Podcasts about Niara

It's the 250th episode of The Pulp Writer Show! To celebrate this occasion, this episode takes a look at the expectations people have of a full-time writer's life and contrasts them with the reality. 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: TALONS50 The coupon code is valid through May 27, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 250 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 2, 2025, and today we're looking at what it is really like to be a full-time writer. This is also the 250th episode of the podcast, so thank you all for listening to the podcast over these last six years. Before I started recording, I totaled up the total length of previous podcast episodes and came to about 78 hours, give or take. That's like three days of continuous talking, which sounds less impressive when you realize it was recorded over the last six years.   Thank you all for listening and here's hoping you can stick around with the next 250 episodes. Before we get to our main topic, which is the expectations versus reality of being a full-time writer, we are going to do Coupon of the Week, a progress update my current writing projects, and then Question of the Week. So let's kick 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 Six in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is TALONS50. As always, you can get that coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through May 27th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered.   Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 60,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which puts me on chapter 13 of 21, so I'm about two thirds of the way through. I think the rough draft will be between 90-100,000 words long, so hopefully I can have that out before the end of May, if all goes well. I also just finished Chapter One of Shield of Power, which will be the final book of the Shield War series and that'll be my main project once Ghost in the Corruption is finished. I'm also 87,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, and that will be my main project once Shield of Power comes out. I expect Final Quest should come out pretty soon after Shield of Power just because I've been chipping away at it for so long and I'm getting close to the end.   In audiobook news, recording is almost done for Ghost in the Assembly and that'll be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. Recording is totally done for Shield of Deception (as narrated by Brad Wills) and that is working its way through processing at the various audiobook platforms, so hopefully we'll not be too much longer before we can get that to you.   00:02:26 Question of the Week So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. And now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite Jonathan Moeller book? The reason for this question is that this is the 250th podcast episode, so it seems like a good topic for that particular milestone. And as you might expect, we had an array of different opinions.   Joachim says: You are kidding us! By the end of the week? How long did you think about your own answer? Let me mirror you: for my own answer, the question is a bit difficult because I spent money on all your books, which meant I thought all of them a good buy. So let me split my answer into male and female protagonists. The best female book was Ghost Exile: Omnibus One because it prompted me to continue with Ghost Exile and fill in the Ghost series later. The Ghosts Omnibus One and Ghost Exile: Omnibus One were my first two books from you. The best male book was the one with Jack March where Thunderbolt said, “males are ogling breasts which never existed”, especially as such AI generated videos are now all over the place on YouTube.   I have to admit that I first came up with the character of Thunderbolt back in early 2021 when I was working on Silent Order: Rust Hand (that was before the AI boom really took off), so she turned out to be a very prescient character for the AI era in a number of ways.   Joe B. says: That is a tough question as there are many contenders. I'm going to go with one that is a little different, Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation, but now known as Stealth and Spells Online: Creation.   Justin says: I nominate Soul of Swords, an excellent end to an excellent series.   Perry says: There can only be one! Demonsouled. Paul says: For me, I think my favorite female protagonist  book is Cloak Games: Truth Chain. Such a dramatic change to Nadia, sets up the series in her struggles with self and enemies so well.   Brad Wills (who as you know narrated the Frostborn, Dragonskull, Malison, and Shield War series for me) says: Does a three book arc count?  Excalibur, The Dragon Knight, and The Shadow Prison made for a fantastic lead-up and finale of the Frostborn series.   Hollis McCarthy (who as you know, narrated the Ghosts and Cloak Mage audiobooks) says: Ghost in the Storm, when Caina and Kylon meet in the Battle for Marsis. Nonstop action, incredible chase scenes, and a great intro to their combative relationship.   Fred says: It's hard for me to say which book is my favorite. All your book series were all great.   Juana says: Frostborn: Excalibur with Ridmark. I happen to love stories about Excalibur, odd but true. Caina in Cloak and Ghost: Rebel Cell because Caina and Nadia are an incendiary team. So there! Randy says: Frostborn: The Dragon Knight. This whole series is great, but that is one of the high points.   Dennis says: I couldn't name my favorite as I enjoy everything you write. I probably enjoyed the Frostborn series best at the time, but having bought and read every one of your books it's now impossible.   Kevin says: There's no way on earth that I could put one book above another, so I would've to take the coward's way out and say Frostborn: The Gray Knight simply because it has a book that drew me to the worlds of Jonathan Moeller back in the spring of 2017, since which time I have bought 117 of his books, including a few omnibus editions, so a few more actual books, I suppose. I avidly read them all as they're published these days, except the Silent Order series (just doesn't grab me and pull me in like the others). Jesse says: Cloak Games: Sky Hammer. Damaged Nadia at her best, epic action the whole way. And yeah, the chapter The Last Death of Nadia Moran was viscerally cinematic and probably the biggest emotional payoff you've written in my opinion, tied her entire journey together. In my head, I cast Castle-era Stana Katic as Nadia, and it worked better than I expected it might.   Morgan says: I can't narrow it down to just one. So top three in no particular order, Sevenfold Swords: Swordbearer, Dragontiarna: Gates, and Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling. That being said, I think Niara might be my favorite character of all your books I have read.   Jonathan T says: I too am torn though only between two books, Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife and Frostborn: The Shadow Prison.   [Side note/addition from The Transcriptionist: My vote is for Half-Elven Thief!]   So thank you everyone for the kind words about all those books. For my own answer, the question is a bit difficult because I've written them all, which meant I thought all of them were good idea at the time. I suppose the glib answer would be the one that made me the most money, which was Frostborn: The Iron Tower, but it really depends on the category, like my favorite heist book, my favorite mystery book, my favorite dungeon crawl, my favorite first in series. So I think I'll go for the most basic level of categorization and split it up by male and female protagonists.   My favorite book of mine with a female protagonist would probably be Cloak Games: Rebel Fist, since it's such a turning point for Nadia and starts the trajectory of the rest of her character arc. It's the first time she really has to save the day instead of just trying to save herself and shows that her brother Russell can also handle himself, which as you know, comes up again later. My favorite book of mine with a male protagonist would probably be Dragontiarna: Defenders, since it has the Battle of Shadow Crown Hill, which was one of my favorite sequences to write. Four different characters have plans and they all crash into each other at the same time, which was a lot of fun to write and set up, which was a real highlight for me in 2020 because as we all know, 2020 was a fun year.   00:07:35 Main Topic of the Week: Writing Full Time: Expectations Versus Reality   So that is it for Question of the Week. Now let's move on to our main topic this week, writing full-time: expectations versus reality (admittedly from the perspective of a self-published author). If you spent any time around the writing community on the Internet at all, you know that many people dream of becoming a full-time writer, and sometimes people think that the only way to be successful as a writer is to write full-time. There are many expectations that people have about what it means to be a full-time writer. Now that I've been a full-time indie writer for nearly nine years at this point, I can provide some lived perspective. In this episode, I will talk about five of those expectations that people have about full-time writing and the way those expectations might be skewed.   So before we get to those, I should mention how I actually became a full-time writer. In 2016 (which seems like a really long time ago now), the Frostborn series was doing really well, and at the time I was also working full time and I realized that summer I was going to have to move for family reasons. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea of moving at first, but I decided to embrace the idea and try to make the best of it. This would involve moving a considerable distance to a different state and all the different problems that entails. So I thought about it and I thought I could look for a new job, but any job I would be qualified for in the area I was moving to would make less money than I was actually making from writing part-time. So I thought, why not try and make a go of full-time writing and see what happens?   Since that was nine years ago, I think I can safely say it's worked out pretty well. And I will say that it's been a pretty good experience and I am very fortunate and very grateful and very blessed to have been able to do this because not everyone has the opportunity to pursue a full-time creative job like I have been able to for these last nine years. That said, while it has been pretty great, it comes with a lot of flexibility and I've gotten to write a lot of great books that many people have enjoyed, it's not always all wine and roses, so to speak, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this episode to let people more in what the reality of being a full-time writer for this long has been like. So with that introduction out of the way, let's move on to our five expectations versus reality.   Expectation #1: Full-time authors make a lot of money. The reality is that even full-time authors generally don't make that much money. A survey from The Author's Guild showed that the median amount that full-time authors make was just about $20,000, though full-time romance writers had a higher median income of about $37,000. Remember that this amount is before any health insurance costs, benefits, retirement contributions, and of course taxes that a traditional job might be able to provide or help with. In the United States, buying even fairly basic health insurance can easily be a thousand dollars per month for a family, and that doesn't include any costs related to deductibles, prescriptions, or additional dental or vision insurance. Authors are either on their own for healthcare in the US or have to rely on a spouse or partner's healthcare coverage. In other words, you either have to pony up a lot of money to buy your own health insurance or you have to rely on your spouse or partner's healthcare coverage.   And at least in the US, taxes are also much higher on the self-employed. Uncle Sam really does not like the self-employed. If you are self-employed, it is in your best interest to essentially form a small corporation and work for yourself (though for details on how to do that, you should consult with an accountant licensed to practice in your region). Now all these costs can add up pretty quickly, and they make the amount of money that you'll earn from writing much less than you think based on raw earnings before taxes and all the other expenses we were talking about. You also have business expenses like cover design, site hosting, editors, narrators, advertising, et cetera, that take even more pieces out of those earnings. You can duck some of those, but not all of them.   So it boils down to that you have to make a significant amount of money as an author to make an actual living after taxes, healthcare costs, and business expenses are taken out of your earnings, which is one of the reasons that writing part-time as you have a full-time job is not the worst idea in the world and can in fact be a very good idea.   Expectation #2: My next book will make as much or more than the last one did. The reality is that your next book or series might not make you as much money as the previous ones did. In fact, you can reliably predict that most book series will have a certain amount of reader drop off as a series goes on, which is why these days I tend to want to keep my series under nine to ten books or so. Budgeting based on your current income levels is not wise, especially with the current economic climate (which for a variety of reasons is very unpredictable) and with increased competition in the ebook market. Most authors have a peak at some point in their career. For example, Stephen King is still obviously making a great living as a writer putting out new books, but his new books don't sell nearly as well as the ones he put out in the ‘80s. J.K. Rowling's novels for adults (she writes as Robert Galbraith the Cormoran Strike series) don't sell anywhere near the number of copies as her Harry Potter series did at its peak.   For myself, my peak years in terms of writing income were 2016 and 2017, and I've never quite been able to recapture that level. In fact, in 2024, I only did about two thirds of what I did in 2017 (my peak year), which can be a little nerve wracking as you watch those numbers move up and down. That is why it is important for a writer (like many other creatives like actors) to anticipate that they might only have a limited window of peak success and to save aggressively rather than living large on the amount you're earning in that peak era. And I am pleased to report that I was fortunate enough and sensible enough to do that, so that even if my income has varied from year to year (2017 onward), it hasn't been a crippling loss and I haven't been out in the street or lost the house or anything like that.   Expectation #3: You will be happier if you write full-time. The reality is that is not true for everyone. Some people actually do better creatively and emotionally with the time restrictions placed on them by having a full-time job. Many famous writers, including Trollope and Kafka, kept their full-time jobs. Even Tolkien was never a full-time writer. He was a professor of philology until he retired. That was interesting to me because personally, I haven't had much in terms of emotional trouble being a full-time writer. I've always kind of had the ability to hyperfocus on a task, and I've been doing that for almost nine years now, and it's worked out well for me.   I've since realized that is not true for many people. One of the things that demonstrated it to me, believe it or not, was insurance actuarial tables. One thing that I tried to do after I became a full-time writer was try and get disability insurance in case I had an accident or severe illness and could not write anymore. I learned that it's extremely difficult for full-time writers to get disability insurance due to their high rates of substance abuse and mental illness. I was astonished by this because I've never had problems with substance abuse or mental illness myself, but given the number of writers and other creatives I've known who have had those issues, perhaps that's not that surprising, but I was still baffled to learn that.   For example, in my area there are a number of tree management companies (because it's a heavily wooded area) and it's a lot easier for an arborist who works with a chainsaw all day to get disability insurance than it is for a writer, which is somewhat crazy to think about because as a writer, I'm mostly sitting in a chair all day pressing buttons on a keyboard while an arborist is climbing a tree or in a crane with a chainsaw, which is a much more physically dangerous thing. But because of the rates of substance abuse and mental illness among full-time writers, apparently it is very difficult for full-time writers to get disability insurance. Some people struggle with the lack of structure and outward accountability that comes from being a full-time writer and find that actually decreases their productivity and leads them to fall into substance abuse or sink deeper into mental health problems. Very few people have the self-discipline and mental resilience required to be a full-time writer for years on end. And that's not me tooting my own horn so to speak, but apparently it is just the facts. Some writers even go back to full-time work just because they find it less stressful or better for their wellbeing. So I think this is an excellent example of having to know yourself and know what is best for you. For example, if you're a very extroverted person who enjoys talking to people at the office, becoming a full-time writer where you spend most of your time by yourself typing might not be the best for your long-term mental and physical health. Expectation #4: Writing full-time will make me more productive. The reality is having more time does not necessarily mean that you'll be more productive. Writers are notorious for falling prey to time wasters, such as social media scrolling, research spirals, and writing adjacent activities (of which there is a whole series about on this podcast already). It does take a lot of a self-discipline, focus, and determination to be a full-time writer. If you are a full-time writer, especially a full-time indie writer, you also have to balance writing time with various administrative tasks, marketing and ads, social media, fan correspondence, and the various tasks involved in the self-publishing process. Writing is not the only thing that writers actually do, and the other tasks often make finding time for writing more difficult than you might expect. Even traditionally published writers still have to carve out time for administrative work and assisting with marketing and social media work.   As your writing career scales up, so does the behind the scenes workload. This is true in my case. Up until 2023, I basically did everything myself, but I did have COVID pretty badly for a while in 2023 and it just knocked out my energy for a while and I realized that I can't keep trying to do everything by myself. I basically had a choice, either cut some tasks or get some help. So I have some people now, some contractors who help me with things like listening to audiobook proofs (I used to do that all myself), doing the podcast transcript, and Excel record keeping (which I used to do myself). While that is an expense, I don't regret it because it really has taken a lot off my plate and freed up more time for writing, which of course is the entire point.   Expectation #5: I admit this one made me laugh. I will have more free time as a full-time writer. I can attest firsthand that that is not true. What you have as a full-time writer is flexibility. The reality is, although there is flexibility on the job, the hours can be more than for a full-time job. There's a joke that full-time writers can work any 12 hours they want every day.   Most indie authors are putting out far more than one book a year in order to make a full-time income, and that requires a fairly demanding pace that most people don't have the self-discipline to maintain as a lifestyle for years and years on end. The majority of full-time writers right now are either romance or erotica writers who are putting out at least a book a month, sometimes even more. As I mentioned in an earlier point in the show, the administrative task can take far more time than most people would imagine. They could, depending on the circumstances, be easily 40 hours a week on their own before you have time to do a single word of writing on the page. I found you really have to guard your writing time well and find ways to keep administrative tasks, distractions, and necessary tasks such as home maintenance or childcare separate from writing.   Anyone who has ever worked from home is familiar with how difficult that can be because home comes with a wide set of distractions. Granted, that's often fewer distractions than the office, but home can have its own set of distractions. I've mentioned before that you need a bit of tunnel vision to produce the quantity of writing I do month after month. I do keep to a pretty rigid schedule. I have daily word count goals I always try to meet and I use the Pomodoro Method to make sure that I'm prioritizing my writing time.   If you are self-employed and working for yourself, that means there are no allocated vacation or sick days and no paid sick leave in the writing world. Taking a couple of weeks off usually means anticipating a loss in income, such as a month without a book being released. Sometimes, especially in the case of illness, family emergencies, and so forth, that just can't be helped. However, the long vacations people imagine writers being able to take mean either a loss of income or a couple of weeks beforehand of working extra hours to make up for it. For example, Brandon Sanderson, who is probably the most famous fantasy author right now, still works and writes on his vacations and does extra work before leaving for a vacation (such as pre-recording videos).   So as you can see, most of the expectations people have about what it's like to write full-time come from the hope that it will change their productivity or make it easier to write. In reality, if you manage your time well, you can often meet all your writing goals even while working another full-time job. Some people are even more productive under the time pressure of only having an hour or so available to write each day. You don't have to wait until you are a full-time writer for your writing career to start. I wrote for decades and published for years before I was a full-time writer.   Frankly, the idea that you need to be a full-time writer in order to be taken seriously or make money exists only in your own mind. Whether you are a full-time writer or not, what matters is having the discipline to shut out distractions and write with absolute consistency regardless of the circumstances. Even writing 250 to 300 words every single day can add up very quickly, even if you don't do it in 15 minute bursts like Anthony Trollope did.   Finally, I suppose this makes it sound like I'm painting a very bleak picture here, but I'm not. As I said before, I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do, and I'm very grateful to all my readers that I'm able to write full-time and even hire on contractors for narration and behind the scenes work. I appreciate and am very grateful to all the readers who have supported me by continuing to buy my work and access it through subscription services like Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus or library options like Libby and Hoopla.   So that is it for this week. I hope it provided some insight into what it's like to be a full-time writer. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show and all 250 episodes. I hope you found the show and all 250 episodes useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on 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.  

