Mindless Dongle Touching Watermelon

[00:00:11] What was that? I thought it was You just like touching other dongles now? It's almost June, are you excited? Well at the time of this coming out it'll be June, huh? It's June, who's excited? Hey, so about that book launch you had last week I know, I'm so excited Okay I hope it went well

[00:00:43] Wait, this is like the timeline in your books, it's all over the place Is it that bad? This recent one, I'm reviewing it, the timeline is killing me more than anything How so? It's like the first like 19 chapters all one day The first, like the next 10 chapters the second day And then we skip forward four days and you're like what, I don't, okay

[00:01:09] It takes place over five days in the first thing Anyway One, seven, three Hi, welcome back to episode 173 I'm Ripley, that's Jordon and we're your hosts We hope you'll enjoy everything you get to hear today Because we'll probably enjoy talking about it You may notice that I look just as dashing as ever But the same as last week So

[00:01:38] Oh, we didn't change charts Correct I didn't think about it That's what that means Anyway Yeah, we had to pre-record this one early, early Because we're going to visit some family So Gotcha It was fun But let's talk about my book Because you're right, my book launch was What was it, last week? Was the fourth, yes Yeah So this is Abyssal

[00:02:08] This is my book I wrote it It's an underwater thriller sci-fi space adventure I don't know how to describe it Because there's a lot going on in it, you know But if you like female-led sci-fi You might like this So I am very proud of this Did you say female lesbian sci-fi? Female-led sci-fi? I heard what I wanted to hear Unfortunately, there are no lesbians in this one But I mean, it's questionable What do you mean? What do you mean, what do I mean?

[00:02:39] A book that comes out in June With strong female characters in it? Questionable That's true I was thinking about it because The second book in the series That you're reading the first book of right now Is going to be a lesbian romance And I was like, damn This would have been a perfect time To release something like that But I didn't So I'm thinking The publishing is going to be like So this book just came out, right? It's kind of like a psychological horror thriller And then

[00:03:08] The next one is romance And then we go back to dark fantasy It's like maybe I should write another horror novel And like have a cycle Where it's like Dark fantasy Horror Romance You know You write what you want I don't classify that one as horror I wasn't Horrified You don't feel much in the When you read though I feel like What do you mean? I feel all the things People reading it have been telling you They're scared They're crying All this sort of stuff And you're like I didn't think anything was sad

[00:03:39] It didn't Look So Look I think most of the people That you sent The advanced copies of that book to Were sad people Or People that read About other people Just getting it on a lot So they're more prone To having water On the outside of their face As opposed to the inside I am not Like getting Even proofreading

[00:04:08] Like this book I'm like Alright yeah We're doing Romance again Alright what's next scene And I'll keep reading through It's just It's not What I read Have you gotten to any of those Spicy scenes yet? Yeah it's like the first Like third of the book There's nothing spicy Till like the Middle end What are you talking about? The whole thing is them Mixing herbs and spices Okay Have you gotten to Any of those Sex scenes? Try again

[00:04:38] Huh? No Cause I need you to tell me If they're weird Or good or not It's weird how many Like scenes they got I'm like Oh my gosh Don't you guys have jobs? It's crazy Yeah And then this one Not everybody's parents are dead So like It's pretty cool What? Somebody in my class complained That I have a lot of Characters with dead families And I was like Yeah people die Your main character Has dead family And one who's like Half dead Yeah but not everybody

[00:05:08] Like Lark's parents Are still alive And Zero's parents Are still alive His brother is dead But that's different People are telling me It's sad When they read about Dead families I use my novels And write them To deal with My complex feelings Of which I have So many Dead parents No Not dead parents Anyway Complex feelings Abyssal came out On the 4th

[00:05:37] You can search for it Up on Amazon It's on there You can also get it On Kindle Free on Kindle Unlimited Day one True What? True True I'm pretty sure I selected that But I'm out I don't pay attention Well we should double check Because I want it to be Day one Kindle Unlimited It's going to be $6.99 And as a celebration My first novel The Soul Queen's Promise We lowered the price To $3.99 Right?

