Podcasts about Cloak

Yes, I know it's a beloved movie, but it bombed at the box office and it was generally overlooked for ages, so we've decided to include the film in the Dabney Coleman tribute. And by we I mean me and frequent guest, podcast producer, and film critic Erik Childress, who loves this movie a whole lot. (More than The Karate Kid!?) Check out the list of episodes here: bit.ly/3WZiLFk. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.  Overhated is now proudly sponsored by those Effin' Birds.com, the award-winning comic strip by Aaron Reynolds.  

The fire is behind you now. No chains. No bargaining voices. Just trees, a narrow stream, and a small flame that belongs to no one. In this second chapter, the road fades and something quieter takes its place. You make camp in the forest, share water and warmth, and begin to understand who the woman beside you really is... and who you are when you're no longer being watched.

In this essential Part 2 of our series on Estate Reclamation, Russell Paul Arthur continues his deep dive into the lawful procedures required to reclaim your estate from the control of the Crown Commonwealth. Building on the foundational knowledge from Part 1, Russell explains the specific affidavit processes, private trust structures, and judicial remedies available through Grace Private Court. We explore how to transition your assets from public domain control to private sovereign authority, and the exact steps required to execute an estate reclamation and restructure your life for maximum protection and asset preservation.   ⏱️ Important Chapter Points & Exact Timestamps 0:00.6 Welcome to The Sovereign Man Podcast and The Awakening Podcast 0:05.9 Fifth Visit from Russell Paul Arthur 0:23.7 Russell Paul Arthur's Self-Introduction 0:42.7 Grace Private Society: A Sovereign Organization 1:01.7 Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom 1:17.7 Grace Private Court: Handling Judiciary Matters 1:29.4 Creator of Grace Sovereignty Academy 1:59.6 System of Control and Extortion 3:18.8 The Importance of Private Courts and Corruption 3:52.7 Creating Something Outside the System 4:27.8 Current System Built on Fiction, Fraud, and Deception 5:31.7 Only Way is Out: Leave the System and Start Fresh 6:20.3 You Don't Win in Their System 6:58.4 Current Court System is a Tiered System 7:38.7 Judges Prevent Access to Court of Equity 8:05.0 All Property Locked into Public Trusts 8:25.7 System Works on Two Principles: Control and Extortion 12:24.4 What is a Public Estate? 12:49.1 Disclaimer and Advisory 15:14.5 Using Affidavit to Get Courts, Detectives, Bailiffs to Back Off 19:40.7 Public Trust Arrangements Explained 22:05.6 Deception and Fraudulent Measures: Grounds for Remedy 23:26.8 Undisclosed Arrangements: Grounds for Coming Back for Remedy 31:11.6 True Relief and Remedy Outside the System 32:08.5 The Private Estate Solution 35:37.0 Setting Up a Private Estate with Academy Members 37:54.3 Remedy and Solution: Estate Reclamation 39:10.3 The Paramount Claim 39:36.9 Estate Reclamation Done in Accordance with Law of Maxims of Equity 40:04.2 Maxim: "Equity Will Not Suffer a Wrong to Be Without a Remedy" 40:39.4 Maxim: "Equity Will Not Allow a Statute to Be Used as a Cloak for Fraud" 43:07.3 Lord Chancellery and Chancery Court of Equity 43:14.2 Equity as Remedy to Common Law 44:37.9 Most Courts Around the World Have Equity Built In 45:01.8 True Court of Equity Sits in Exclusive Equity 47:32.8 Court of Chancery: Highest of Highest Courts 47:52.9 Judges Prevent People from Going Up Through System 48:05.8 Creating Our Own Private Court with True Equity 49:50.5 Our Court is Justice by Consent 67:43.5 Estate Reclamation as Remedy and Solution 69:14.5 Maxim: "Equity Looks to the Intent and Not the Form" 70:19.1 Maxim: "Equity Regards the Beneficiary as the True Owner" 86:39 Closing Discussion and Fair Payment System 87:05.3 The 10-Week Trial System 87:37.7 10% Completion Rate and Serious Commitment Required 122:33.2 Academy Courses and Classes 122:50.7 10-Week Group Mentorship Sessions 123:04.2 Fully Informed Decision After 10 Weeks 123:19.4 Next Episode: Status Protection 123:22.7 Private Trusts and Formation 123:37.9 Operating in the Public Safely Through Private Trusts 123:47.6 Private Trusts as Lawful Avatars and Protective Shields 123:50.9 Final Links and Contact Information   TOTAL DURATION: 123 minutes 57 seconds  

Uncover the dangerous allure of a legendary Hawaiian artifact—King Kamehameha's feathered cloak—and why everyone from collectors to criminals will kill for it.In this gripping episode, Philip Marlowe dives into a tangled web of theft, deception, and obsession surrounding a priceless relic that carries more than just historical value—it's a symbol of power and betrayal. When a mysterious letter leads him into the shadowy underworld of feather collectors and con artists, he quickly realizes that losing this cloak could mean much more than theft; it could be deadly.You'll discover:How the myth and history of King Kamehameha's cloak fuel a high-stakes black marketThe surprising ways obsession with rare feathers drives both art and crimeThe clever clues hidden in a Hawaiian poem that reveal the killer's identityWhy unbalanced lovers and desperate con artists are dangerous allies in this treasure huntThe psychological trap that leads the most unbalanced to desperate acts of violenceThis episode underscores the high stakes of cultural theft and the perilous obsession with historical relics—reminding us why understanding criminal motives can be crucial to stopping them. Perfect for fans of classic noir, true crime, or anyone who loves intricate stories of deception and danger.With a compelling plot rooted in history and deception, this story challenges you to see how far people will go for something they believe belongs to them—or that they think they deserve. If you're intrigued by the dark side of collectibles, this episode is essential listening.

Critical Magic Theory closes the book on Half-Bloods with one final superlatives showdown, capping off more than a year spent inside the wizarding world's largest and most varied blood-status category. Professor Julian Wamble runs all seventeen half-bloods discussed this season, including Harry Potter, Voldemort, McGonagall, Snape, Umbridge, Hagrid, Lupin, Tonks, Cho Chang, Dean Thomas — through every category the show has built: best and worst person, a quick teacher recap, best and worst house member, best and worst friend, biggest hero, and biggest villain. Expect a few ties, a few numbers that don't match the narrative you'd expect, and at least one result that upends everything you thought you knew about who the fandom actually fears most. The episode closes with a reflection on what really defines a "good half-blood."PRE-ORDER Behind the Cloak

In this week's episode, we share nine tips and tricks to help indie authors manage their files. Since I now have 174 novels, file management has become important! This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store: JULYSKULL The coupon code is valid through July 27, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 311 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 10th, 2026. Today we are discussing file management tips for indie authors. Before we get into that, we'll have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is JULYSKULL. As always, the coupon code and the links to the appropriate pages in my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through July the 27th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As I mentioned last week, Blade of Thieves is now out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, Bookshop.org, and my own Payhip store. It is selling well and people seem to be enjoying it, so thank you all for that. Now that Blade of Thieves is out, my next main project is Cloak of Frost, which will be the 15th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy series. As of this recording, I am 52,000 words into it. I'm thinking the rough draft will be about 100,000 words. So if all goes well, I hope to have the book out in August. My secondary project is Blade of Visions, the sequel to Blade of Thieves, and I am 4,000 words into that. Once Cloak of Frost is finished, Blade of Visions will become my new main project. In audiobook news, recording is done for Dragon-Mage, the sixth book in the Rivah series, and that will be excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward. I just have to proof/listen to that and then we can submit it to QA and then it should be showing up on the audiobook stories in a few weeks. Recording has started on Cloak of Worlds, which will be [recorded by] Hollis McCarthy, and Blade of Thieves, which will be [recorded by] Brad Wills. So look for more news and updates about that in the coming weeks. So that is where I'm at with current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:16 Main Topic of the Week: File Organization for Writers So let's move on to our main topic this week, file organization tips for writers. One of the inspirations for this episode was an episode of the sitcom Community, which is quite funny. In the episode, the college is making a movie based on a legal loophole because they have some archival footage of a suddenly popular actor. One of the characters, Jeff, becomes concerned that people aren't treating the movie as seriously as they would deserve. So he steals the laptop with the movie and sets out to edit it himself. However, Jeff doesn't know anything about editing a movie, so he watches a YouTube tutorial about how to edit videos. The first lesson is "Step 1: How to properly organize your files." Jeff rages that no, he just wants to learn how to edit movies. While realizing that proper file organization is vital in the age of digital video editing, maintaining a good file structure isn't quite as rigid for authors and writers as it would be for video editors. However, even though many people consider file structure to be old-fashioned or pointless in the age of Google Docs and AI, in my years working in IT, I found that people wasted many hours trying to find files unnecessarily. For example, I always flinch a little bit when I see someone whose desktop is just a wall of misplaced icons and thousands of documents stacked upon each other. I used to do tech support for someone who had the most amazing gift for the most unhelpful and un-useful file names, often with misspelled words. He would get very frustrated and angry that he couldn't find anything because he hadn't labeled files properly with good file names. Better file structures and file naming conventions would have saved them all that stress and time. It's not wise to have all your files stacked up on your desktop and hope for the best. As you grow as a writer, files suddenly become much more complicated than one single draft in a word processing file. There needs to be organization for audiobook files, cover art, marketing materials, research, and much more. Blade of Thieves was my 174th book. So if you think about it, that means I have 174 separate book files on my computer. Many of them have audiobooks. They all have cover art. The audiobooks have cover art, to say nothing of the hundreds of short stories I've written and all of that needs to be organized properly so I can find it when I need it to. So today we're going to talk about setting up and organizing file structures for your writing work. First of all, what do I mean by file structures? In traditional computing, files like Word documents and Excel spreadsheets are organized in folders. How you navigate through the folder structure on your computer or server to find the files is called a path. Much like with a real path on a hiking trail, you want the path to find a file in a folder to be as clear from junk and confusion as possible. Good file and folder naming is like setting up signs on that hiking trail to help you find the way. Setting up your folders and files correctly makes them easier to use, find, and share with others. So let's go through some tips on how to properly organize your writing files and save yourself much stress and hassle of trying to find things. #1: Make a plan before you begin. Instead of borrowing someone else's file structure, take some time to think about how you use your writing files every day. Do you have a lot of project files for each book like book research, cover ideas, mood boards, and so on? Do you do most of your writing collaboratively? Think about your working style, the amount of files you have, and what kind of files you have that need organizing. It helps to plan for flexibility and growth in the future as the amount of files you have grows. For example, if someone currently runs only ads on Amazon but wants to add other companies like Facebook or BookBub, it'd be messier to add files from those projects if everything in their advertising folder was all Amazon documents with no sub-folder for Amazon. Making an Amazon sub-folder right away in your advertising folder prevents confusion as you start to add other companies into your advertising strategy. What you design should be realistic and as simple to use as possible. Are you someone who makes grand and complicated plans, but then sees them fall by the wayside after a couple of weeks? Many people are. Good organization is something where it's easy to let the perfect be the enemy of the possible. If you design overly complicated file and folder structures and naming conventions that you can't remember without a 20-page guide, you're not very likely to keep up with it. It's better to make something simple that it's easy to remember. Carve out the time to do this with your full attention instead of trying to do it in bits and pieces on the fly. It may take anywhere from an hour to days, depending on how many writing files you have. At the very least, set up the initial folders in one chunk of time so the organization is in place before you start moving files around. #2: Clean up before you start organizing. Get rid of duplicate and obsolete files before starting to organize other files. It will save time and make the process easier. #3: File structure is supported by good naming. Versions and drafts should be numbered to find the most recent one. Be specific. "Second draft" or "Volume one" without a book title isn't helpful if there are multiple books with that name across multiple folders. If you are using dates, be sure to include day, month, and year because in 10 years, "March ads" is not going to make much sense without the context of a year. Be consistent in how you order month, date, and year in a file because being inconsistent with it could make for mixed up dates. #4: Version control. "Rough draft THIS ONE" is not a good name to indicate that this is the latest draft and never use "final" as part of a draft or project name until it's well and truly done. On both Windows, Mac, and Linux, you get 256 characters for file names and it's a good idea to use them to be as descriptive as possible in your file names. #5: Be consistent. Don't make a folder called "Fix These File Names Later" because guess what? That date won't come. In the meantime, you'll probably get annoyed trying to find one of those files that don't have a correct name. If you're struggling with remembering to use your folder and file names, either make yourself a one-page reminder guide or take it as a sign that you might have made your structure and naming conventions too complicated. Remember that simpler is always better. #6: Document it. As with so many areas of life, proper documentation will help you remember something in the future. Write out how your folders are going to be structured, what style and formatting you will use to name the folders and files, and give yourselves some examples to jog your memory. If you're sharing the files and folders with others, make sure to share documentation with them and go over the system with them. That will save much time later since you won't have to spend so much time explaining to people where to find things in your file structure. #7: Decluttering isn't just for your college t-shirts. Schedule a regular time monthly or quarterly to declutter and fix anything in your file structure that isn't working or isn't consistent or correct. Much like organizing a drawer of shirts, things will only stay in order if you keep up with putting in and taking things out using your system. #8: It should fix, not create problems. Your first attempt at file organization may not work once you've added more files or tried it out for a while. Reflect on what is causing problems, what you would like your system to be able to do, and what you dislike about your current system. Train others who will use it. For example, differences in month/[day]/year naming conventions between countries can lead to incorrect dates if it isn't clear what date style is being used. Abbreviations should be standard to prevent confusion. For example, United States state abbreviations could follow the US Postal Service Conventions instead of writing your own abbreviations. MN would be Minnesota instead of M-I-N-N or M-I-N-N-E-S. (Though this can cause a confusion if you're not accustomed to them since, for example, in the postal codes, people often get Missouri and Minnesota mixed up.) Tip #9: Sharing isn't always caring. You can set up password protection on folders and files you don't want to share with others, especially if you're in a shared storage space. Read-only access is a way to share documents with others without worrying about them changing the files. For example, I have read-only access set for my book files so that someone working on my series bibles can download them without editing or changing the files themselves. So instead of having to make extra folders and files that are safe for someone to use without changing, I just set read-only access to those files [for that user]. Now let's take a look at some pros and cons of some typical structures. I'm going to provide examples of three possible folder structures you could use for writing and give you some of the pros and cons for each. #1: Organizing by date. In this system, the year is the first file and more specific files like quarters and months are sub-folders. This system might work best if you write based on challenges or projects such as National Novel Writing Month where each year is its own project. If you're taking writing courses, organizing by date and then by semester or course also would make sense for many people. For many writers, however, this could be a difficult way to organize because then you have to remember what year each book was written and many books are written across several years or months. If you're sharing the files with others, then you have to give them information on the history of each book project so they know which folder dates to look at, which creates extra work and most likely confusion. Like for example, off the top of my head, I could tell you that Ghost in the Forge is the sixth book in the Ghost series. However, I couldn't remember what year or month it was written in. I think it would be 2012, maybe February of 2012, but I would not be able to confirm that without looking it up, which would mean trying to find the file for Ghost in the Forge if I needed it would be a bit of a challenge. #2: Organizing by book. In this system, each book has its own folder and then other aspects like drafts, marketing materials, research, and covers are subfolders. If you don't have a large volume of books and don't have many writing adjacent activity files like research and advertising and don't share files with others, often this is a pretty straightforward way to organize your writing files. #3: Organizing by project type. In this system, the type of project is the main subfolder and sub-folders such as the books, marketing materials, covers, and series bibles would be in folders instead of being organized by individual books. For example, there would be a folder for marketing images. Instagram would be a sub-folder, and then there would be sub-folders in that folder for specific images and ads or individual books. If you have a lot of marketing images, that can be easier than trying to remember what image was for a certain book. This file organization system is more complex than just organizing by book and could be hard to keep up without some dedication. It might be unnecessarily complex for someone who only has a handful of books and only a small amount of files. As your writing adjacent activities like marketing and social media grow, it can be easier to organize this way than just by individual books. It's also much easier to share folders in a granular way using this method. For example, if you hire an assistant to help with social media posts, you can give them access to the social media marketing folders without having to give them access to the folders that have the book files and drafts in them. Now, what do I do for my own file organization system? Now, my system has partly been thought out and partly developed organically over the 15 years I've been doing this. And I found for me, since I've written so many books and series, that the best organizational principle is to run by series. My rough drafts are not super organized because once I am done with the book, I tend not to look back at the rough draft files. So usually my rough drafts are sitting in individual folders for the series like Frostborn, Dragontiarna, Blades of Ruin, and so forth. I am much more organized in the final drafts. Each individual series has its own folder and within the series, each individual book has its own folder as well. To help with keeping things in order, I usually number the folders. So for example, in Blades of Ruin, the first folder within it would be 01 Blade of Flames, then 02 Blade of Shadows, 03 Blade of Storms, and so forth. Within the individual book folders, I have the final files in ePub and PDF form for the books along with the cover images for both ebook, audiobook, and paperback. However, as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I don't have just the book files. I also have audiobook files, advertising files, and a very large photo library from a combination of stock photos, 3D renders, and photographs I have specifically taken over the years for the purpose of using for ebook covers and advertising materials. For advertising images and materials, like I said, I found the best organizing principle for me is by series. So I generally tend to just organize them by series. So Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, and the Andomhaim books generally have just one folder of advertising images since I can use the advertising image for both Frostborn: the Gray Knight and Sevenfold Sword: Champion. For my audiobooks, I keep those on a separate drive because they eat up a lot of space. But then I just have them organized out by book and series, which is pretty easy when I need to find something. For my stock photos, I do have those pretty well organized and again, in a separate drive, which I back up separately. I divide out the images by type. So I have a folder for castles, a folder for medieval or ancient cities, a folder for modern cities, a folder for fireballs and so forth. And so if I'm making a book cover image and I think, hmm, I want a sword, I can go into the swords folder and look at appropriate pictures of swords until I find one that would work for the project. How this [has] changed over time is I've had to become a bit more organized with the files because I started using Vellum, which generates a separate file of its own. So then I had to make sure that those were organized into proper files. I used to keep all my stock photos in just one big folder that quickly became unmanageable. So I once took two days to properly organize these stock photos. Just keeping all the rough drafts in one big folder for the series has worked pretty well for me because once I am done with the rough draft and have turned into the final draft, I just ignore the rough draft file and any changes that need to be made are obviously made to the final draft file. I also used to keep all the cover images in one folder for some reason and that was a bad idea. So then I started keeping the specific cover image in the folder with the specific book and that has worked out well. Would this be something I would recommend to someone just starting out? I think so. You can obviously get more complicated with this and my file structure is pretty simple overall, but it works for me. I can find anything I need to pretty quickly. In fact, my folder structure is deep enough I find sometimes that I get halfway down the folder structure and forget what I am looking for before I find it, which is a separate problem from folder organization. But I've stuck to this pretty consistently over the last 15 years and it's worked well for me. So I think I could recommend this to someone starting out. I'd have a folder for your rough drafts and then a folder with separate folders within it for your final drafts. Conclusion File organization is not glamorous, but as any records manager at a US government agency can tell you, it is extremely important for finding, organizing, and preserving what you create. Searching for files is not a writing adjacent activity that you want to take up your time and you definitely don't want the stress of losing something that you worked on for a long time by naming and storing it incorrectly. Finally, I want to close out with a reminder that however you set up your writing files and organizing them, they absolutely need to be backed up on a regular basis. I would recommend using a combination of cloud and local backups since they reinforce each other. If heaven forbid your house explodes and you lose your local backups, you still have your cloud backups. And if your cloud provider goes down or gets hacked or something, you still have your local backups. So no matter how you organize your files or how well organized they are, you definitely want to back them up on a very regular basis. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all of the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