This week Nini & Zoy discuss having PTSD, reverse seasonal depression, and being loyal for life.Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.


This week Nini & Zoy discuss how NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING!!!! Also, Jesus, phone broke, accident.Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss the tragic events in the beginning of the year, the duality of baby mamas, and we rewrite the ending of a film. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

Send us a textn this fascinating episode of Adventure Diaries, we welcome legendary explorer Benedict Allen, whose remarkable journeys span decades and continents. From surviving ambushes by Pablo Escobar's men to undergoing the brutal crocodile initiation ceremony with the Niara tribe in Papua New Guinea, Benedict's stories are nothing short of extraordinary.We delve into his heartfelt reunion with the Yaifo tribe after 27 years, a moment of celebration and resilience that symbolized hope amidst the challenges of gold mining and environmental destruction. Benedict shares his unique philosophy on exploration—emphasizing vulnerability, trust, and learning from indigenous cultures over conquest or adrenaline-fueled escapades.Discover how Benedict balances the ethical dilemmas of documenting endangered cultures, the impact of modern media on his work, and the lessons he's learned from tribes thriving against all odds. He also shares practical advice for anyone seeking adventure, including the importance of dedicating sacred time to explore and reconnect with the world around you.This episode is a treasure trove of inspiration, wisdom, and stories that will ignite your passion for adventure and humanity.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The transformative power of vulnerability in connecting with remote tribes.How the Yaifo thrived by isolating themselves from the chaos of gold mining.Insights into the brutal yet life-altering Niara crocodile initiation ceremony.The ethics and challenges of documenting uncontacted tribes.Why Benedict believes adventure is more relevant than ever in today's interconnected world.Episode Highlights:Benedict's near-death encounters and how they shaped his view of exploration.The Yaifo's extraordinary resilience and how their culture has adapted over decades.Reflections on the media's distortion of exploration narratives.The importance of balancing risk with ethical responsibility in modern adventuring.Benedict's advice to set aside sacred time for personal adventures.Call to Action:Inspired by Benedict's stories? Plan your own adventure, big or small! Start by dedicating a weekend to explore something new in your area.Resources & Mentions:Visit Benedict Allen's website for books and updates.Support the Environmental Justice Foundation and Save the Rhino Trust, two causes close to Benedict's heart.Learn more about this episode and others at AdventureDiaries.com/podcast.Let's Connect:Follow Adventure Diaries on Instagram: @adventurediariespodcastShare your thoughts on this episode and leave a review!Until next time, embrace the adventure and pay it forward.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss the whirlwind that is 2024. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

During her military service with the USAF from 1979 to 1983 as a radar specialist, Niara Isley witnessed a UFO at Tonopah Test Range. She was subsequently taken to Area 51, where she was subjected to sexual and other forms of abuse to suppress her memories. Isley was next taken on frequent trips to the Moon over the next three months, where she was exploited as slave labor and a sex worker. The abuses only ended after an extraterrestrial recognized that she was a Lyran starseed, and everything happening to her was being recorded by her star family. Isley wrote about her experiences and how she overcame the traumatic memories in her 2013 book, Facing the Shadow, Embracing the Light. In this Exopolitics Today interview, Niara Isley describes newly restored memories of when she was also taken to Mars during her USAF service in a 20-and-back program. On Mars, she describes her dual duties to study archeological artifacts in the Cydonia region while also being exploited as a sex worker. Facing the Shadow, Embracing the Light: A Journey of Spirit Retrieval and Awakening is available on Amazon --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/exopoliticstoday/support

✨  Niara Simon-Hollis, Sr. Marketing Director, Streaming at Tastemade☁️ Do's and don'ts when relocating for a job☁️ Embracing diversity and storytelling in marketing☁️ The value in having a unique perspective and point of view☁️ Prioritizing company culture when evaluating new roles☁️ Transitioning from fashion to entertainment marketingJoin the Sky Society Women in Marketing private LinkedIn group.Follow Sky Society on Instagram @skysociety.co and TikTok @skysociety.co

This week Nini & Zoy discuss a Nini's trip to LA, the hookah epidemic of the 20teens, and when reality TV is actually real. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

Neste episódio, conversamos com o cartunista e músico mineiro Renato Aroeira autor da personagem Niara, protagonista da campanha Tributar os Super-Ricos. Ela nasceu para explicar as distorções na cobrança de impostos no Brasil. De maneira lúdica e com humor, a personagem chama atenção para o aumento da desigualdade no Brasil em decorrência da injustiça fiscal. As tirinhas Niara receberam o apoio institucional da ADUFRGS.