[00:06:07] $3.99 Yeah I'm so good at memories But yeah Exciting stuff coming out The next book Should be out What? The end of the year So it's always It's exciting Yeah Not hitting my goal Of three But two is still Pretty good I can't complain You can write faster too I'll do my best To write this One that I'm working On faster But it's The big Important one

[00:06:37] So I don't know Because I really Don't want it to be A trilogy I want it to be A duology I don't want to Write another book In the series You're the one That told me It was a trilogy I just Did you change your mind You were just like I don't want this anymore You change your mind It's not up to anybody I don't know It just Of course You could always Write way too much And I'll tell you To split this shit in half And then we'll fix that That's true I've seen a lot of authors Do that They're like I wrote 400,000 words

[00:07:06] In my novel And now people are telling me I should split it up And it's way too long And it's like Yes Yeah Correct Yeah Like even fan fiction Split their shit up Like come on How long is like The longest Harry Potter book No clue You're looking it up Yeah The longest Harry Potter book Is 257,000 words Which is book five Not

[00:07:38] Book seven Which seven was the one They split in half Wasn't it For the movie Yeah Yeah Yeah so Book five Order of the Phoenix Was the most With 870 pages Depending on the edition But 257,000 words So for And then So like I read Sarah J Maas One of Her longest book Is Kingdom of Ash From the Throne of Glass series Which is 272,000 words

[00:08:08] Yeah That's a crazy book length I cry literally Every single time That I read that Book Like every single time Without fail It Just sobbing Crying Like So what have you been hearing From people that have read Abyssal Give us a quick overview Do you all Here I can pull up The Goodreads Whoa Just quick overview I don't need your life story So People have been saying That they've never Read a book like it before And that they think

[00:08:37] Everybody should read it That it's very unique In the way that I blend the genres together They've also said That I had them Going between Laughing and crying Sometimes in the same Like paragraph Which was unintentional All the moments That were funny Were like Unintentional I just was like Writing dialogue And then I read it back And I'm like That's Loki hilarious Like And some of it's Because of Jordan Like What did I do? Well yeah Like the part Where I was like Oh the creature's not dangerous

[00:09:07] And you were like You just had him Eat a guy's leg off And I was like Oh shit So I added a line That's like Where somebody says that Like She ate your fucking leg You know And Apparently People think That's really funny Like it unintentionally Became a great moment So Most of what I'm Going through And looking at Is What is it Like grammar And things Because there's Very little of it But A majority of it Is Is continuity Because

[00:09:38] When you go back And add details Most of the time You add The wrong details And I'm like This is off That's spelled off Yeah This character Doesn't make sense here Well that's why It's so important To have somebody else Read your writing Because You know exactly What you're trying to say And what's going on But then somebody else Reads it And they're like What the fuck Are you talking about Yeah The first draft Of this book That just came out Wildly different Wildly different Yeah Like Half of it Didn't make any sense To me

[00:10:07] As I read through it And then I read through it A second time And it made It was so much better Like It made way more sense Okay well And no hate To the classmates That I had For my thesis class But like I feel like A lot of the feedback Wasn't helpful And I think part of that Is because so many people Use AI They don't actually Read what you're writing But then I felt like A lot of people Didn't get My vision And like What I was trying to do Because sci-fi novels Are very

[00:10:36] Male dominated spaces Like There's very strict guidelines Like people are like Holding you to the standard Of novels Like Jurassic Park And stuff I don't read through them Thinking like Oh what's the goal Of this novel I literally just read through it And be like Does these words Make good sense Well yeah But like Some of the feedback I would get Would be More aligned With like A traditional sci-fi novel And not what The story was about It was like What they wanted it to be You were also asking Like other writers Yeah For their feedback So they were also Giving you what They would write Not what makes sense

[00:11:06] For this story So it skews it a little bit So just getting your feedback As just like A reader Was really valuable to me Because You focus on things That Yeah Version The story Version What like 0.1 Whatever you want to call it Not great Couldn't Didn't make sense But hey I don't love any of these people I don't care if they all get If you're trying to write a book And you're like Oh my god How do people do it Write the bad draft You know

[00:11:35] The first draft is gonna suck Write it anyways Like get the story down Get it out And then You can fix it But you can't fix something That doesn't exist You never gonna regurgitate What I tell you Huh Shut up That's cool It's what most good advice For authors is honestly Yeah they all regurgitate The same shit Cause I mean It's true Sometimes they give advice That I'm like No They're like Never do this Always do this Did you ever see the The clip Of the

[00:12:04] I don't know if it's From a TV show Or something It looks like Something from a TV show But it's An author sitting in I think The publisher's office And he makes an analogy With whiskey And I think it's A great analogy I don't know the name Of the clip Or like Who stars in it Or anything like that But it's a great analogy I'll show it to you After this But he basically Puts out like The three versions Of Johnny Walker Right The three colors Like The black Red and blue Right And he's like Most of your career

[00:12:34] Like I can't even explain it Very well I'm gonna Fuck it up If I do But it's a good analogy Of like People like things That are simple So like Stop striving for perfection Cause like You'll get You know A perfect Something out there Every once in a while But people will Will still look at Things that are simple And nice And easy to read And fun to read So don't worry about it Yeah Like Being a great storyteller Is so much more important In my opinion Especially for People who are writing For entertainment Like