In this second Prof Responds episode, Professor Julian Wamble returns to listener comments from Critical Magic Theory's Patreon and Spotify communities for a deeper dive into Harry Potter's heroism, sacrifice, half-blood identity, and free will. Wamble argues that our harshest judgments of Harry often come from over-identification: because his is the only interior perspective the books give us, readers project their own standards onto him, a pattern echoed in research linking reader-Harry identification to greater acceptance of immigrants and LGBTQ people. He reframes Harry's repeated self-sacrifice not as simple bravery or cowardice, but as a lifelong search for worthiness rooted in childhood conditioning and service. On the "good half-blood" debate, Wamble suggests the books themselves actively discourage bridging the Muggle and magical worlds, making all of us "terrible half-bloods" by design. Finally, he tackles free will and prophecy, arguing that while Harry's destination may be fixed, the choices that get him there are entirely his own.Behind the Cloak

"It was the first time that the idea of an HBCU was even a thought to me of a thing I could do... it was so eye-opening to me that there was this whole other part of life in Black culture that I just didn't know anything about... we're sending the message that all of our blackness is good." - Niceole LevyREWIND EPISODEThe 80s TV Ladies are almost done moving! A few more bonus episodes to rerun, and we'll be settled in and bringing you brand new episodes! We loved rewatching A Different World and learning about the show from our incredible guests. We think this interview with TV writer/producer Niceole Levy is so fun. We hope you enjoy it, too! Sharon and Susan begin an all-new series of episodes looking at the groundbreaking 80s sitcom A Different World (1987-1993). This Cosby Show spin-off starred Lisa Bonet, Kadeem Hardison, Jasmine Guy, Charnele Brown, Dawn Lewis and Marissa Tomei. It explored the lives of students at Hillman College, a fictional HBCU, and addressed issues such as race, sexual assault, HIV/AIDS and equal rights while still keeping the laughs coming. In 1988, Lisa Bonet and Marissa Tomei left the show and a new showrunner was brought on -- the legendary actress, producer, director and choreographer Debbie Allen.To help kick off this in-depth look at A Different World, we welcome A Different World fan and amazing “2020s TV Lady” -- writer, producer, and author Niceole Levy.  Niceole's numerous TV writing/producing credits include Cloak and Dagger, Shades of Blue, SWAT, The Recruit and Found. She is the co-writer, along with George Nolfi, of the 2020 feature film The Banker. She has also written a book for aspiring TV writers called "The Writer's Room Survival Guide."THE CONVERSATION80s TV made marriage look easy and fun -- cuz the couples were usually crime-solving millionaires!How watching every syndicated show on TV -- Perry Mason, I Love Lucy, Marcus Welby, Dick Van Dyke Show, Ironside -- prepares you for a life of TV writing.Everything retro is new again: Getting that first gig -- with Blair Underwood -- on the 2013 re-boot of Ironside!Niceole's advice for getting into TV and film -- DON'T GO TO FILM SCHOOL!For Niceole -- and so many others -- A Different World's Hillman College was her first exposure to an HBCU.RUN THE NUMBERS: 20 of the 47 writers on ADW were women!SEASON 2 RE-SET: How the addition of show-runner Debbie Allen re-ignited the series with a new sense of excitement and vitality.A DIFFERENT LOOK -- How A Different World achieved a bigger, more expansive look than other sitcoms of the time.So, join Susan, Sharon -- and Niceole -- as they talk Miami Vice, watching 1,000 television shows, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,keeping a TV journal, Boyz II Men, dancing with Kamala Harris, scheduling your life around a TV show -- and the importance of not messing up the lunch order!AUDIOGRAPHYWatch A Different World -- streaming on Netflix and Philo. Find out more about Niceole Levy at niceolelevy.com.Read her article “What I Learned Watching 1,000 Television Shows” here. Buy Niceole Levy's book "The Writer's Room Survival Guide" at Bookshop.org.Get Susan's President Carter play, Confidence (and the Speech) at Broadway Licensing.Help Abortion Access at Abortionfinder.org.PROMO DEALS - SPECIAL COZY EARTH PROMOTION! NOW Thru July 16th! Get 30% OFF at CozyEarth.com -After July 16, you can still get 21% OFF - or the BEST DEAL they have going - on awesome sheets and pajamas at COZY EARTH.Be sure to use the promo code: 80STVLADIES for the best deal they're offering. Happy Shopping!

Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

In this week's episode, we take a look at 5 lessons indie authors can learn from tradpub. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: JULYCROWN The coupon code is valid through July 20, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 310 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 2nd, 2026 and today we are discussing five lessons indie authors can learn from traditional publishing. Given how negative I've been about traditional publishing over the years, that may be a bit of a surprise, but we will find out more later. We will also have a Coupon of the Week and a progress update at my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 of my Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is JULYCROWN. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July 20th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook for your summer travels, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that Blade of Thieves is now done and published. Once this episode goes out, you should be able to get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, bookshop.org, and my own Payhip store. It's starting off strong, so thank you to everyone who is reading and enjoying it. Thank you for everyone being patient while I got to it. Now that Blade of Thieves is finished, my next main project will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy novel series. I'm currently 24,000 words into that. I think the rough draft will be about 100,000 words. If all goes well, I hope to have that out in August. My new secondary project is now Blade of Visions, which of course will be the direct sequel to Blade of Thieves. As of this recording, I am 1,000 words into it. In audiobook news, Leanne Woodward has started recording Dragon-Mage and Hollis McCarthy is currently recording Cloak of Worlds, which was the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series. In a few days after this, Brad Wills is going to start recording on Blade of Thieves. So we should have a bunch of new audiobooks coming up for you to listen to before too much longer, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:23 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Things Indie Authors Can Learn From TradPub Now onto our main topic this week, five lessons indie authors can learn from TradPub. Given how critical I have been and continue to be of traditional publishing on this blog and my podcast, this might come as a bit of a surprise and this should be in no way an endorsement for anyone to pursue traditional publishing. My blunt opinion is that if you are a new author starting out, you are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much better served going indie instead of traditionally publishing. You will retain ownership over your IP. You will potentially be able to make more money and you won't have to deal with the various problems endemic in traditional publishing. Occasionally I see on social media a newish author trying to get an agent or being excited that an agent responded to their query letter or whatever. I don't do this because arguing with strangers on the internet is a waste of time, but I want to tell them, "Don't do this. Go indie. You'll be much happier in the long run and you won't have to worry about your agents stealing all your money," of which there have been documented cases that have happened. Now with all those caveats aside, traditional publishing has lasted for a long time. There is a reason that traditional publishing has survived so many changes and continues in many different forms to this day. And while I wouldn't recommend that you pursue traditional publishing, there are things you can learn from it to enhance your career as an indie author. So today I'm going to talk about five things you can learn from TradPub as an indie author. #1: Your book doesn't exist in a vacuum. Many authors are resistant to their book being put into categories or being paired with similar books. I've frequently noticed that aspiring and first time authors are particularly resistant to the either idea of their book best fitting into a single category or being similar to another authors. It doesn't mean that your book isn't creative or unique, it's accepting the reality of bookselling. Even in the modern indie era, books are still very much classified by a limited number of categories on book sites and ads are built on comparing your books to other authors. Focus on the category that best represents your book if it spans genres and focus extra effort on finding similar authors to help potential readers understand what type of book you are offering. For example, I had this problem with Cloak Games and Cloak Mage for a couple of years because the series is primarily an urban fantasy, but it's also set 300 years in the future. There are increasing science fiction elements in the series. The protagonist has visited several different planets and so forth, so trying to cram that all into an ad description or an ad targeting is a difficult proposition. I had better success when I started describing the series as the Dresden Files crossed with the Shadowrun RPG, which readers of it will say probably captures it quite well and then in the marketing, I always focus on the urban fantasy elements. I don't even mention the sci-fi elements because I think that's a fair representation of the book is that it's 80% urban fantasy with some sci-fi stuff in the background. So that is an example from my own books that I've done where I have emphasized the urban fantasy and contemporary fantasy aspect of Cloak Mage in the advertising and then just didn't mention the rest of the stuff in the other advertising. Traditional publishers even create the feeling of similarity with their own books by using the same artists and styles for their book covers. There was a post going around last year showing all the romance books with blue covers, cartoon figures facing each other while outside, and swooping white font. Book genres have conventions and trends in their covers. Instead of fighting that, you might want to take a time to look at the best sellers in your category to take note of what's working for other authors in your category. A book cover doesn't have to match everything about your book. It just has to give people a quick impression of what the book is about so it makes sense and doesn't confuse people and gives them something that is least in line with genre expectations. My rule of thumb for book covers is always that it should, in a space of two seconds of looking at a book cover, it should tell you the title of the book, the author of the book, and the genre of the book and it should do this all in an aesthetically pleasing and attractive matter. Those are essentially the four rules for a successful book cover, that you look at it and you can within two seconds know the title, the author, the genre, and it's presented in aesthetically pleasing and attractive manner. So to get a good book cover for your category, it would be a good idea to look at the other books in your category and see if you can find a design that while it doesn't copy the other designs, nonetheless follows some of the same design rules. #2: Timing matters. Traditional publishing is largely based on three seasons: spring, summer, and fall. By building the release schedule this way, it offers reliability for booksellers and libraries and each season has a general theme that makes it easier to market new releases. For example, fall has a lot of prestige literary fiction titles while summer might focus more on beach reads and SATs study guides. Indie publishing isn't beholden to this type of thinking about scheduling book releases, but it's smart to learn from what has worked for traditional publishing over the last couple centuries. Book sales in the US are generally a little softer in January and the summer and peak around the winter gift giving season. Thrillers often get published in September and October so they can get the "spooky season" boost from people looking for Halloween adjacent reads. It makes sense to look at the rhythm of what has been working for bookselling in your genre and see if there's a time that is especially advantageous for you to put out your book where you're just starting out and don't have very much in the way of your own sales data yet. For myself, I found what indie authors really need to watch out for is holidays. Publishing a book the day before Christmas or the day after Christmas is not a good idea. One of the reasons I didn't rush to get Blade of Thieves out the last week of June is because a lot of people will be taking the last week of June off because it leads right into the 4th of July holiday, which is why Blade of Thieves came out after 4th of July. I'd say the weakest times in my experience for indie authors are generally on November, December (because of the late Christmas), and then August and September also tend to be fairly weak because that is back to school time, which is very often very expensive and a financial strain for many people, in addition to their time and energy being focused on things other than recreational reading. Also, I've been doing this long enough to say this with some authority is that presidential election years, especially in the run up to the election are always pretty weak times in 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024, especially 2024. I did notice a dip in sales as we approached the election and the general intensity of the campaigning and the ads and everything picked up. I've come to realize that a significant portion of the reading public, especially in the United States, also overlaps with the very politically involved public. I mean, it's not a perfect Venn Diagram, but there is significant overlap. So as the election season heats up, you can expect to see a drop in sales. I honestly wonder if traditional publishing has that as well. I would look into that at some point. So I'd say for an indie author, be mindful of holidays and don't be alarmed if you see a sales dip before and during the holidays and it might be a good idea if you have a big release to wait until after the holiday to push it. Tip #3: If it's a product, make it a good one. Another thing that many authors reject is the notion that their book is a product to be sold and not just a piece of art. Publishing isn't shy about thinking of their books as products with units just like a can of beans on a shelf and when you're shipping hundreds of thousands of books across the world, the general process isn't all that different (with the possible exception that books are generally quite heavy). When you remove some of that emotional attachment to a book and think of it as a product, it becomes a little easier to work with. And what do I mean by that? It's much easier to tear a book apart in editing, change the cover, fix the blurb, and make ads by thinking of the book as a product that exists next to similar products instead of a special and unique masterpiece. If your book is a product, then make it a good one. Take the time to improve it and look at it from an outsider's perspective. Seek feedback, just like TradPub does through the use of advanced reader copies. Tip #4: Deadlines work. One thing traditionally published authors usually have that indie authors do not is a deadline. The TradPub book is set to be released on a specific date and missing the deadline is a pretty efficient way to get your publisher upset with you as a TradPub writer since that release date has likely been publicized and changing release dates could impact how your book sells against other books. The problem with not having a set deadline for finishing a book is that many indie authors fall prey to waiting for inspiration or letting themselves get into the habit of undisciplined work time. They let, as I often say, the perfect to be the enemy of the possible, or just as importantly, the finished. Some people need an external deadline and pressure from other people in order to work for any meaningful amount of time. It's best to know yourself and if you're the kind of person who needs some structure to work well, to find a way to put that structure and those deadlines into your work as a writer. You can try making deadlines and sharing them with someone else in a form of accountability buddy or making a set of rewards based on making your own deadlines. Plotting out your release schedule at the beginning of another year is a way of doing this. Tip #5: Paper books still matter. A surprising area of opportunity for TradPub has been print books. For some categories like children's books or cookbooks, ebooks have never been the driving force and the demand for physical copies over ebooks has remained fairly consistent. Some of the trend of readers wanting more print books started in the COVID era when people were spending entire days on Zoom meetings and staring at computer screens for work or school and needed a break from their screens in their leisure time. Bookstagram and BookTok have also driven this print trend. These influencers typically use physical books in their photos and videos and they are often arranged in various athletically pleasing ways. Publishers responded with a slew of special and exclusive print editions for this market and existing fans of the series. They often have sprayed edges or color illustrations and are so prized by collectors that some have the [sprayed edges] on the books facing out in their bookshelves or books on stands to display certain interior illustrations. Traditional publishing did not give up on print and neither should you as an indie author. Most of your income as an indie author is probably going to come from some form of ebooks, but print should not be overlooked. Some categories do better than others in the print format, but many readers will want the print version of a favorite book they have already read as an ebook or just prefer print as their preferred reading format. Fortunately, the days of having to buy a large amount of print books and keep them in your garage has passed for indie authors. Many companies, including Amazon, Ingram Spark, and Draft2Digital offer print on demand services for indie authors so you don't have to spend a large sum of money printing your own books. It's worth investigating how the print on demand format might work for you as an indie author. One thing I should also mention is that if you write nonfiction, it's also a very good idea to have a print edition because for certain kinds of nonfiction books, the reader will keep the nonfiction book and reference it again and again and keep it for years as opposed to a fiction book where the reader might read it once and be done with it and if it's not their favorite book, they might not need a print edition. My Linux Command Line Beginner's Guide is also available in print and is my overall bestselling print book because it's essentially a tutorial for learning the basics of the Linux command line and it makes sense therefore that people would want the physical copy as a quick reference when doing things in the Linux command line. In conclusion, there's no point in throwing out the centuries of experience that traditional publishers have in selling books. Although the publishing industry continues to change (and although I still think you're better off self-publishing than pursuing a TradPub deal), it's wise to look at things that are working there and adapt them to suit your needs (although once again, I still think you're better off self-publishing). So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your view on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.

