Interstitial Fill?

Emperor Sydeke likes ekorus races. Ekoruses are based on real creatures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekorus_ekakeran
The article has some fiction in it, of course.

I deactivated my Amazon Seller account. I had them ship me my items. They were all sitting there not selling. The listing for the one item I'd hoped would be my best seller was broken by Amazon. It was a differently packaged version of one of their best sellers. I've had a help ticket open on it since November. Every few days they would send me an email telling me they were working on it. I have dozens of them. I might publish them in a blog post one day. After I had them ship that product to me, they still told me how hard they were working on it. Then suddenly they sent me a mail telling me they'd fixed the problem. hmm They also wanted to know how well they had done solving my issue. Solving my issue? They solved my issue? I still haven't answered.
I'm going to give most of the items to a local charity.

I may reactivate later if I can save up enough money to do it better knowing everything I learned the first time around. Or I might not. In my state if you generate your own electricity, electric companies are forced by law to buy any excess from you. Though it would cost more, it might be easier to do something like that. Buffing the dust off solar panels once a month wouldn't be too hard.

Progress on the book has been less than I'd like. I ran into a problem this week in real life that interfered. It seems like there's always something getting in the way. Sometimes, it's like God's telling me this desert is ending, but I don't see the end. I'm not seeing the breakthroughs I need. I'm pretty burned out at this point.

Remember the other day I mentioned it doesn't seem like anyone cares? The church I've been going to lately is a small church where everyone knows everyone. I never go Sunday mornings, because it doesn't fit my schedule. They cancelled Sunday night services to go to some other church for something or other.  Nobody called me to tell me. They all forgot. I showed up to a dark building and an empty parking lot. The property across the road is quite picturesque. I should take some video of it. There were at least a dozen turkeys hanging out doing turkey things. We have a lot of wild turkeys here. Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird, but the other leaders wanted it to be the bald eagle, a carrion animal.

Studio Update

It hasn't been a scintillating week. I got some extra work done on the studio.

These are the boards that go on the wall.

This is the wall from a different angle. That line of paint is the hairline crack.

 A picture of a crack in the floor.

 A different crack.

This is one of my studio lights and stand.

It's hard to tell, but the cracks still aren't completely sealed. I tried to outsmart them. I used some of my old acrylic hobby paint and slathered it on with a 1 inch paint brush thinking it would fill the cracks. I then painted over it with the red house paint, which is leftover from something else. That light streak along the crack is the acrylic showing through. It almost worked. A lot of it is sealed, but I'm still seeing pinprick holes. I've used multiple coats. It's nearly done.

The room is almost cleaned up. There are a few things left to do, then I'll be able to clean the boards with furniture polish and put them back up. And, yes, that floor color's not the best. My plan is to put down a cheap laminate floor one day when I can afford it.

I've had a couple of bad things happen lately that I could use some serious prayer for, if you want to. I mean real prayer. Nothing wimpy, something awesome. I need answers.

I've made YouTube videos before and even one a few months ago, but it can still be hard to talk to the camera. The experts say it just takes practice. To help get me started off right, I picked up a really cheap mirror at Walmart for $5.88. It's about 50 inches tall. That's 12.7 decimeters.

That was a joke for European readers. ;) It's 1.27m. I like using the deci gag on Americans. Hopefully, it plays in Europe, too. :)

Anyway, it's easier to talk to a mirror than a camera lens. Until I get more comfortable with the camera, I'm going to put the mirror behind it and try to talk to the mirror like it was a person. I can also see my reactions and if I'm doing something annoying or fidgety.

I'm making progress on the book but not what I'd hoped for. I could use prayer for that, too. :)

Painting and Such

Things are progressing for the "studio". It's taking a bit longer than I'd hoped. As you might recall it's in a room in the basement that has humidity problems. I've taken down all but one board on the wall that's fully underground. The last board is under the boards on the other wall. It turns out the wall is already sealed, although there's a hairline crack running from ceiling to about three quarters of the way down. I've had to apply multiple layers of paint. It's almost fixed. I still need to clean the boards and replace them.

