Frightful Weather, Small Consolations, and Amazon Being a Dragon

The weather today was, in a word, awful.

In more words: the rain was insistent and relentless and entirely without charm, the kind of rain that doesn’t have the decency to be dramatic about it and just settles in with its bags unpacked and its feet up, prepared to stay indefinitely. There was nothing delightful about any of it and I say that as someone who does not, in principle, object to rain. This was not rain you could enjoy from a window with a cup of tea. This was rain that was making a point.

I had to go to town anyway because groceries do not materialise simply because the weather is demoralising, and the drive was exactly as hairy as the sky promised it would be. I made it there. I made it back. The house was rewarded for this act of meteorological bravery with Subway for dinner, which is not nothing. Some days the consolation prize is genuinely consoling.

The cross stitch subscription box arrived, which is exciting and being treated accordingly — which is to say it’s sitting there looking full of potential while I decide the right moment to open it properly. These things deserve the right moment. I’ll know it when I find it.

In the meantime I have been making a colouring book.

This is for the Meandering Book Nook — the wandering bookshop project, for those just joining us — and I’m not entirely sure yet whether it will become a regular fixture or whether it will remain an occasional thing. My instinct says occasional themed colouring books are probably going to be a permanent feature of the Nook’s life, because they feel right in a way that is difficult to articulate but easy to act on. We’ll see how the first one lands and go from there.

And then there is the other thing.

I would like to report that Isolated is out in the world and Bella Bruce’s author page is live and everything is proceeding beautifully on the hockey romance front. I would very much like to report that. Unfortunately what I am actually reporting is that Amazon has decided to be an absolute bitch about the whole thing and is currently sitting on both the book approval and the author page like a very bureaucratic dragon on a very unhelpful pile of gold.

I don’t have details beyond that. There are no details beyond that. There is just the waiting and the refreshing and the particular helpless frustration of having done everything right and then handed the whole thing to a platform that operates on its own timeline and its own logic and does not particularly care about your release schedule or your nerves or the fifteen years you have been carrying these characters around in your heart.

Bella is stalled. Her boys are waiting. There is nothing to do about it right now except wait.

So I am doing what writers do when one door slams shut on them: I am wandering through the other rooms. There are other projects. There are always other projects when you have three pen names and approximately a hundred books in various states of completion, and right now that particular abundance is genuinely a comfort. Something is always moving forward even when something else is stuck.

It is not the forward motion I wanted today.

But it is forward motion, and I am choosing to count it. Amazon will sort itself out. Or it won’t and I’ll have to go a few rounds with it, which is a battle I will fight when I get there. For now — other projects, more tea, a colouring book taking shape on the table, and a cross stitch box waiting for its moment.

And the cats, who are blissfully unbothered by publishing platforms and have, as ever, the right idea.

🖤 🏒