It's PID Radio's Throwback Thursday, our series of programs pulled from the archives. This week, we feature a 2006 interview with the late Capt. Eric May about what he called the “summer terror season.” Originally released June 18, 2006 We present a special interview with Captain Eric May, commanding officer of the cyberintelligence unit Ghost Troop, as we look ahead at what Captain May calls the official start of the 2006 summer terror season. Show topics: Capt. Eric May‘Back to the Bunker' by William Arkin, military analyst for the Washington PostInterview: Capt. May interview with Cloak & Dagger, July 28, 2005 – “Mission 911-2B”Interview: Captain May's briefing in real time of flashes in the sky over Houston on July 28, 2005Brother Jonathan's HAARP Log (2005)HAARP was active the same night as the flashes in the sky over Houston, TexasNortheast ripe, but maybe not ready, for a monster hurricane“[S]urface water temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean have been extraordinarily high for more than a year now.”WeatherWars.info: Electric Hurricanes Sharon's niece, Sarah Sachleben, is fighting stage 4 bowel cancer, and the medical bills are piling up. If you are led to help, please go to GilbertHouse.org/hopeforsarah. Follow us! X (formerly Twitter): @pidradio | @sharonkgilbert | @derekgilbert | @gilberthouse_tvTelegram: t.me/gilberthouse | t.me/sharonsroom | t.me/viewfromthebunkerSubstack: gilberthouse.substack.comYouTube: @GilbertHouse | @UnravelingRevelationFacebook.com/pidradio JOIN US IN ISRAEL (NOTE NEW DATES)! We will tour the Holy Land October 25–November 6, 2027 with an optional three-day extension to Jordan. For more information, log on to GilbertHouse.org/travel. Thank you for making our Build Barn Better project a reality! Our 1,200 square foot pole barn has a new HVAC system, epoxy floor, 100-amp electric service, new windows, insulation, lights, and ceiling fans! If you are so led, you can help out by clicking here: gilberthouse.org/donate. Get our free app! It connects you to this podcast, our weekly Bible studies, and our weekly video programs Unraveling Revelation and A View from the Bunker. The app is available for iOS, Android, Roku, and Apple TV. Links to the app stores are at pidradio.com/app. Think better, feel better! Our partners at Simply Clean Foods offer freeze-dried, 100% GMO-free food and delicious, vacuum-packed fair trade coffee from Honduras. Find out more at GilbertHouse.org/store/.

What should you read this summer? Matthew, Mike, and special guest Brynette Yee, have some ideas for you! There is no book like the Bible but we all learn from the ministry of others, including ministry that comes to us in written form. In our ninth instalment of Cloak, Books, and Parchments (2Tim 4:13), we share brief reviews of seven books for your reading enjoyment:– When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near by Kyle Strobel and John Coe (Baker Books)– The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs (UpdatedWorks.com)– Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness by Bobby Jamieson (Waterbrook)– Leaves from the African Jungle by R.C. Allison (John Ritchie)– My Life Story: Concerning God’s Goodness, Grace & Guidance by Andrew Bergsma, edited by Rhoda Griffin– The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides (Doubleday)– The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman (Picador) Scriptures Referenced:Ps 119:160 Visit PracticologyPodcast.com for more episodes.

On this episode of Cloak & Dagger Correspondences, Thane Riddle is joined by Saeed, lead developer of the amazing piece of open source software/service, XMRchat. Herein, Saeed discussed his background, motivations to build XMRchat, and what's to come. Please enjoy and consider joining us for a LIVE Self-Liberation Saturday, starting at… The post Cloak & Dagger Correspondences #11: Building XMRchat w/ Saeed, Lead Dev. (P.AZ.NIA Radio Network) appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

