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real life

A 3619-post collection

Smol Dramas

Once again, I have to rant about a few things because life is hellishly inconvenient and everything costs too much and I slightly want to scream.

First up - ISBNs.

So I was thinking that once you got an ISBN for one book, you could use the same ISBN for the SAME CONTENT. I couldn't find anything about this on Lulu, but Smashwords insisted on one, so I thought I'd better check with Lulu just to be sure.

And dummins me went ahead with using the Lulu ISBN because -hey- same content, same serial number, right? Wrong.

For this conversation, pretend that Lulu takes 24 to 48 hours to reply to anything I said. Because that's what freaking happened.

Me: Yo guys I need your phone number so I can accurately use the ISBN I already got from you guys for the same book in e-format. And BTW I need it today.

Them: Uhhh... Are you trying to get... uuuuuuuuuhhhh... ISBN?

Me: No. I HAVE and ISBN, I'm just trying to use it with another publisher because it's the same fucking book. In order to use it properly, I needed your phone number three freaking days ago when I emailed you about it.

Them: You can get an ISBN for your book at our ISBN'ing URL here. Glad I could help.

Me: Listen up, shithead, I don't need an ISBN. I already have one. Today is my LAST DAY FOR A WEEK to fix anything about this so just give me your fucking PHONE NUMBER so I can use the ISBN that I ALREADY FUCKING HAVE.

Them: [halfway fucking through the week I'm in Morgan, SA] No, you're not allowed to do that. You have to trash everything and start over again.

Me: [Heavily sarcastic] "Thanks" for your "help". I especially admire how "swiftly" you resolved my problem.

Them: Great! Take a survey!

Me: Off the hell fuck...

So my first day back home (three more days later, for those keeping score) and plus an emergency dentist run because Chaos' tooth... I look around in Smashwords for a way to change the ISBN. I contact their help section.

Me: Shit, I fucked up the ISBN in this book, how to I change it?

Them: [In the SAME AFTERNOON - take notes, Lulu] Sorry, there's no real way to do that and we didn't think about it because you reached strange new realms of fucking up.

Me: Fine, I'll get rid of it and republish that fucker with the right procedurals.

Them: Turns out you can't permanently delete any book you've unpublished and archived, either. And you're not allowed to use exactly the same title as something in your archives.

Me: Fuck you, I'm adding an exclamation point to the title.

Them: We ignore those, but we still allow that adjustment.

Me: o_O

Me: Whatever...

Long story short, I have learned from the error of my ways and will never fuck up that badly again. I also recently learned that audiobooks are $225/hour up front when my budget's $0.

My options at this point are:

  • Try a GoFundMe
  • Beg on Tumblr
  • Desperately shill the print and ebook versions and pray I get enough via Paypal payments to do the audiobook thing1
  • Hope that someone 'out there' likes KFZ enough to do a competent reading
  • Ask Mark Reads Things if he's interested.

And I still have to tweak the print version so that it looks more professional. Sigh.

And in personal news, this VERY FRIENDLY Staffy has turned up in our yard with every intention of staying. -_-

  1. Keep in mind that the last thing my royalties were able to pay for was an advance order on the vinyl version of Music From Steamworld Heist, net cost - about $55 including postage and handling. ↩

Tropes That Annoy Me: I Have Brothers

It's usually a feature of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but sometimes your Action Gal explains her usually manly feats with "I have brothers". The brothers are almost always older, and numerous, and our female lead has learned to hold her own against them as some form of survival skill.

Sometimes, there are no brothers, the mother is usually out of the picture1, and the father "didn't know how to raise a girl" so did all the boy stuff with her.

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Tropes That Annoy Me: The Fighting Fucktoy

If you want to know all about the Fighting Fuctoy, you won't find much about it on tvtropes.org at all. Nope. For that, you have to go to sites written by, and run by exclusively female authors.

Or you could absorb this picture:

[Artistry care of Kate Beaton of Hark, A Vagrant! fame. Link leads to her Strong Female Characters series collation]

Any attempt to put this sort of thing up on tvtropes results in, I presume, a phenomenally unbelievable amount

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GDI

I was really hoping for the crises to be done with by today. I wanted to talk about the Fighting Fucktoy trope with y'all.

But no. Life has intervened and I need to bitch about stuff for a bit.

Before you fret, Chaos is fine. Her tooth is still nice and shiny and she's eating okay. Today's threat to the return of normalcy is... Mayhem.

