Progress Post: Happy Belated 4th of July

Transcript

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Hi. Today I’m going to be doing my very first ever author vlog. I have been doing progress posts on my blog with a B every week for quite a while now, but I thought I would try doing it as a video format instead. Let’s get started. Hello, my name is Danielle Forrest and I am an alien romance author. On this channel, I do videos about myself, my writing, and any topics related to those things. Today is an author vlog video. This is a vlog video for week 28 of 2023. And let’s find out what I’ve been up to. What have I been up to? I was actually really productive on July fourth, which is rather unusual for me. I think I already mentioned this on my blog, but I spent a lot of time on July fourth actually working on not only YouTube videos, but also on cover art. I finally finished the cover art for Fated Mates of the Drakoan, as well as Match to the Alien captain, which has been sitting on my to do list for a ridiculous amount of time. I do not know why I kept on procrastinating this, but maybe it was necessary.

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Maybe it was something I just needed to get my creative juices churning in the background in order to get to the point where I finally figured out what I wanted, which is fair, absolutely fair. Looking at my notes, I spent a lot of time working on Fated Mates of the Drakoan. I finished episode 6 and started writing Episode 7. I haven’t finished writing it yet, but I think I’m over a thousand words into Episode 7, so I am in good shape to finish that soon. Then it’s just down to actually editing the episode, but I’m hoping to get that done soon as well. I also started setting up Fated Mates the Drakoan on the various free sites I plan to share it on, which includes Inkitt and Dreame. I think it’s supposed to go live on those on July 10th, but since this is a new thing I’m doing on new platforms I’ve never used before, there’s always a possibility that something might go wrong. For example, as of the recording of this video, last time I checked, it hadn’t shown up on Inkitt, even though I’m pretty sure it should have already.

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So we’ll see what happens there. As for Match to the Alien Captain, I wrote, looks like a little over 1,700 words over the course of the last week. Not too bad considering it was a holiday week and I really got started on Tuesday rather than Monday like I ordinarily would. Not bad. What else is going on in my life? I got to watch some little bits of fireworks on July fourth, which is of course a US holiday. I was sitting out on my patio, which I have a relatively new patio chair that I had gotten with the intention of me actually spending more time outdoors than I have been in the past. Me and my dog, we hung out there and we watched what few fireworks we could see from our patio. Also, because of July fourth, my day job was a little bit interesting this week. I work at a clinical laboratory and as such, we receive samples from doctor’s offices, hospitals, veterinary clinics, you name it. And because we are a reference laboratory and not one that’s directly linked to, say, for example, a hospital, when there is a holiday that shuts down the shipping companies like FedEx and UPS and such, we don’t get packages.

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We closed down on those days, which means we always get all the samples that people at these hospitals and stuff were holding on to in one fell swoop. And Tuesdays are usually our biggest days anyway because a lot of people ship on Monday after the weekend because Sundays, again, these services don’t pick up packages. You already have it that Tuesdays are usually pretty bad. Then you have it that because things weren’t delivering on Tuesdays or picking up packages on Tuesday, people were holding them even longer than usual. We had it Wednesday was crickets, absolutely nothing. Then Thursday was let’s just kick your butt. Like absolutely smack down, it was a mess. It was so bad. Oh, my God. From that point on, I don’t think I had a single day that I didn’t end up having to stay late at work because we just couldn’t do anything else. We did the best we could, but we were literally doing extra runs. We don’t have the people for that. We have personnel for doing a certain number of runs per day, and now we’re trying to squeeze in to do even more, and it really wasn’t working.

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Now, okay, for my blog posts, I usually do a section at the end of what I am currently reading or what I have just finished reading. I just finished reading Three Babies and an alien Warrior, I believe, by honey Phillips. Let me check that really quick. Okay, it’s called Three Babies and the alien Warrior. And yes, it’s by honey Phillips. And I always love these books in this series. I don’t know what it is about them, but I really enjoy them. And actually, I really enjoy honey Phillips’s a general rule. I think she’s a really good author. I’m not really sure. I find it absolutely adorable that the tail knows first. I think that’s what it is about these books that I like so much is that it always starts with the tail being a little bit too clingy. And for whatever reason, I just find this absolutely hilarious. I find it so hilarious, adorable, and it’s just like, Oh, look, the tail is doing this. That’s what that means. Oh, my God. That’s so cute and so exciting. And yeah, it’s just kind of fun. That’s all I have for today. I’m hoping to have more for you next week.

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Until next time, I will be seeing you. Also, little side note, as I was thinking about it, stay tuned for later in this week, I am planning to release an author reading of Episode 1 of my serial, Fated Mates of the Drakoan. So stay tuned. And if you want to hear more about that, you want to be informed of when that is dropping, sign up, hit the bell, and in the comments, let me know, have you read any of the books in that series by honey Phillips? What did you think? What is your favorite parts of it? And I will see you next time. Bye.