I was up with the poet again on Thursday, which always sets me up for a good day at work. If he leaves the house too early, I go back to sleep. If he leaves the house too late, or if he doesn’t leave the house, we both struggle to get up. But there’s this sweet spot in between the two, where we both get up at the same time, then he goes off to work and I start my day. And that’s what happened yesterday.
There wasn’t a lot on my to-do list. The client edit has been pushed back again to next week. I don’t currently have any material for the newsletter, so that was pushed back by 2 weeks. I couldn’t share anything on Facebook, because I’m taking part in the Meta boycott this week. (Did anyone notice?) So that left just study and my own writing, which is how it should be.
I started the day deciding on a period in history I’d like to study and know more about. I used to be quite hot on the Tudors, and I edited and proof-read a lot of books about Tudor England. I’m still quite hot on the Second World War, and I’ve edited and proof-read a lot of books about WW2. And I used to know a bit about the First World War, but that was a very long time ago.
As all three of those have been written about to death in the fiction and TV world, I wanted to choose a period about which I have a chance of knowing more than my readers. My ghostwriting, 12 novels, was set in the Regency period, and I learned a lot about the Regency period while I was writing those. But, again, readers of Regency usually know a lot more about the period than I do. But I do like the period, and I wanted to expand on that and learn a bit more about the entire Georgian period.
Add to that the end of the Jacobites in Scotland (although I’ve never known very much about the Stuarts), and I had my period. From the last Jacobite rising in 1745 to the start of the Victorian period in 1837.
I rooted around to see what information I could find on the period and found several bookazines on Readly regarding the Georgians and the Napoleonic wars. And I started to read the one on the Georgians, making timeline notes as I went.
All of my Lady Mathilda stories fit into the later Georgian period, so I had her born in 1744, on the same day as Queen Charlotte. And that was right before the last Jacobite rising and the Battle of Culloden. While that gave me her age, I didn’t have any information on the Jacobites. So as Kobo had recently given me a £5 store credit, I thought I’d see if there were any books there.
I found a couple that I fancied. One was a trilogy of novels, the other was all about the later Jacobite risings. So I popped those into my basket and off I pootled to buy them with my store credit…
Hands up everyone who can guess what came next…
It didn’t work. I tried on the app. I tried on the mobile browser. I tried using 2 login IDs. Nope. Computer at their end didn’t want to play.
So off went *another* complaint to Kobo, and then another email itemising every single problem I’ve had with them since the poet bought me the Kobo Clara Colour for Christmas.
The list was quite long for something I’ve only had for 6 months.
- The Kobo Clara Colour can only be loaded with ebooks bought from Kobo (also see #5…) or epubs sideloaded onto it via my computer(s). Kobo Clara Colour doesn’t work with Google Drive or any other drive.
- Then NetGalley wrote to us to tell us that we couldn’t read our book review ARCs on Kobo any longer, due to a lack of security, or other such thing, on the Kobo side.
- I can’t sideload different editions in a series to the Kobo at the same time. For example, I already had Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2025 on my Kobo, and when my May/Jun edition arrived, it would not load, saying it was already on there. It wasn’t. This was 2 different books.
- The Kobo app on my android phone won’t even open if I don’t have an internet signal or a wifi connection, which completely defeats the object of downloading books to read offline.
- And now I can’t even buy any books from the Kobo store!
Honestly, what is the point of having either the Kobo app or a Kobo device?
Fortunately, I do still have Google Play Books and, unfortunately, I also still have the Kindle app and a Paperwhite. So I can still read my vast library of books. Plus, I can still sideload them onto the device or collect them from Google Drive on the Kobo app.
But at the moment, I don’t see any benefit to having a Kobo other than it isn’t a Kindle.
Not a happy bunny, but it isn’t the end of the world. I’m just sorely disappointed.
I finally made it to my desk and I watched the last of the gothic writing workshop videos. But with my great novella challenge work already done for the day (character work), and nothing else booked in for this week, I went back to start revising the writing with depth workshops, as I do feel something my writing does lack is depth.
And that was it. That was my day.
We have no plans for the weekend. What are yours?
That Kobo stuff is so frustrating! The research bit sounds fun, though.
It’s Mother’s Day here this weekend, so I want to make a nice day for my mom. I have an artist cohort meeting on Saturday afternoon, too, which will be fun. Other than that, it’s writing, housework, and maybe working on the textile piece.
Fortunately, Kobo sorted out the store credits and the book purchases, but I had to create a different account with them for it to work.
Sounds like a lovely weekend.