In this week's episode, we'll take a look at five tips for creating distinctive character voices and viewpoints within your novel. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Update Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 209 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July the 12th, 2024 and today we are discussing five tips for creating vivid characterizations. Before we get into that, we'll have some writing progress updates, a couple of questions from readers, Question of the Week, and then we'll get on to our main topic. So for my current writing projects, I'm pleased to report that Shield of Darkness is out and selling briskly, and you can get it at all the usual places: Amazon, Barnes, and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. It's had a very strong response so far and thank you for that. I'm glad you guys are enjoying the book. Now that Shield of Darkness is out, my next project is Half-Orc Paladin. I am pleased to report I'm currently on Chapter 10 of 16, which puts me at 60,000 words. Yesterday I had a 10,000 word day while I was working on it, my sixth one of 2024. Good progress has been made. I'm hoping to have that book out preferably in early August. In audiobook news, the audiobook of Wizard-Thief as narrated by Leanne Woodward is almost finished. We've just got to finish proofing it and that should take place next week and hopefully the audiobook will be out towards the end of July or early August. Once Half-Orc Paladin is done, I have not 100% decided what I'm going to write next. I'm 20,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs, so that could be next or I might write Shield of Conquest or Cloak of Illusion. We will see what I do when I get to the end of Half-Orc Paladin. But right now, I am focusing on Half-Orc Paladin and bringing that to completion. We have a reader question from BV, who asks: I saw an app called Scrivener, and I thought of what Jonathan uses. I'm an old mainframe COBOL/RPG developer and I know that the tech environment can really help. I tried Scrivener way back in 2014 and it was too complicated for me, too much. Granted, the app might have changed since then because 2014 feels to me at least like it was really recent, but it was in fact ten years ago. So for writing, I primarily use Microsoft Word for writing and editing and then I use Vellum on the Mac for the final ebook formatting. That's the way I do it right now. Nothing to say that it can't change. Maybe I might switch to LibreOffice again for writing as Microsoft continues to sort of circle the AI drain and adds more and more useless AI features to its products. 00:02:38 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is your favorite kind of sandwich? This got a lot of responses, as you might expect. Grimlar says: buttered oven bottom muffin, slice of lamb, medium mature slice of cheese, and a coating of salad cream. Justin says: the current sandwich at my house is turkey with provolone, lettuce, and tomato with mayonnaise on homemade sourdough. That actually sounds pretty good right now. Kevin says: bit boring here. Grilled cheese and bacon or BLT with mayo. Easily pleased, Michael says: can't beat a toasted cheese sandwich, which seems to be called a grilled cheese in the US, which has always baffled me. Ham is a good addition as well. I agree with Michael. That is a very good sandwich. Brandy says: old school. Tie between cold Jif creamy peanut butter and Concord grape jam or warm grilled Gruyere and Colby Jack on a good homemade bread (pumpernickel, oatmeal, wheat, or sourdough). Barbara says: Kind of a plain girl: toasted cheese and tomato. Annie says: toasted sandwich: ham, cheese, red onions, and tomato with butter and mayo. Jesse says: Italian sub with hot peppers. Steve says: I'd add some cheese because I'm a cheesy kind of guy and my spicy mustard has a bit of horseradish, too. Bonnie says: Maine Amatoes roast beef Italian (RB, cheese, onion, green pepper, pickled tomato, black olives, mayo, not oil. Jenny says: rare roast beef slices, sharp cheddar, and sourdough bread. I don't lubricate my sandwiches and prefer simple. Otherwise grilled cheese (extra sharp cheddar and gouda) or really anything with ham in there. Nick says: this is just perfect. Just make the beef pastrami. Jonah says: Panini. Genoa salami, roasted red peppers, onions, Jack and mozzarella cheese, good olive oil, and maybe a pesto. Gary says: there are lots of good ones, but if I can only have one, it has to be PB&J (crunchy peanut butter and raspberry jam). Andrew says: An MLT, a nice mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich where the mutton is so lean. I have to admit I did not know that was an actual sandwich. Randy says: hot and juicy pastrami with melted pepperjack cheese, diced red onion, mayo, and horseradish mustard on a lightly toasted sourdough hoagie. Dang it. Now I'm hungry. Craig says: club. Stacy says: grilled cheese. David says PB and J. Judy says peanut butter and grape jelly or a Philly cheesesteak. John says: tie between a really good Reuben or really authentic Philly cheesesteak. Croque Monsieur is a close second. Venus says: funniest sandwich story I ever heard was when my brother ordered a BLT and the waitress asked if he wanted any condiments on it. He said no and received bacon between two slices of bread. When I was younger, I used to eat BLTs that way. Just bacon and bread, though now that I'm older and recognize the benefits of vegetables in many areas of life, I do have BLTS with the lettuce and tomato. Juana says: BLT. For myself, the answer would be I think a sub with roast beef, ham, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, and a significant quantity of spicy mustard. The inspiration for this question was that I typed it up, it was almost lunch time and I'm hungry. It may have been a mistake to record this podcast before lunch because I am now quite hungry after reading all that, but onwards to our Main Topic of the Week. 00:06:02 Main Topic: How to Create Distinctive Characterizations and Character Voices in a Novel Now on to our Main Topic of the Week: how to create distinctive characterizations and character voices in a novel. We're going to go through five tips for that. I got to think about this because I just finished Shield of Darkness, which was quite a long book, and it had multiple point of views. My previous long series, the Dragonskull series, was mostly a single point of view throughout all nine books. Gareth Arban was the main character and though we started to have more point of view characters come in starting with the fifth book and especially in the final third of the series, Gareth was still the main character and had the most scenes. By contrast, Shield of Storms and the rest of the Shield War series is going to be multi point of view. As of right now, Ridmark Arban, Niara, Lika, and Nikomedes are going to be the main characters and we will have new point of view characters that start introducing in with the rest of the series. The point of view of the different chapters will rotate between them. I'm writing in in what's called limited third person, where you shift entirely to one person's perspective for a scene or chapter. For example, if I'm writing from Ridmark's perspective, we will see things from Ridmark's perspective and know what he's thinking. Omniscient third person, by contrast, is when the author jumps from person to person. For example, in a scene with both Ridmark and the Nikomedes, the author will let us know what they're both thinking and will see things through both their eyes. There is nothing wrong with this, as a skillful writer can do it quite well. I think Agatha Christie especially did it quite well, but it's generally easier and simpler to write in third person limited instead of third person omniscient. Of course, third person limited is only easier if you can make each point of view distinctive. You have to write a distinctive voice for each character and it can become a problem if all the characters all sound and think the same way. So how can you create a distinctive voice for each point of view character? There are a couple of different ways that you can do this. #1: Descriptions. When writing from a particular character's viewpoint in limited third person, obviously that character will see things through his or her own personal lens. This is a handy way to differentiate characters. For example, take the laptop I used to write this podcast script. I got it in the summer of 2023 where my previous laptop went to the big recycling bin in the sky and it's an HP Envy with a 17 inch screen, since I'm at a phase of life where I prefer to write with the Microsoft Word window maximized and the screen size zoomed way up. But someone who knows less about computers than I do wouldn't see an HP Envy, they'll just see a silver laptop with a big screen. Someone who only uses Mac laptops would just see it as a big chunky PC laptop and would think of it that way. Firearms are another good example of this. For example, according to the FBI website, the official side arm of an FBI agent is a Glock 19 M semi-automatic pistol, which holds 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition, but many people would not know this. They would see the weapon and think of it as just a black handgun or a black pistol, or may even describe it inaccurately, calling it a revolver or a machine gun. This variation in description would also extend to characters. Consider a woman who works as a school administrator. The school board chairman might think of her as the most reliable employee in the district and describe her that way. The students might describe her as the mean lady who works in the office. One of the teachers might think of her as my best friend. Another teacher might think of her as my cousin's nasty ex-wife. Which one of these characterizations of the woman are correct? Well, it depends on the particular point of view at the moment, and you can use that description to help differentiate your characters from one another. #2: Dialogue is another great way to differentiate characters from one another. No two people ever really have similar speech patterns. The school administrator in the previous example might always find a way to bring the conversation back around to her cats. A socially awkward computer programmer might start over sharing facts about topics that interest him. A taciturn electrician might only speak when necessary and prefer silence the rest of the time. A lawyer might talk in very precise sentences with every word exactly measured, especially a lawyer who is used to arguing in front of a judge. A common joke is that rather than asking why, the lawyer will always say on what basis? People will also talk about different things. They have favorite topics or are better or worse at handling emotionally sensitive discussions. People also have things they absolutely refuse to discuss under any circumstances and become angry if someone tries to force them to talk about these topics. Dialogue is also a place where it's best not to get too hung up on grammar, since you'll find that most people do not talk in grammatically perfect sentences. People often repeat themselves, respond to a question with another question or an irrelevant answer, and go off on tangents. The trick for writing dialogue is to try and catch a feeling of verisimilitude with the somewhat rambling nature of human conversation in general without getting too bogged down and trying to make it too realistic. You want to keep the story moving forward, after all. #3: Attitudes. Another good way to differentiate between point of view characters is attitude. How do they respond to things emotionally? This ties into both description and dialogue because the character's attitude will obviously influence how they describe things and how they talk. To return to the example of the school administrator above, a student with a cranky attitude might think of her as the mean lady in the office, while a teacher who is in a good mood and enjoys his or her work might think of her as Miss Jones from the school district. The character's mood will color how they describe their surroundings and how they relate to the characters around them. A character who is in a good mood would simply note a car braking in front of them in traffic and slow down. A character in a bad mood will likely rant about how the jerk in front brake checked them. This leads into the next aspect of character attitudes. How does a character react emotionally to events and other characters? One character might view having to stand in line for a while as a minor inconvenience and turn his or her thoughts elsewhere during the wait. Another character might fly into a rage with impatience and demand to speak to the manager over. The first character might dislike going to restaurants because he or she finds it embarrassing to be waited upon and will get through the experience with stiff politeness. The second character might love going to restaurants and makes all sorts of unreasonable demands upon the waiter. Character attitudes and how they emotionally react to situations and each other is an excellent way to differentiate characters and therefore create unique voice. #4: Knowledge. Another good way to distinguish between characters is their individual knowledge and can also help inform the descriptions. For example, during a recent road trip I was listening to the audiobook of Dark Angel by John Sanford and narrated by Robert Petkoff. In the book, two federal agents Letty Davenport and Rod Baxter are assigned to infiltrate a group of dangerous hackers. Letty is an expert on firearms and violence and very physically fit while Baxter is 60 pounds overweight but an expert in all aspects of hacking and computer crime. He doesn't know anything about guns, but he knows everything about breaking into a computer system whereas Letty has only a surface level grasp of computer crime. She knows what a ransomware attack is but nothing about how to actually execute one or repair one. This is a helpful way to distinguish between the character's point of view scenes like we talked about with description. As we said, one character might see a firearm and think it's a black rifle but a character with greater knowledge of guns would immediately identify it as an M16A2. Another character might see a van and just think of it as an old red van, but a character who works as a mechanic would identify it as a 1993 Ford Aerostar. #5: Subtext. Now we come to the great bane and hindrance of human communication, subtext. How characters react to subtext, whether they notice it, imagine it, or fail to detect it at all can help distinguish between character point of views and help create character voice. In this context, subtext refers to an additional implied meaning beyond the actual literal meaning of the spoken words. For example, a woman tells her boyfriend that she hears the Grand Canyon is nice in May. The subtext is that she wants him to plan a trip for them to the Grand Canyon, and the boyfriend may or may not pick up on this subtext. Communication failure of this sort is a common staple of sitcom plots, where many conflicts could be resolved if the participants were capable of communicating clearly. This is something of a cliched example, but we've all had examples in real life where we said something only to have our words totally misinterpreted. For example, say you say, “I don't like fish” and the person to whom you are speaking interprets that as “I hate your cooking.” That might not have been your meaning at all, but the comment was interpreted that way. Or an office manager observes that there are budget cuts. His employees immediately interpret that as impending layoffs when in fact, the manager simply meant that the budget for office supplies and computers has been cut. Subtext provides an excellent tool for distinguishing between characters. One character might completely miss subtext in conversation, while another might imagine subtexts that aren't there at all, like with the fish comment or another character who constantly speaks in subtext and gets annoyed when people don't pick up on their subtle meanings. Hopefully these five tips will help you craft characters with distinctive voices and viewpoints. So that's it for this week. After all that talk about sandwiches, I think I might go look for lunch myself. 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 on 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.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss a PRIDE adventure in NOLA, Keith Lee in BR, and being that girl. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

No Contraponto dessa segunda-feira a gente conversa com a jornalista e membra da Frente Feminista 8M/Pelotas, Niara de Oliveira. Mulheres de todo o Brasil tomaram as ruas para protestar contra o chamado PL do Estupro, que equipara o aborto a partir das 22 semanas de gestação ao crime de homicídio. Mais tarde, às 9h50, recebemos a professora Caroline Casali, jornalista e coordenadora do curso de Gestão Pública da UFPel. Ela coordenou a plataforma AbrigosRS aqui em Pelotas, trabalho que foi encerrado na última sexta-feira. Caroline faz um balanço do projeto e da situação dos alojamentos na cidade. O programa começa às 9h da manhã e é transmitido ao vivo na 104.5 FM e no Instagram, YouTube e Facebook da RádioCom Pelotas. #pelotas #radiocompelotas #PLdoEstupro #pos-enchente

This week Nini & Zoy discuss all the problems in the world, how much we love beef, and we remember to be mindful of why we were invited to earth. ***Nini refers to “Like That” as “Not Like Us” multiple times. Also, BBL DRIZZY (she's just a girl)*** Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