In this week's episode, we offer 7 tips indie authors can use to help their audiobooks turn a profit on production costs. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store: JUNENIGHT The coupon code is valid through July 13, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 309 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 26th, 2026 and today we are sharing seven tips for audiobook profitability for indie authors. Before we get to that, we will have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store. That code is JUNENIGHT. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July the 13th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook series to read this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report I am on the second editing pass of Blade of Thieves. I am about 13% of the way through that. And so if all goes well, I think the book will be out after the 4th of July weekend/second week in July, if all goes well. I have a few real life things to do that might slow that down, but I am very, very keen to finally have this book out after the 4th of July weekend. After Blade of Thieves is published, my next project will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage series. I am 17,000 words into that and I am hoping that will be out in August, if all goes well. I have no audiobooks currently in production, but that will change next month because Brad Wills will be recording Blade of Thieves once it's done. Hollis McCarthy will be recording Cloak of Worlds and Leanne Woodward will be recording Dragon-Mage. So we'll go from having no audiobooks being worked on to a bunch being worked on all at once. Funny how things tend to bunch up like that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:01:59 The Economics of Audiobook Production for Indie Authors [All money amounts mentioned are in USD.] Now today I want to talk about a very advanced level indie author topic, namely audiobook production and the economics of it. Recently there's been some controversy because ACX (which is Amazon's audiobook production platform) has been changing its royalty model and rolling out what they call synthetic voice, which is basically an AI generated voice. Some writers have been using it because it's a lot cheaper than a good human narrator, but the flip side is that not many people like listening to it and won't pay money for it. Admittedly, synthetic voice is not fundamentally a new technology. Text to speech has been around forever. Macs have had it since I believe 1984, back when 120 kilobytes of RAM was a lot. As a brief digression, I wish the term AI hadn't been bandied about so liberally. Before the public backlash began against generative AI and data centers, the term AI was trendy, so it got slapped on a lot of things that are actually wildly different than generative AI. I saw a post where someone was complaining about the locations in Starfield being AI generated, when in fact they're procedurally generated, which is something totally different. Anyway, synthetic voice is just a more advanced version of the text to speech technology that's been around since the early 1980s. The fear is that AI generated audiobooks will swamp the market and dominate most of ACX's payment model. Now, while that is a valid fear, I strongly suspect that it is not going to work out that way, given the hostility I have observed towards synthetic voices, especially in fiction. I think what'll happen is authors who use synthetic voice will save a lot of money by not paying a narrator, but then they won't actually make any money because no one will want to buy these machine voiced audiobooks. I have some basis for that because in the early 2020s, I experimented with making synthetic voice versions of my Silent Order science fiction series and putting them on YouTube. The overwhelming response was that people liked the story but hated the computer generated voice. It might be different for nonfiction. A romance novel with a synthetic voice would obviously be quite flat, but that wouldn't matter as much for a primer on tax law or agriculture or something similar. So there's a lot of uncertainty on whether or not audiobooks can still be profitable for indie authors. However, I suggest this is nothing new. Audiobooks have always been indie publishing on hard mode, partly because they're expensive to produce and partly because they're harder to sell than ebooks and sometimes even paperbacks. That said, I'm on my eighth year of self-publishing audiobooks and some of them have made back their production costs and turned a profit. So I thought it would share seven tips on how to have profitable self-published audiobooks. #1: Think long term. If you want your audiobooks to be profitable, you need to think in the long term. ACX has this program called Royalty Share where rather than pay a narrator, you and the narrator split the royalties on the audiobook for the next seven years and after those seven years are passed, you get all these subsequent royalties. I've never taken this option, but I cite it here because I think seven years is not an unreasonable amount of time for an audiobook to earn back its production cost. People always blanch a bit when I say that, but I've been doing self-published audiobooks for eight years now, so let's see how some of them have done. The Frostborn audiobooks, 100% of them have earned back their production cost. Of the 24 Ghosts books in audio, about the first 10 have earned back their production cost. For Cloak Mage, of the 12 Cloak Mage books currently in audio, about the first three and a half have earned back their production cost. For Dragonskull, of the nine Dragonskull books, the first three and a half have earned back their production cost. For Malison, of the four Malison books, they have 100% earned back their production cost. It helps that they're short. For The Shield War, of the six Shield War books, the first one has earned back its production costs, but I only started the series in 2023. The Linux Command Line Beginner's Guide (my one nonfiction book) has totally earned back its production cost. So I don't think seven years is an unreasonable length of time to earn back the production cost for an audiobook. That means you have to think long term, almost like a small business owner buying a new piece of equipment. Depending on the business, the owner might budget for the equipment making back what he paid for it in four or five years, or if he has to take out a loan to buy the equipment, he'll calculate how long it'll take to pay back that loan. Like for example, I just had to pay a lot of money to have these struts in my car fixed and I expect the garage owner carefully considered how much he would spend on his vehicle hoist since I believe a new vehicle hoist and installation typically costs between $7,000 and $12,000 and how long it would take him to make back that money. All successful small business owners have to think like this. Now this mindset is a bit tricky for indie authors because we often have a strong tendency to think in the short term, especially new indie authors who want their books to make a ton of money right now. But as I said above, audiobooks are self-publishing on hard mode, so you need to decide whether it is worth the investment and if you're comfortable waiting a few years to earn back the production cost over time. The reality is that if you are paying a professional narrator to create an audiobook, you're paying $200 per finished hour or above, which is a small business expense. So for that kind of money, you need to think about the audiobook like a small business owner. #2: Deductions First off, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice and I am not an accountant and this is not investment/financial advice. If you want financial/investment advice, you should talk to an accountant or financial planner properly certified with the tax laws of your state, province, and nation. If you want legal advice, you should talk to a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. The way my writing business is set up, I can take the production cost of audiobooks as a deduction against my taxes. This initially was one of the reasons I got into self-published audiobooks in the first place way back in 2018. I realized that if I was going to have to pay the money in taxes anyway, I might as well spend some of it on audio production instead, since that way I'll at least get a revenue generating asset out of it. Other small businesses will sometimes do this when they approach the end of their fiscal year and realize they have more tax liability than expected, so it's probably time to invest in some new equipment or upgrades that they would need anyway. Like maybe the garage owner we mentioned earlier has a really good year so he decides it's a good time to spend that $12,000 on a new vehicle hoist so he doesn't have quite so high a tax bill at the end of the year. I once had someone tell me rather self-righteously that this was a tax dodge and therefore immoral, but that's ridiculous. [Transcriptionist's side note: I wish I had that person's level of unearned confidence. I'd use it for cliff diving or starting a library just for puppies and the weirdest, clumsiest orange cats. Literally anything else.] No less of an authority than Jesus Christ himself said that to render under Caesar what is Caesar. If Caesar says that audiobook book production is a deductible business expense, it is a deductible business expense. Business deductions are the government's way of saying, "spend this income on something that benefits the national economy or will take it as taxes." To a more immediate point, the IRS itself says you have the legal obligation to pay exactly the amount of taxes you owe, but there are also legal ways such as business deductions to reduce the amount of taxes you owe. Besides, no matter what you do, the government gets its cut anyway. At the end of the year, I have to file 1099s for the narrators because their payments are taxable income and every time one of the audiobooks sells, the government gets sales tax, the stores owe taxes on that income, and I owe taxes on the payment from the store. Uncle Sam has a lot of practice at getting his cut and he's very good at it. So depending on your business structure and the local tax laws where you live, audiobook production might be a deductible expense, which is very helpful on the financial side of it. #3: Promote the ebook. The easiest way I found to sell an audiobook is to have the audiobook of an ebook that sells well. Admittedly, this is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, isn't it? However, that can help you choose which titles to make into audiobooks. Like I mentioned above that Frostborn has paid back 100% of its production costs, and that's because it's my most popular series. It was easy for the audiobooks to sell well because the ebooks were selling well. By contrast, an ebook that sells more slowly will have a harder time selling audiobooks. One of the reasons I experimented with using synthetic voice on YouTube with the Silent Order series earlier in the 2020s was because I knew I would never make Silent Order into actual audiobooks because the series didn't sell well enough to merit it. So if you want your audiobook to sell, the easiest way to do it is to promote the ebook. If the ebook sells well enough, it will likely generate some audiobook sales as well. This can also help you determine whether or not you should even produce an audiobook of a particular ebook. If the ebook does not have strong sales, it is probably not a good idea to make an audiobook out of it. #4: Diversify We started out by talking about ACX, but ACX is not the only game in town. The other big audiobook distribution platform is INaudio, which is owned by Spotify. It was previously known as Findaway Voices, but then Spotify bought it and changed the name to INaudio. ACX will get your audiobook into Audible, Amazon, and Apple. INaudio will get your audiobook into every other platform: Google Play, Kobo, Storytel, Chirp, the library distributors, and a bunch of others. So if your audiobook is not exclusive to ACX, it's a good idea to use INaudio as well. That said, Google Play and Kobo now have direct upload for audiobooks and if your audiobook is not exclusive to ACX, it's a good idea to use the direct upload for Google Play and Kobo instead of relying on INaudio. There are a few significant advantages to this. First, you make a little bit more money since INaudio is not taking its distribution fee and the cumulative effect of that over time can be significant. Second, your audiobook will be eligible for Kobo Plus, which can generate extra revenue. I've had some of my best months on Kobo in 2026 thanks to Kobo Plus. Third and perhaps most importantly, you won't be completely dependent on INaudio because INaudio is frequently quite glitchy and in my frank and unbiased opinion, has gone downhill noticeably in quality since Spotify took over. Every single problem I've ever had with INaudio has come after Spotify bought Findaway and turned it into INaudio. I'm afraid that Spotify, like many other publicly traded corporations in the US, has the chronic problem of an upper management class who are buzzword prone MBA drones with an unhealthy enthusiasm for generative AI and indulging in self-destructive cost cutting and layoffs right before it's time to file quarterly reports. Very frequently, the QA process on INaudio will go berserk and declare that a book is AI generated and ineligible for distribution even when it's not. So direct upload to Google Play and Kobo avoids that problem. Because of these problems, another distributor called Author's Republic has been growing, but I haven't tried that out yet. Despite these problems, INaudio also gets you access to Chirp, which is our next bullet point. #5: Chirp Deals I said earlier that the best way to promote your audiobook is ebook promotion, but the one exception to that is Chirp. Chirp is run by BookBub, which is an email newsletter service that offers discounted ebooks to its subscribers. BookBub wanted to expand to audiobooks, but Audible very famously does not let indie authors control their prices and definitely doesn't let them do discounts. So to get around that slight problem, BookBub started its own audiobook store in the form of Chirp, which does let indie authors control their prices and therefore offer discounts. I've had some excellent results with Chirp deals over the years, usually with Child of the Ghost and Cloak of Dragons. In May, I had a Chirp deal with Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, but since the dashboard on INaudio only updates every 30 days for Chirp, I'm not sure how it did yet. If you get a Chirp deal and you want to take a big swing with it, you can also set temporary discounts on the subsequent books in the series. For my earlier Chirp deals for Cloak of Dragons and Child of the Ghosts, the price for Cloak of Dragons was at $0.99 and I set the price of the subsequent two audiobooks at $2.99 each. I got good results from that and some of my best months on INaudio. For the recent Dragonskull deal, Sword of the Squire was at $0.99 and I temporarily set every other audiobook in the series at $2.99 on Chirp. It was the biggest swing I've taken with a Chip deal, so I'm curious to see how it plays out. #6: Direct sales It's a good idea to have a direct sales platform of some kind, whether it's Shopify or Payhip or Gumroad or a similar platform and offer direct sales of your audiobooks. There are numerous advantages to this. You can set your own price, which as we mentioned above, ACX does not let you do. You can very easily run sales and discounts. If you're a regular reader at the site, you know I do a different Coupon of the Week for my Payhip store every week and it's often for audiobooks. As I mentioned with the problems with INaudio, it provides a platform to get your audiobook to listeners even if the other stores are having technical problems. Sometimes ACX processing can take weeks and the site's past troubles sometimes stretched [it] into months. The difficulty is getting people to actually use the store. The term vendor lock-in means that the more a customer uses the platform, the less likely they are to switch. If someone has been building up their Kindle library or Audible library since 2009, they're unlikely to switch to a competitor. Most of my direct sales come from a combination of Coupon of the Week and new releases to people who don't like DRM. So having a direct sales platform is a long haul, but still worth doing. Besides, everything in audiobooks is a long haul. #7: Direct reader relationship via Patreon or a similar site. I've never done this myself so I don't have any specific tips, but I have seen some writers do it quite successfully. That said, you should only have a Patreon or a similar site if you're willing to put in the work. Readers are very unforgiving of a writer who does not live up to his or her Patreon obligations. However, if you include audiobooks as one of your patron tiers that can go a long way towards audiobook profitability. A regular Patreon type income can help fund regular audiobook production. Conclusion Audiobooks are indeed indie publishing on hard mode, but hopefully these tips will help increase the chances that your audiobooks will be profitable. Lastly, thanks to everyone who has listened to one of my audiobooks. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Fr. Anthony talks with returning guest co-host Dr. Cyril Gary Jenkins, as we reach what Frodo had hoped was the end of his quest and begin to find that it has only just begun. Music attribution: Hidden Past and Celtic Impulse, both by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In episode 306, we looked at the advantages of taking your book wide to all retailers. In this week's episode, we'll look at the other side of the coin and examine eight advantages to placing your book in Kindle Unlimited. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: JUNEDOOM The coupon code is valid through July 7, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 308 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 19th, 2026 and today we are looking at the advantages of using Kindle Unlimited for your books. Two weeks ago, we had an episode about the advantages of going wide and distributing it away from Amazon, but there is another side of the coin and today we're going to look at it in the advantages of Kindle Unlimited. We also have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects and Coupon of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That code is JUNEDOOM. As always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in these show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July 7th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for your travels this summer, we have got you covered. So now let's take a look at where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Thieves is done. It turned out to be just about as long as Blade of Wraiths. I'm also finished with Orcish Fury, which will be the bonus short story that newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of when Blade of Thieves comes out. I am now editing Blade of Thieves. The first two chapters are edited. I am not sure how many chapters I'll end up with because I've gotten into the habit of splitting up longer chapters into shorter chapters lately since readers seem to prefer that. I do think the book will probably be out after 4th of July weekend if all goes well, because it is a big book and I'm going to have to do a fair bit of editing and I do have a few more things to do in real life that might slow the process down. But if all goes well, the book should be out shortly after the 4th of July weekend. I am also 13,000 words into Cloak of Frost, which will be my next main project once Blade of Thieves is finally done. That will probably be available in August, if all goes well. In audiobook news, at the moment I have no audiobooks in active production, but that will change next month because Leanne Woodward will be recording Dragon-Mage. Hollis McCarthy will be recording Cloak of Worlds and Brad Wills will be recording Blade of Thieves once I finally get it done. So it's funny how things always seem to do a bunch up like that rather than having a more conveniently distributed fashion, but I suppose that's just the nature of life. In other audiobook news, I mentioned earlier that Cloak of Dragons is now available in Audible Plus for those of you who are Audible listeners who have a plan that includes that. Before too much longer, I'm going to start working on the audiobook version of Cloak Mage Omnibus Four, which will combine I believe Cloak of Embers, Cloak of Titans, and Cloak of Illusion into one audiobook bundle. I've done that before [in] the past [with] Cloak Mage books and it's worked pretty well, so we're going to do it with this one as well. I'm going to start working on that next week because I've got to make the cover and then it takes forever to upload all the audiobook files. Hopefully that will be out sometime in July, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:03:23 Main Topic of the Week: When and Why to Put Your Books in Kindle Unlimited (KU) Now let's move on to our main topic this week, when and why to put your books in Kindle Unlimited. You might remember that two weeks ago (with Episode 306, I believe) we discussed the advantages and benefits of taking your books wide and not exclusive to Amazon. However, there are reasons it might actually be a good decision to put your books in Kindle Unlimited. In this week's episode, we'll talk about why you might want to consider putting your book in Kindle Unlimited. First, we should discuss how Kindle Unlimited actually works, defining our terms, so to speak. Kindle Unlimited is Amazon's merchandising program for ebooks, essentially. To use the program, you agree that your ebook will be exclusive to Amazon for the next three months (and by default, it auto renews, but you can turn that off in the dashboard). The advantages to you for using Kindle Unlimited are that in addition to buying your book outright, people can also check it out in the Kindle Unlimited program and then you get paid based on how many pages they read. The payout typically varies, but it's usually 45% of one cent [USD] per page read. For example, Half-Elven Thief, you can buy it for $4.99, but in terms of Kindle Unlimited, it comes to about 300 Kindle Unlimited pages, which means that if a reader reads the entire book, I typically get about $1.35 for a complete read. Obviously, this advantages longer books, whereas with the sale of the book, I would get like $3.49, which is significantly more, but it is possible to make up in volume of page reads lost sales on other platforms if the circumstances are right. So that is how Kindle Unlimited works. And now we will look at eight reasons why it is a good idea or why it might be a good idea and why it might be advantageous for you to put your books into Kindle Unlimited. #1: Certain genres are KU dominant. This is not true across all genres, but certain genres tend to be heavily dominated by Kindle Unlimited readers. For example, LitRPG is a unique case because the most popular LitRPG tends to be in serialized form on sites like Royal Road and similar sites, but when it does come to ebook form, it's usually on Kindle Unlimited. So if you're looking to read LitRPG, you will find most of it on Kindle Unlimited and not on the other sites. Other genres tend to be not totally dominant to that effect the way that LitRPG is, but do still have a great deal of strength in Kindle Unlimited, such as military sci-fi, certain kind of thrillers, and certain romance genres as well tend to be very heavily dominated by Kindle Unlimited. So if you are writing in one of those genres, it may be worth your while to consider that it may be advantageous to you to put your book in Kindle Unlimited and see how it performs. #2: The Kindle Unlimited Boost It's no secret that Amazon definitely puts its thumb on the scales for Kindle Unlimited books as opposed to regular ebooks. I've noticed that Kindle Unlimited books tend to go higher in the Amazon rankings. They tend to stay up there for longer than non-Kindle Unlimited books and that reviews generally show up faster for Kindle Unlimited books than they do for non-Kindle Unlimited books. That last part might vary, but the ranking thing is true. It's also true that the higher a book stays in the Amazon rankings and for longer, the more likely it is Amazon is to generate "we think you might like this" emails and send them out to readers in hopes of drawing them to your books. So it is true that Amazon definitely gives a lot of advantages to Kindle Unlimited books that other books don't get. And depending on your sales strategy and your genre, as we mentioned before, it might be worthwhile for your book to be in Kindle Unlimited. #3: Your sales data supports it. If you publish a book wide and after you look at a couple of months of sales data and you notice something like 95% of the sales are coming from Amazon, it might be worthwhile to consider taking the book exclusive and putting it in Kindle Unlimited since in that instance, the boost of page reads and page reads revenue would make up for the sales you clearly aren't getting on the other platforms. Now the threshold for this obviously varies a good deal. I've had months in the past where only like 45% of my revenue came from Amazon and in some of my older series in particular, the Amazon revenue tends to only be around like 40 to 45% and the rest comes from all the other retailers. So in that case, obviously it would be a very poor decision to take the book exclusive to Amazon and take it off all the other retailers. So this is a case where it is once again a good idea to monitor your sales data closely so you can make informed decision rather than working off of gut hunches and guesswork. #4: It permits you to reach readers who aren't buying individual books and value conscious readers. When I've talked about Kindle Unlimited on Facebook and my website in the past, I usually get comments from people who point out that they are on fixed incomes, whether from retirement or disability or taking care of other relatives and so forth and that Kindle Unlimited for them is a great deal because in exchange for $12 a month, they can read as many KU books as they have time to read. That is true. Kindle Unlimited is a much better deal for readers than it is for the majority of writers. And having your book in Kindle Unlimited is a way to reach those value conscious readers who will not buy individual ebooks for whatever reason, whether budgetary constraints or other reasons but do have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. Kindle Unlimited offers you a way to reach those readers that you otherwise would not and that is a potentially useful advantage. #5: It helps you to find new readers and binge readers. Kindle Unlimited kind of works a little bit like the permafree strategy, which I've discussed before, where that if you make the first book in your series free, people are more likely to take a chance on it than they would otherwise. The same thing is true of Kindle Unlimited because if someone's already paid the Kindle Unlimited subscription for a month, it's a sunk cost and therefore there is no disadvantage or additional cost to them for trying out your book and that can potentially lead to a strong sales boost for you if someone discovers your books and likes it. Additionally, if you have a series, every time you release a new book in the series, there is a strong chance your previous books will get a boost. This has been my strategy with the Half-Elven Thief series for the last two and a half years. Now, every time I release a new book in the series, I am fortunate enough that it does well enough that it goes high in the ranks for a while and that causes a sort of halo effect as people discover the previous books in the series for the first time and read through them with their Kindle Unlimited subscriptions, which generates a lot of page reads and therefore revenue. As I said before, a complete read through of Half-Elven Thief, the first book in a series by itself tends to get me around $1.30 to $1.50, depending on what the KU payout rate is that month. By contrast, if a Kindle Unlimited reader reads through all six books in the series, that tends to be around $8 to $8.50, which is a good chunk of revenue. These are often people who, as I mentioned in the previous point, would not have bought the individual ebooks. So that is potentially a big advantage, especially if you write in series and you regularly release in that series because then you get the halo effect to it. #6: It simplifies your ads and marketing strategy. I've often recommended to people who are just starting out self-publishing that it's a good idea to start on Amazon and KU and then see if they want to expand later because it's very simple to just manage one dashboard as opposed to like seven or eight different retailers. As self-publishers get more advanced experience, they tend to prefer to go wide. This also means that your ads are simplified because then you just have to worry about Amazon ads. You can do BookBub ads for KU books. I have not found that to be very advantageous because it's so expensive, but Amazon ads for KU books tend to be very effective and fairly cost effective so long as you monitor the costs and keep your cost per click and ad budget down closely. #7: KU has kind of what I call an immediacy bias. It definitely favors new material over older material. I would not say it's a good idea to take an old series out and put it in KU, especially if it's been on Amazon for several years because the Amazon algorithm definitely tends to reward newness. Self-publishers will talk about the 30, 60, and 90 day cliff where sales tend to drop off, partly from just the organic effect of the book having reached most of its target audience and partly because the Amazon algorithms stop pushing it so much once they reach those points. Kindle Unlimited really, really likes new stuff and I think they change the algorithms on a regular basis, but I think it gives a strong advantage to new stuff. So that ties in if you write a long series and publish new books in it on a regular basis, then you will probably see a strong advantage from that because each new additional book you published in the series will get that new book Halo Effect, which will then boost the other books in the series and that's happening with Half-Elven Thief right now with Dragon-Mage boosting the previous books in the series. #8: Don't plan on keeping your books in Kindle Unlimited forever. As I mentioned in previous episodes of this podcast, my strategy going forward is to only write three series at a time, two of which will be wide and one of which will be in Kindle Unlimited. Once Half-Elven Thief is finished, and I've written the ninth book in the series and it's all wrapped up, I will take it out of Kindle Unlimited and take it to the other platforms because of KU's newness bias. As I mentioned before, since I will no longer be writing new books in the Half-Elven Thief series, they will no longer get that halo boost of page reads from a new book and therefore it makes sense to take it out of Kindle Unlimited and then take it wide to other retailers. I know of other indie authors who do this. [They] will start out their series in Kindle Unlimited and then when it's complete, take it wide to other retailers and that is something I think is worth thinking about if you are publishing your book in Kindle Unlimited is that once the series is done and once you're no longer publishing new books that receive advantages from KU's preference for new material, it is definitely time to start thinking about taking the series out of Kindle Unlimited and putting it on other platforms. Indeed, this is advice I'm going to follow myself once Half-Elven Thief is finished. So there are eight potential reasons putting your book in Kindle Unlimited might be advantageous to you and now the question always tends to be a bit of a binary one is like, should my book be wide? Should my book be in Kindle Unlimited? The secret is there is no right answer. There is just the answer that is right for you and your individual circumstances at this point in time. Like I mentioned earlier, myself, I'm doing a hybrid strategy where most of my books remain wide and most of my new books are wide, but I do have one series in Kindle Unlimited that I am continuing and that might work for you if you write fast enough or it might work better for you to be wide. It might work what better for you to be in Kindle Unlimited. It is just important to reflect and soberly and honestly analyze the data and then make the best decision that is right for you and your self-publishing business. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

Today we have an episode of Cloak & Dagger, “The Kuchin Story”, from June 18, 1950. Cloak and Dagger was a short-lived radio series that told stories taken from the files of the Office of Strategic Services, the World War 2 forerunner of the CIA.Visit our website at BrickPickleMedia.com/podcasts. Subscribe to the ad-free version at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/worldwar2radio/subscribe.

Miles Mussenden is a British-born American actor, filmmaker, producer, and director known for his commanding screen presence and emotionally grounded performances across film and television. With over a decade of professional experience, he has built a reputation as a versatile character actor capable of delivering both intensity and nuance. Miles is widely recognized for his series regular role as Otis Johnson in the Marvel television series Marvel's Cloak & Dagger, as well as standout performances in acclaimed productions including The Good Lord Bird, Bloodline, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, and The Blacklist. He also brought a memorable edge to the DC Universe as the super-villain Frenzy in Doom Patrol. He has continued to build momentum with recurring roles in Tulsa King, Swagger, and Based on a True Story. Upcoming projects include a recurring role in the Apple TV+ series Cape Fear and a lead role in the feature film Croatoan. Expanding beyond acting, Miles has established himself as a filmmaker with his directorial debut, Homage, an urban crime drama exploring loyalty, redemption, and the lasting consequences of one's past. The film marks a significant milestone in his creative evolution, showcasing his talents behind the camera as both a storyteller and producer. Drawing from his Caribbean heritage and early experience producing dancehall reggae music, he brings an authentic cultural perspective to his work, often exploring themes rooted in identity, legacy, community, and resilience. As a producer and director, Miles is focused on creating character-driven stories that resonate with global audiences while building sustainable independent film ventures. Originally beginning his training in New York City, he studied at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts before transitioning into a full-time career in film and television. Off-screen, Miles is passionate about family and community impact, working with organizations that support at-risk youth. With a growing slate of projects as both an actor and filmmaker, Miles Mussenden is emerging as a dynamic creative voice—bridging performance, direction, and storytelling at the highest level. Screen Heat Miami Screen Heat Miami (SHM) is hosted by veteran Miami based producers Kevin Sharpley and JL Martinez and covers the latest trends in the film, tv, and entertainment industry, including interviews with global and local industry leaders, all told from a "Miami" point of view.

Adventure: I Was a Communist for the FBI “I Walk Alone” 3/30/52 Syndicated, Cloak and Dagger “Operation Sell-Out” 9/22/50 NBC.

