I can't do this every week but know that every book sale is important to me (and art sale). So this is observed book sales over the past few weeks. Since I last did this (and no, Ketamine Addicted Pandas and Dark Roast haven't returned to me yet). This covers both amazon and godless. It isn't definitive, just what I notice. 

Stara has really been getting some love. This is one year after I re-issued the book. In my godless birthday post I detail re-issuing Stara and releasing Ghetto Super Skank. There's even a review over on amazon (where you can buy the paperback). 

There's hardly a week that goes by where Broccoli doesn't sell. I guess a lot of you want to find out what it is like to go swimming in a sea of body fluids. And who could blame you. If you would like paperbacks, I have copies that I can post out. Contact me on social media. Or you can get them from amazon or lulu. 

I was enjoying my bank holiday weekend last week so I didn't get a chance to blog. I did make some random page updates though. I had pictures of the Penis Bird masks and did finally start the long promised censorship guide. Both of those pages are intended to be updated as needed. Also last weekend I had an interview with the lovely Mar Garcia, which I will post later on today.

Two hours after the interview, I had my hair cut off. So now there's a video circulating with my long locks in pigtails and then a few hours later I had them chopped off. Long hair is lovely when it is in good condition. Mine wasn't. The hair split about half way up the shaft (hair shaft you pervs) and it was awful looking. I will never be getting a haircut from Groupon again. I found a new, lovely hairdresser. When I booked the appointment, she had a quick look at my hair and said she was confident she could handle it. Then I went back last Saturday to actually have it cut. She asked how much I wanted cut, I replied about 12 inches, more if needed. She started to say, "That'll take it into a bob," and then cut herself off after looking and said, "I can see it needs it." When my hair was held up afterwards I could see just how bad it was. So all the damage has been cut off. I'm not sure if I'm going to grow it out again. I plan on having highlights put in within the next few months and will decide then. I like it at this length. I don't have a picture of it without it being straightened but if I get some Frizz-ease or some curl cream, it is going to look great. 

Of course, Tuesday morning I was settling Jerk Face just before leaving for work when I suddenly came over ill. It is always the way with tummy bugs but I made it to the toilet where I can assure you the chunks of orange in my vomit were sweet potatoes and not carrots. I hate carrots. I worked from home for Tuesday and Wednesday. To be honest, and looking back, after some feedback, I should have just phoned out entirely on Tuesday. I'm still feeling the effects of god knows how many years of medical gaslighting. I know I'm not the only woman in this situation. I don't have the time today to go into medical gaslighting and the impact it has held on my life and on society in general. Plus there's population groups still experiencing it. 

There's one week until payday. I'm a bit worried about my bank account, but overall, and considering I didn't even have a full paycheque this month (I only started my new job a week and a bit into the month), I think I've done well. There's groceries for the week. There's gas and electric. Bills are paid. That 72 pouches of cat food I bought for the Princess and Jerk Face and the eight boxes of Gourmet Gold Senior Pate I bought for Jess still have one week left. Plus that bag of Iams Senior still has another two weeks. So I was able to accurately guess how much I would need for one month (there's other things I bought as well, but some of them last longer than a month, like 16 rolls of toilet roll). I am dreading the new phone bill after our upgrades at the beginning of the month. But I won't have to put a down payment towards a phone or buy really expensive trainers this upcoming month. I will need to buy some of my son's birthday presents though. Hoping by the end of the summer to have that much desired stability (still need to budget paying back debts, but once that's calculated, I'll have stability, then once they're paid off, I can start a savings account). 

And now, I have a ton of stuff to do. I will get that interview posted up before the end of the day. I don't want to make any promises, but I do have releases planned for every month for the rest of the year. Snow White is calling me though.

​If you don't know my writing process, I often settle on keeping one or two albums on repeat (decided while I'm hacking out the first thousand words or so by listening to random playlists, I may not even like the type of music). With Snow White, due to the length, I've settled on two bands with their entire discography. I dreamt of one of the bands last night. The vocalist had managed to get me lost in a underground railway system. It wasn't Liverpool's. It only has four stations and basically goes around in a circle. It is super easy to navigate. It didn't look like London's Underground. I've been on that enough times to know my way around. A friend mentioned the New York Subway makes no sense, so maybe it was that? I've never been on the New York Subway. But so many cities all over the world have these systems, so it could have been any of them. Wherever it was, it was very busy, spring/summer time and daylight. I didn't step into any disused tunnels (even Liverpool has those and some old stations, the local paper covers them sometimes) in my search to find the vocalists I was separated from. And he waited for me. 