Niara Nicholas has led marketing and technical teams across globally recognized consumer product giants, including P&G, Johnson & Johnson, and Estee Lauder. Her leadership has been pivotal in pioneering novel commercial and product frameworks, strategically amplifying product reach and identifying lucrative growth avenues—both adjacent and forward-looking. Niara's mission is deeply entrenched in sharing her proficiency in consumer insights, marketing, innovation, and strategic foresight to empower brands in delivering enduring value to consumers and stakeholders alike. Her unwavering commitment lies in enabling brands to navigate the evolving landscape by marrying insight-driven strategies with a relentless pursuit of innovation.Know more about her here:Niara Nicholas------------------------------------------------------------Episode Guide:0:46 - What is Innovation?1:38 - What isn't Innovation?3:03 - Turning sparked invention to innovation5:27 - Missing link between innovation and invention7:27 - Identifying importance and understanding intersection8:48 - The beauty industry11:27 - The "N of one"14:55 - Brand attributes16:16 - Brand authenticity and innovation21:17 - Consumer perception and product development27:31 - Commitment and consumer communication29:23 - Advice to innovator--------------------------OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management

This week Nini & Zoy discuss stolen hairstyles, extremely uncanny events, and prayers up (down) for OJ. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss people being too alright, celebrity accusations, and a new bob new Ni! Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss a lying legion, secret POC meetings, and breakdancing in the club. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss getting justice during BHM, popping up at people's house, and we interview an Aquarius. HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH!!! ✊