Full archive from 6/13/26 of Cloak & Dagger with Thane Riddle. Thane covers news, fan mail, and is joined by Shane/Rayo2 to get some updates on the P.A.Z.NIA Lbry & PAZcraft. Leave a message for the show: XMRCHAT.COM/PAZNIAradio Join us on SimpleX: PAZNIA.COM/SIMPLEX VonuLife, the most practical, valuable, and hardcore… The post [P.A.Z.NIA RADIO NETWORK] Self-Liberation Saturday (6/13/26) FULL: Cloak & Dagger with Thane Riddle with Shane/Rayo2 appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

LoC: https://substack.com/home/post/p-198686549https://x.com/ExLibrisCelaenoFox and Sons: use code JBurdenJ: https://findmyfrens.net/jburden/Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/j.burdenSubstack: https://substack.com/@jburdenPatreon: https://patreon.com/JburdenGUMROAD: https://radiofreechicago.gumroad.com/l/ucducAxios: https://axios-remote-fitness-coaching.kit.com/affiliateETH: 0xB06aF86d23B9304818729abfe02c07513e68Cb70BTC: 33xLknSCeXFkpFsXRRMqYjGu43x14X1iEt

If you are needing a refresher course on the majesty and awe-striking wonder of the Almighty, this is a message for you. In fact, this may be the series for you. If the hem of His garment can bring healing, what if we pursued even more of this amazing God we serve?------------» Take these studies deeper and be discipled in person by Eric, Leslie, Nathan, and the team at Ellerslie in one of our upcoming discipleship programs – learn more at: https://ellerslie.com/be-discipled/» Receive our free “Five Keys to Walking Through Difficulty” PDF by going to: https://ellerslie.com/subscribe/» For more information about Daily Thunder and the ministry of Ellerslie Mission Society, please visit: https://ellerslie.com/daily» If you have been blessed by Ellerslie, consider partnering with the ministry by donating at: https://ellerslie.com/donate/» Discover more resources, books, and sermons from Eric Ludy by going to: https://ellerslie.com/about-eric-ludy/

In this week's episode, we take a look at eight reasons to diversify your ebooks sales beyond just Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock, Book #7 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: WARLOCKJUNE The coupon code is valid through June 22, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 306 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 5th, 2026 and today we'll discuss eight reasons you should diversify your book sales beyond Amazon. We'll also talk about Coupon of the Week and give a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects.   So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock, Book #7 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is WARLOCKJUNE. As always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through June 22nd, 2026, So if you need a new audiobook for the summer as you go on a summer road trip, we have got you covered. Now let's talk about my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am 80,000 words into Blade of Thieves, which puts me in Chapter 17 of 25 of my outline. So we're closing in on the end. I think we're going to be about 110-115,000 words or thereabouts in the rough draft. So hopefully a couple more solid pushes and we'll get there to the end. I hope to be at 90,000 words by this point, but there is quite a lot to do in real life so we didn't quite get there, but 80,000 words is still better than nothing. For Cloak of Frost, as of this recording, I am now 9,000 words into it and that will be my main project once Blade of Thieves is done. I was hoping to have Blade of Thieves come out in June, but July is looking more likely at this point. Hopefully Cloak of Frost will come out the month after Blade Thieves comes out, whenever that is.   In audiobook news, I'm pleased to report that Blade of Wraiths (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is now out at all audiobook platforms. Get it at Audible, Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo Books, Chirp, my own Payhip store and all the usual audiobook stores. At the moment, I have no other audiobooks in active production, but once Blade of Thieves is done, Brad will also be recording that. Later this month, Hollis McCarthy is scheduled to start on Cloak of Worlds and in July, Leanne Woodward is going to record Dragon-Mage, the most recent Rivah book. So we don't have any audiobooks being produced right now, but we will in the future. So that is where I am at with my current writing, audiobook, and publishing projects.   00:02:32 Main Topic of the Week: Beyond Amazon: Reasons to Diversify Your Sales Platform   Now onto our main topic this week, Beyond Amazon: Reasons to Diversify Your Sales Platform, which is something you know I do quite often given how often I talk about my links to my Payhip store on this very podcast.   For a long time, the conventional wisdom has been that Amazon has 80% of the US book market and putting your ebooks into Kindle Unlimited was the best route of success because of that monopoly and some of the algorithmic benefits Amazon gives to KU authors. While it's true that certain genres (especially LitRPG and romance) are almost exclusively focused on Amazon and KU in the US, going exclusive with Amazon is not necessarily the best course of action for everyone, especially if you're interested in growing your international sales.   Today we'll talk about reasons why putting your books in KU is limiting and in the interest of fairness, in two weeks, we will also be doing an episode later [about] when putting your book in KU is a good idea and some of the benefits of that. But today we're going to start with the benefits of diversification. Here are eight reasons you might want to consider moving beyond just Amazon, which is often called going wide in the Indie Publishing world. #1: Increasing your global reach.   It may surprise you to know that the Kindle store is not available in every country and that other countries have a strong competitor to the Kindle store. For example, in Canada, Kobo is Amazon's main competitor and has traditionally a strong market share there, quite a bit larger than Amazon Canada based on my own sales data. Kobo is also very strong in many European markets. Additionally, because there are many more Android users internationally than there are in the US, Google Play Books is important in non-US countries. It's also an easy platform for users and integrates into the Google ecosystem as well. Data usually finds that while the iPhone [iOS] is dominant in the United States, Android tends to be the majority mobile operating system in the rest of the world. So if you want to access Android users in the Google Play Book Store, then you want to be on Google Play Books. #2: Some people are boycotting Amazon.   There are many readers who boycott Amazon or American-led companies for a number of reasons. It is possible to overstate the strength of these. I've seen many people be alarmed about Amazon boycotts impacting their sales, but it never really seems to materialize. I suspect a lot of the boycotting thing is much louder online than it is in real life. That said, it is undeniable. There are people who will not buy ebooks or anything from Amazon for a variety of reasons. So if you sell your books only through Amazon, you're missing out on that group of readers. Some categories of romance have also been affected by Amazon boycotts, so it's worth investigating other options if you're an author in these categories.   #3: Kobo Plus.   Kobo offers a subscription program called Kobo Plus that unlike KU, does not require exclusivity to participate in it. Over three million ebooks and 100,000 audiobooks (quite a few of which are mine) are available to subscribers for less than the cost of a KU subscription. Kobo has been gaining popularity in the US in part due to their subscription program. I have to admit my own personal experience with Kobo Plus as an indie author has been almost entirely positive. When it first came out, I was a little leery of it, but then I decided to test it out by putting Frostborn into it and that did quite well and I was pleased enough with the results that now I just put everything in Kobo on Kobo Plus and that has paid off because the majority of my month to month Kobo revenue and the majority of my yearly Kobo revenue comes from Kobo Plus now. In March and April, I had two of my best months ever on Kobo in the 14 years I've been publishing with Kobo entirely off the strength of Kobo Plus. So my experience with it has been if you write a really long series like that that generates a strong read through (like Frostborn is 15 books, Sevenfold Sword was 12 books, Cloak Mage as of this point is up to 14 books), then it would be definitely advantageous to you to investigate Kobo Plus.   #4: It gives you the chance to support independent booksellers through bookshop.org.   This past year, bookshop.org made a deal with Draft2Digital that made it possible for indie authors to put their books on the bookshop.org platform. In the past, has not been particularly easy or straightforward for small indie bookstores to sell ebooks, so this is an opportunity for physical indie bookstores based in the US. For American readers who want to shop local but still read ebooks, it's nice to be able to offer them an option that benefits their local communities. It also gives these bookstores a way of supporting local authors without having to find physical space for them within the store itself. Bookshop.org is still in the early stages of accepting indie ebooks and there are some things that need to be worked out with features on their app, especially about user complaints about a lack of flexibility with DRM-free e-books. Still, romance and what the site calls "serious nonfiction" are growing rapidly on the platform, so it's definitely worth exploring, especially for authors in those categories. If they do succeed in their plans to put out their own ereader, that would make the platform even more attractive to many book buyers.   #5: Direct sales equals greater profit, extras, price fixability, et cetera.    Having your own sales platform (typically hosted on sites like Payhip and Shopify) gives you far more control over your sales platform. It also gives you a far greater cut of the profits. To give an example, if I do a coupon code for one of my audiobooks on my Payhip site to make it 50% off like I did earlier in this episode with the Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock coupon, I still earn a similar amount as if someone had bought it for full price on Audible.   A direct sales platform also allows you to create discounts for sales far more easily than on other platforms. Additionally, you don't have to wait for ebooks or audiobooks to get through processing on a direct sales site like you do with ACX and the other sites, which makes when a book or audiobook is ready for sale far more predictable. You can also bundle things with ebooks like such as the book file in multiple formats or bonus items like maps, worksheets, or charts. On the other ebook sites, this isn't typically possible. Direct sales gives you a greater flexibility in terms of selling. You can include bonus items and it's also a good fallback position if one of the main sites isn't working. I first got into direct sales in 2021 because Barnes & Noble had its big ransomware hack then and for a while it was impossible to publish new things to the platform and I believe that was when Ghost in the Vault came out and since I couldn't publish that on Barnes & Noble until the ransomware problem was fixed, I directed people to the Payhip site instead.   #6: Library sales and Kindle Unlimited.   The popularity of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and the Project Hail Mary audiobook made a lot of people aware of the fact that exclusivity agreements with Amazon and Audible have often been structured to leave out options for library ebook platforms or require maneuvering or additional deals in order to make it possible. The popularity of Libby in particular is growing here in the United States, especially as people are having to shift their leisure spending from things like books and entertainment to covering basic necessities like housing, transportation, fuel, and food costs due to the poor state of the economy. If library sales and library readers are important to you, then going wide is your best option for reaching the library market.   Myself, I haven't particularly pursued the library market. I haven't refused it either. I usually, when the option is available, click on the toggle switch to publish it to a library service, but then don't think about it very much after that, but there are many indie authors who are very interested in getting in libraries and have pursued that quite a bit through these programs.   #7: Vendor lock-in/user preference.   There is a concept called vendor lock-in, meaning that ebook buyers have a particular platform that they default to when buying ebooks because that is where the ebook collection is based and they want to keep their books together instead of spread across several different apps. Many Barnes & Noble and Kobo users are not interested in ebooks from Amazon or KU for this reason and won't even follow a favorite author to another platform. It's important to have an option available for these readers.   #8: DRM free. [Digital Rights Management]   Having a DRM free copy of an ebook is extremely important to many readers and that is what makes an ebook purchase a true purchase instead of a highly conditional license. Sites like Kobo allow ebook buyers to limit their searches to only DRM free titles and many will not buy a book that is not available without DRM. My Payhip store, all the files you get from that when you buy an ebook or an audiobook are DRM free as well.   For myself, a large portion of my sales come from outside Amazon, so that's why I've never been fully exclusive with Kindle Unlimited and instead rotate a small selection of my series in and out of KU. Over the years, I've experimented with having various books in KU and starting in 2023, what I settled on doing was that I would write three series ongoing. Two of those series would be available on all ebook platforms and one of those series would be available in Kindle Unlimited, which allowed me to pursue both markets at once. As of right now, the wide series are Blades of Ruin and Cloak Mage and the Kindle Unlimited series is Half-Elven Thief. Once Half-Elven Thief is completed, I will take it out of Kindle Unlimited and take it wide and start a new series for Kindle Unlimited.   Overall, I found it's worthwhile to be wide even when pursuing Kindle Unlimited with some of my books because typically in an average month about 45 to 55% of my revenue comes from Amazon and the rest comes from all the other platforms put together. So while Amazon is typically half, that's not nothing, it's only half and the rest of the revenue comes from all these ebook platforms I've been cultivating over the years. So the conclusion is that the beauty of KU's current agreement is that you only have to commit to being exclusive for a short amount of time, specifically three months, and then can always return to it if you want to try going wide for a while.    It's also important to note that growth on other platforms may be slow and if you're going to try them out, it's important to be patient and have realistic expectations. It's the benefit of being an indie author that we can experiment and make decisions quickly based on data and reader preferences. Going wide may not be the best decision for everyone, but the results may surprise you, especially over time.   The cumulative effect of things is often easy to overlook, but it does add up over time. Part of the reason I think my books do so well with Kobo Plus is because they've been on the Kobo website for the last 14 years, which gives them time to accumulate reviews and additional word of mouth. So when someone is browsing Kobo Plus for something to read and they see this long book series with a bunch of good reviews, it becomes easy for them to try it through Kobo Plus.   So that is it for this week. This week we talked about going wide. Next week I don't have time to record a full-time episode, so we're going to do another audiobook sampler roundup, which will be fun. The week after that, in two weeks from today, we are going to talk about the benefits of going to Kindle Unlimited as a contrast to this episode and I will talk about some of my Kindle Unlimited experiences (both good and bad). So thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the backups at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting and platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

Our hardware hacker friend, Jamin Biconik, is back on Cloak & Dagger Correspondences! Herein, Jamin fills us in on all his mesh networking, drone, local, self-hosted AI projects… They also go into quite a deep dive on self-psychology, its relation to AI, and how this manifests in physical space and… The post Cloak & Dagger Correspondences #10: If It Smells Like Salmon, It Must Be Jamin (with Hardware Hacker, Jamin Biconik) appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

It's time for another Mike Makes Mike Watch! This week, Mike D is making Smith catch up on Denis Villeneuve's breakout hit, PRISONERS. Meanwhile, Smith is making Mike D watch the incredibly fun Hitchcock-for-kids thriller CLOAK & DAGGER!

The following is the newest installment of Cloak & Dagger Correspondences, this time with guest, Alena Vranova. Being an OG bitcoiner and super early cypherpunk Across The Pond, she co-founded Satoshi Labs, helped to coordinate conferences & meet-ups, and now, is dedicated to Gart.io, the first stealth alert app, enabling… The post Cloak & Dagger Correspondences #9: Bitcoin, Nostr, & Gart.io with Alena Vranova appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