I keep promising a page with some of the things I say to get around social media censorship and I just don't have the time today. I have a story I really need to try to finish, I need to straighten my hair (hair appointment next week, so hopefully some magic will happen and it will become easier to manage), need to clean the bathroom, do the ironing, get my lunch ready for tomorrow, etc etc (and sometimes on a Sunday evening my son will watch a film with me, I bought popcorn). 

I won't be doing a weekly review either this week, or going through what books have been selling like I did last week. But thank you for picking up books and if you leave a review, thank you for that too. 

I will get a handle on this schedule thing and once I do, time management will become so much easier. At least the art commission I'm working on is now at the ugly stage (when the base colours go down but aren't blended or shaded properly - lots of highlights in this one so there is some shading going on). 

Next week is a Bank Holiday weekend. Hopefully, weather dependent I'll be attending a party, then I have an interview with Mar Garcia (times have changed since my first interview with her, that one was a few weeks before I wrote 56 Seconds, so it wasn't even thought of then), then a hair appointment, then (depending on Aldi) I'll be cooking a turkey dinner. So another pretty easy weekend, minus the turkey dinner bit. 

Finally. As promised my #readerhack post. 

So I guess there's this "reader hack" circulating TikTok. It is less a reader hack and more theft. From what I can gather, Amazon has a shitty-ass return policy when it concerns kindle books. People purchase the kindle book, read it and return it within the time limit. This is literally taking money out of author's pockets. 

Most of this is based on my own experience, so an opinion piece. I know I'm usually a cheerful and happy person but this gets dark. I don't believe in this false-positivity shit that does the rounds (seriously, positive thought can only be complete once you take the actions to ensure a positive outcome, as someone who meditates a lot, and has been meditating since my late teens/early 20s, there's no magical manifestation meditation that will magically fix things, you need to take physical action and a lot of times, the first actual step in positive thought is acknowledging something negative, positive thought and manifestation could form another post when I get a chance). Life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes life is hard and no one is immune to it. The positive thought people are outright delusional in their denial of reality (I've had to deal with more than a few of these types and well, maybe positive thought will tell them they can fly and they'll jump off a fucking bridge). 

The average author is not rich. The average author works another job, either full time or part time. Sometimes these day jobs are rather shitty (I have experience there and love my new job so much more because of it, and that would have happened before the ten pointless years because I had a very shitty job in college and my first year of university). Over the pandemic, some people decided to take their mental health issues out on me as if that is acceptable (it isn't). As a result I lost a lot of freelance clients with the stress and public telling off from someone incapable of reading and thinking and then processing what is being said. Royalties were why we and my son ate. I'm going to be paying off the debt that situation put me in all through the rest of this year and into next. Nor was it the first time something like that has happened (up until early 2018, it was such a common occurrence throughout my entire life, including childhood, that not a week went by with at least two incidents of this sort of drama, I guess after early 2018 I started to grow complacent as these incidents don't occur all that often anymore, but now, they're more devastating when they do). 

My situation was extreme (and I'll post about that around the anniversary of handing in my final degree assignment, so grateful for the legal changes over here that freed me so four years later I landed my dream job). But speak to authors, artists, musicians, film makers, dancers, etc. Most of us aren't doing this full time. And we have families to feed. Even if we didn't, taking our hard-earned money is costing us. After loosing my clients, I was on the verge of eviction (no, the government does not pay for housing over here). So even if someone is single, no pets, no house plants and entirely alone, they still have living expenses. And if they're homeless, they have even more expenses with a lack of cooking and washing facilities, maybe paying for a night in a hostel, etc (I'm sure there's more). A homeless person would at the very least need to somehow hold onto a laptop and then find an internet connection to publish a book. 

At the very least, authors are investing their time into creating your entertainment (as is everyone else working in the arts and entertainment). Self-published authors have further expenses - there's editing, cover art, layouts (I know I do my own art and layouts, but most don't). Then there's marketing, which can be rather expensive. A lot goes into creating a book and there's people beyond the author that need to be paid. 

