-mo. I’d already had to stop work and check the speed. Our provider (Sky) is currently bragging that they can offer our area speeds of up to 900 mb/s. Vodafone is offering 1,600 mb/s. Then there are several offering 1,100 mb/s. Ours was running at Download = 46 mb/s; Upload = 0 mb/s.

No mb/s. 🤨

No wonder we can’t watch a television programme without it pixellating every few minutes. And pixellating badly. No wonder we can’t use the internet without it dropping out every few minutes. That is absolute rubbish.

I did all of the online tests, in between drop-outs, and the Sky bot said everything was working fine. So I made a phone call – after wasting countless minutes just looking for a phone number. The bot there also did a test, but it said there was an issue inside the home. It told me to go onto the website and do a test from there to locate the fault, which I’d already done, but I’d been told everything was working.

It took me a few goes with the robot, but it eventually let me speak to someone, who also did a line test and also spotted an issue inside the home. He wanted me to start rebooting the modem, resetting it, identifying it, pressing buttons, testing wires, etc, etc, etc. I explained that I’d already done all of that and couldn’t do another reset because the poet was in the middle of a Teams call. 

So he arranged for an engineer to come out. The engineer will be here Wednesday morning between 10am and noon. In the meantime, we have to put up with this intermittent to non-existent service. And we WILL be requesting a refund.

He also said that we can’t have the 900 mb/s yet because we’re still on copper. I said they’d been laying fibre for weeks in and around the village, but he said none of it had been released to them yet. But he also said we should be getting 60 mb/s and that our minimum should be 30 mb/s, which was when I mentioned our 0 mb/s. He was as unimpressed as me.

It was already midday and not a single job was ticked on my to-do list. We’ve been doing the shopping on a Friday recently, but I couldn’t justify taking more time off to do that last week, so I just cracked on, working my way through the list. I started with this week’s diary.

Then I set about publishing Paper Roses as a standalone short story, a Wordsworth Short (#33 if you’re interested). Everything went relatively well but, oh, it was so slow with the internet playing up. I ended up uploading the wrong cover image. I forgot to update the credit inside the book. I had to create a new Word file twice. Until eventually it all published on Draft2Digital.

I ticked the D2D box on my power spreadsheet and moved on to Kindle Direct Publishing. I can’t send the D2D book to them because the content already appears elsewhere (in Words Worth Reading Issue 1) and I have to publish it direct. 

That was actually quite straightforward, but they don’t like png files for covers. They want jpgs. So I went and collected the jpg from Canva and uploaded that instead. I also even found the future publication date, but they wouldn’t let me do that before tomorrow, so the KDP book will be a day later than the D2D book.

Then I moved on to Google Play Books and started to upload the book to there. But that was also when the internet was at its absolute worst and Google Play kept saying things like ‘price missing’ or ‘author’s bio missing’ when there they were! I got there eventually. But it was soooooo slooooooowwwwwwww…zzzzzzz….

Once that was done the poet offered to change the cable on the modem to see if that was at fault. That was worse and he had to change it back again. His machine was working a lot faster than mine and I started to wonder if it was the Mac. I tried a few things, but it didn’t seem to make any difference, and then I remembered that the television is pixellating when we try to stream something. Nothing to do with my new Mac!

Back to it, I ticked the KDP and Google Play boxes on the power spreadsheet and moved to Canva to create the graphic. It was then that I noticed it had the wrong cover. The border at the bottom was translucent instead of solid but, worse than that, the title was an old working title. Red Roses! So I had to change that and download it again.

By the time I’d got to the end, I was mentally exhausted. The internet had been frustrating me all day. I’d spent more time waiting than actually doing. And my patience was running very thin. So I nipped on to Scrivener, finalised today’s blog post, and updated my spanking new 12-project spreadsheet. (Have I mentioned that today?) To calm me down, I even allowed myself some time to sit and gaze at said spreadsheet.

Deciding I might do some work at the weekend, now we didn’t have a gig to go to, I closed down. Find out tomorrow how the weekend went…