I’ve been writing scifi romance novels for over a decade. Cover designs for this genre have gone through quite a lot of changes in that time. I just in 2025 finished my latest revamp of the covers for my four-book Collective Saga series, plus the box set. All four books – Aquarian Awakenings, Betelgeuse Beguiling, Centauri Chaos, and Draconis Discord – are now fully updated in ebook and print on all platforms. While I was at it, I did an editing pass of all four books to make some minor tweaks.
As an author, it is critically important that you regularly review what the current best-selling covers look like and make sure your books hold their own against that style. You can look at nearly any long-lasting well-selling series to see that they regularly update their covers.
Here’s the progression taken by my Aquarian Awakenings book – this is book 1 in The Collective Saga.
Try #1 – aquarian symbol – people thought it was a self-help book for people of the sign Aquarius.
Try #2 – nebula – again people thought it was for Aquarians.
Try #3 – cartoon people – this looked too much like a children’s book and was hard to see the image.
Try #4 – cartoon people – clearer to see, but just gave a sense of a romance on a distant planet.
Try #5 – human models – much better at drawing in my target audience. People knew this was a space romance. However they complained that my book wasn’t sex-filled enough. The cover drew in readers of racy romance.
Try #6 – human models with space uniforms – now my target audience didn’t assume it would be full of sex. Much better. However, in modern times many readers of romance prefer not to be seen carrying around ‘bodice ripper’ covers. They want much more subtle covers. Also, modern buyers on cellphones need to be able to clearly see giant-letters in a title.
Current cover – giant letters. Clearly about space. Not screaming ‘romance’ which apparently buyers want. They know it’s romance because they were browsing in the romance category to find it. I admit this is an adjustment for me personally because I grew up in the era of romance covers screaming romance on them. I still think of sexy cover models as ‘natural’. I need to adjust my mindset to reach a modern reader.
The Herbert West Reanimator series by H. P. Lovecraft is six short stories which were published episode by episode in a magazine. Each one was required to have a cliff-hanger ending, drawing a person to buy the next magazine issue. Each story was required to have a recap at the beginning so that a person who happened to pick up magazine #2 could catch up and enjoy the story without having to track down issue #1 to read the first story.
For these reasons, it’s a really good idea to NOT binge-read these. I recommend reading story 1, giving yourself some time to digest, reading story 2, and so on. That helps the repetitive nature of the introductions seem less egregious. It could even be a bit helpful to be reminded of the storyline.
We begin episode 1, From The Dark, knowing that we have a pair of precocious college students. There’s an unnamed narrator and there’s his domineering friend Herbert West. We also know that 17 years in the future something mysterious happens to West. But we’re not going to learn WHAT that is for quite a while.
For now, we’re immersed in the college years. West loves slaughtering cats, dogs, monkeys, etc. all in the name of trying to bring one back to life. Then he gets bored with bland life and wants to start playing with human beings. ‘Two negroes’ are able to acquire dead humans from who-knows-where, and soon there’s a rogue lab set up in an abandoned farmhouse. Now West-plus-narrator are digging up random bodies.
The body they find is “youth of wholesome plebeian type—large-framed, grey-eyed, and brown-haired—a sound animal without psychological subtleties” – clearly the two college students look down on this inferior creature. Oh, it gets far worse going forward.
Anyway, they try their experiment, think they’ve failed, only to have him spectacularly erupt to life. The two students run screaming and the house burns down. And then, 17 years later …
cliffhanger.
I’m just not drawn to this story. Yes, it’s one of the first-ever zombie stories. But the main character is a bland blond-blue-eyed-frail jerk. His best friend is never described and just mindlessly follows him. What is up with Lovecraft writing about strong-willed main characters and weak males who follow around behind them?
Amazon’s publishing system is now rolling out main-dashboard-page notices which push authors to use AI to instantly create audiobooks for their books. This is going to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of narrators.
AI was of course built by listening in on all of those existing audiobooks … without compensation to the narrators …
It is a very challenging time to be an author, an artist, or a narrator.