When I first moved to Liverpool a creep tried to convince me that it was okay to pirate whatever he wanted because no one makes money off it so no one looses. And he wonders why I avoid him. I literally get paid from my art. Sometimes it was the only way I was getting paid. If I'm not getting paid, I'm not paying the rent or the council tax or any of the other bills, I can't afford food or clothing. But he had a penis so therefore he was right (thank the gods again for the legal changes which mean I can now phone the police on these creep losers and thank god for my new job so I can start looking presentable again and not attract them in the first place, which may not necessarily be expensive but is when you have nothing). He was the type of person that thought authors puked out novels in a day or so. Even when a book is a quick write, there's still more going into it. 

​I'm going to use Name Dropping With Hayden as my example because I self-published this one. 56 Seconds remains my quickest write, but that might be more to do with the fact that when I sent it to the publisher on 01 April 2018, my next step was to tell them I have no idea about the cover art so they designed a few covers without my input. I couldn't decide between two so the ever-lovely Crabes picked the final one. NR even did the back of book blurb. Name Dropping with Hayden took about as long to write as 56 Seconds. 

Once Name Dropping with Hayden was done, I had to go through it myself, slowly and carefully because I couldn't afford an editor. I think I left it to rest while I finished off Stef and Tucker 4: Secret. That took a few days and I've just mentioned that I could not afford an editor. I was so poor in late December/early January that not only could I not afford an editor, but I was struggling to afford even basic food (again, for the people at the back, the government does not fucking pay my goddamn way, I have a few ideas where that misconception comes from and let me just say that anyone that actually believes the government is paying someone's way is so far beyond stupid that it would be unbelievable if I didn't have to deal with these idiots, my remaining parent is one of these people before someone says "Bank of Mom and Dad").

Name Dropping with Hayden was my light during this dark and hungry time (although I wasn't as hungry as when I was in college and university and not allowed to eat). It made me happy to write it. If you see my blog post from last night, you can view my promo video for it. This past Christmas was absolutely horrible. Due to when it was released, I haven't received a royalty payment for it yet, but I can promise you that the money will probably go on my son's birthday to help make up for a shitty Christmas (I had lots of these and was hoping my son would never experience one, but people and their drama and incessant need for attention and need to blow up at you if they misinterpreted something). If I didn't find a new job, that upcoming royalty payment would have gone entirely on the rent. 

After me editing my own book (this is really bad practice to any new authors or anyone thinking of writing and self publishing a book, if you are going through a publisher, a good publisher will either in-house edit or hire someone or in the case of Death's Head Press who published Becoming, hire your favourite editor, although I don't think they did that on purpose). I had to do the layout. While I wasn't getting much work in over the later lockdown I learned how to self publish (I am not the sort of person who likes to waste time, however, if you needed downtime during the pandemic for your mental health, especially to ensure you don't project what you feel onto others, I totally respect that, it takes a lot of different people with different personalities to make the world go around). By this point, I'm pretty confident with basic layouts (once I sort out The Daisies That Open at Midnight, We Gave the World Synthpop Dreams and That's Where All The Magic Is, I'll be learning why Becoming was such a nightmare for Death's Head Press). So that took a few hours. 

Once the layout was done, I needed to make a cover. Now, I've been to art school. However, that was a long time ago and digital drawing tablets weren't a thing back then. Over the first lockdown, before work arrived for the day or before I started working I would practice on my drawing tablet. This time though I was having difficulties with the tablet so the cover didn't turn out how I wanted it. It is nowhere near as bad as the cover for Ghetto Super Skank but it didn't look how I wanted and that's important to me.  It took time for me to learn how to draw and then how to draw digital and I'm still not very confident with it. The cover design took me about one week. 

Once the cover was done, I had to convert the files. I'm lucky I had the internet to send them in (my internet bill was always late during this time) to godless and upload to amazon (if you want the paperback, get the ebook from godless, theres instructions on how to upload it to your kindle). So the only expense here was my time, my electricity and my internet bill. But you know, no paying the internet could have meant I wouldn't have been able to send it and upload it, which could have meant homelessness further down the line. I was on that much of a knife-edge while writing Name Dropping With Hayden that it could have happened (thankfully I have some great friends, including one who helped pay the rent during this time). 

Back to the creep, is he paying for anyone's living expenses that he's stealing from? I doubt it. He's probably still out there preaching how stealing art and entertainment isn't hurting anyone. But it is hurting people. I mentioned the positive thought people at the top of this post, people like these #readerhack thieves are another form of this delusional behaviour. They are out there denying reality. 

