Friday 12 December 2025: Short n sweet

This post also appears on Patreon.

And here we are again. The end of another week already.

It was quite non-stop and busy yesterday again, as I get ready to close down for the year. We were all up early again, as the poet had another long-distance drive for work. But at least the dogs let us sleep all the way through the night. I got up and stayed up and combined my quiet hour with my dirty cuppa so I could go straight in to work once I’d had my morning play with the dogs.

First job of the day was the complete novella part of the bookazine, which I did. I shared the gig list post and then went back to the bookazine, taking much of the rest of the day to complete the novel serialisation part of the bookazine (Part 3 of 4).

An email came in with a new shiny badge attached, which I’d completely forgotten was due: It was my 12 stories in 12 months challenge completion badge for the 2^nd year running. So of course I shared that where I’m supposed to and uploaded it to the sidebar on here (it’s at the bottom on mobile devices, unless you turn them on their side).

Another email came in, this time from the editing client, with the first proof pdf for the last-but-one job I sent in to be forwarded for setting. That will be scheduled in for January now.

I finished everything for the bookazine and went over to Draft2Digital to get it published, taking special care to see if the Amazon option was still there, as so many people are reporting it’s been taken off. It was still there, so either it’s new publishers it applies to or maybe just in certain countries. Or maybe I have that yet to come.

I don’t mind. If I have to publish direct to Amazon, I’ll just use the file D2D gives me. I already do that for Google Play Books and I’m toying with doing it myself for Kobo and Apple Books too as the royalties are apparently more favourable if I go direct.

If this keeps on, I’ll be mastering Vellum and going everywhere direct. D2D doesn’t like the epub files Vellum creates, but I have yet to try out Google Play and Amazon directly myself.

Once the bookazine was out of the way, I turned once again to the client edit. I’d promised the author I’d probably have it back to him 3 weeks after I started it, which should be next Tuesday. But I finish work today for 3 weeks, so I may nip on every now and then, where I can, to get that done.

At least I got the bookazine in production, though. That will be out on Monday 5 January 2026, all being well.

*Another* email came in from the editing client, this time a remittance advice. The last amount I invoiced them for will be in my bank account today, so that’s nice, just in time for Christmas.

Proper hotline here yesterday.

A rash of books came in for review this week, I think about a dozen, including 4 on a new platform, Booksprout. I doubt I’ll use that, though, as there’s a really tight turnaround to get reviews written and posted. I may have a look at it, as the discipline may be very useful. But at the moment, I’m still resisting.

All the other books were via NetGalley, including one publisher who sent me an invitation for the first time ever. Perhaps they’re short of reviewers at the moment…

I’m back at Dermatology this morning for my light therapy session, but the rest of the day will be editing and maybe a few scheduled blog posts, including the short stories on Patreon and then on here 4 weeks later.

I’ll wrap today up for Monday’s blog so, in the meantime, have a super weekend! I think we’re going to check on the campervan, make sure it hasn’t blown away in the recent storms…