Someone on Bluesky just accused me of writing my content with ChatGPT because I write so quickly.
I’ve been writing this quickly all my life – DECADES before ChatGPT ever existed. Anyone can go back through my blog and social media posts to see me posting my novellas and short stories as I write them.
I’m a full time author who is dedicated and focused. I practice yoga and meditation to allow me to immerse fully in the flow of writing all day.
It’s disappointing that we real authors putting in serious work are now being denigrated as offloading their work to ChatGPT.
For the past 25+ years, I have posted literally hundreds of thousands of articles, essays, and content pages on my 30+ websites. All of that content, plus my 500+ books, has been hoovered up by ChatGPT and other AI engines to create their systems. Now AI and ChatGPT is actively putting me out of work. I used to make money from my own website traffic and by writing blog articles for third-party websites. All of that has dried up with the arrival of ChatGPT.
So to then have fellow artists and authors degenerate into a baseless witch-hunt attack without even the most basic of research is beyond frustrating.
It’s funny how used to Lovecraft’s casual racism I’ve gotten that my first thought on this short story was how much I enjoyed its writing and atmosphere. It’s only when I started going through the nitty-gritty of the storyline that I remembered how offensive many of the African details are, including the use of the N word. Even when Lovecraft wrote this story, that word was a powerful slur. Lovecraft is quite happy to use it.
I like how Lovecraft puts New England decrepit houses right up against classic horror situations like Rhine castles and Paris catacombs. This definitely is true. And at the time Lovecraft had a lot to do with promoting this imagery. Having lived in New England nearly all my life, I can viscerally feel the scenes he’s creating. My own father was a genealogist, so we would tromp around New England landscapes looking at ancient houses, ancient stone walls, etc. We knew many people who lived in 1700s-era homes. I can ‘smell’ and feel these scenes.
So the main character is biking around in Miskatonic Valley near Arkham, both fictional places, and a pouring rain begins. Our hero sees an ancient house in the distance. He goes up to it and realizes it might be occupied but then he WALKS IN. What?? This man knows New Englanders! He could easily be bludgeoned to death or shot or stabbed. You do not just walk into an old house around here.
Besides, houses of the 1700s era are falling apart. The ceiling could fall in on you. You could fall through to the basement. The mold could kill you. You just don’t walk in.
Our hero finds a book about cannibalism. We learn that some Black people in Africa have white features. Lovecraft uses the N word. There are lots of iffy issues involving the Africa storyline. Let’s just try to ignore those.
And then it turns out the house owner is in fact there. He’s large, threatening, but a gentle giant. Also it turns out he is a man from the Revolutionary War who has stayed alive by cannibalizing people passing by. And now he has his eyes set on our new visitor.
Luckily, we’re told a paragraph before the end that our main character survives. Usually Lovecraft would tell us in Paragraph One that the guy lived. We’re fortunate that Lovecraft managed to wait until near the end before revealing the twist. A lightning strike destroys the house. Is the cannibal thrown clear and runs off? Is he killed and under the rubble?
I enjoy the writing style. I like that it’s set in New England. I wish it didn’t have the Congo African white-negro sections.
The short story The Alchemist written by H. P. Lovecraft was written in 1908 when Lovecraft was a teenager and published a few years later. This is often thought to be the first, or at least one of the first, short stories that Lovecraft wrote.
My review of The Alchemist contains a LOT of spoilers, so I highly recommend you read the short story first:
First, it’s certainly a nice work for a first short story. The ‘twist ending’ is quite telegraphed, but heck, Lovecraft is a teen. There are good uses of descriptions and setting the scene. I’m a bit iffy on the super-good main character vs the dastardly-evil two villains, but it’s also fair that we only learn about the villains’ traits from the family members of the cursed family. We’re not getting objective views.
That being said, it’s suspect that the only redeeming trait of young son sorcerer Charles is that he adores his father with “a more than filial affection.” Hmmm. That would seem to be fairly questionable to me.