It isn't like you can't get free or cheap books. Amazon do kindle unlimited subscriptions and a lot of stuff is on there and the authors are still getting paid (pennies from what I hear, but I only have one book enrolled in it that I have self published and can't say it has benefited me, when I get the chance to give that one a new cover it is going on godless). On this website I have two free Era Two stories and two free Chester and Lester stories, plus two (or is it three?) of my university assignments. I'm always looking for reviews and will send out advance ebook copies for a review. Fuck, a few months ago, I would have sent you Name Dropping With Hayden and Stef and Tucker 4: Secret to beta because I couldn't afford an editor. I'm not the only author that has free titles available. And where I don't have stuff for free, each book in the Stef and Tucker series and Tainted 07/The Human Connection are 50 cents each on godless. 

If you want people to keep making art, you need to actually pay us. Stop stealing from us. Authors have to give money back to amazon with each return. Most of us can't afford that. 

​As an author, if you're sick of amazon ripping you off, get on godless. I can sell my books for cheaper on there than on amazon and still make more money, which a few months ago was the difference between going hungry or not. It isn't just extreme horror. My bizarro and experimental stuff does a Hell of a lot better on there than my extreme stuff. It isn't just self-published authors on there. Talk to your publisher about godless if they haven't already signed up. 

As a reader, you should be on godless. Look at some of these books:

• Puritea by Lucy Leitner 50 cents (I haven't started this one yet)
• Spunk of the Sasquatch also 50 cents (with a title like that you know it is going to be good) 
• Laser Slut, 99 cents instead of $1.99
• The Sexual Avenger 50 fucking cents

This is just me picking books from the best seller's list. But as you can see, they're hardly bank breaking. Download the app and switch on the notifications and you won't miss anything on it. 

​This post is much longer than I intended. I have to cook dinner, then I have an art commission and a book to finish writing so I guess my Censorship Guide is going to have to wait. Seriously stop stealing books or music or films. Do you steal shoes or cars? 

This past week has been my godless birthday week. I mentioned a few weeks ago during the godless one year anniversary that I was on godless early and so I was. 
My first two books on godless were Ghetto Super Skank (which I found on my computer when I switched from the old Windows machine to this lovely refurbished MacBook) and a re-issue of Stara.

In those early days, much like the rest of the crowd I thought godless was all about extreme horror and stuff that had been banned from amazon. I honestly thought Stara would do the best on it and then I wouldn't have anything more to send in. I was most surprised when Ghetto Super Skank exceeded Stara's sales. Then the reviews came in (honestly I can use more of these, please review my books) and Ghetto Super Skank seemed to be loved while Stara had no reviews (it has one on amazon now, yay!). 

After the success of Ghetto Super Skank I started to release more books on godless during the upcoming months. I think Stef and Tucker One and Two, along with the ebook release of Broccoli followed next. 

Then I started to do godless exclusives with The Midnight Pumpkin Fucker in September and The Snow Queen coming along in December. Between those two I released Stef and Tucker 3: The Flowering Penises on godless before it hit amazon as part of the 31 Days of Godless.

November saw my entry into the Scumbags family with The Scratching Post. Over the Easter weekend I plan on turning my notes for Scumbags Season Two into a story, or at least a draft of one. I'm so excited about this second season. It is going to be bigger and better. 

January saw my first semi-extreme (yes I know Drew, who runs godless doesn't like that word, but I don't really have anything else to describe some of my stuff, maybe extremely disgusting for this one) book since writing Becoming with Name Dropping with Hayden (Kord, the demonic shapeshifting demon from Mars and Hayden have a lot in common), released early on Godless but paperbacks are available on amazon. Unfortunately I was having trouble with my drawing tablet and the software so the cover didn't come out how I wanted (and the tablet is sorted out now). Name Dropping with Hayden is more disgusting than it is extreme. And it was so much fun to write. I was giggling while writing it. In fact, in the promo video for it, I was trying not to giggle. Scroll to the bottom for the video. It is funny. I have plans for the next Stupid Things Extreme with a possible release date in September (still getting used to the new schedule plus I still have shopping to do and need to have my hair sorted out, etc.). And that one is Girlboss. I do have an outline and some vague notes, it is just a matter of writing it. 

February didn't just see Stef and Tucker Four: Secret it also saw the release of the Call Me Hoop anthology (that's all the Scumbags Season One books together). Call Me Hoop is even available in paperback. There was some funny business between amazon and the UK edition. The picture of the book and possibly the description as well was for (probably drop-shipped) fast fashion pink crop tops. As a result of that, there's now a pink Call Me Hoop tee-shirt, which I unfortunately do not own. 