In this week's episode, I take a look at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Spring 2026, and rate them from least to most favorite. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store: DRAGONJUNE The coupon code is valid through June 15, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 305 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 29th, 2026 and today we'll be discussing my Spring Movie Review Roundup for 2026, where I discuss the movies and streaming shows I watched over the last few months. We will also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is DRAGONJUNE. And as always, you get the coupon code and the links in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through June the 15th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's move on to my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As I mentioned last week, Dragon-Mage is out and you can get it at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited and it's doing well, so thank you for that. My next main project is Blade of Thieves and as of this recording, I am on chapter 11 of 25, though that'll probably expand in the final draft, which puts me at 56,000 words in. So I'm almost halfway through. I think probably it's going to be the length of Blade of Wraiths or a little longer, but we'll see. I'm hoping to have it out towards the end of June, but depending on how June goes, that might slip till July. Hopefully we can avoid that. I'm also 5,000 words into Cloak of Frost and that will be my main project once Blade of Thieves is done. I'm hoping to have Cloak of Frost out towards the end of July, but depending on how June goes, it might slip to August. For audiobook projects, Blade of Wraiths is still processing at ACX, though I believe as of right now, you can get it at Google Play, Kobo, Spotify, and my own Payhip store. The other stores should be available within a few weeks. As of right now, I don't actually have any current audiobooks in production, though we have some scheduled for the future. Once Blade of Thieves is finally done, Brad Wills will record that for us. Hollis McCarthy is scheduled to record Cloak of Worlds in June, if all goes well. Leanne Woodward will be recording Dragon-Mage sometime in July, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Hopefully we'll have new things for you to read and listen to before much longer. 00:02:32 Main Topic: Spring 2026 Movie Review Roundup Now without any further ado, let's move on to our main topic, my Spring 2026 Movie Review Roundup. It's time for the Spring 2026 Movie Review Roundup, where I review the movies and streaming shows I watched over the last few months. As always, they're listed from least favorite to most favorite. The grades are wholly subjective and based on nothing more than my own opinions and thoughts. With that disclaimer out of the way, let's go to the movies. First up is Kicking and Screaming, which came out in 2005. This is a family comedy with Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall. Pharrell plays Phil Weston, a mild mannered vitamin store owner and Duvall plays his father, Buck Weston, owner of a successful chain of sports equipment stores. Buck is one of those hyper competitive guys who has to win at everything and Phil has always rolled with it. But when Phil's son is a benchwarmer on the youth soccer team that Buck coaches, Phil's had enough and starts coaching a rival team to get his son into the game and to defeat his father. Along the way, of course, he descends into Will Ferrell style comedic lunacy, but the PG version since this is a PG movie. Mike Ditka was also hilarious as Phil's sidekick and assistant coach. It seemed like an '80s family movie. It was a sort of movie where you could have taken the entire family to the theater in 2005 and everyone would have been at least moderately entertained. Overall Grade: C Next up is the animated Lord of the Rings, which came out in 1978. As I mentioned, this was the animated version of Lord of the Rings from 1978. Extremely ambitious, but I think it's fair to say this landed in ambitious failure territory, but they tried the best they could given the constraints of the technology at the time and the actual available budget. They tried to pack the entirety of the Fellowship of the Ring and the first half of The Two Towers into about two hours and 20 minutes. I'm sorry to say it just didn't work. Like Dune, the Lord of the Rings is one of those books that requires like 10 hours of very expensive filmmaking to pull off properly. That said, I think it is fair to say that this stumbled so that the Peter Jackson live action trilogy could run. Adapting a book (especially a big book) into a movie is a challenge and I don't think this quite got there. Too much was cut out and if you hadn't read the book, you would probably have no idea what was happening or just been confused the entire time. Additionally, the movie relied heavily on rotoscoping and it didn't always quite work. Like the rotoscope Nazgul looked creepy and unsettling, so that worked for them. However, the rotoscoped orcs just looked bad. You know how in live theater stagehands will dress all in black? The orcs kind of looked like that, albeit they're wearing yellow ponchos over their black stagehand outfits, almost like the stagehands were expecting inclement weather backstage. That said, the vocal performances and the music were very good. So an ambitious and admirable failure. As I said, I think the filmmaker's vision exceeded the grasp of their budget and the available technology of the 1970s. Overall Grade: C Next up is Airplane!, which came out in 1980. It was interesting to watch this as a cultural artifact. It had the leisurely pace of an '80s movie, with far more absurdist humor. It was a parody of various airplane disaster movies from the 1970s. It's also interesting that this is remembered as a Leslie Nielsen movie nowadays, though Leslie Nielsen 's character is only a supporting character. For all that he's known for his absurdist humor these days from later movies, Nielsen plays his character stone cold dead straight, which makes him all the funnier, amazingly enough. Some of the jokes in this movie have aged very badly, but it's still worth watching as an interesting and amusing cultural artifact, given how it influenced the entire genre of comedy movies afterwards. There's also the obligatory three seconds of nudity that can get cut on cable TV broadcast. Overall Grade: B- Next up is the Thomas Crown Affair, which came out in 1999. This is an interesting remake of a movie from the 1960s. Pierce Brosnan plays Thomas Crown, a billionaire who has grown bored with his life, so he orchestrates the theft of a priceless Monet painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The heist goes off flawlessly and the museum's insurance company sends out investigator Catherine Banning (played by Renee Russo) to retrieve the painting and avoid a hundred million dollar insurance payout. Banning immediately intuits that Crown is the thief and sets about to find the painting. This investigation is complicated by the fact that Crown and Banning immediately develop a strong attraction and start an affair. It was interesting to watch since neither Crown nor Banning are particularly sympathetic characters. In 2026, the phrase "bored New York billionaire" has much more sinister connotations than it did in 1999 and Banning breaks all kinds of laws and sleeping with her target is not a particularly bright idea. That said, the opening heist was interesting and Crown's final gambit to return the painting was extremely clever and enjoyable to watch. So overall, I like the movie, but there's still way too much nudity. Cable broadcasts are probably like 10 minutes shorter than the actual runtime from cutting it all out. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Whiskey Galore, which came out in 2017 and this is a remake of the original Whiskey Galore from 1949. Honestly, this is exactly the same movie from 1949 that I watched in the Movie Review Roundup for Summer 2025, just updated with modern filmmaking techniques. If the movie makers in the '40s could have done it this way, they would have. Though I would recommend watching the 1949 one first and then the one from 2017. Overall Grade: B Next up is Super Mario Galaxy, which came out in 2026. And I have to admit, it felt a little strange to be the oldest person at the theater watching Super Mario Galaxy, but I've been playing Mario games since before any of these kids were born, so I think I had a right to be there. Anyway, I would say this movie is about 75% as good as the first one. It was a little overpacked and the plot wasn't quite as tight, but it's still fun to watch. The animation was excellent and I enjoyed all the callbacks to the various Mario games and since I haven't actually played all the Mario games (as a reminder, I played no console games of any kind between 1998 and 2019), I'm sure there were quite a few I missed. The plot is that Bowser Jr is coming to rescue his father, Bowser, who's been held captive since the end of the last movie. To power his doomsday weapon, Junior kidnaps Princess Rosalina and Princess Peach goes to rescue her while Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi stay to protect the Mushroom Kingdom. Their separate subplots will end up crossing when Bowser Jr. invades the Mushroom Kingdom to get Bowser. Glen Powell was an excellent choice to voice Fox McCloud. I'd say if you could imagine a movie that the audience would enjoy and the critics would hate, you'd end up with Super Mario Galaxy. Since that appears to be what happened to the tune of $970 million, it appears that metaphor was accurate. Also, to be less glib, "movies you can take your kids to" do serve a valuable social function (in my opinion). Overall Grade: B Next up is the Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins, which came out in 2026. This was a comedy with a fun premise. Reggie Dinkins (played by Tracy Morgan) was an elite NFL player who got bounced out of the league for placing bets on himself. Years later, he teams up with an indie filmmaker named Arthur Tobin (played by Daniel Radcliffe), to make a documentary to rehabilitate his image. However, Tobin has his own issues. He has an Oscar, but after the Oscar, he got hired to direct a Marvel movie and cracked under the pressure. He and Reggie have to go on a journey to recover their reputations. I thought this was a pretty funny sitcom. Tracy Morgan is a comedic natural, but Daniel Radcliffe turned out to be an excellent comedic actor as well. He was great in that Weird Al biopic a few years ago and he's very funny in this. Craig Robinson was also great as Jerry Basmati, Reggie's sleazy nemesis. Overall Grade: B+ Next up is The Mandalorian and Grogu, which came out in 2026. I enjoyed this. It was like three pretty good episodes of The Mandalorian show put together. The end result was an adventure movie that kind of reminded me of the best of 1980s fantasy and sci-fi movies with a lot of creature work and a lot of action scenes. For an extended stretch of the movie, Grogu takes over as the primary protagonist, and given that Grogu is a very expensive puppet, that's an impressive feat. The plot picks up from the end of The Mandalorian show. The Mandalorian and his adopted son Grogu are now working for the New Republic, helping to hunt down Imperial warlords. Mando gets assigned to hunt down in a mysterious Imperial warlord named Commander Coin, but the only people who have information on Coin's location are the Twins, a pair of Hutt crime lords and relatives of Jabba the Hutt from Return of the Jedi. The Twins are willing to give up Coin's location if Mando does a job for them, but as Han Solo could have warned Mando, working for the Hutts is not a good idea. I was surprised that the reviews for this movie were as mixed as they were, but I suspect that's a combination of three social factors: Number one, cumulative ill will towards Disney as a corporation, which has done numerous sketchy things in the 2020s. I think something similar happened with Microsoft and Starfield. Number two, the lingering bad aftertaste of the sequel trilogy and number three, the tendency of the hardcore Star Wars fandom to chronically overthink things. Overall Grade: B+ Next up is the animated Hobbit, which came out in 1977. Peter Jackson's Hobbit Trilogy from the 2010 famously stretched The Hobbit across three movies, which really didn't work and added a bunch of epic battle scenes, which was totally off for what was essentially a children's book. The animated 1977 version of The Hobbit, by contrast, went in a different direction, neatly adapting it down to 70 minutes or so, presumably because animation is very expensive. At the time, this got mixed reviews, but looking back nearly 50 years later, I think we can appreciate it more because of the sheer amount of work that goes into hand-drawn animation. Like computer-based animation is unquestionably a lot of work as well, but hand-drawn animation is on something of a higher level in terms of difficulty, in my opinion. That said, I think this adaptation did a better job of compressing the story down than the animated Lord of the Rings movie I mentioned earlier in this episode. There's also a lot of 1970s style folk singing-like a LOT. I suspect J.R.R. Tolkien would have hated every single adaptation ever made of any of his works (with perhaps the exception of the audiobooks), but he would have approved of the number of songs and poetry in this. Though it was amusing that the high elves in this movie sing in a '70s folk music style. It would be humorous if in the Silmarillion, Earnedil the Mariner had finally crossed the Sundering Seas to reach Valinor and appeal the aid of the Valar against Morgoth and his hordes, only to hear '70 style folk music echoing across the shining hills of the Undying Lands. Anyway, it's definitely worth watching this if you like The Hobbit or old style animation. Overall Grade: A- Next up is House of David Season 2, which came out in 2026. I wrestled with what grade to give this because it used a lot of AI for the big battle scene in episode one and as long time readers and listeners know, I do not generally approve of LLM generated slop. Ironically, I think episode one, the big battle sequence with all the AI, was definitely the weakest point of the entire second season. Everything else was better. That said, all the character drama and interactions and acting were really good, which amusingly shows that while LLM stuff can generate blurry scenes of mounted soldiers charging at night, the real human emotion comes from, well, real human emotion. Anyway, this picks right up from the end of Season 1, right after David kills Goliath, which means it takes place during most of the events with the third quarter of the book of 1 Samuel from the Bible. David becomes one of the chief commanders of King Saul, but David is secretly the anointed king of Israel. Saul's deteriorating mental state becomes threatening to David while Saul's children scheme for position (with the exception of Jonathan, who has accepted that God has chosen David as the next king of Israel) and the Philistines prepare for war against Israel. It is interesting how the show alternates between leaning into the Grimdark aspects of life in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age and avoiding them. Like, constant warfare was a fact of life for a Mesopotamian king around 1000 BC. But the show also shows David as having passionate romantic love for Saul's daughter Michal and in the Bible, David ended up with at least eight wives that we know about (there were likely others) and an unnamed number of concubines. So late Bronze Age/early Iron Age monarchs were not likely to have been in the grips of fervent romantic love. Though based on the Psalms he wrote, David seems to have been a man who definitely was in touch with his emotions and quite possibly he would have passionately loved multiple women at the same time. Anyway, I enjoyed the show. While I am not an expert, I probably have a higher than average level of Old Testament knowledge. So when the show expanded on something from 1 Samuel (such as the role of Doeg, the murderous Edomite shepherd), I could see where they were coming from. Or the subplot where Jonathan falls in love with an Israelite woman since in the Bible, David took care of Jonathan's son, Mephibosheth, logically, Jonathan had a wife at some point. Related to that as Saul continues his descent, in a moment of rage in 1 Samuel, he calls Jonathan "the son of a perverse and rebellious woman" and the show has a subplot explaining how Saul came to see Queen Ahinoam as a "perverse and rebellious woman". So I enjoyed this and will definitely watch Season 3 when it comes along. That said, the opening battle with the AI generated battle scenes is still definitely the weakest part of the series, though. Overall Grade: A- Next up is Maul: Shadow Lord, which came out in 2026. And in my opinion, this was pretty good. I think he could call the plot Sith Noir. Maul, desiring vengeance against the Emperor for all the pain he has endured, has decided to rebuild his criminal syndicate (previously destroyed in the Clone Wars) and use it to bring down the Empire. Meanwhile, Captain Lawson, a detective on a minor world, is trying to rebuild his relationship with his teenage son and keep his career afloat. This becomes tricky when a pair of fugitive Jedi fleeing from the Inquisitors turn up on their world. But in the younger of the two Jedi, Maul sees a potential apprentice for himself, one he could corrupt to the dark side. The animation has improved by quantum leaps and bounds since the days of the Clone War show. The lighting and the shadows are excellent. Maul looks spooky and a little uncanny. The lightsaber fights are quick and fluid. No spoilers, but the final episode is absolutely excellent. I also think one of the best things about the Star Wars animation shows is how Maul's character has evolved from simply the cool swordsmen at the end of The Phantom Menace to a sympathetic yet still evil warrior-philosopher, a tragic figure whose every effort always contains the seeds of its own downfall. Overall Grade: A Next up is Emma, which came out in 2020. This is an excellent adaptation of the Jane Austen's novel. Good performances, good cinematography, and it captures the essence of the novel quite well and it's probably a must for Austen fans to see. I don't really have anything negative to say about it, say that it has the three seconds of unnecessary nudity that can be cut in cable broadcasts. Ironically, and quite amusingly, that three seconds of nudity is quite literally the only thing this movie has in common with Airplane!. Overall Grade: A Next up is No Packers, No Life, which came out in 2025. This was a fun documentary about a group of Japanese Green Bay Packers fans. Obviously, there are fairly large cultural and linguistic divides between the United States and Japan, so American football is not hugely popular in Japan. However, the Green Bay Packers are the only community owned team in the NFL to this day and so they're quite a bit more sympathetic than one that's owned by a faceless billionaire. Anyway, an American businessman goes to Japan and stumbles across a Japanese man wearing a Packers jersey at a bar. From there, he learns of a small club called the Japanese Packers Cheering Team that gathered to watch Packers games. This businessman in question happened to be from Wisconsin, so he befriended the Japanese Packers Cheering Team and invited them to Green Bay for a game. The invitation snowballed and so the entire club and their families arrived to watch the game. Sports fandom really isn't one of my interests, so it's always interesting to look at it from the outside. That said, this was an enjoyable documentary about cross-cultural communication at its best. Overall Grade: A Let's close out this episode with my favorite thing I saw in spring 2026, which was Project Hail Mary, which came out in 2026. This is another "science man solves space problem that saves the day with math and science", type science fiction adventure like The Martian, though some new twists on the formula. Dr. Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship with all the other crew dead and no memory of how he got there. Gradually, he partially remembers and works out that he is part of Project Hail Mary, a last ditch effort to stop Earth's sun from dimming due to an extremophile organism called the Astrophage. Only one other star in Earth's stellar neighborhood was showing no signs of Astrophage infection, so Grace's ship was sent there on a suicide mission to try and recover some means of defeating the Astrophage. While there, he encounters an alien ship with a sole survivor and he slowly works out how to communicate with the alien, who he dubs Rocky. It turns out Rocky's people sent him there on a mission to solve the Astrophage problem as well and together Grace and Rocky try to work out how to save their respective home worlds. Quite enjoyable and worth seeing. At the time I typed this in March of 2026, it was the highest-grossing movie of 2026 and I think it deserved that, though it did eventually get overtaken by Super Mario Galaxy. Overall Grade: A I suppose that was an eclectic range of movies, wasn't it? Interestingly, I actually saw three of them in theaters: Project Hail Mary, Super Mario Galaxy, and The Mandalorian and Grogu, so I went to the theater three times in three months. I think that's the most I've been to the movie theater in a single year in the entirety of the 2020s. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show interesting. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

Join us for one of the most POWERFUL and VALUABLE Self-Liberation Saturday transmissions thus far — essentially fully LIVE with a brand new show. First off, on Cloak & Dagger, Thane is joined by Alena from Gart.io, the first stealth alert app, enabling you to share your location with trusted… The post [P.A.Z.NIA RADIO NETWORK] Self-Liberation Saturday! Cloak & Dagger with Alena Vranova of Satoshi Labs/Gart.IO; Tinker Tribe LIVE with Greg Doud; P.A.Z.NIA Monthly News Show! appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

Spidey has to save supervillains from an evil prison warden! Thankfully, Otto Octavius is well-rested from his coma and ready to help. We talk about Otto's immediate return and his adorable romance with Anna Maria, Regent's backstory and some unfortunate implications, Cloak and Dagger's successful multi-episode arc, and the most obvious bad guy reveal of all time.We're watching Spider-Man (2017): Season 2, Episode 21: “The Cellar”.⁠⁠Take the Glitterjaw Listener Survey⁠⁠⁠⁠ and enter to win a $50 gift card!Website⁠ | ⁠Patreon⁠ | ⁠Discord⁠Part of The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast CollectiveContact us: @WallopingWebPod on ⁠Bluesky⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠Email: ⁠wallopingwebsnapperspodcast@gmail.com⁠Theme song features: ⁠“Resonance (Cyan & Ladybot Remix)” by HOME⁠ | ⁠License (CC BY 3.0)

On this episode of Cloak & Dagger Correspondences, Thane dialogues with Lily Forester, aka Miranda Webb, a fugitive that escaped the USSA to Acapulco about a decade ago. Since then, she's learned a lot about privacy/security, living in Mexico, and even experienced severe tragedy that was later documented on the… The post Cloak & Dagger Correspondences #8: Thane Speaks with HBO Star Lily Forester, aka Miranda Webb appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