Yes, folks. Disasters come once per little darling in this house, and it's Mayhem's turn to fuck

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Signs of a rotten week

The fear/exhaustion feeling is not going away. It's starting to suck major league balls.

I will do just about anything to make it go away. Except break Keto. That crap is not going to happen.

Fortunately, I have a fuckoff-huge coffee hoard and little tricks like sugarless mints to help maintain awareness.

The worst part is trying to go to sleep at night. I can succumb to the exhaustion, but the fear manages to keep me awake for way longer than

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Blurghledy

Something is in the air. Something got to me in the dead of the night and reminded me that asthma is a son of a bitch.

Sneezin' and Wheezin' Season got me, last night, and I woke to the all-too-familiar sensation of not having enough air. So I've used Max for maybe the third time since I started on Keto.

I'm okay. I found my Seratide and dosed myself up on that and some nebuliser Atrovent. I can breathe again.

What I

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Off I go again

This time, it's a much shorter trip to MeMum's to sort out whatever has fluffed up with her tech this time. I suspect she's forced a quit during an update and now everything's gone do-lally. Either that or a virus has managed to get past her antiviral thing and now she needs a purge.

I really hope it's the update thing. That's way easier to fix than the virus.

Either way, I am sorting out a lot of crap, today. Which means

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...sigh...

Home again, home again, and boy, are we grateful. It takes a time to get away from it all to appreciate what you have.

But of course, it wouldn't be a family holiday without a family disaster. Chaos got the run-abouts while waiting in the Adelaide airport, tripped over Mayhem, and bumped a front tooth. Grandma insists that Chaos has broken her tooth and it's going to end in disaster. And won't shut up about the dental disaster that she calls key

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Off we pop

Headed back home to sunny Queensland, today. We've given ourselves until midday to shift on out of the place we're renting, and planned a leisurely toddle towards the Adelaide airport for the hurry-up-and-wait.

I am definitely making certain I have access to my headphones so I can listen to some good tunes1 all the way home.

And I will be extremely glad of my nice comfy home that doesn't creak ominously when you head off to one of the loos.

And

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Last full day in Morgan

There's nothing planned for today, but I would like to pop over to the museum, later on. I, for one, will be very glad to get back home to a bed that's actually comfortable to sleep in. Beloved will also be glad of that respite, I am sure.

Tomorrow, we pack everything up and get ready to exit Morgan, head to Adelaide airport, and do the whole hurry-up-and-wait noise all over again. All so we can return to our home so late

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Well...

We did go on a riverboat tour. For some reason, I was convinced that it would also be a paddle-steamer. No such luck. There were a few paddlewheel boats on the river, but they weren't operational.

Miss Chaos had a beautiful birthday cake made for her by the tour people, and she's been allowed to have all the chocolate-coated strawberries that were on the top and what looks suspiciously like a Ferrero-Rocher praline ball. All of which will be gone, I suspect,

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Hello from Morgan!

And for everyone wondering where the heck that is, I can safely say that it is on the Murray River, and somewhere in South Australia. I think we drove for three hours to get out here, but I can't be certain because I fell asleep for patches of it.

There's a lot of one-street towns in Australia where the Town Hall is right next to the Pub, which is right next to the only shop for forty miles or so, and the

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Rushed!

What I was not told until late last night, is that we're taking off for South Australia at four in the morning, tomorrow. So we can be at the airport in time to hurry up and wait.

Today will all be packing, when we're not celebrating Mother's Day in a very rushed way.

So far, the Primary Parental of the house has not been woken up by younglings. And one of said younglings apparently spent all night gaming instead of coming up

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No Tropes Today

We're due to get our flu jabs, this morning. As such, I don't really have the time for an in-depth rant about things that Hollywood does to tick me off.

That will probably happen more often next week.

It all depends on what else I find to write about, really.

But for now, I have a one and a half hour time window to hammer out a story for you, because post-jabs, I'm planning on heading down to MeMum's for a Stuff

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Tropes That Annoy Me: The Magical Minority

You know that point in the movie. The hero has hit a wall. Hit a low point. Hit the place where most people would give up, mourn, and try to pick up the pieces. Along comes an inspirational message from the nearest Magical Minority, a trope so large that it has entire sets of sub-tropes. This helps get

It's usually a person of colour, but occasionally a disabled person. For extra points, it's a disabled person of colour. And the reason why

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