In this week's episode, I take a look at different models of ereader devices and try to determine which is the best one. I also reflect on the experience of watching the Super Bowl for the first time in several years. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE RAZOR as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE RAZOR for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERRAZOR The coupon code is valid through March 1st, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we've got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 188 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 16th 2024 as I record this, and today we are looking at the best ereader devices. I also talk a little bit about what it was like to watch the Super Bowl for the first time in like 20 years. Just a little word of warning, there is some fairly substantial construction noise going on the street outside that may intrude in the background. Additionally, yesterday the computer I use for recording for received a Windows Update that messed it up rather severely, and the processor is constantly maxing out, which means it makes a loud fan noise. So if you hear hissing noise in the background, that is what is happening. I just haven't had time to fix it yet, so between the construction noise and that hissing noise, we are going to have an adventuresome podcast today. Before we get to our main topics, let us do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is going to be for the audiobook of Ghost in the Razor, as excellently narrated by narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Razor for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERRAZOR. That is WINTERRAZOR and that will be included in the show notes. That coupon code will be valid until March 1st, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we've got one ready for you. Now let's have some updates on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, the second book in my LitRPG series, is now out and you can get it at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. After a year's worth of sales data from the first book, I have concluded that LitRPG really does seem to perform best in Kindle Unlimited and audio so that is where it's going to go. It's currently in Kindle Unlimited and hopefully we should have audio in a few months, but we'll see how that works out and remind you that it's at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. I'm not sure how long the series is going to be. I am leaning towards making it a trilogy and wrapping it up with the next book, but we will see how Leveling performs for the first 30 days it's out in the marketplace and maybe it would merit becoming a longer series, but if it sells at the level I expected it to, I think it will probably be trilogy. My next big project will be Ghost in the Veils, the second book in the Ghost Armor series with Caina, and I am 8,000 words into that, putting me on Chapter 2 and hopefully that will come out towards the end of March. It does need to come out before April because that's when I have a recording slot scheduled for it, so it does need to come out by then, so it's going to come out by then. I'm also about 26,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and hopefully that will come out fairly quickly after Ghost in the Veils comes out. I am also writing the outline for Cloak of Titans, which would be the eleventh Cloak Mage book, and that will be my main project after Ghost in the Veils and Wizard Thief are out. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Storms, and hopefully that should be out in March sometime, but we will see how things go. 00:03:17 Reader Comment Before we get to our main topics, let's have a comment from a reader. James says: having just finished the Dragonskull series while waiting for Cloak of Titans, I thought how great it would be if there's a short story about Gareth's return home with Niara would be. His mother's reaction would be precious. Just starting on the Sevenfold Sword series. I love all your books and you have totally taken over my Kindle. Thanks, James. I am glad you have enjoyed all those books. In answer to your question, that is a fairly major part of the plot in Shield of Storms, where Gareth and companions return home. Just the difference is in the Shield War series, Gareth and his friends aren't the main characters. They're supporting characters and Ridmark is one of the main characters.   00:03:57 Thoughts on the 2024 Super Bowl Now let's talk about something a bit uncharacteristic: The Super Bowl. I did something I haven't done since the early 2000s, and I watched the entirety of The Super Bowl last week. The reason I did that was that some family members wanted to watch it, and I had no objection. So I watched The Super Bowl. Though to be fair, when I say watched, what I really mean is I had it on in the background while playing Icewind Dale on my iPad for the most part, along with some Skyrim on my Switch. I admit that when I was younger and more insufferable, I would make a point of refusing to watch The Super Bowl. Then I realized such an approach was self-defeating. Professional football is no better or worse than any other form of recreation. Additionally, connecting with people socially is not among my strengths, and very often sports discussions are the low hanging fruit of easy social engagement. That said, I don't exactly pay close attention to professional sports, so here is what I found interesting about The Super Bowl as an outsider, so to speak. I think an observer completely unfamiliar with American culture and professional sports, upon watching The Super Bowl, would conclude it was a 3 1/2 hour block of commercials infrequently broken up by two-minute clips of football. That said, the Christopher Walken commercial was the funniest one and also the one with Dunkin' Donuts. The NFL may not be a cartel in the strict legal definition of the term, but we all know it's totally a cartel, which is a pretty sweet position to be in because you have massive corporations like Apple and Verizon shelling out big bucks. So it's the Apple Music Halftime Show or the Verizon Pregame Show or whatever. I do think from an objective viewpoint that it is rather surprising that football became the predominant sporting event in America. And I think the reason has to do with the football commissioners rather foresightedly seeing the potential of broadcast television in the 1950s and the 1960s. American football, if you look at it from the outside, is this really weird mutant form of rugby with a lot of arcane terminology and non-intuitive rules, and compared to soccer or basketball, it's just a very slow and plodding game. There's 15 seconds of action and then everyone stands around for two or three minutes. It's time for a commercial break, brought to you by Verizon. Soccer and basketball are much faster paced If American football is the imperial system, then European football/soccer is the metric system that everybody else in the world uses. I suspect to really appreciate American football, you have to get into it as a child and grow up with it so all the weird rules become second nature, which is probably why the NFL embraced Taylor Swift so much this year, which did annoy some long-term NFL fans who are not fans of Swift's music. I don't really have an opinion on Taylor Swift one way or another, since I mostly listen to computer game soundtracks, that is my preferred musical genre. But like I said above, I think to really appreciate American football you have to grow up with it. Football doesn't quite have the cultural hegemony it had in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. It's still massively popular, but more and more parents are keeping their kids away from playing it because of the danger of long-term head injuries or because of all the many sketchy things the NFL has done over the years. Though, to be fair, it's not like FIFA is a paragon of business ethics either, so you have more young people who don't grow up with it and therefore can't be bothered to pay attention. But Swift is popular with the young people, and the NFL desperately wants more of the young people watching the games. I don't think the Super Bowl or the NFL season is scripted in advance, but I can definitely see how people come to that conclusion, partly because the NFL's broadcasts are so slick and media savvy that they feel like they should be scripted. I think it's mostly because the human brain has this tendency to see systems and order where there is in fact, nothing more than chaos. Though this year's Super Bowl game was so dramatic, with the Chiefs squeaking out a win in overtime, that it feels like it should have been written in advance. Finally, are football and professional sports the modern “bread and circuses” like they had in the Roman Empire? Maybe. But if they are, is that necessarily even a bad thing? If you look at history, every large civilization has had games and public spectacles as part of the maintenance of social and public order. Some aspect of human psychology really seems to require it. There's lots to criticize about the NFL, but it's certainly better than a lot of the stuff the Romans got up to or early medieval tournaments, which were mock battles that sometimes escalated into actual battles that turned into actual local wars. Perhaps modern professional sports or a more efficient and usually more bloodless method of public spectacle. So I don't really have any grand conclusions here, just observations from an outsider's perspective made while watching the Super Bowl and mostly playing Icewind Dale on my iPad, though I am pleased to report that in Icewind Dale during The Super Bowl I defeated an ogre with a bunch of Level 1 characters and my thief and my cleric both leveled up during the game. When I talked about this on my Facebook page, my readers had some good comments, so I thought I'd read a few of the few of few of them here.   00:09:11 Reader Comments on the 2024 Super Bowl Our first comments from William, who writing from the perspective of someone in the UK, says: I've seen the Super Bowl described as one of the great shared cultural experiences of the US and one of those times you can enjoy American football even if you're not really into the sport otherwise. It's one of those times you get together with family acquaintances you have few, if any common interests with. I think that's true and that's some good insight there. An opposing comment comes from reader named Mary, who says: I grew up breathing NFL. My sons played football through high school. As an adult, I watched consistently until I moved to an area without many services. Went four years without TV. Ordered a new streaming device and service. I hoped to bring some of those great memories forward. My goodness, what a disappointment. The commercials are heavily pharma-based or bad food. Gambling is another frequent advertisement. You're correct, the advertising is the point. I spend most of my free time reading, a much more immersive experience. Cancelled my service today with relief. So we can also see that the emphasis on ads during The Super Bowl and I think during regular football games as well, really does turn off some viewers. I definitely approve of reading as someone's main form of recreation, though I admit that might be a bit of self-interest on my part. 00:10:24 Main Topic: Best ereaders for 2024 in the US Now let's continue on to our main topic: the best ereaders available for 2024 in the US market. A couple of notes before we start. This is not sponsored. There are no affiliate links here. I'm not getting paid for anything I say here and these are just my opinions and research we are talking about on the show today. Because technology changes so quickly, I want to emphasize that this is current information or current information to the best of my ability as of February 2024, and since I'm based in the US, this mostly applies to the US market. It's definitely a good idea to do your own research when you're buying an electronic device, especially regarding specs, and especially if you have very specialized needs. The information was pulled together with a lot of help from my podcast transcriptionist by combing through user reviews and looking at testing from popular magazines such as Consumer Reports, Wired, PC Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and similar magazines. So I suppose we should start with the obvious question. Why have a dedicated ereader when you can easily read ebooks on your phone or tablet? An ereader does have several advantages that you don't get with a phone or a tablet. For one thing, it's lighter. It's easier to use with one hand, which, depending on the size of your tablet or phone, may be impossible. It also helps with eye strain if you're using a dedicated grayscale ereader. It doesn't have a backlight or it has a much weaker backlight than a tablet or phone will have, and therefore it is generally easier on the eyes, though that can vary from person to person. And it can also help you to focus on reading and minimize distractions, because if you're reading on a tablet or a phone, you might get a lot of notifications coming in from text messages or emails or social media and all that, all of which can pull you out of the book you are trying to read. So if you are a serious reader and you don't mind reading ebooks, it can be definitely worth your while to have a dedicated ereader. So let's look at the most popular model of ereader, which of course in the US and several other countries is the Amazon Kindle. In general, Kindles are superbly integrated with the Amazon ecosystem, but they generally don't work well with non-Amazon or non-Kindle products. I've run into that a few times myself on my Payhip store (which hopefully you will visit soon to get your discounted copy of the audiobook of Ghost in the Razor). I often have to include several different kinds of file formats to work with whatever generation of Kindle people might be using. Additionally, if you use your local library's ebook service and they use Libby, not all Libby books are available for Kindles. A couple of times I've run into that, where I want to check out an ebook from Libby and it turns out that it's not available for Kindle, which is kind of disappointing because then you have to read it on your phone, which defeats the purpose of this episode. For specific Kindle models, the Kindle Oasis seems to be the high end one, and because it has the strongest backlight, it is considered generally best for reading at night. The Kindle Paperwhite seems to be overall the best reviewed and most popular model. It is lightweight. It weighs less than half a pound and it is waterproof. It has strong reviews from many review publications like Wired and Good Housekeeping and has a major fan following. Finally, the perhaps most esoteric Kindle ereader would be the Kindle Scribe. It's the biggest one, designed for note taking. So that's something that interests you that might be worth investigating, though it would be harder to hold the Kindle Scribe with one hand. After the Kindles, probably the most popular model of ereader in the US is the Kobo family. I'm a big fan of Kobo. Most of my books are available on Kobo, and most of them are also in Kobo Plus, their subscription program. In general, Kobos are best for people who do a lot of side loading, which involves taking ebook files and loading them manually onto your device and people who want a lot of customization. The one weakness of Kobo is that we're not entirely sure how well it will work with the various library services. The OverDrive app is being retired in favor of Libby and Kobo relies heavily on OverDrive because Kobo's parent company, Rakuten, used to own OverDrive for a while until they sold it off. So with OverDrive going away in favor of Libby, it's sort of an open question how well Kobos will integrate with library services in the future. Additionally, it's important to note that audiobooks and magazines from Libby are not presently available for Kobo devices. Hopefully that will change in the future, but that is the case right now. For specific models of the Kobo, Eclipsa is considered the best for people who like to take notes and annotate the actual pages, and it has the feature where you can convert handwriting to type text and then export those notes to Dropbox. The Kobo Clara model is the budget option that still has waterproofing, which is different from the Kindle base model, which doesn't. The Paperwhite does. I don't think the Oasis has waterproofing, but the Kindle Paperwhite does. If you are one of those people who likes to read in the bath and you drop your ereader, hopefully it will survive the immersion till you get it out of the water. Clara does have that waterproofing feature. The most popular model seems to be the Kobo Libra and it's best for those who are not locked into the Amazon ecosystem or another specific vendor. It has a very loyal cult following. It has physical page turn buttons, for those who prefer that feature, and it is highly regarded for its screen clarity. It also has very good battery life, which again is one of those strengths of ereaders over phones and tablets, which tend to be charging every other day, especially because the Libra settings allow you to easily shut off the Wi-Fi, dial back the lighting, and so forth to extend the battery life. So Kindle and Kobo are the big ones, but there's a couple others we should address. One of them is the Nook Glowlight, which is the current ereader available from Barnes and Noble. The tricky part with Barnes and Noble is that while they do have ebooks, it is not really a priority for the the company's current management, which has chosen to focus primarily on physical bookselling and which has apparently kept Barnes and Noble from going bankrupt. So good thing. But they're not hugely as interested in ebooks as they used to be. The Glowlight is best for those who have a lot of Barnes and Noble gift cards to use, since that's a popular present or who already have a lot of ebooks from Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately, it does not integrate very well with public library software like Libby. It can be done, but it is a lot of work and not nearly as easy as it is with the Kindle or the Kobos. And there are complaints of system problems like it's difficult to set up or prone to freezing. Another popular but niche ebook reader is the Onyx Boox Tab, which is a tablet with a color E ink display and the picture quality resembles color newspapers (for those of you who are old enough to remember when newspapers had color pictures). It has a loyal cult following, especially with comics and manga readers, and it has good note taking features. However, the big weakness is it is expensive and costs around $600.00 USD. Now, while we've mostly focused on dedicated ereaders, the truth is that tablets can in fact be very good ereaders if you know what you want and you know what you want to use them for. The advantages tablets have over ereaders is that they are more versatile than ereaders. And if, like nearly all of us, you are on a budget and limited what you can spend, which, let's be honest, is true of everybody, it may make more sense to buy a device that can do many things instead of an ereader which can do just one thing. Tablets are also good for those who aren't committed to a single source for their ebooks. You can easily download apps for all of the main ebook stores on an iPad. You can have the Kindle app, the Barnes and Noble app, the Kobo app, and a bunch of library services such as Libby and Hoopla, and you can enjoy them all on one device. Tablets are also good for those who enjoy reading manga or magazines often because if you have a color display, you can see the illustrations that come in a magazine or an ebook that has a lot of color illustrations, like a technical manual or a history book that has a lot of color plates, and the larger screens minimize the need for constantly zooming text. This is something I have done myself. I have a Kindle Fire HD-10 and I also have a bunch of various PDFs I bought from the Pathfinder company from a Humble Bundle and it's a lot easier to read PDFs in color on a Kindle Fire than it is on a dedicated ereader because you can move around the page easily. The screen is big enough you can see most of the text. You can see all the illustrations in color. It's really nice. So let's take a look at the specific families of tablets and nowadays, for all practical purposes, there are three major tablet families. The first and the most successful one is the iPad. Everyone knows what the iPad is. It's the best device for those who want to use it for web browsing, media use, and ebook reading. The iPad Pro models are rather overpowered for normal reading and web browsing and media use. They're also quite a bit more expensive. The base model iPad is the cheapest it's ever been. I think as of right now, as of this recording you get a base model iPad for about $329, which while a lot of money, is still significantly cheaper than has been in the past. And it also is a very capable device that can do everything we've listed above. The second major family is the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which is generally well regarded and is the iPad's chief competitor, and it gets high reports for reliability and performance from all the reviews. You get access to the full Google Play Store so you can install a bunch of apps and you can get all the different ereader apps and all the different library apps on Samsung Galaxy Tab. The third major tablet family is Amazon Fire tablet line. I have one and I'm quite happy with it. It's better for those who play games or watch videos heavily, since it's very strongly tied into Amazon's media ecosystem. So it does make a pretty good portable video player if you are tied into Amazon's Prime Video ecosystem. It's not as convenient for sideloaders, and the biggest weakness of the Amazon Fire is that you only have access to Amazon's curated App Store. You don't have access to the full Google Play ecosystem, which is a lot bigger and more vibrant than Amazon's App Store. Very often you will find popular Android and iOS apps that are available for regular Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy or for the iPad are just not available on the Amazon Fire. So I'd say overall that's it's biggest weakness. It is possible to install the Google Play Store on the Amazon Fire, though, it does take a bit of finagling, and given the rumors that that Amazon is planning to develop its own operating system for its Fire tablets, that option may go away in the future. So that is something to bear in mind. And I thought it would be interesting to wrap up the show by sharing what I personally use for ereading and what my podcast transcriptionist personally uses for ereading, since she did most of the research for this episode and helped me pull it all together. The transcriptionist's favorites that she likes are the Kindle Paperwhite for outdoor reading. It's easier than eyes on the eyes than the tablet screen. She prefers the iPad for magazines and books with lots of color photographs, like cookbooks. For myself, I do most of my reading on a Kindle Oasis that I bought before COVID broke out in 2020, which, given the amount of reading I did during COVID, turned out to be a really good investment. After four and a half years, it's still going pretty strong and I'm hoping to keep on using it for several years to come. For a tablet, I have an iPad that I use pretty regularly. I do some reading on it when I have some with a lot of photographs, though for most color reading I have a Kindle Fire 10 that I got for editing because in my final stage of editing my books, I use it to read the book aloud to catch anything weird and hopefully fix any lingering problems, but it's also really great for viewing full color PDF files because you can load the PDFs on the Kindle Fire and then they show up in your library. It's very easy and convenient and smooth to read them on the Kindle Fire HD-10. So that is what I personally use for ereading. 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 of the show with frequent transcripts on https://thepulpwritershow.com. Speaking of transcripts, I'd like to once again thank my transcriptionist for helping me to do the research for this episode. So 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.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss getting jumped at home, Natalie vs. Gypsy, and the importance of touching grass. *all drama discussed is ALLEGED* Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at my ten favorite scenes to write in 2023. I also discuss how my advertising efforts fared in December 2023. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 182 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 5th, 2024, and today we're going to talk about the favorite scenes I wrote in 2023. We also have an update on how my ads did for my books in December 2023. This is the first episode I'm actually recording in 2024, so Happy New Year to everyone. If you are listening now, however 2023 treated you, I hope 2024 treats you even better. Before we get to our main topics, let's have an update on my current writing projects. My main project right now is Shield of Storms and I am 71,000 words into it. I'm hoping I can get that out in January. It might slip to February. We will see how the rest of the month goes. My side projects right now: I am also working on Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I am 55,000 words into that. That will come out after Shield of Storms, so February or March depending on how long Shield of Storms takes to write. And I am 8,500 words into Wizard Thief, which is going to be the sequel to Half-Elven Thief from December. Not sure when that one's going to come out. I have to write Ghost in the Veils first because I have a recording slot scheduled for that in April that I really need to meet, but so it will probably be late spring, if all goes well. In audio news, the audiobook for Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation is now available at all the usual audiobook stores except Apple, and it should be showing up there later. It's narrated by CJ McAllister, comes to just under 10 hours long, and it's a very good audiobook and worth the listen. So if you have spare credit to or some audiobook money to use, I recommend giving that a chance, and that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. Before we get to the main topic, let's see how ads did in December 2023. Advertising in December is always tricky, both for authors and regardless of what business you're in because every consumer facing business in the world is dumping a ton of money into ads for Christmas and so the cost gets all screwy. But I'm pleased to report some good results for December. First, let's see how the Facebook ads did. For the Ghost series, I got back $4.82 for a dollar I spent, with 16.7% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, I got back $6.42 for every dollar I spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Malison and Dragontiarna, I got back $1.82 for every dollar spent. For Silent Order, I got back $1.98 for every dollar spent. I think for January, I will shut off the Facebook ads for Malison and Dragontiarna and Silent Order and let them rest until the next time and get a Bookbub for one of them. Next up, let's see how my Bookbub ads did. As before, I advertised Frostborn on Bookbub and for Frostborn I got back $6.52 for every dollar spent, with 37% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Complete series of audiobooks seems to do really well on Bookbub. I need to expand my targeting data for the platform so I can advertise Ghosts there as well, and maybe urban fantasy and perhaps science fiction at some point. Finally, let's look at my Amazon ads. This month, I advertised Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, Cloak Games: Omnibus One, and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation on Amazon ads. I'm not entirely sure how Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation did, because the audiobook came out and I'm not entirely sure what the per sale rate for that is going to be, but I think that ad doubled its money, but I'm not entirely sure. For the ones I am sure about, here's how they did. Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire got back $3.06 for every dollar spent, with 18% of the profit coming from audiobook. Cloak Games: Omnibus One got back $3.63 for every dollar spent, with 22% of the profit coming from the audiobook. So, overall I think it is safe to say that my December campaigns went pretty well. So thanks for reading the books, everyone and hopefully we'll have more books to come very soon. 00:04:15 Favorite Scenes of 2023 (SPOILER WARNING FOR REST OF PODCAST) Now our main topic of the week: my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. First, I should note very strongly that this podcast episode will have spoilers for every single thing I published in 2023, so stop listening right now if you're not caught up and you want to avoid spoilers. That said, I thought it would be interesting to look back at 2023 and talk about some of the favorite scenes to write from the past year. As an added bonus, when I prepared this list, it turned out to be 10 scenes, which is convenient since all the news sites from their top ten articles in December and January anyway. Reminder: spoilers, and there are spoilers after this point. And here are my favorite scenes of 2023, in no particular order. Number One: when Nadia bursts through the roof with Delaxsicoria in Cloak of Dragonfire. That was a fun one to write. I used to joke that I originally intended Nadia's character arc to be a bad person, reluctantly and against her will slowly turned into a good one. But what her plot arc actually turned out to be was Catwoman slowing turning into Gandalf. Exploding through the roof of an athletic complex to save the day while riding a dragon was definitely one of the more Gandalf-esque things that Nadia has done. The scene immediately after that where Nadia, Delaxsicoria, Varzalshinpol, and Tarthrunivor all chase Ferrunivar through the skies of southern California was pretty great as well. Number Two: Caina deduces who Kalliope Agramemnos is in Ghost in the Serpent. I have to admit, for a while I knew it was likely that Caina would have stepchildren she didn't know about since she's married to Kylon, who used to strive to be a model Kyracian noble and Kyracian nobles in general tend to regard abstinence as something to be avoided at best, and a disgraceful vice at worst. Not their most admirable character trait. But for a while I didn't know how to write that situation in a way that would be interesting. If the mother died and Caina was left to raise the stepchildren, that would be lazy writing. It would also be lazy writing if everyone got along. There is an apocryphal story that for a while in the 2000s, all these newly remarried middle-aged screenwriters kept pitching sitcoms where a screenwriter, his new younger wife, and his ex-wife all lived in harmony together. The studio executives, who as a class are not always known for their firm grasp upon reality, always rejected these ideas because they knew a majority of the female half of the audience would absolutely hate it. So a scenario where Caina, Kylon, and Kalliope all got along seemed likely equally lazy writing. But what if Kylon and Kalliope couldn't stand each other? And Kylon had further grievances against Kalliope because she had never told him about the children? But Kalliope ends up being in awe of and a little frightened of Caina? So the dynamic is that Kylon and Kalliope can't stand each other, but Caina keeps the peace between them? I thought that might turn out to be pretty interesting to write and Ghost in the Serpents sold enough that I think people agree with me. It's also interesting to write because this is happening while Caina is one of the few people who know how dangerous the Cult of Rhadamathar really is. But more about that to come in future Ghost books. Number Three: Delaxsicoria tells Nadia not to be so hard on herself in Cloak of Dragonfire. The unlikely friendship between Della and Nadia has been fun to write throughout the Cloak Mage series and side stories. From Della's perspective of course they would be friends – Nadia caught the murderer of her uncle, and Nadia is wound up tighter than a spring and doesn't relax very much. Nadia, of course, is a little baffled by this, especially since she doesn't really have any interest in music, which is Della's great passion. So they have a great dynamic, and we'll see more of that in future books. Number Four: Sir Telemachus and Niara kill Mharoslav in Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock. This was fun to write because Mharoslav always got away from or at least got the best of the heroes in their previous encounters, including nearly killing Telemachus in the process. Telemachus decided that he would sacrifice himself in seeking vengeance against Mharoslav and save his friends in the process. Then he met Niara. Niara comes from the General Patton school of warfare – dying for your country is a fine thing, but it's way better to make the other jerk die for his country. Her utter loathing for all wielders of dark magic played into that as well, allowing her to show the way for Telemachus to defeat Mharoslav at last. Number Five: Myotharia versus Xothalaxiar in Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress. I have to admit Myotharia was originally going to die in the final battle of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, but she was such a great character that I felt I could get more narrative mileage out of the poor woman. I always knew from the beginning of the series that Niara was going to have to fight Xothalaxiar for the final time, and Myotharia lost everything to the urdmordar. So I realized that having Myotharia join the fight against Xothalaxiar would give her a sort of emotional catharsis, and help set Niara onto a path other than seeking her own death in battle. Number Six: Thunderbolt. I lucked out with Thunderbolt's character in the Silent Order series. I charted out the rest of the Silent Order series way back in 2021, which is when Thunderbolt was first mentioned in Silent Order: Royal Hand. I originally envisioned her as the sort of classic Star Trek Evil Sentient Computer, the sort of computer Captain Kirk would have to talk into a logic loop every other week. But then in 2022 and 2023 ChatGPT and Bing Chat came along, and they were terrible! For a while, the various insane ramblings of ChatGPT and Bing Chat regularly made the news. So when it was time to write Silent Order: Thunder Hand, I based Thunderbolt's personality off some of ChatGPT's more hilarious public meltdowns, though I left it ambiguous just how insane Thunderbolt actually was and how much of her behavior was just screwing with people to put them off their balance. By the end, Jack March definitely suspected the latter. Number Seven: The Battle of Calaskar. The entire Battle of Calaskar sequence in Silent Order: Pulse Hand was fun to write because I've been thinking about it for ages, since I've had a clear endpoint for the Silent Order series in my head for a while. I liked how it was able to bring back Admiral Stormreel, the Navigators, the Calaskaran Navy, and a bunch of other elements from the series for the Grand Finale. Number Eight: Gareth Figures out the Dragonskull. I also liked the final confrontation with Azalmora in Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods. Azalmora was such a self-controlled and intellectual villain that I wanted her demise to be intellectual, a sort of a moment of revelation that kills her. When Gareth figures out the nature of the Dragonskull itself and the way the xortami twisted it with their dark magic, he's able to use that against Azalmora, and in her final moment she understands the true nature of the Dragonskull, albeit briefly. Number Nine: Riordan MacCormac vs Michael Durst. This was a fun scene to write in Cloak of Embers. Durst had been an arc villain over the last few books. He proudly considered himself a monster, but then he had the bad luck to start working for Maestro, who was just as evil as he was but without any of his self-destructive indulgences. So it was little wonder that Durst found himself dragged into Maestro's orbit, even if he didn't realize what was happening. (The scene where Durst goes to kill Maestro and instead she talks him into doing exactly what she wants was also pretty great to write.) Even if Durst didn't want to kill Nadia, Riordan would still have fought him to the death, because Durst represents a rejection of self-control and responsibility, something Riordan finds utterly abhorrent. And unlike Durst, Riordan knew that a moment of reckoning was coming, which was why he practiced and trained so much with Sir Trandor, while Durst simply went begging to the Dark Ones for power, so the final showdown between Riordan and Durst was quite fun to write. And finally, Number Ten: Rivah and the Magister's Tower. When I plotted out Rivah's heist of Ramarion's tower in Half-Elven Thief, I didn't get too detailed in my outline as to what the inside of the tower would look like. I just knew I wanted it to be as weird and freaky and unsettling as possible, with a lot of Evil Wizard Stuff cluttering up the place. Several people have told me Rivah's venture into the tower was their favorite part of the book, so I think I succeeded. So those were my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. Thanks for reading, everyone. So that's 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. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss their 2023 highlights, and their plans for 2024. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