Also, Count Antoine has lived alone in this chateau for his entire life – 32 years. He’s barely had a man-servant to be around. Sure, Antoine spends some time reading – but he also explores the chateau and surrounding wood. How in the world is there possibly entire SECTIONS of the building that he’s never gone into? Maybe if he’d only been there a month or two – but he’s been there decades. All alone. Nothing else to do but read. Surely he has gone into every cupboard, every closet, every single spot to poke around. I wish it had been written more like a storm hit and a section tumbled down, revealing a passage into an area which had previously been blocked by rubble.
Our hero Count Antoine of C— (i.e. fictional county in France) is 90 when he tells his story, which is in (to round off a bit) 1900. That means Count Antoine was born in 1810. We know this curse by Charles was set in the mid-1200s when Charles killed the first Count Henri. Let’s say 1250 for another round number. If we assume each boy grew up to be 25 before having a first son, which would be fairly young for a Count, then we end up with 22 generations. So if that only thing happening was Henri having one son Godfrey, Godfrey growing up to age 32 and having one son along the way (Robert), then Robert growing up to age 32, having just one son along the way, then our Charles murders 22 men before we get to Antoine.
But human biology doesn’t create one and only one son like magic for 22 generations straight. Sometimes there will be girl-children! Sometimes multiple children! And the curse states:
“May ne’er a noble of thy murd’rous line Survive to reach a greater age than thine!”
It doesn’t say FIRST BORN BOY. It says any noble. Girl children of a count are nobles, too. They aren’t peasants. I won’t even get into Salic law here. Let’s assume this family is in the part of France where girls aren’t allowed to inherit land and therefore can’t inherit the title. Only the boys can. But still, there can be multiple boys. So the first one is living his life in county C—- while the second goes off to marry a countess in Burgundy. When the eldest son is murdered at age 32, it might take the younger son (now the Count of C—-) a few years to get his Burgundy affairs in order to return home to take over the family seat. Then he’ll be over 32! The curse will have failed.
And how about all the girl-children who are noble and who have been married off to counts or earls in Bordeaux or Champagne? The will need to be tracked down and killed. But somehow the story seems to dismiss any girl-children. Heck, the only two women mentioned are the wife of the sorcerer (brutally sacrificed to the Devil, or so claim the curse-laden family) and the mother of our main character (tragically sacrificed in the birthing of her child, a la Tyrion).
Speaking of which, all of the fathers are being slaughtered at the age of 32, which if we say they start to take on adult duties at sixteen, gives them a full sixteen years of ‘active administrating’ before they die. Yet somehow they are all incapable of running their household in an effective manner. Which is bad enough, but how about the wives? Noble wives are trained from birth TO run a household effective. History gives us countless examples of noble households very efficiently run by a woman well into her later years. Heck, when Veuve Cliquot’s husband died at age 30, in 1805, she turned the winery into a world-famous one.
Yes, the Counts of C—– could not engage in farming. That was explicitly against French law. But they had a county full of workers! Counts make money by having their farmers and blacksmiths and so on prosper. That’s the role of a Count – to oversee their county, to maintain the defenses of the keep / chateau to protect the King’s realm, and to ride off at the King’s side in time of war. There’s no way a King would let one of his important land areas sit so run-down that any random neighbor country could trample in and take over a section of his country. Never mind not have ANY soldiers ready for summoning. The King would have long since sent in advisors to get the area in shape or, heck, assigned a new Count. The entire reason you have a Count is to administer a County. If the current Count is abjectly negligent in his duties, a new one would be brought in.
A minor note – Count is a TITLE like Duke or Earl. It’s not a last name. A person is given Count rights by the King to rule County C. His son inherits those rights. But the Count can be ‘kicked out’ by the King, too.
And I suppose while we’re on that topic, there was this French Revolution in 1799! The French revolutionaries abolished all nobility! How how is this curse even still active if it’s only about descendants with noble titles? There aren’t any nobles any more.
