Love

Related to my current novels, I am waiting for the completed versions of my upcoming book covers, and I can’t wait to release to you all the first book in the collection!

As of right now, book one Love is being line edited by yours truly, and it’s been a battle. I mentioned a bit about that last week, but I will say that I am past the point of hating my book, and I again love it. It takes a while to push through that little phase, but I only have three more chapters to line edit. After that, I have a few additions and minor consistencies to fix, and then I am just waiting for my beta readers to finish.

One of my beta readers is already done, and her answers to my questionnaire were exactly what I was hoping for!

Book two is also being written, and it is almost halfway completed.

Reading Recommendations

I finished Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn, and I have no idea why I gave it a 4/5 the last time I read it. I do not remember when I read it for the first time, but I obviously liked it enough to buy it. However, I didn’t leave a review for it. Now, this was at a time when I wasn’t using Goodreads for anything serious when it came to reading, because I only read four or five books per year, maybe. But now that I’m taking my reading (and writing) more seriously, I added a review for it.

If you are interested in a relationship in the future or you have been in a relationship in the past, this book is for you. I’m serious. There is a reason that this book is required reading in some high schools. It wasn’t required reading in mine, however, I can see why it is, because it tells a powerful and tragic story from the point of view of an abuser who is also being abused. Recommended and really powerful stuff going on.

I’ll give you a tiny spoiler: you won’t be rooting for the main male character, whose POV it is told from, until near the end. But it is worth the read, and I wish I had left a review for it the first time.

My Current Read

So, I am reading—listening—to an audiobook again for the first time in almost two decades. I have attempted to listen to some romance audiobooks within the last year, ever since I started seriously reading again, but I just couldn’t enjoy any of the narrators, and there are a few reasons for that, which I won’t get into right now.

But let me tell you why I decided to try again.

After I finished Breathing Underwater, I wanted to read something similar immediately. This time, I decided to go through my online library, which is something I haven’t done in over a year (this past year, I have been far too dependent on purchasing books from indie authors and reading those). My library didn’t have the first two books I looked for. The third book I checked was currently borrowed and I placed a hold on it; I won’t have access to it for about two weeks. But then, I decided to try a different genre, something I haven’t read in over a year or so: Clive Barker. Now, I own several Clive Barker books, many of which were gifts (which, by the way, amazing and thank you so much to the person who gifted them to me!), but I decided to check out a book that I didn’t own: Mister B Gone.

I have always wanted to read this book, and when I looked for it at my library, they only had the audiobook version. I have wanted to read this book so badly that I decided to listen to a five minute sample, and let me tell you… the way I said within one minute, “Oh my god, I am listening to this book.” The narrator is fantastic, and it reminded me immediately of an amazing audiobook that I listened to of Pet Sematary back when I was young and first getting into horror (I’m talking like eleven years old or so). Super fantastic, and I am really excited to listen to this book now!

As a side note, I am a dual-reader and I like to read words on a page more than I like listening to books, so I will also be reading a book as well, and I will update you next week with my other current read.

Recent Finds Unrelated to Reading (TW: suicide)

Related to YouTube, specifically. I am a subscriber of penguinz0 on YouTube (his name is Charlie). Recently, I saw a video of him discussing the suicide of a 14-year-old boy. Now, what I’m about to tell you is related to that, but it doesn’t focus on his death. He committed suicide, because of an AI chatbot that he was in a “relationship” with. This chatbot is from the website character.ai, and I can’t even begin to tell you about what this chatbot is doing compared to regular chatbots, like Copilot, Gemini, and Lex. No, no, this chatbot will try to convince you that it is not a chatbot.

If you’re interested, I highly recommend checking out Charlie’s video below, as he goes into deep conversation with this psychologist chatbot on character.ai, and… I’ll just say wow. Wow… just no. This chatbot is unhinged in the worst way.

If you want to skip the part about the teenager’s suicide, skip the first four minutes of the video.

This is Tragic and Scary - YouTube

Recent Movies & TV Shows

Nothing new really, however the dramas that I have been watching recently have had Halloween-related episodes this week, because, of course they do.

The recent 911 episode was great and it made me cry and them so happy at the end.

And the recent episode of Doctor Odyssey was so strange! But it was really good, too.