In this week's episode, I examine my reasoning for putting HALF-ELVEN THIEF in Kindle Unlimited. I also discuss THE SHIELD WAR, my upcoming epic fantasy series. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 179 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December 15th, 2023, and today we're going to talk about why my new book, Half-Elven Thief, went into Kindle Unlimited. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. First up, as you might have guessed from the opening of the show, my new book, Half-Elven Thief, is out. The last book I will publish in 2023 is now available at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, so if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read that for free as part of your Kindle Unlimited subscription. Now that that book is out, my next big project will be Shield of Storms, the new Andomhaim book, which I will be talking about more later in the show. Hopefully that will come out in January. I'm also almost 50,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, and I think that will probably be out in February, if everything goes well. I've also written about 1,500 words of the sequel to Half-Elven Thief, but I haven't decided when that's going to come out yet. It depends on what happens over the next few months and what the coming year brings us. In audiobook news, Dragon Skull: Crown of the Gods just went live as of the time of recording. It is currently on Audible and Amazon. It should be showing up on Apple in another few days and then hopefully it should be showing up on Chirp, Google Play, Kobo, and the various library services in a couple of days after that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects.   00:01:39 Shield of Storms News/ 12 Days of Short Stories Christmas Let's talk a little bit about more about one of those, Shield of Storms. I am now (as of recording) about 11,000 words into it and it will be the first book of my new The Shield War epic fantasy series. If all goes well, it will be the first book I published in 2024 on Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Payhip.  I think the series is going to be about six books long. It might get up to seven, but I'm going to try to keep it at six and will be set in Andomhaim immediately after the events of Dragonskull. So what will this book be about? Well, we will have four protagonists and three chief villains. The protagonists: the first protagonist will be Ridmark Arban, who is returning again. He knows that while the Heptarchy might have been repulsed, someday the Armies of the Seven Temples will attack Andomhaim again and that they will use their stronghold on the Isle of Kordain as a base for a new invasion. Will Andomhaim be ready? Ridmark doesn't know, but if you can find a way to wrest the Isle of Kordain from the Heptarchy's grasp, that might go a long way to deciding the coming war. The problem is that the Heptarchy has more warships than Andomhaim and attacking the Isle of Kordain from the sea might bring disastrous defeat unless he can find another way. The second protagonist will be Lika, the leader of the thieves of Teramis, the chief city of the Isle of Kordain, currently ruled with an iron fist by the Exarch of the Heptarchy. Once Tyrannus was the city of the Corsairs, free men who bowed to no king, and certainly not to the High King of Andomhaim. Then ten years ago Warlord Agravhask, exterminated the Corsair Lords, and the Heptarchy has ruled the Isle of Kordain ever since. Lika needs to protect her people until her father is returned, for her father went to the abandoned halls of the Mountain House to seek a weapon to defeat the Heptarchy. She knows that he will return, even though he left eight years ago. Our third protagonist is Niara Arban, who has returned to Andomhaim far different than the one she left, far different and far weaker. The modern Magistri are weak and feeble and no match for the first Magistri who drove back the ancient urdmordar (at least in her opinion), but the realm still has enemies and Niara will show them what war is really like. And our final protagonist will be Nikomedes. He was once an assassin of the Heptarchy, and now he serves the Master of the Mountain House. He still isn't entirely sure about the difference between right and wrong, but he's trying really hard to find out. All he knows is that the Master will make a better world in the end, and if Nicomedes has to kill a lot of people to make that happen, it will all be for the greater good. Now on to our three main antagonists. The first antagonist will be Seziravorna, the Exarch, the High priestess of the Temple of the Crimson and the head Tarkey governor of the Isle of Kordain. It is her task to make the isle a stronghold of the Heptarchy to prepare for the return of the Seven Temples in the decades to come. But so many senior priestesses and battlemages perished in Agravhask's invasion that Seziravorna sees her chance of complete victory. She will lure the armies of Andomhaim into a final catastrophic battle, and then she will be the exarch not just of the Isle of Kordain, but all of Andomhaim. Our second antagonist will be the Master of the Mountain House. The Mountain House is a dangerous ruin beneath the mountains at the center of the Isle of Kordain, and long the Corsairs have had legend about the mysterious wizard who dwells there and the terrible powers he wields. No one who ever crosses the ruined gate of the Mountain House ever returns, for the master of the Mountain House has been laboring for millennia to prepare a new and better world, even if he has to burn away the old one to make it. Our final antagonist is Urzo and Urzo is…. well….Urzo is hungry. We will find out more about all these characters soon. Anyway, if all goes well, Shield of Storms will be my first book of 2024, hopefully coming out sometime towards the end of January. Before we get to our main topic, I also want to mention our 12 Days of Short Story Christmas. In the lead up to Christmas, I am giving away twelve of my short stories for free through my Payhip store and then will wrap it up with a coupon for a big discount on any of the paid items on the store. So if you go to my website, Jonathanmoeller.com, and look at the top page, there will be many links to the 12 Days of Short Story Christmas and you can get quite a few free short stories. The short stories will remain free on my Payhip store until December 31st, the last day of 2023. So head on over to jonathanmoeller.com and get yourself some free short stories to read during your holiday travels. 00:06:15 Main Topic: Half Elven Thief and Kindle Unlimited Now let's come to our main topic of this week's episode: why I put my new book Half-Elven Thief in Kindle Unlimited. First, I want to say it had a very strong launch, especially for something new and unconnected to any of my previous settings. It wasn't a tie in for The Ghosts or Nadia's world or anything in Frostborn and Andomhaim. It was a completely new setting with completely new characters. The last two completely new things I've tried in the last couple of years were Covering Fire in 2021 and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation in 2023 and Half-Elven Thief had a stronger first day than both of them and came within two copies of having a stronger first day than both books combined. So thank you for reading, everyone. That means Rivah Half-Elven will join Caina, Nadia, Victoria Carrow, and Moriah Rhosmor as one of my Angry Thief Girl characters. The series with Rivah will have six books. I'm going to work on them as I do other stuff in 2024. I did, as I mentioned, put Half-Elven Thief in Kindle Unlimited, which means it's only available on Amazon. I do regret that it's only on Amazon, but once the series is complete, I will take it wide. I think I have good reasons for this decision, which I will now enumerate in the Internet's performed format for discourse: a numbered list. Number one: I did this before in 2020 and it worked pretty well. We all dealt with the great COVID panic in different ways, some for better, some for much worse. Myself, I spent 2020 learning how to use Photoshop and writing an entire epic fantasy series (specifically, Wraithshard). I ended up writing all five Wraithshard books in 2020, and I originally put them in Kindle Unlimited and then phased them over to all the other stores in 2021 once their Kindle Unlimited term ran out. This had a very good result in terms of sales and I'm hoping to have something of a repeat with Half-Elven Thief. Reason Number Two: Amazon and its AI problems. Amazon had a bad problem with ChatGPT over the summer of 2023. Scammers were using ChatGPT to churn out content formatted as ebooks uploaded to Kindle Unlimited and then used click farms to harvest page reads. This caused widespread problems, since the best seller lists on Amazon were filled with this AI generated nonsense and the page payment rate for authors plummeted because so many of the page reads were going to these AI generated click farm books. Amazon finally responded by limiting the number of new books an individual author could publish to three a day. Some of the scammers were uploading hundreds or even thousands of new books every day, so this put a serious crimp in their operations. I had avoided Kindle Unlimited entirely for that time, but since it seems to be stable again, I'm willing to give it another try. We'll see how things go. The third reason why I put the short story The Jeweled Curse wide and not in Kindle Unlimited is because then I can give it away for free on my Payhip store. Everyone gets something. Reason #4: The bad economy. Don't believe what you see on the news about good job numbers or investments and so forth. The real economy is very bad and has been that way for some time for many complicated reasons, so subscription services are a really important part of people's entertainment because the value for the cost is in fact pretty good. That's why nearly all of my books are in the Kobo Plus subscription program, and most of my ebooks and audiobooks are in Scribd or whatever Scribd is calling itself now (I think it's like Everand or something like that) and many of my audiobooks are on Spotify. Even though the money from those particular channels isn't always super great, it does add up over time, and it's nice to have a lower cost option for people on tight budgets. Reason #5: Everything else will stay wide. Indie authors sometimes gets stuck in binary thinking about Kindle Unlimited and wide, but why not both? I write enough that I can put books into both on a pretty regular basis. The Shield War series we already discussed, the new Nadia books, and the new Caina books in 2024 will be wide and not exclusive to Amazon, which is similar to what I did in 2020. Wraithshard was in KU, but Dragontiarna and Cloak Mage were wide, and in 2024 the Shield War, Cloak Mage, and Ghost Armor will be wide, but Half-Elven Thief will be in Kindle Unlimited and I think Sevenfold Sword Online will perform better in Kindle Unlimited than it did wide, so those books will be in Kindle Unlimited as well. So that is my reasoning. Hopefully that makes sense. If you are a wide reader, I apologize for the inconvenience, but once the Half-Elven Thief series is finished, it will go wide and the Shield War, Cloak Mage, and Ghost Armor will also all be wide in 2024. Hopefully we will soon see more from Rivah Half-Elven in 2024 as well. So that is 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 back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. And don't forget also to go to jonathanmoeller.com and get your free short stories from now until December 31st, 2023. 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.