At the end, Count Antoine has lived a nice, long life plus he had a pile of gold to fix his home up with. He chose not to have any kids – maybe he wasn’t wholly sure the curse was actually done with the family. Maybe he just wanted to spend his remaining days fixing up his castle, get a few dogs, learn how to oil paint, and enjoy some fine wines.
I love stamps. So did my father! My dad, George, was born in 1946. began collecting stamps when he was quite young. He would put ‘like stamps’ into little envelopes and have one representative stamp on the outside of the envelope. He’d often write little notes to himself on the back of the envelope. One envelope has his 1961 resolutions which include to ‘kiss a girl’. Just the thing I can see his fourteen-year-old self dreaming of!
The 5 cent documentary series of 1898 is not a “postage” stamp. This wasn’t put on an envelope to mail a letter to a friend. Instead, documentary stamps were used to signify something tax-related was paid for. So if you bought tobacco, for example, the stamp would show you paid the fee for it.
The stamp is in lilac / purple. It shows a battleship.
When I opened the little envelope for this stamp there were a few of the stamps stuck together. I gently soaked them in warm water for a few minutes until they separated. Then I tried them on a paper towel. I hope that was OK. Please let me know if you’d like to see any other photos or get any other information.
Prices on the web seem to range from $2.20 to $4.99 depending on quality, including shipping.
I have several of these, and I’ll start listing them in my ebay account.
I have a Samsung Galaxy Active2 Watch. I have loved this watch and used it for years to manage my sleep, my walking steps, and much more. Unfortunately, two days ago it began repeatedly popping up, with vibration, alerts about Google Pay. I’ve never even used Google Pay, and I don’t have it installed. This made the watch completely unusable.
Here are my troubleshooting steps.
First, I disabled Google Pay.
Next, I fully installed Google Pay so that I could access all the options to shut down notifications.
Next I tried the Force Stop option in Google Pay.
Next up, I tried disabling the bezel on my watch. A number of users reported that disabling the bezel helped.
Finally, I tried putting my watch into Water Mode. This stopped the pop-ups! Of course, it also meant any time I wanted to use any apps on my watch, I had to go through the process of taking it OUT of water mode. So this is a step in the right direction but not a complete solution.
I really don’t want to reset my Samsung Galaxy Active2 Watch. Please let me know what else I should try!
I will note this is a well documented issue which is happening to a LOT of owners of the Samsung Galaxy series of watches:
Alert! Gmail/Google is about to DELETE any accounts that haven’t been accessed in 2 years (that don’t host YouTube videos).
This account deletion could then cause you to lose access to other systems which rely on that email address. If for example you set up a Facebook account and tie it to your Gmail email address, and then the Gmail email address gets deleted, you could lose your ability to do ‘lost my password’ and other activities with Facebook.
Make sure to log into ALL of your Gmail accounts by December 1 2023 just to be sure.
Aaaaa apparently QuickBooks is now ransomware-like locking its entire system EVERY YEAR ($687.68!!) if you don’t pay to upgrade.
I’ve lost all access to all my financial QuickBooks data files. I’ve been using this software for a LONG time. I have years and years of data in here. I will have to pay to regain access.
Any suggestions of where to move my data? I don’t have to create invoices or bills. I just need to manage multiple bank accounts and credit card accounts, and import my existing QuickBooks data.
Thanks!
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It just took me over an hour on chat with Intuit just to even get access to my online account, because they have two accounts for me and have gotten the two all intertangled …
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UPDATE: It took me two hours on QuickBooks chat Tuesday plus another six hours with their support teams today to get my QuickBooks into a new, accessible, stable state. QuickBooks gave me a temporarily 30-day trial of QuickBooks Desktop to get my data accessible again. Then for $15 I got a month of the QuickBooks online with my data fully migrated into it. So for $15 I have a month to evaluate my options. I also have now exported all my various data files into Excel, so I have access to all of my raw data. I consider that a win.