I had a surprise release in March with Tainted 07/The Human Connection for the godless one year anniversary. Please review this book. If you guys like the format of two short stories together I'll release another one for Christmas and maybe for Halloween as well (these won't be Era Two stories though). This one is exclusive to godless and both stories are part of Era Two (I'm working on a Sassy story now, I'm not sure when Gemini will re-appear, she's pretty much what Sassy would be if he were a woman). 

This weekend I plan on hopefully finishing a release for May. It isn't quite a Super Things Extreme because no one told me something stupid but it does have some very stupid behaviour combined with a very judgemental attitude. I've been calling it Sex God: Ultimate Pleasure Machine but the title has already changed once. 

If I'm really lucky and get this schedule thing down then I'll have Stef and Tucker 5: Mile High ready for June and a Chester and Lester Christmas in July Special ready for July. 

I do have a few other things to write, including that Sassy focused Era Two story and my Scumbags story. I can't wait to pick up Snow White again. I'm currently planning to release it in novelette length segments over the course of 2023 but that can change. 

Please navigate to the books section for detailed descriptions of each of these books. 

And I don't think the first week of April can pass without me mentioning 56 Seconds. 01 April 2018 was when I sent it to the publisher (it wasn't released until August of that year). 

If you follow my social media I know I've promised to post about this god-awful #bookhacker thing that has been doing the rounds on TikTok, I'm tired tonight and it is getting late. But I will get to it this weekend. Plus my censorship guide. 

So what a busy week for sales. Thank you so very much. I don't have time to check that often, but I've been keeping an eye on amazon because I'm waiting for Ketamine Addicted Pandas and Dark Roast to be unpublished so I can upload the new version (the publisher is waiting on amazon).

I've noticed Becoming is picking up while I was on there. This poor book was published just before everyone started to panic buy toilet roll so sales started strong and then just dropped. It is an important Era Two book. I know I always link to the paperback, but it is available for kindle as well. But kindle looses the formatting. If you like the Era Two stories, make sure you check out 56 Seconds as well (I have no idea if that is kindle or paperback, but you can type Dani Brown 56 Seconds into amazon to find it). 

I'm not sure if these sales are connected to the release of Tainted 07/The Human Connection. Those are both Era Two stories in one book, but only on godless. It is usually a bit harder to work out what is selling on godless compared to amazon, but it looks like The Midnight Pumpkin Fucker has been getting some love too. 

If you enjoy The Midnight Pumpkin Fucker, be sure to check out The Snow Queen. I finally wrote my emotionally detached experimental piece but with a Boxing Day release, it went below the radar. I will get Snow White to you as soon as possible. I have some other writing to see to first, including summer releases, another novel I'm working on and Fucking Scumbags Burn in Hell Season Two. 

Today is my Godless one year birthday. So my books have been on godless for one year today. It started with Ghetto Superskank and a reissue of Stara. I honestly thought Stara would do better than Ghetto Superskank but you lot have surprised me and Ghetto Superskank does so much better. It is probably the weirdest book I have written and I'm so excited that people are enjoying my weirder and more experimental books more than my extreme books (yes, I know Becoming is extreme, but that one is a bit special in that the narration is so experimental that even with graphic details of every act of violence, it shouldn't really count, hence promoting the paperback more than the kindle version). 

I have prints of some of my art on Redbubble. I don't have much on there. Not enough to get much notice through the site (apparently you need 60+ images) so I have email notifications for when I sell something on there. You lot love the penis birds (or Richard Gizzards because censorship). I had a few emails with products sold this past week. 

If you are enjoying my books, please leave a review. I do check these and sometimes use them in marketing. I can't really use goodreads but I can check reviews and take a screenshot. 

If you read my last post, you would have learned that I was paid. Being paid meant I had to go shopping, which wasn't fun but with my life not being stable for so long, there were things to buy. 

First stop, me and my son went to EE to finally upgrade our phones. As I'm not home during the day, I can't sit there and wait for parcels so we couldn't do this online. And I have carpal tunnel (in both hands) so wanted to feel both an iphone mini and a regular iphone in my hand to see which one felt more comfortable. We spent about an hour and a half sorting out these new phones. The guy in the shop then explained there's an upgrade any time on both, with a free upgrade after 12 months in front of my son. I'm the type of person who uses a piece of tech until it is well past its use-by date (unless I absolutely hate it) so this upgrade anytime thing is of no interest to me. My son is excited about it though. But we both have new phones now. 