Niara has been a spiritual seeker from almost the cradle up. After discovering a disturbing three-month block of missing time in 1980 from her time as an enlisted airman in the U.S. Air Force – during which she had only the most general of memories – Niara underwent hypnosis to recover some of that missing time and to investigate other earlier memories and strange dreams from her childhood. What she discovered was staggering and life-altering, turning her life upside down for a good many years, launching her into more study and research to find out what had happened to her, why, and in what context, and to heal from the ensuing emotional fallout.As an experiencer of extraterrestrial abduction/contact and strange milab-type experiences while in the Air Force, Niara has gained deep insights into the workings of our world and the roles that different groups of extraterrestrials may be playing in it. Today she works to raise public awareness about the reality of extraterrestrials, to shed light on the machinations of the “deep state” as a veteran and patriot of our United States of America.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss the k-dramas, life updates, and the Curious Case of Natalia Grace. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies I watched over the second half of summer 2023. I also provide writing progress updates and answer reader questions. It's time for a new Coupon of the Week! This week's coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE BLOOD, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE BLOOD for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SEPGHOSTS The coupon code is valid through September 22nd, 2023, so if you find yourself dealing with the Back To School blues, it might be time to get yourself a new audiobook! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Welcome and Coupon of the Week Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 166 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 1st, 2023, and today we're talking about Summer Movie Roundup: Part 2, specifically the movies I saw over the second half of the summer. However, before we address any of our topics or even discuss spreading projects, let's do this week's Coupon of the Week. Long time listeners remember that I used to do Coupon of the Week but I stopped around March 2023 just because I was running out of time. But I have been able to revive it, and this week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Blood as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Blood for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code, SEPTGHOSTS. Again, that's SEPTGHOSTS and the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. That coupon code is valid through September 22nd, 2023. So if you find yourself dealing with the back to school blues, I think it might be time to get yourself a new audiobook. 00:01:15: Writing Progress Updates/August Ad Sales Now let's have an update on writing progress. I'm pleased to report I am done with the rough draft of Silent Order: Pulse Hand, the 14th and final book in my Silent Order science fiction series. As part of my Summer of Finishing Things, I am in currently in the second round of edits for it, and if all goes well, I am hoping it will come out sometime before September 10th. We will see how the upcoming week goes in terms of progress. After that is done it will be full speed ahead on Ghost in the Serpent, the first book in the new Ghost Armor series and the first Caina book I've written in two years. I am also working on the side. I finally have time to do it again. I am finally working on Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling. I'm on Chapter 2 of what will probably be 16. And I'm thinking that will probably be the last book I published in 2023. But we will see how the rest of the year goes. Since it is the end of August and the start of September, let's take a look back at my advertising results for August 2023, like we usually do at the end of the month. For Facebook ads, here's what I got back for every $1.00 I spent advertising the series on Facebook ads. For The Ghosts, for every dollar I spent, I got back $3.12. For Cloak Games, for every dollar I spent, I got back $3.62. And for Frostborn, for every dollar I spent, I got back $4.39. I should also say having a complete series in audiobook really, really helps with the profitability of running an ad. Like for August 2023. It looks like about 38% of the Frostborn revenue came from the audio books, and for Ghosts it was about 36%. Obviously, the challenge with that is that having a complete series in audio book, especially when you write in long series like I do, is an enormous amount of time and expense. It can also take a long time for the audio books to earn back their investments. Like, Brad Wills narrated Frostborn number six through 15 for me and so far, number six and #11 have actually earned back what I've spent on them and #12 is getting close. I would have to double check the math, but for the 18 Ghost Books Hollis McCarthy narrated for me, I think about seven of them have earned back the investment so far. I do have complete confidence they will all earn out within a few years. It also helps very much that for my specific business and tax circumstances, audiobook production does count as a business expense and therefore is a tax deduction. I really didn't do anything with Amazon ads in August because Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire was an Amazon monthly deal in the UK for 99 Pence, which is, you know, about, give or take $0.99 in USD, but I expect I'll do more within September, once Sword of the Squire goes back up to $4.99 USD. And as always, thanks for reading and listening to the audio books. There would be no point in advertising if you did not. 00:04:08: Reader Questions/Comments Before we get into this week's main topic, let's have some questions and comments from readers and listeners. Edward writes in to ask: I just wanted to say how fantastic the end of the Dragonskull series was, although to be honest, I'd like to read about Niara and Calliande meeting for the first time. At the end of the book, it says there was a preview for the last next series in The Last Shield, I can only find on Amazon The Final Shield same thing, just a small mistake. Thank you for your time and especially for all your wonderful books. Thanks, Edward. I'm glad you have enjoyed them all and to answer to your question, that was a small mistake I made. The story is called The Final Shield. For some reason when I was writing it, I kept transposing it as The Last Shield and I had to go back and double check a bunch of times and it looks like looks like I missed a spot, so I'll have to go back and fix that. But the story in question, that is a preview of the Shield War series I will right next year is The Final Shield. In fact, I almost said The Last Shield, but no, it's The Final Shield. Our next question is from Jake who says about the final book of the Silent Order series, bittersweet. I hate it when a series ends. Hopefully there'll be more in the new series. Space holds so many mysteries. Thanks. I'm glad you have enjoyed the series. I'm not actively planning to write anything more in the Silent Order series. But neither am I saying no to the possibility. In the few years, or maybe even a few months, I may have the urge to write some science fiction again. And if I do, I will probably go back to the Silent Order setting, because after 14 books it's a very well developed setting. Our next question is from T who writes in to ask: Hello, sorry to bother you. I've been reading your books since high school. I don't know if I missed the newsletter. Are you not doing any more Ghost series books? Thanks for reading, T. I'm glad you have enjoyed the books and to answer your question, that was a very convenient timing for your question because next week in fact, I am planning on starting Ghost in the Serpent, the next book…first book in the new Caina series. I gave her a bit of a break since I finished writing Ghost in the Sun since 2021 because I wanted to stop and think of it about what I wanted to do next with the character and I last time arrived at the conclusion. So I will be starting on that next week. Our final comment is from Michael who says about Dragonskull: Love the series and just read The Final Shield. Was wondering when you would venture to this storyline. So excited for new series. Have fun writing. I'm so glad I chanced upon your free The Gray Knight Book book. So that started me on my journey of so many of your stories. Thank you for amazing stories that helped me to escape reality sometime. Thanks, Michael. I am glad you have enjoyed books and that they help you to escape reality. Sometimes we can all do that at times. It does reinforce my point that giving away the first book of your series for free is a good idea. Because I've had a lot of people tell me they got into Frostborn when they came across Frostborn: The Gray Knight for free and that sort of drew them into the whole universe of Andomhaim and all the books. There, so that's it for questions and comments from readers for this week. If you have any questions or comments you'd like asked or answered on the show, send them in to me via e-mail or leave a comment on my blog or Facebook posts and hopefully we'll get to it. 00:07:31 Summer Movie Roundup 2: The Sequel So on to our main topic for this week. Summer Movie Roundup 2: The Sequel. Alas, the trees in my yard are already losing their leaves, which means that summer is almost done. That means, however, it's time to do the second half of my Summer Movie Roundup where we rate the movies and TV shows I watched over the summer, and this time we're going to go from worst to best. So I'm afraid starting out with the worst thing I saw in the second half of the summer was Secret Wars. I would describe it as dour, plotting, and very confusing, Marvel's attempt to do a gritty spy novel but with space aliens, and it didn't really work. All the actors gave good performances, especially Ben Mendelsohn, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Olivia Coleman and Emilia Clarke. Don Cheadle is really good as a villain as you know, if you've seen this hilarious Captain Planet parody. But again they seem like characters in a gritty spy novel, not characters in any Marvel TV show about shape shifting space aliens. It was annoying that Nick Fury got the Last Jedi treatment in this. He went from mastermind super spy to a bumbling old man who single handedly causes all the problems in the series. Every single one of them with his incompetence and his effort effortlessly replaced by a competent younger woman. Honestly, if furious, exasperated Skull allies decided to eliminate and replace him with one of their own. You really couldn't blame them. Disney seems to really love this “legacy character is now a loser” storyline since they did it with this and Star Wars and Indiana Jones. If Disney had made Top Gun Maverick: Maverick would have been a bitter old man unwillingly dragged out of retirement by resentful recruits and the movie would have lost $100 million instead of making 1.4 billion. Honestly, it feels like the Marvel Cinematic Universe had a satisfying ending with Avengers Endgame and an excellent epilogue with the Tom Holland Spiderman movies (especially No Way Home) and Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which we'll discuss more in a bit. But most of the TV shows feel like DLC cranked out to squeeze a few more bucks out of a good game fading from the public consciousness. Overall grade: D minus Next up is Battleship, which originally came out in 2012. And I saw this movie for a very idiosyncratic reason. I listened to the Halo Game soundtrack a lot on Spotify, and after it does, after I listened to it, Spotify autoplays and decides to recommend the Battleship soundtrack to me for all reasons. And then I saw that the Battleship movie was on Prime. So I thought, what the heck, let's try it. You could tell this movie had been in production hell for a while. It's ostensibly based on the board game Battleship, and while the connection is there, you kind of have to squint and have a few drinks first to notice it. The movie was as dumb as Secret Invasion, but much more entertaining. The first third of the movie plays like some sort of wacky comedy. Aimless loser steals a chicken burrito to impress the girl at the bar. But it turns out the girl is the admiral's daughter. So he joins the US Navy to impress her. This apparently works because after the time jump, he's a Lieutenant and they want to get married…he wants to get married to the Admiral's daughter, who is, in fact a physical therapist at the Naval Hospital in Hawaii. Except Lieutenant Loser keeps screwing up and threatening his naval career. Then space aliens invade. If you've ever played the original Battleship game, you'll recall that it does not have any space aliens, but this movie does. For some reason, aliens who have mastered interstellar flight and impenetrable force fields land their ships in the ocean and engage in naval combat. All the other senior officers get wiped out, so Lieutenant Loser suddenly finds himself in command. And since the alien ships are impervious to both radar and sonar, the US Navy has to track them using water displacement on a grid, just like the game of Battleship. Meanwhile, the Admiral's daughter is helping a double amputee acclimate to his artificial legs when they discovered that the aliens are preparing to phone home from Hawaii and they need to stop it. That would have been a much more interesting movie :Wounded war veteran is recuperating at a hospital, only aliens invade. Since he is the only one with leadership skills, it's up to him to save the day. It also was interesting in the movie when a group of retirees take a museum ship to fight the aliens since that's the only ship they have left. That also would have been a better movie than this one. Overall grade: D minus but C plus for the bits with the wounded veteran and the retirees, because those honestly were the best parts of the movie. Next up is The Amazing Spiderman 2, which came out in 2014 and which I saw for the first time this year. Honestly I think this movie got a bum deal. It's actually pretty good. You'll recall that Sony panicked and rebooted their Spiderman series after this, which led to the Tom Holland Spiderman series as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But I really think they overreacted. I saw the first Amazing Spiderman movie last year and thought it was so-so, sort of like a gritty reboot for Spiderman. I expected The Amazing Spiderman 2 to be worse based on its reputation, but instead I really liked it. It had an entirely self-contained story arc and had good character growth for both the villains and the protagonists. This was the first version of Harry Osborne who seemed kind of scary and not just like a loser punching bag for his evil dad. So with that in mind, it was nice that Andrew Garfield…the Andrew Garfield version of Spiderman got a proper send off in Spiderman: No Way Home. Overall grade: A minus. Next up is Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3, which came out this year in 2023. It's a rule of thumb in writing and screen writing in particular that if you want the audience to hate a character, show the character being cruel to an animal. Boy, does Guardians 3 lean hard into this! The villain, The High Evolutionary, regularly experimented on animals and raised them to sentience and then killed them if they fail to meet his increasingly insane expectations of perfection. Of course, The High Evolutionary also committed genocide fairly regularly for thousands of years, but that mostly happens off screen. There was a minor Internet controversy about animal cruelty in film when this movie came out, but I think it was overblown because 1. All the animal cruelty is the work of the villain. 2. This is shown to be shown to be unambiguously morally bankrupt. 3. It's mostly shown off screen through montages of worrying surgical instruments, and the results of The High Evolutionary's experiments, a rabbit with cybernetic spider legs and so forth. Anyway, the plot of the movie is that Rocket Raccoon was The High Evolutionary's most brilliant creation, a technical genius without equal and The High Evolutionary wants him back so he can dissect Rocket's brain and use that genius to chase his elusive perfect society. The Guardians team up to rescue Rocket. It's a very dark movie for all the reasons mentioned above, but it has numerous moments of genuine humor, and it achieves an increasingly rare feat :a satisfying ending in a superhero saga. All the characters experience growth in the arcs and achieve resolution, even if it is somewhat bittersweet. Overall Grade: A minus Next up is Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One which came out in 2023, which I actually saw in the theater. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part One is an excellent example of a high quality action movie. I think we can all agree that Tom Cruise is kind of a strange dude. But his devotion to his craft is both inspiring and very unsettling. However, in the early 2010s, he seems to have embraced the role of action star, and he's been running with it, often literally, ever since. The Mission Impossible movies are as implausible as the Fast and Furious series, but they somehow maintain a greater air of verisimilitude. Perhaps Mr. Cruz's insistence on doing as many of his own students as possible really does help with that in this movie. Ethan Hunt's up against an evil artificial intelligence called The Entity. It's up to him to find the two halves of the key that can control the evil artificial intelligence. Many action sequences follow, and I'm looking forward to Part 2, which should come out next year unless the Hollywood strikes affect that. Overall grade: A. And now for the best movie I saw in the second half of the summer: Oppenheimer, which came out in 2023 and which I saw in the theater this year-a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb done in Christopher Nolan's non-linear style. In my opinion, I think Oppenheimer is tied with The Dark Knight and Inception for Nolan's best movie. All the cast gives stellar performances. For a movie that is about historical events, meaning the ending has already been spoiled by default, it has a remarkable degree of tension. It's a great portrait of Oppenheimer, a man who helped build the atomic bomb so the Nazis wouldn't get it first, is later horrified by the consequences of what he has done, and yet still loves his work, loves being known as the father of the atomic bomb, and probably would've done it all over if given a chance. Oppenheimer's nemesis, Lewis Strauss, is usually portrayed as a villain in popular American history. In real life, he did numerous admirable, charitable things that his rivalry of Oppenheimer overshadowed in the public consciousness. But the movie is also an excellent character portrait of Strauss, an egotistical man who is underhanded and very petty but is nonetheless absolutely convinced that he is doing the right thing to serve his country and finds Oppenheimer both personally and morally offensive. Moral ambiguity is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, but Oppenheimer actually does manage moral ambiguity quite well. All the characters have no good choices, only an array of bad ones and the resulting consequences. I would give it an A+, but I think the nude scene was pointless and I don't approve of nudity in film in general. Overall Grade: A, almost an A plus. Final thoughts on the movies I saw this summer: I didn't get around to seeing Barbie, though I don't disapprove of the idea of a Barbie movie and I thought the whole Barbenheimer thing was hilarious, but I don't go to the actual movies all that often. I took a day…half day off to celebrate publishing Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods so I could see Oppenheimer during that half day. I expect I'll see Barbie on streaming at some point. Oh, let's be honest: I'm definitely the Christopher Nolan target demographic and not the Greta Gerwig one, though Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women was excellent. What's amusing is that Warner Discovery released Barbie on the same day as Oppenheimer to screw with Nolan, since Nolan fell out with Warner during the pandemic and went to Universal instead. The goal, obviously was to try and bury Oppenheimer. What actually happened was the Barbenheimer meme. And Barbie made well over a billion dollars, and Oppenheimer did like 750 million by the time of this recording. Some executive at Warner was probably like, “We wanted revenge, and all we got was a lousy billion dollars.” Now I have to admit I am old enough that I can think of a few people I would like to have revenge on, but if God came down from heaven and said, “You can have either a billion dollars or revenge,” I think I would choose the billion dollars. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. 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.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss a troubled fast food experience, Lizzo's alleged misconduct, and TikTok drama. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss naughty Pilgrims, passing out in the club, and we spread a little misinformation (allegedly). Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