In this week's episode, we share five tips & tricks for writing believeable ways characters can overlook the obvious. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book #6 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: TALONS2026 The coupon code is valid through June 8, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 304 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 22nd, 2026, and it's our first new episode in two and a half weeks, so that is exciting. Today we'll be talking about how writers can believably write characters who miss the obvious or fail to notice important facts without exasperating the reader. We also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book #6 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That is TALONS2026. As always, the links to my Payhip and the coupon code will be available in these show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through June 8th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for your summer travels, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Since I recorded the last episode on May 6th, I'm pleased to report that Dragon-Mage, the sixth book in the Half-Elven Thief series, is done. You can get it at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited since Half Eleven Thief is my Kindle Unlimited series (until it is finished). It's doing quite well and thank you all for that. Now that Dragon-Mage is finished, my main project is now Blade of Thieves. And as of this recording, I am 29,000 words into it. I think the rough draft will be 100,000 words or so, give or take. I hope to have this out in June, though it might slip to July (depending on events). My secondary project is Cloak of Frost, which will be the 15th book in the Cloak Mage series. I am 2,000 words into that and I am hoping to have that out towards the end of July, though of course that by slip to August (depending on events). So that is what I am working on right now. In audiobook news, since I recorded the last episode, we had two audiobooks mostly come out. Cloak of Illusion (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is available at Audible, Apple, Google Play, and all the other audiobook stores. Blade of Wraiths (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is also finished. I believe as of this recording, you can get it at my Payhip store, Google Play, and Kobo (though Audible and the other audiobook stores should be following along before too much longer). As for Dragon-Mage, Leanne Woodward will be recording that in July (if all goes well). So that's where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:38 Main Topic: Perception Failure Mode for Writers Now let's go to our main topic, how to write characters who miss the obvious in a way that's believable and doesn't exasperate the reader. When writing a story, it's sometimes useful to have a character miss the obvious. Of course, if done badly, this can sometimes inspire exasperation in the audience, like the cliche of the woman going alone into the basement with a flickering candle to reset the circuit breaker while a serial killer is on the loose and you get bonus cliche points if she's wearing a bikini. The trick is to have the character miss the obvious in a believable way that matches the circumstances. The obvious might be obvious, but it is often obvious only in hindsight. For example, here is a story about the time I failed to notice the obvious. In the morning, I typically get up, use the restroom, and then get dressed to go to the gym. I normally sleep with earplugs and don't usually remove them until I get dressed. While using the restroom, I will bring my phone or my tablet, depending on which is closer at hand and play chess puzzles to help my brain wake up. Now this detail is important. My tablet is an iPad, but my phone is an Android. Gradually, I began to notice that whenever I started the day, I could hear a woman talking very loudly outside the window. At first, I thought nothing of it. The house is fairly close to the sidewalk, so I often hear people talking as they walk past. However, as the days passed, I noticed I frequently heard exactly the same woman whenever I went into the bathroom. That started again on my nerves, so I glanced out the window to see who it was, but I never saw anyone nearby. For that matter, it didn't happen every day. Then a very strange fact occurred to me. This only happened on days when I had my phone, not my iPad, and this led me to discover the truth. The chess app had been updated to have the virtual chess coach talk to you as you played chess. My iPad and my phone were on mute, but on Android, apps can sometimes override the system mute setting to make noise. So my phone was talking to me as I did chess puzzles, and because I still had my earplugs in and hadn't enjoyed my morning coffee yet and my brain wasn't working, I failed to realize that my phone was the source of the voice. I had failed to notice the obvious. So once I had turned off the voice on the chess app, this got me to thinking. My specific example is so implausible and convoluted that it would be impossible to use in a novel since it would seem contrived, but how can you have characters in a novel fail to notice the obvious in a way that doesn't annoy the reader? I think there are five ways you can do it. #1: The character fails to notice something because of reasonable circumstances. Human perception is quite fallible and more so when we are stressed. It's common knowledge that if five people witness a crime, there will be five contradictory accounts of what happened based on what the individual in question happened to notice. For example, if you see a car accident in front of you, that will dominate your attention and cause you to miss background details, like the color of a nearby parked car or a nearby house. A character can also miss important details when he or she has no good reason to notice these details. There's a reason that in real life many spies try to be unremarkable as possible. The brain sort of slides over the unremarkable and makes it into part of the background. This can also work in mundane settings. For example, if a character is an electrician, he won't know what accounting software his clients use because he has no reason to know or care, especially if he gets paid on time. Stress is also a good way to have a character fail to notice something important. Job loss, an illness, a bad day, lack of sleep, and other things might mean the character is not operating at his or her best and may fail to notice important details. #2: Missing information causes you to miss the obvious. Insufficient information can cause a character to come to the wrong conclusion. Here's another example from my own life. Earlier this year, I drove a 2,000 mile road trip in a few days and towards the end, my right foot and leg started to hurt. The explanation for that I thought was obviously that I'd driven 2,000 miles in four days and put too much unaccustomed strain on my right foot. Once I got home, I would take a few days to rest and it should be good. Except when I got home, the pain got worse. I developed a fever and an uncomfortable swelling on the side of my right foot. I didn't have tendonitis or muscle strain. I had actually developed cellulitis for some reason. If you haven't heard of cellulitis, it's a potentially serious infection of these subdermal skin layer. A trip to the doctor and some antibiotics later, it was better. But this is an excellent example of coming to a reasonable, nonetheless wrong conclusion based on the available facts. Considering the amount of driving and walking I had been doing, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that I had strained something in my leg, but that wasn't what was happening at all. All the facts I knew were correct, but I was missing the key fact, the infection, and so had come to the wrong conclusion. This is a technique you can use in fiction quite easily and it's common in detective and mystery novels. It's common for the protagonist to construct a theory about the crime only for it to be proven wrong by a single piece of additional information. #3: All the information, wrong conclusion. Sometimes you can have all the correct information, but you draw the wrong conclusion from it. Here's another example from my life. As you may know, I have a lot of audiobooks available on Spotify, so if you're a Spotify listener and want to use your audiobook hours, I have some for you. So this naturally means I get a tax form from Spotify every year. During the run up to the 2026 tax season, I got an email from Spotify saying that my tax information was wrong and needed to be updated, which was baffling because my tax information had not changed. So I logged into the dashboard, but nothing seemed amiss and I saw no notifications about it there. Then I realized the truth, the email was fake. It had been sent to a different email address than the one I actually used for Spotify. The email was a very clever and very well written phishing attempt. The habit of never clicking on any link in an email (instead going directly to the dashboard in question) had served me well here. I had all the facts before me, but I arrived at the wrong conclusion because it was tax season and so it was reasonable to expect to get an email like that. Now this can be used in fiction in multiple ways. Probably the most famous example is how Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy come to the wrong conclusion about each other's motives in Pride and Prejudice. They both have all the facts but draw wrong assumptions from them. #4: Deliberately deceived. A character can also come to the wrong conclusion or fail to notice the obvious or if he or she is deliberately deceived. The phishing attempt I mentioned earlier was an example of this. Having a character be believably deceived and indeed deceiving the reader as well is a very useful technique in fiction. Agatha Christie was very good at this in her mystery novels. For example, in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The ABC Murders, and Murder on the Orient Express, the characters and the readers are operating under assumptions for most of the book that turn out to be the result of deceptions on the part of some of the characters. Granted, using this method can be kind of a rug pull for the reader. However, there's nothing wrong with a rug pull if it's done well. As I mentioned earlier, it's a common saying that the obvious is only obvious in hindsight. If you have the characters believing the deception for reasonable reasons only to have them realize the truth later, if you do it well and make the book all the more satisfying if there were subtle clues and foreshadowing about the truth earlier in the story. That kind of rug pull is a bit like garlic in cooking. You don't want to overdo it, but it's highly effective when used in the proper amount. #5: Something more important is happening. Sometimes you don't notice something that would otherwise be obvious because something more urgent is demanding all of your attention and focus. I think this is one of the biggest reasons people miss the obvious and it's very relatable. In my earlier bout with cellulitis, I didn't realize the obvious truth that I was getting cellulitis because I was focused on something more important at the time, namely not accidentally driving my car into an overpass embankment for the next thousand miles or so. People have varying attention spans, but every individual person has only so many things they can think about or worry about at any given time. You can use this to cause your characters to miss things they might otherwise have noticed. For example, imagine a village in a fantasy book. There's an evil wizard living incognito in the village and he's summoning tribes of goblins to destroy the village. The protagonist is busy trying to fight off the goblins, so he overlooks the subtle hints that one of his neighbors is an evil wizard because all his attention is on fighting and he's tired enough that he's missing things he might otherwise catch. In this example, the problems are linked. The goblins are attacking the village because the evil wizard is summoning them. Having linked problems like that can help drive the plot forward and provide narrative tension as the character gradually realizes the truth or stumbles across clues pointing to the truth. So those are five tips and tricks you can use to have your characters believably overlook the obvious, but there's one bonus reason that has developed in the last 15 years or so and that bonus reason is number six: stop looking at your phone in public. In recent years, I've become amazed at how many people allow themselves to be utterly mesmerized by their phones in public. I suppose I'm old enough that it's a generational thing. I didn't have my first smartphone until I was well into my 30s, but it still surprises me every time I see it. That said, for all that you hear about crime and disorder on the news in the United States, you can tell that the US still is by and large and for the most part a pretty safe country because people are so comfortable focusing on their phones in public and ignoring their surroundings. Safety experts will tell you that the number one thing you can do to keep yourself safe in a public place is to maintain situational awareness and yet an astonishingly large number of people simply don't do that in favor of looking at their phones. So if you are writing a book set in the modern era, a quick and easy way to make sure a character doesn't notice something is to have him or her looking at [his or] her phone. Granted, you can overuse this, but this makes for a very believable technique for making sure that a character misses a detail or an event. Conclusion It's annoying when a character is all-knowing, but it's equally annoying when a character fails to notice the obvious because it's convenient for the writer. Hopefully these five tips and one bonus tip will help to create plausible reasons for characters to overlook things and miss things they would [have] otherwise noticed. Used well, this can help you create a compelling story for your book. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcript [transcripts are available for episodes beyond Episode 228]. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on our podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

Adventure: I Was a Communist for the FBI “I Walk Alone” 3/30/52 Syndicated, Cloak and Dagger “Operation Sell-Out” 9/22/50 NBC.

In this episode we continue to look at the month of May on our planet's vibration has grown to an all time high within our human species in this part three podcast edition. The collective consciousness in people from all over the world is beginning to see the manipulation from our loved ones that we trust and have an emotional connection with. These are the stages of the voices; the voices from the people we trust most such as your parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc. The gray cloak is positioned to wait for what triggers you to come out through these people.  In this month of May this energetic gray cloak will be attempted to be placed on everyone to create a sense of frustration, irritation and almost a series of private digs or verbal attacks so we have our guards down and never see it coming. Spirit says not to question the human that said the thing that may have disrespected you or made you feel awkward. This podcast will tell you exactly why they said it and the reasons that you were insulted. This is the time for strategy not reactions. Check it out.  If you are looking for more answers on this topic listen in and discover more about the source in which your brain is talking to you in this podcast. This Meditation only podcast channel with Tony and his Tuning Forks: https://raisingyourspiritsmeditation.buzzsprout.com In the meditation portion of this podcast we used the Aura Clearing Meditation: Aura Clearing with Tuning Forks & Drums For safety reasons we ask that you not listen to the meditation portion of this podcast if you are driving or operating any machinery as the sounds and frequencies will place you in an altered state. Here is a link to Tony's many classes/workshops especially his world class transformational Sound Bathing Events every month where you can attend virtually on ZOOM from your home: https://lovehigherself.com/eventsSubscribe to our YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/@raisingyourspiritswithtony108 Meditation only Podcast Library: Raising Your Spirits Meditation Podcast (buzzsprout.com)Tony Gyenis conducts a free weekly Facebook LIVE meditation class on Fridays at 1:30pm Eastern called Tuning In with Tony . Here is the link to Tony's page to join his weekly class: https://www.facebook.com/tony.gyenis Book your spot here: https://calendly.com/whitelight878/tune-in-with-tonyTony's eCard:https://link.v1ce.co.uk/pbex/tonygyenis Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremiah needs to find some answers to the source of his powers, but he'll need to deal with some shady characters to do it...Thanks to Rich for the email and the fan art of Paladin V!Rich's blog -https://lunchboxadventures4.wordpress.com/Game System: Custom (Novas & Nebulae Modern Playtest)Oracle - “The Oracle” (My own free oracle on itch.io and DTRPG)Music/Background Sounds - Tabletop AudioSend me an email with any feedback here -> jamessral@proton.me This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit subclassact.substack.com

Being pure in heart doesn't happen by accident. A pure heart is a heart that is KNOWN. A pure heart is a heart that enjoys the affection of God.We do not wear an INVISIBILITY cloak before God, but an ACCEPTABILITY Cloak.  A pure heart is one of borrowed purity. Find out how:https://youtu.be/3rSfRMZ_j-4

In this week's message, we explore the ethic of the Kingdom found in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Far from ordinary or expected, this ethic is both extraordinary and deeply challenging. How can we possibly live up to such demanding standards? Join us as we wrestle through that question together.

An expert in traditional Maori weaving says the return of a centuries-old cloak to Aotearoa New Zealand has brought surprise, intrigue, and a closeness to her ancestors. Erin Johnson reports.

On this Cloak & Dagger Correspondences, Thane Riddle has a ~3 hour long discussion with co-founder/CEO of Start 9, Matt Hill. Herein, we learn about Start9, the company and the mission, as well as Matt Hill, the father, coder, self-liberator…and after you put in the time listening, you'll have a much… The post Cloak & Dagger Correspondences #7: Securing The Sovereign Individual with Matt Hill (CEO/Co-Founder Start9) appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

Escríbenos un MensajeEn la vida experimentamos cambios y en este caso hablamos de los cambios que vivimos después de convertirnos en madres. Queremos desearle un feliz día de las madres a todas las mamacitas que viven en los Estados Unidos. Como en cada semana estaremos tomándonos una cerveza, en este caso es la Icehouse.Recomendaciones de la Semana;