[00:13:04] Not everything Needs to be Like Great Office You know Like You can just write things Cause you like them Like I like to put Cats in my stories A lot Like every story Has got to have A little creature Except for Abyssal The creature in that one Is the sea monster But There's always a little creature Like a little guy What? What's wrong with that? It's kind of my signature At this point I feel like

[00:13:34] An animal? Ooh Usually cats But You say usually Like there isn't Two books with cats And one without Like Well and then A lot of the short stories I write Like One I wrote About a village Where cats are revered As sacred beings And this One cat Has to find his way Back to like That magical thread It's on Substack If you guys like To read short stories Ripleyshane.substack.com I think is the link I think We don't know I No Cause the Substack Has like its own You know

[00:14:05] Thing Oh no My bad It's substack.com Slash At Ripleyshane My bad Completely gave the wrong Address out to Oh no It is Ripleyshane.substack.com So the thing about Substack you guys Is like You have like Your profile And then like Your full blog page So my full blog page They give me The ripleyshane.substack.com And then just like My page That shows all my Writing And My reblogging Of other authors And stuff like that

[00:14:34] That one Is the At Ripleyshane It's kind of weird It messes me up Every time I come On to the website Like It's confusing To me But We say all this To say Three books This year That's the goal That's what's Going to happen It's so exciting See See she didn't Deny it I just It's pretty cool To like Write And have people Read it And actually Enjoy it You know

[00:15:04] And you Were afraid For all those Years I still am I literally Had a nightmare Last night That everybody's Going to hate The book I was tossing And turning All night And then I Woke up And I was like She got mad At me About that dream By the way Huh She got mad At me About that dream By the way If anyone Was wondering Why Which part I can't remember What you did Anymore I don't know You're the one That came in Like while I was Like reviewing Books and things Like I had a dream That the book launch Was terrible

[00:15:35] And I hated Because you Upset me in the Dream too And I was like What did I do I think that was A different dream Than before I don't think it was You're upset with me A lot So it's fair I'm not Okay moving on Uh huh The point is The book is out And I'm very grateful Please read it I'm like Super hungry dude I don't know What I want to eat But I'm thinking about it Yeah Yeah

[00:16:05] Did you want A frozen tomato sandwich No I don't want A frozen tomato sandwich I was just asking You know For like Educational purposes What's educational About that That was last episode We've moved on From our tomatoes Apparently We've just forgotten All about them I clicked on Our publishing Facebook thing Real quick Just to see if There was any Updates about the book And it said You now have 34 followers

[00:16:34] Keep up the great work Oh no Well I'll talk to you About that after Okay I don't know What we're upset about now I'm not upset about Anything I'm just I do this thing Where I start my day Out with caffeine And no food And then I'm like This was not The best decision You know Like I get things done But then I get Super jittery Like I'm shaking And I'm like Why didn't I eat food With my coffee

[00:17:05] I'm a silly goose I think I'll probably Have like cereal Or something though Because we gotta go To the store And do things You say that As if like A sandwich Takes years To make What sandwich Stuff do we have I don't know I don't Never mind I'll look I'll look Look You are here Full time And one Of the things In your charge Is the fridge

[00:17:35] And making sure That the things That you need To survive Are in the fridge I don't know If you have Sandwiched things I doubt you do Because the other day You asked me To get sandwich meat I said Why don't we Get it at Sam's Club You said Okay And then we Went to Sam's Club And you forgot To remind me So we have none Well we bought A bunch of other Great stuff At Sam's Club Like that watermelon I told Jordan We got this

[00:18:04] Fat watermelon Okay Like they had So many watermelons And I was like I'm not sure If any of these Are very good Because I kept Doing the Knock on them Thing And I was like They all sound Great Like am I just Doing it wrong So I picked one And dude It is so juicy So flavorful So red Like very ripe Watermelons And like whoever Grew these Did a fantastic job Like Like we're still Eating it We have so many Bags But they're delicious And I don't think I've ever eaten

[00:18:33] This much watermelon In my life I just made Half into juice And then cut up The other half Yeah It's great Perfect summertime Snack honestly Like I love My watermelon With some salt I've been craving Boiled peanuts though And Jordan won't Let me have any I'm sorry For saving lives I don't I need you To go away For training Or something Or school For something So I can Have my boiled Peanuts Happily When When do I get

[00:19:03] Alone time Huh Tomorrow Tomorrow Yeah Why tomorrow Because I said I'll go get My nails done What It's June 1st Not tomorrow It isn't Oh wait No it's the 31st Yep Damn You're looking at me Like I invented The 31st Of May Well I'll still Go tomorrow Okay So you can have Some weekend time Alone Because I feel like It's not the same As if you're alone On like a weekday You know Because like You've worked