After that, I had to get myself some trainers as the Converse I typically wear are not good for walking to work. Sketchers was across from the phone shop so that was easy. I hope these last a good few months because they were expensive. My knee hurts from yesterday's walking in Converse so I skipped dancing this morning. 

Then lunch. We went to Five Guys (trying to word that so you lot don't make perv jokes) for the first time since before the pandemic and it was amazing. 

We discovered our favourite sweet shop is no longer open so we tried a new one but found it expensive. I still bought Fruit Loops to have for dinner though and my son bought some Sour Patch Kids (there is a huge difference between the American and UK versions of both Fruit Loops and Sour Patch). I'm hoping B&M have Twizzlers in stock next time I go in because I was not paying those prices when B&M does a bigger back for half the price. 

By this point my son just wanted to get home and set up his phone. His friends kept texting during our lunch as well. But he needed school shoes very badly. I had a 10% off voucher for Marks and Spencers so while we were in there I made him get some clothes as well. He was too fed up to pick out another shirt so we'll have to go back out next month. But he has clothes now and his old school shoes are in the bin. They did last a fairly long time but there were lockdowns between buying them and throwing them out. 

Last stop was the art shop for some fineliners. They didn't have many in stock but I have enough for the commission I have. My son was complaining the entire walk home because he wanted to get home and sort out his phone. 

​Once we arrived home, I was meant to clean before delivery of a tumble drier. But the tumble drier arrived before the cleaning. It is much cheaper to run than the heat. 

I did get the cleaning done though. I'm starting to get used to this schedule. It is nice knowing I will always be in work at certain hours because I can build everything else around that instead of working when something comes in plus dealing with a day job. I always get paid the same-ish amount (this first month, I didn't work a full month plus if I get sick or something, I don't want to eat into my holiday time because I'll need that when the Housing Association re-do the kitchen and if I need surgery for whatever health problem it is that I have). That makes it much easier to budget and takes away a massive amount of stress. 

The blue one is the gas. On Friday, the day it peaks, we both had showers, didn't use the cooker at all but ran the heat mainly to dry clothes. On Saturday, in the morning we ran the heat to try to dry the clothes in the morning (they didn't dry) and I had a bath, plus we put it on in the evening because it was a bit chilly. The yellow one is the electric. On Friday, I ran two loads of laundry and used the vacuum cleaner. On Saturday, I did one load of laundry and used the vacuum cleaner again, plus ran the tumble drier for three hours. 

Although my life isn't exactly where I want it, it is definitely on the right track. I won't go into what the ten years before 2018 were like (I've done that so many times before and I'll only be repeating myself again when the anniversary of handing in my final degree assignment comes up in about six weeks) or my entire life up to handing in my degree assignment (really, those ten years were totally 100 per cent pointless as it was all stuff I had been through before). Life changed for me in late December 2017, just after the #metoo movement. I was finally able to tell people to fuck off and I told them. Some creeps thought six months single was long enough and that I should voluntarily step back into that cycle. So I told them to fuck off and phoned the police. But that's not what this post is about. This is a post to thank everyone who has helped me get to where I am today. 

Yesterday was payday. I haven't sorted out all of my bills yet (some are easier than others) but I have groceries. Tomorrow I will try to sort out the rent and me and my son are going to town. We can't afford something nice to eat after getting much needed school shoes for him and trainers for me (Converse just aren't suitable for walking a long distance every day, no, even if I had a car, I would not drive it, have you seen rush hour!?!) and hopefully new phones but we will be getting McDonald's (his choice, I want Taco Bell) and maybe we'll bring Cinnabon home. My income is hopefully high enough (cost of living increase and those effing gas and electric prices) but I did not work a full month this month so things are still really tight (and I don't plan on buying shoes and phones every month, there's an offer on the phone my son wants that runs out in a few days and mine is free with contract other wise I would wait another month). It'll take a few months to work out a proper budget once what needs to be sorted out NOW is sorted. And then I will pay off the rest of my debt as fast as I can before opening a savings account (there's something about a work pension, although I will probably open a separate one at some point in the future). I also have to sort out a major mess that built up in those ten years (it came to light in 2014/15, but the idiots around me combined with the moronic "help" wouldn't let me sort it then and now it is a very expensive problem, luckily I have kept documentation and when I'm filing about some drama or someone taking their NPD/BPD/C-PTSD, it is always one of those three, out on me, it involves that one very expensive problem). 