In this week's episode, we take a look at best practices for indie authors' email newsletters. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store: CALLIANDE25 The coupon code is valid through May 18, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 301 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 1st, 2026, and today we are looking at the effective use of email newsletters for indie authors. We'll also have an update on my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects and a Coupon of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code, we'll get you 25% off the ebooks in the Frostborn series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is CALLIANDE25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through May the 18th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this spring, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. My main project right now is Dragon-Mage, the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. I'm pleased to report the rough draft of that is done at 82,000 words. So I think this will end up being the longest book in the series to date by a slight margin. I believe the previous longest one was Half-Orc Paladin, which came in at 78,000. I've started editing. The first editing pass is 9% through. Hoping to get a little further with that after I record this episode. I'm hoping to have this book out before the end of May, if all goes well. My secondary project is Blade of Thieves, the fifth book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I am currently 8,000 words into that. So once Dragon-Mage is published, Blade of Thieves will be my new main project. My new secondary project then will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage series. I thought I should mention that in the podcast because I had two questions in my email about that today. So I will be starting on Cloak of Frost sometime in the second half of May, if all goes well. Hopefully it will be published in July, with Blade of Thieves coming out in June (if all goes well). In audiobook news, recording is underway for Cloak of Illusion, and that will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy and Blade of Wraiths, which will be narrated by Brad Wills. We're making good progress on both. I am looking forward to sharing those audiobooks with you before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:28 Main Topic: Email Newsletters for Indie Authors Now let's move on to our main topic, email newsletters for indie authors. If you are listening to this podcast, there's a pretty good chance you're also subscribed to my newsletter and if you are not subscribed to my newsletter, I recommend you do so because not only do you get three free ebooks when you subscribe to my newsletter, then every time I have a new book announcement, I give away a free short story as well through links in the newsletter. So it really is to your benefit if you want to read my books to be subscribed to my new release newsletter. But there are other reasons for an indie author to have a newsletter and we're going to talk about some of those reasons in this episode and some of the things you should not do with a new release newsletter or an email newsletter (if you have one). For a while, email newsletters were considered obsolete in the age of social media. Why not just put things on Facebook or Twitter? Well, for one thing, Twitter doesn't exist anymore. For another, as social media algorithms changed and it became harder for people to see content in their feeds consistently, many authors began to look for alternatives to social media and ended up back on email newsletters or Substacks. The main benefit of an email newsletter is that you have control and it's not dependent on a specific platform. You don't have to worry about your account being flagged or closed by some random AI glitch and lose your ability to communicate with your readers. Most importantly, you're targeting people who want to know more about you instead of trying to fight through all the digital noise that is the modern internet. So today, we're going to talk about five things to try with your author email newsletter, and five things that would probably be the best to avoid. #1: Give people a reason to care. People need a reason to subscribe to an email newsletter, and it should be substantial enough to be a motivator. For myself, I offer three free full length books to new subscribers, Malison: Dragon Curse, Blade of the Ghosts, and Frostborn: The Skull Quest, and they arrive in a three book bundle from Book Funnel. People also need a reason to open the emails once they subscribe. For myself, I offer newsletter subscribers free short stories, usually timed around the release of a new book. For example, I just published Blade of Wraiths, and that came with a free short story, Halfling Alchemy, and I gave away a bunch of copies of Halfling Alchemy when Blade of Wraiths came out. For Dragon-Mage, yesterday I finished writing a short story called Paladin and Priest, and that will also be given away for free to newsletter subscribers when I send out the new release newsletter after Dragon-Mage is finally published (hopefully later this month). Other things you can try are offering exclusive discounts, sneak peeks of new books, and giveaways. When I have a BookBub featured deal, I will usually send out a newsletter like the day before or two days before that to share the upcoming discount with my newsletter subscribers as well. Sometimes when I have special sales like that, I will also use the newsletter to send things out to try and generate interest in the sale. #2: Get to the point. It's good to get to the point as quickly as possible in an email newsletter. People are skimming emails at best. We all get lots and lots of emails, and the longer the email is, the less likely it is to be read. Make it easy to scan for the main points and try not to have a long, rambling introduction. Good formatting also helps people who are skimming to find what they want quickly. Good formatting also helps people who are skimming to find out what they want quickly. Based on my own email data, what gets the most clicks are the images of book covers I put on there. Usually I have an image of the book cover that goes to Amazon and an image of the short story cover that goes to my Payhip store where I'm giving away the short story for free, and those consistently get the most clicks in my email newsletters. So that is an example of getting to the point and good formatting because the point of the newsletter is to let people know that I have a new book out or that something's on sale and the good formatting in the form of the cover images lets people quickly get to the thing I am offering them. #3: Use data to figure out what's working. Once you've done a few newsletters, you will have the data to see if there's certain types of newsletters that are more successful than others. You can go even further and test if there's certain days of the week or times of day that are more likely to be successful. Conventional wisdom is to send things early on the day on a Monday or Tuesday and avoid Friday afternoons when people are already distracted by the weekend. For myself, I've generally gotten the best results with newsletters sent on Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Now, obviously many people are at work at that time, but you'd be surprised how many people have signed up for the newsletter with their work email address and seem to welcome the distraction during the workday when a new release announcement arrives. I have sent newsletters on Fridays and weekends. It's never as effective. Usually Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the most effective days to send out a newsletter. #4: Use a consistent format. Using a consistent format for your newsletter can make it easier for people to find the information they're looking for and makes reading a newsletter more of a ritual. For example, author James Clear does a weekly newsletter with three quotes from his own books, two quotes from other people, and one reflection question each week. For myself, my newsletters almost always follow the same format. I'll have one section with the cover image and links to the main thing I'm selling and then below that, two smaller areas, which are for the short story I'm giving away for free, and then another one with another short story I'm giving away for free or some other item I want to promote. Sometimes it's an audiobook. Sometimes it's another author's book who has asked me to include it in a newsletter swap. It's usually something of that nature. I've been using that in the same email format for like the last 10 years or so, and it's been working pretty well. #5: Be sure to preview and proofread before sending. Be sure to preview how the newsletter will actually work before sending it out. Proofread the text, make sure none of the images are pixelated, and make sure all the links are working correctly. If you include a wrong link in the newsletter (which I have done in the past), people will let you know about it. It might be helpful to have someone else test it before sending it out. So those are five tips that you want to do with your newsletter. And I'm also going to add a bonus sixth one: follow the law. There are several regulations related to email newsletters, both in the US and the EU, and I think most of the EU ones still apply to the UK, even though they left a couple of years ago. In the US, if you are sending an email for a commercial purpose, you need to include a physical mailing address with every newsletter you send out. Many authors use PO boxes or UPS box numbers to avoid putting their home address in there, but if you are sending out an email for commercial purposes, you do need to have a physical address somewhere in the email. Usually it's at the bottom. If you look at, for example, emails you get from like Amazon or Microsoft or Apple and you scroll to the bottom, you will note that they are including a physical address for the company in every email they send out because that is the law. There's also something that is required in the EU, and I believe it's now required in the US called a double opt-in. That's where if you add someone to your newsletter, they have to have given explicit permission for them to have been added to the list. For the subscriber, how that usually works is they fill out a form and then you are required to send them a follow-up email with a link to officially subscribe and that should get them officially subscribed to your email list. It also works that they send you explicit written permission to add them to the list. For example, I've had a couple of tech support questions where someone said, "I want to be on your newsletter, but I can't figure out the form. Could you just add me? " That counts as explicit permission. You should only add emails to your list if you have this explicit permission for them to do it, and that's with a double opt-in explicit, written permission, or the kind of giveaway that properly follows these rules, where various services offer things where you can put up your books and people sign up to receive free ebook copies of the book and if they do so, they acknowledge that they will be added to your email list. That also qualifies as the permission. So those will be the things you want to be aware of with your newsletter. You'll need a physical address and to be aware of the rules involving permission and double opt-in. Don't randomly add email addresses to your list. Probably nothing will happen, but if someone complains that they're on their list and they can appeal to the appropriate authorities and you don't have documentation that they were added to your list in that way appropriately, you could get in trouble. So try to follow the law whenever possible with your ... Actually, no, not whenever possible. Always follow the law with your email newsletter. So let's launch from that into five things not to do with your email newsletter. #1: This is not a diary. It's good to be a little bit personal in your newsletter, to have a warm and welcoming tone, and to give people a tiny peek into your life. However, some authors put their entire life on display in their newsletters, which includes epic rants, details about relationship problems, photographs and personal details about minor children, and breathless pages on pages about how writing is so very hard. And this is not (in my opinion) a healthy way to engage with the Internet. Again, it's good to be a little bit personal, but as a writer, your newsletters are still professional communication, and it's good to be mindful that many people have a very, very low tolerance for personal details. Even innocuous information like a picture of yourself boarding the plane to your minor child's hockey tournament has to be done with caution. Something like that gives people a way to find you at a specific place and time and know exactly when you will be away from home, two things you probably want to avoid. All the usual precautions about posting things about yourself and your children that apply to social media also apply to your newsletter as well. #2: Don't spam people. Although it's good to regularly send out a newsletter, sometimes it can cross the line into being too much. It can be tempting to send out a barrage of updates when a new book comes out, but daily emails are overwhelming and will get ignored. The conventional wisdom is to send out things no more than once per week. That's the rule I followed myself and it's worked out pretty well. #3: Don't treat it as only an ad. If you only send out links to your books, people will eventually tune out. Beside the incentives we mentioned earlier, it's a good idea to do things like provide writing updates, answer reader questions, and giving behind the scenes peeks like a teaser quote from a work in progress. #4: Don't put the most important stuff on the bottom. The most important information in the newsletter needs to be near the top. Not everyone will scroll all the way through each newsletter, so it's important to put any important news, links, or updates within the first couple of paragraphs or lines. That's why whenever I publish a new book and send out the newsletter, the first thing on the ... Well, actually the second thing, we'll talk about the first thing in the next point, but very near the top is the link and the cover image to the new book. #5: You do not want to force your subscribers to stay. Don't hide the unsubscribe button. You want people who don't want to be able there to leave or to not to flag it as spam. For myself, I put a link at the very top of each email to give people the chance to unsubscribe without having to hunt around for that information. It's best to do this because many people do not unsubscribe to email newsletters. They simply mark them as spam and move on. If enough people mark your newsletter as spam, then it will get harder and harder for it to show up in people's inboxes, which is the entire point. So you want to make it as smooth and easy and as frictionless as possible for people to unsubscribe from the newsletter because that will be to your advantage in the future. I have read some horror stories about authors who flip their lids when someone unsubscribes and then manually re-add subscribers to the list after people have unsubscribed. Do not do this. This is illegal. You may get in trouble for it, and even if you don't get in trouble for it, it will irritate your reader/the person who unsubscribed, and they will start leaving bad reviews and spreading bad word of mouth about your books. So for all these reasons, it's definitely to your advantage to make it very easy to unsubscribe from your newsletter. So to sum things up, email newsletters are a great way to reach people, but it's a delicate balance of providing people information they want and treating it like an ad or diary while also making sure you are complying with relevant laws and regulations. It may take some trial and error to find the right balance that your readers want and one that you can keep up with consistently and most importantly, enjoy doing. Just because something works for one author doesn't mean it's going to work for you or interest your readers. If your newsletter isn't an instant success, don't give up, but keep trying new things and be consistent with it. After all, everyone needs to start with their first subscriber at some point. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Enjoy this episode? Please share it with at least ONE friend who you think needs to hear it!Investigative mythologist William Henry explains how Babylonian prophecy, Judeo-Christian tradition, and Islam converge on the Temple Mount and the Ark of the Covenant, and why that timeline may still be unfolding today, in episode 244 of the Far Out with Faust podcast.William Henry is an investigative mythologist, author, and longtime researcher of human spiritual transformation, known for his work on Ancient Aliens and his Gaia series The Awakened Soul: The Lost Science of Ascension. With over 30 years of research and multiple books including Cloak of the Illuminati and The Watchers, his work explores the intersection of ancient texts, ascension science, and emerging technologies, including transhumanism and the evolving relationship between consciousness and the human body.In this conversation, Faust and William Henry challenge the conventional view of the Ark of the Covenant, suggesting it may have been something far more than a relic: a form of ancient technology tied to human transformation. They explore how overlapping messianic timelines across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam continue to shape real-world events, while tracing a hidden thread that links the Anunnaki, Osiris, and Jesus through a shared concept of the “garment of light.” As the discussion moves into the present, the question shifts: are transhumanism and artificial intelligence a break from the past, or the latest phase of the same ancient impulse to transcend the human body?In this episode: • Temple Mount prophecy: why Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all point to the same contested site • Ark of the Covenant: relic, weapon, or lost technology tied to ascension and human transformation • Solomon's Temple and Babylon: how destruction, exile, and prophecy created a timeline still unfolding today • The Messianic race: why multiple religions may be working toward the same prophesied endgame • The “garment of light”: the hidden link between the Anunnaki, Osiris, and Jesus • Iraq Stargate theory: what Saddam Hussein was allegedly searching for in ancient Babylon • Sacred sound and resonance: the lost technology behind megaliths and suppressed scientific breakthroughs • The Anunnaki and human origins: genetic intervention, the neocortex, and the rise of civilization • Transhumanism and AI: are modern technologies continuing an ancient blueprint for human evolution • The future of humanity: what happens when AI replaces labor and reshapes human purposeIf these ancient timelines, religious prophecies, and emerging technologies are all pointing in the same direction, the real question isn't what's coming — it's whether we're recognizing it in time.00:00:00 - Teaser & Introduction00:03:11 - The Middle East, The Temple Mount & The Ark of the Covenant00:08:22 - Messianic Prophecies & Modern Political Symbolism00:17:16 - Saddam Hussein, Nebuchadnezzar & The Babylon Connection00:23:40 - The Anunnaki, Osiris, Jesus & The Transmittable Garment00:28:51 - Ancient Genetic Alteration & The Awakening of the Neocortex00:32:42 - Rethinking AI, Transhumanism & Scientific Materialism00:46:10 - The Fall from Eden & Technology as a Tool for Ascension00:55:49 - Sacred Geometry, Crop Circles & The Shroud of Turin00:59:53 - The Lineage of Ascension & Avatars01:05:39 - Sound Frequency, Megaliths & Suppressed Ancient Tech01:14:12 - The Next 50 Years: Singularity, Awakening & The Soul01:27:11 - The Viral Story: Saddam Hussein's Secret Iraqi Stargate01:34:42 - Outro & Final ThoughtsCheck out William Henry's bookshttps://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B006FYUDHUConnect with William Henrywe'd love to hear from you

This might as well be Sedition Saturday on the P.A.Z.NIA Radio Network — though, I guess that could be any transmission. Hit “PLAY” for a 6+ hour masterclass on guerrilla warfare, just war theory, and much more. Please enjoy and consider joining us for a LIVE Self-Liberation Saturday transmission, starting… The post Self-Liberation Saturday, 5/2/26: Cloak & Dagger with Thane Riddle + Bill Cooper, Militias + Guerrilla Warfare with Shane & Kyle appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

Classic non-James Bond spy movies shaped the genre long before 007 ever existed. In this episode of Cracking the Code of Spy Movies, Dan and Tom are back with 10 more essential pre-Bond films. These are the movies that built the blueprint for everything that followed. Each pick is packed with moral complexity, grounded tradecraft, and real espionage tension. No gadgets, no tuxedos — just paranoia, deception, and atmosphere. We span two decades of spy cinema history, from 1939 all the way to 1959. Every film on this list has influenced the spy movies you already love. Some of these titles are buried gems that most fans have never seen. Others are legendary films finally examined through a spy movie lens. Here's a taste of what we cover: ·       The Spy in Black (1939) — the film where serious British spy cinema truly begins ·       Night Train to Munich (1940) — features the very first aerial tramway chase in spy movie history ·       Decision Before Dawn (1951) — the first spy movie ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture ·       Cloak and Dagger (1946) — Gary Cooper goes undercover to stop the Nazi atomic bomb program ·       North by Northwest (1959) — Hitchcock's masterpiece, widely called the first James Bond movie before Bond existed If you loved our first list, this episode delivers ten more must-watch classics. Remember: Trust no one — except us. New details. Every rewatch. That's the Cracking the Code of Spy Movies promise. Tell us what you think about these classic non-James Bond spy movies? What movies did we miss?  Are any of these new to you?  Don't forget that we have espisoded that dive deeper into each of these movies.  Find them on http://spymovienavigator.com/episode Let us know your thoughts, ideas for future episodes, and what you think of this episode. Just drop us a note at info@spymovienavigator.com.  The more we hear from you, the better the show will surely be!  We'll give you a shout-out in a future episode!   You can check out all our CRACKING THE CODE OF SPY MOVIES podcast episodes on your favorite podcast app or our website. In addition, you can check out our YouTube channel as well.   Episode Webpage:  https://spymovienavigator.com/episode/10-more-classic-spy-movies-from-before-james-bond-that-you-need-to-watch

GK Chesterton was many things—journalist, philosopher, poet, and debater—but what does his life look like through the eyes of a young reader? In this episode, Joe sits down with Holly Gyger Lee, author of the new young reader's biography The Man Who Carried a Swordstick and a Pen, to explore what drew her to Chesterton, what surprised her in the research, and why a boy who didn't fit the classroom mold became one of the most prolific writers in the English language. From Charlotte Mason's "living books" philosophy to Chesterton's theology of play, this conversation is a delight for readers of all ages. In This Episode: How Holly discovered GK Chesterton through C.S. Lewis—and why The Man Who Was Thursday wasn't the right entry point The Charlotte Mason "living books" philosophy that inspired Holly to write a biography for young readers What surprised Holly most in her research: Chesterton the unconventional student, and the headmaster's famous remark—"He is six feet of genius" The swordstick, the cloak, and how Frances shaped the image of a man who was a walking anachronism—out of time, and for all times Chesterton's theology of play and leisure, from the Toy Theater essay to his belief that the heavy work is the play Chapters: 00:00: Welcome and Introduction 00:54: Holly's Background, Homeschooling, and Life in North Carolina 04:01: Discovering Chesterton Through C.S. Lewis 09:11: Charlotte Mason, Living Books, and the Inspiration Behind the Biography 13:39: The Swordstick, the Cloak, and Chesterton's Persona 16:18: Chesterton on Leisure, Play, and the Toy Theater 19:14: Taking Children Seriously—Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, and MacDonald 24:32: Research Surprises: The Unconventional Student 28:43: The Junior Debating Club, Frances, and a Life of Hospitality 33:37: Holly's Current Projects and Where to Find Her Resources Mentioned: Get the Book Holly's Website Holly's YouTube Gilbert Magazine American Chesterton Society Shop FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Like the title suggests, this one introduces Marvel characters Cloak & Dagger (voiced by their concurrent live action actors!) But the big surprise? The introduction of Anna Maria Marconi, who shakes up the Superior Spider-Man story and even brings early conversations about super genius schools vs. underfunded public schools back into the fray. We get into Peter in a robot body, the startling lack of the Spider-Women, Miles finally getting into the action but still being underused, and more!We're watching Marvel's Spider-Man (2017): Season 2, Episode 18: “Cloak and Dagger”.Website⁠ | ⁠Patreon⁠ | ⁠Discord⁠Part of The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast CollectiveContact us: @WallopingWebPod on ⁠Bluesky⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠Email: ⁠wallopingwebsnapperspodcast@gmail.com⁠Theme song features: ⁠“Resonance (Cyan & Ladybot Remix)” by HOME⁠ | ⁠License (CC BY 3.0)⁠

Here's the FULL archive of the 4/25/26 Self-Liberation Saturday transmission on the P.A.Z.NIA Radio Network. SCHEDULE/PLAYLIST: Leave a message for the show: XMRCHAT.COM/PAZNIAradio Join us on SimpleX: PAZNIA.COM/SIMPLEX VonuLife, the most practical, valuable, and hardcore freedom zine is BACK! Sections include: *The VonuLife Message Board*Intentional Communities, Networking, & Vonuing in… The post [Self-Liberation Saturday FULL, 4/25/26] Cloak & Dagger LIVE + Billy Mays' Triumphant Return + The Life & Times of P.A.Z.NIA with Shane/Rayo2 & Shadrach appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

In a dramatic leak, The New York Times has published seven private memos from a 2016 exchange between Supreme Court Justices leading up to the now-famous interim order that blocked President Obama's "Clean Power Plan." The Times's lopsided framing accuses Chief Justice Roberts of being flippant and taking unprecedented action. But the so-called "shadow docket" has been used more broadly to shut down both rampant Biden-era lawfare and Trumpian overreach. This week, the guys detail how the courts of both law and public opinion have been changing in the era of the imperial presidency.Recommended:The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme CourtLeaked Supreme Court Memos Reveal Why Court Stayed Clean Power PlanThe Pity PartyWatch with video on Youtube This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claremontinstitute.substack.com/subscribe

Cloak and Dagger (1946) is one of the most overlooked spy films ever made — and this episode proves it deserves a second look. Dan and Tom decode this gritty WWII thriller starring Gary Cooper and directed by Fritz Lang. It's raw, tense, and surprisingly realistic. Before James Bond made espionage glamorous, this film showed what it really looked like. No gadgets. No tuxedos. Just survival. A physics professor is yanked from the Manhattan Project and sent to Europe — with no training and no safety net. His mission: find out how close Nazi Germany is to building an atomic bomb. That fear was real. The stakes were enormous. We dig deep into what makes this film stand out: the brutal, visceral staircase fight scene, the film noir cinematography by Sol Polito, and Max Steiner's understated score. We also explore the Hitchcock parallels, the Bond connections, and the censored anti-nuclear ending Fritz Lang never got to film. Episode highlights: ·      

Go to http://shopify.com/scb to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. Today Ben dives into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to ask: Why did Harry drop the Resurrection Stone?  He could have seen his parents anytime he wante to but leaves it to the infinite depths of the Forbidden Forest instead? And what of the Elder Wand and the Invisibility Cloak? Should he have kept the wand? Destroyed the Cloak?

In this episode, Xan and I review Cloak & Dagger (1984) -- quite possibly the Greatest Movie EVER?