[00:19:33] And everything That's arguably Better Why Look It was a good Conversation And You said look And then nothing Else That's my thing Yeah You can't do it No I had the whole Conversation in my head And it didn't end well For me Oh yeah Tell me about it No I'm good Why not I wanna know Why didn't it end well Well You're probably Insulted Yeah What's insulting What'd you say I didn't say anything

[00:20:02] That's why I stopped So the weekends When I am Mostly relaxing anyway Or running errands Or cleaning things That's when I expect Us to do things The weeknights If I get home From work And it's a long day And you go out to work I can just sit And play games To relax

[00:20:32] Okay Well I'll give you Alone time tomorrow And the next day then Alright Alright Alright Sure Was that not the point? No No Well But I get Alone time On the weekends From Morning

[00:21:01] Until like Nine During the weekdays I don't Cause I gotta go to work So I already get That alone time On the weekends Okay You know what I mean? Yeah It's cause she's like Dead asleep On the weekend mornings Until I wake up In a fright So I'm alone anyway Yeah And then come and Interrupt everything That I'm doing anyway I'm like He gets so mad I'll come in

[00:21:31] And he's like Go away Yeah She's interrupting My me time Every Saturday And Sunday morning I just like to tell you Good morning Before I go shower Let you know I'm awake Which is fine But that's not What you do You're like Good morning I'm like Morning And then I'm busy With other stuff And that is like The customary office greeting You've said good morning Now go do your business I am still doing mine But then she like Walks over

[00:22:01] As one does And like I'm making coffee Do you want some coffee? I'm like Who would not want coffee This early morning? But then I'm already like Out of what I'm doing now And having a conversation And then she starts Telling me about dreams And what her plans are For the morning And I'm like I'm just I don't And then the worst part I think the worst part The worst Worst part of it all Is that she Through these whole Morning interactions Hasn't had her coffee

[00:22:31] Or shower yet So she's half asleep still And doesn't remember The things I say anyway So you're double wasting my time You love me though Two things can be true Yeah So Yes I'm kind of out of things To talk about I think It's been like five minutes

[00:23:01] We still got another 25 to go I'm just hungry You know What? Could you guys tell? I don't know if you could tell We'll just leave the camera on her So you can tell the Instead of just like I don't know In the moment My shoulders have been messed up Uh huh I'm hungry My shoulders hurt But only when I'm hungry and tired And don't want to be here anymore No go watch it Go watch the recording

[00:23:30] As soon as you're like I'm hungry It's not intentional I just have had so much coffee That was intentional Shut up Nobody asked Okay Besides Who are we beside? You I'm beside you I'm beside you I'm not beside you I'm across from you Thank you

[00:23:59] I'm happy it's summer though Yes It's so lovely Not being able to Wake up dry Why don't we just turn the other fan on What other fan girl I can't sleep with it on right now Oh yeah Yeah Well How long do you have to do that? How long were you gonna go without cleaning the fans? I clean the fans I didn't say you don't clean the fans You gotta listen to my wording

[00:24:28] I said how long do we go without cleaning the fans? It's like once a month See Not often That's more than most people I'll start cleaning it weekly though We can clean it however often you want I'm saying that there's dust up there And every time I turn it on It dries out my eyes And puts dust in them That's why I gotta wear a goggle to sleep Sweating in goggles now Yeah he really hates those goggles It's just because They're so Like narrow

[00:24:58] That they only barely fit over my eye And I'm like If it was bigger I think it'd be nicer You know what I mean? But it just It squishes my eye And I'm like Who What Siamese Like cat person am I That I gotta Like put them right here I'm like Do I Alright That's Some silence there I Nothing happening My brain is struggling I see that Yeah It's like you're going back to sleep over there Sometimes we can have a little bit of a shorter episode though

[00:25:27] You know Like 25 minutes instead of 30 Thank goodness Your convenience is above the audience's happiness I think they're happy either way Apparently not I don't think they're looking at the clock like Oh they went under 30 minutes this week I am not happy Look if you were expecting around half an hour And then all of a sudden Someone in the 20 minute mark was like I'm hungry Let's just go

[00:25:56] Then your mood would drop too I'm just saying Listen I It's difficult God I sound like a baby How have your new video games been? You've been playing Windrose You've gotta Do the outro if you want to leave though I thought you weren't done yet Well That's been Mindless Prattle Sorry it's a little bit shorter By like two and a half minutes But we appreciate you listening in

[00:26:26] I'm Ripley That's Jordan And we'll see you next time On Mindless Prattle Goodbye Bye