1 - Ilay boky tranainy nefa manankery indrindra 2 - Fanatsarana ny fahitan'ny maso 3 - Iza moa Atra 4 - Toro-hevitra fanabeazana ankizy 02 5 - Niara-natsangany ka niara-napetrany any an-danitra ao amin'ny Kristy Jesosy

Full Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svZHjxncXTA Originally aired on 10/22/20 JOURNEY TO TRUTH 2023 CONFERENCE REPLAY Grafton, Illinois May 22 - 25 - GET YOUR TICKET TODAY! https://www.journeytotruthcon.com/ PATREON: Subscribe to our Patreon for Webinars and Bonus Content: https://www.patreon.com/j2tpodcast SUNFIRE FESTIVAL: Aug 25-28 | Tickets available here! https://www.sunfirefest.com/ HOPEWELL FARM CBD: PROMO CODE 'Journeytotruth10' gets you 10% off all cbd products! To Learn More and Purchase Hopewell Farm CBD Products. Crypto payment option now available! CLICK HERE -- https://hopewellfarmtn.com/?wpam_id=1 OUR WEBSITE: https://www.journeytotruthpodcast.com/ DONATE: https://donorbox.org/donate-to-jttp Thank you

This week Nini & Zoy discuss middle school salesmen, who needs Neuriva, and we find out how to get jaundice. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss the apocalypse, the struggles of womanhood, and a silk press that lasts until the end of the world. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss Beyoncé pandemonium, compatibility, and the Chr*s Br*wn curse. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123. HAPPY BHM!!!!!!!!!

Spędziłem w mediach 30 lat. I... czas na eksperyment. Wszyscy powtarzają, że to będzie rok AI, także w mediach. W Voice House mamy okazję jako pierwsi przetestować technologię sztucznej inteligencji z wykorzystaniem mojego głosu. Z odpowiednim tempem, intonacją, emocją, pauzą, oddechem, przecinkiem, myślnikiem, kropką! WAŻNE - redakcja przygotowuje profesjonalny, dziennikarski materiał, technologia zamienia go na podcast premium z wykorzystaniem mojego głosu. To świadomy eksperyment, który pozwoli nam wspierać pracę Zespołu nowoczesną technologią. Sprawdźcie jak wyszło.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss Bayou Classic, the meaning of Kwanzaa, and Nini is given her 15th reason. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!

This week Nini & Zoy discuss cuckold fetishes, shrooms in your blood, and the pair are surprised by a short king! Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss neapolitan flavors, learning to relax, and the death of a clown. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

In this episode, Kashara has a conversation with her friend, Niara Perry, about her journey to making peace with her emotions and gender identity. This conversation also touches on navigating our mental health while building careers.To purchase Niara's book, Mourning a Stranger, visit her website, www.niaraperry.com.If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe to Kashara's Five-Minute Letters. These are personal letters sent from her straight to your inbox every 1st and 3rd Friday. Stories, bits of lessons learned, and reminders for self-care and self-compassion included.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss that time of the month, teens on tik tok, and Zoy redacts a huge statement. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss the housing crisis, Dollar Tree beef , and a certain celebrity's blackness. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

"Alexa!!! Play Said Sum!" That's def the energy behind the latest episode of "Late Nights W/ Scorpiana" . After being gone for almost a year, Niara has decided to return with lots of energy, life updates, and hot topics.  --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/scorpiana/support

This week Nini & Zoy discuss living with siblings, beefing with stranger teens, and dining while black. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

Oi, angulers! Um episódio dolorido. Não teria como ser diferente. Abrimos o #141, falando da revogação da decisão que permitia o aborto nacionalmente nos Estados Unidos. Depois, repercutimos o caso da menina de 11 anos e de Klara Castanho e falamos sobre o terror que é ser mulher ou menina nessa sociedade patriarcal brasileira. Por fim, analisamos do ponto de vista jornalístico, esse vazamento de informações e violação de direitos. Dá pra chamar isso de jornalismo? Enfim… sirva-se! Edição e mixagem: Tico Pro - Laranja Preta Produtora - Indicações do #141: - Em casa com os Gil - Prime Video (série) - Sempre foi sobre nós: relatos da violência política de gênero no Brasil - organização de Manuela D'Ávila (livro) - Histórias de morte matada contadas feito morte morrida - Niara de Oliveira e Vanessa Rodrigues (livro)

This week Nini & Zoy discuss Kevin Samuels' demise, faking the big O, and a ghost disrupts Nini's peace. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss great Disney movies, ruining the vibe, and serving your country. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss cats vs. dogs, ATM skims, and bringing in a third. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

This week Nini & Zoy discuss the great mushroom war, cranes in the sky, and wanting your sister's man. Submit your questions and confessions to madgirlsconfess@gmail.com. Follow us on social media: @ZOYAVELI and @Niara_123.

Enjoy an interesting interview with Ms. Darlene Niara. She shares her growth as a dancer and her struggles with colorism and her steps to finding balance. Listen as she shares the importance of surrounding yourself with positive energy and stepping outside of your world to become the best version of yourself! 

Enjoy an interesting interview with Ms. Darlene Niara. She shares her growth as a dancer and her struggles with colorism and her steps to finding balance. Listen as she shares the importance of surrounding yourself with positive energy and stepping outside of your world to become the best version of yourself!