I've painted most of the concrete floor, which was partly sealed already. It has multiple cracks none of which are very wide. But they sure are hard to fix with paint. I'm having to apply several coats, let them dry, then apply more. It's time-consuming. I'm having to paint part of the floor and move furnishings around to paint another part. I have two parts painted and one part left to go(plus any cracks). The last part is by far the smallest.

The humidity is only noticeable after it rains. I'm hoping the moisture is seeping up through the floor and maybe the hairline wall crack and that painting will put a stop to it. Cleaning the walls and getting rid of anything musty can only help. I might have it finished in a couple of weeks. It's something I usually work on a little each day, although I missed a day or two for life reasons.

YouTube
A while back I made a Messengers YouTube channel. There's nothing there yet except a video I think is unlisted. This might be the time to start making videos for it. Some of them would be talking about things in the Bible. Some would be talking about the Biblical underpinnings of the books, etc. I've been wanting to do a study guide type of book, but wow, am I ever behind on everything. I might put that into video format for free. Not only would talking be faster than typing and editing, it would get done sooner, since I could do a topic at at time on the side practically anywhere it's not too loud. I might could do some of it in a local park.

I'm not sure whether to let YouTube run ads on it. I set up monetization. I'm just not sure people want to see commercials on a "spiritual" channel, and I wouldn't be able to choose which ones appear. Maybe God could do more through a donate button? There's not much money to be made through ads. It's something like $1,000+ for 1,000,000 views. Could you imagine a million views on a Bible study in today's world? Any money at all would be good, of course. The real value might be in book sales.

Book
At this point I'd wanted to be finished or nearly finished with the rough draft on the next book. I'm not. I'm seeing progress, but it's slow.

Life, YouTube and Writing

Ever get the feeling no one really cares about you except yourself? (And the Lord, of course.) I usually get that feeling at least once a day, especially online. I don't have tons of Facebook friends, but the ones I do have generally never Like my posts no matter how funny they might be. I'm sure they never see them, which is why. If they don't care about anything I post, why are those people on my friends list? I've deleted some of them in the past. At least one ran away in a tizzy after I dropped a truth bomb. Maybe I should delete more.
Real life isn't much better. Do you ever find people treating you like crap just because they can? If only we could delete rude cashiers. Wouldn't that be cool if you could go to the store and never have to see the mean cashiers more than once? Walmart Preferences App. It would steer you away from the bad checkout aisles. The only cashiers you would ever have to see would be the friendly ones that say hi when you show up and tell you to have a nice day when you leave.

Anyway.

I'm still working on the "studio" for the YouTube show. The room it will be in is in the basement, which has humidity problems. The reason it's taking so long is I'm having to take the walls apart to seal up any concrete that isn't sealed. I told you last week it was depressing. It's taking forever. It's not just that. I'm having to clean anything musty. Life hack: If you put books in a plastic bag and put them in the freezer for 24 hours, it kills the mustiness or mold or whatever. I'd read that but never tried it. It actually works. It's kind of like magic. I'm going to try it with a cap once I'm done with the books and see if it works for cloth.

B'vellah War book 2. What a struggle. I'm trying to get to the point where I can go pro. The indie author thing sucks. I need a publisher. To have that, I need to follow current publishing conventions. That generally means following the 3-act formula that Hollywood movies use. The YA book that's resting right now has it. The Rise of Aethan Lightbringer mostly follows it. I used plot points in that, even though it had two story lines, which made things weird.

The problem with the 3-act formula is that it stifles my creativity. One section of the YA book was very hard because I was trying to do what publishers want to see. I may give up on a pure 3-act structure and modify it for my style. Could I get away with that? I think so. Branden Sanderson, whose books I haven't actually read, doesn't use 3-act at all and outsells most of the people who do. Hollywood flops use the 3-act formula, so it's not a magic bullet. I could go further, but it would get kind of geeky real fast. That might be a topic for the YouTube channel or its own topic a different day.

I think I've mentioned in a previous blog that I wanted to do a YouTube channel in French. All the work for the writing channel will give me a place to do that, too. Speaking of YouTube, there actually is a way to make money just from that, but I'd need 5,000 subscribers. Sponsorship. I could make a few hundred dollars a month doing those on the side. We'll see.

That's all I have time for today. I had more, but the clock's telling me no.