But I have a stable job and I don't think I would be here right now without the help I've received since late December 2017/early January 2018. Although a full time job was never part of the plan, it just sorta happened (I hadn't really considered it until I saw one that I wanted to apply for, at the time I was setting out my life plan freelancing in secret while building up a business -also in secret, was my only option). My son is old enough now for me to be working in the field in which I'm qualified to work in anyways and my mother passed away ten years ago this year (the life plan was thought of two years before I had my son, and when my mother was alive, freelancing in secret was to cater for her mental health symptoms as I wasn't allowed to leave my bedroom other than to have a boyfriend, which I can assure you really sucked and people wonder why I refuse to date, why yes, I am still completely repulsed by the very idea). 

Even before my MacBook fundraiser I was getting random Paypal surprises. And those got me out of some very tight spots. This reduced my stress, allowing me to write 56 Seconds (and the creeps allowed me up until I finished Becoming before they started creeping). It also allowed my son to see that people aren't bad after a lifetime of drama and people not letting me work/kicking off drama for no reason at all/etc. 

Without the MacBook I would have never be able to freelance. I had tried freelancing before when my last Windows laptop (it was a cheap ebook thing that lasted long past it should have) was new and I was working a day job that had me in tears daily but someone's incessant need for attention and drama. I wouldn't have been able to start self-publishing either. And I definitely would not be selling prints of my art. Book sales, especially on Godless have helped me escape some tight spots this past year. Art sales helped with Christmas (I still don't have enough art on Redbubble to really see much income from it). 

Without freelancing and possibly my published books, I would not have gotten the job. It doesn't matter how great my degree is, I'm pushing 40 and lost so many years of my life that I needed experience that I would not have gotten if it weren't for the help and support over these past four years. 

Then when I accepted the job offer, because up to this point (or payday) life has been very hand-to-mouth for me so I knew I would have to rely on the kindness of others to see me through that first month (and possibly the second because I didn't know if I would be paid or if it would be withheld for the first month), I had to ask for money. This covered not just groceries but clothing for work. None of my clothes fit. 

I am still working out a schedule but a regular steady job offers more of a work/life balance than freelancing ever did. Plus there's already been a great reduction in my stress levels knowing that once I get all the direct debits sorted out that my bills will be paid and I won't be worrying about whether I have any work coming in to cover something. No more invoicing or chasing up payments (except royalties for books with publishers, guess you can't win them all). My son's anxiety has decreased as well. Even he knows that nothing in life is free. He's also seen that education is not pointless and is talking positively of the future (his future) for the first time ever (seriously if someone's mother has a degree and wants to work in the field in which she is qualified to work in, let her and especially don't come up with other things she could be doing or force her into low skill/low paid work in front of her child). 

I like my new colleagues and the office atmosphere seems really pleasant. And there's pizza if we hit our monthly target. I wish someone warned me about how much pizza. So far, I'm doing okay resisting the office snacks. I'm not walking all that way to not shed the weight I need to shed to hopefully get my physical health symptoms under some sort of control (a proper diagnosis will probably help too, one hospital appointment out of two for this lot done). And hopefully sometime over the summer I will be used to my schedule, have my summer release lineup sorted and can join them for a few hours on the evening out. 

It has gone 10PM (or 2200 for us civilised people who don't like the AM/PM thing) on a Friday. This post is probably littered with typos and I think my laundry has stopped. But thank you so much. To you, it may not have been much, but to me, it was my life. And all the actual help made the difference. 

I probably will get the lower part of the tattoo finished sometime this autumn before I start driving lessons (okay I'm getting a Theremin or Theremini before I get the driving lessons) . I would get the rest but people are really stupid and can't comprehend that the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia is a capitalist country (the top part is meant to be Laika cartoon style with either a Soviet capsule or the Soviet flag, I won't be having the middle done until both the top and bottom are finished). I've included it here because I'm getting the tattoo finished because I want to have it finished. It is no longer a necessity. Having tattoos became a necessity when "help" such as from my child's primary school kept trying to erase my identity and everyone around me was so dismissive of who I am and what I want out of life. My father would insult my makeup constantly or make snide remarks (even into my 20s). Makeup washes off. Tattoos are forever. And that makeup story is symbolic of my life up until late December 2017/early January 2018.