10 clicks

10 clicks  

  

Hike the mountains do 4 summits

Start out with a bad knee

Wear your support all is fine

Except it's not fine far from it

Push yourself to the limit

Feel it after the hike

No sleep for days

Maximum strength pain killers

And snake oil linament

Feel the burn you're alive!

What a hike it was

World War 2 battlefield research

See the old bullets live and spent

Pretty green medicine bottles

Used for amphetamines sky high Japs

The big fat brown bottle turd coloured

See the old gun positions stop peak 1

3 more peaks follow all small terrible

Knee acting up now push on

Use up all my water

No worries a moped guys

Gave me a litre for a crystal

Passed half way mark the quarry

Have several rests under the trees

This isn't too bad cept when I move

My crystals back home

Head down the Holy Road

See my old mates talk history

One had war items

Give them me for the museum

History of the dead alive

No city crap stop the peak

Just me and my sore knee

Where's the 5 sexy gals when I need them?

Hike with me let's get it on

Another hike on the peaks

Riga More Than Words Brian Von Blimp

 Join Riga in new stories about her life in different realities. The work here is both familiar and new. She works in a call centre. She ventures far in her flying disc. She rekindles things with her ex Pedro. There is an erotic script here. How will Riga be in it? Learn more about how Riga thinks. Critical thinking is a must if you want to control your life. Riga introduces one of her daughters here. Her daughter is a pilot defending freedom. A poetry section is also featured. Do you relate to little Riga?

https://books2read.com/u/baYl62 

 

repost - Should retailers start charging authors to publish their books?

 

Hi Nick, Welcome back to a new edition of the Reedsy marketing newsletter! If you’ve been reading along, you’ll know I’ve recently been focusing solely on AI visibility. But today, I have to take a hiatus from that and talk about the elephant of the week instead: Draft2Digital and Barnes & Noble’s latest changes. Here’s a quick recap of the situation: Draft2Digital’s changes: New accounts incur an “activation fee” of $20, charged only if the account is used to publish and distribute books. Existing accounts are unaffected by this. All accounts are now subject to an annual “maintenance fee” of $12. This fee is only charged to accounts whose earnings (net proceeds after D2D’s commission) are under $100 for the past year. The maintenance fee goes into effect on May 14, 2026, and is charged on the anniversary of the creation of the account. An important note (that D2D hasn’t been very good at communicating): the maintenance fee only applies to accounts that have books actively being distributed. If all your books are unlisted, or if you only use D2D for formatting or for the Books2Read links, you can keep your account free of charge. Barnes & Noble Press’ changes: Minimum pricing: B&N Press print books must have a retail price of $14.99 or above. Any titles priced below that will be removed from sale starting May 14, 2026. Title limit: A single Barnes & Noble Press account will have a limit of 100 individual titles. Each title can be available in both print and digital format and count as one of the 100 titles you can publish. Any titles above that limit may be removed at B&N Press’ discretion starting May 14, 2026. At first glance, these changes aren’t related — except for their announcement date. But in reality, they both answer the same problem. The AI bookspam wave “Bookspam” is a term coined by author Kevin McLaughlin to describe a problem we’ve been seeing since the release of GPT-3: scammers using AI to spam out thousands of books on retailers. With AI agents, it’s easy now to just create an agent (using OpenClaw, for example) that: Writes a book; Formats it for ebook and print distribution; Uploads it to retailers (KDP, D2D, B&N, etc.); and Publishes it. I’d estimate a workflow like this takes 5-10 minutes to run. Which means one could theoretically publish over 100 AI-generated books every single day. And there are likely thousands of scammers out there doing just that.  We (authors and readers) don’t always see it. These books rarely sell more than a handful of copies, and so get little to no visibility. But a handful of sales across thousands of titles is still enough money to keep scammers going. And these days, companies like Draft2Digital, Barnes & Noble Press, or Kindle Direct Publishing are definitely feeling the bookspam wave. In a recent interview with Kevin McLaughlin, D2D’s CEO Kris Austin mentioned that Draft2Digital regularly has to decline as much as 70% of the titles uploaded to their platform for publication. In other words, up to 70% of books uploaded to D2D every single day are spam (mostly AI-generated spam). And I expect that percentage to be similar on KDP, B&N, Kobo, and every other major retailer (or distributor). Now, Draft2Digital and Barnes & Noble have actively tried to combat this. D2D has gotten pretty good at detecting bookspam and shuts down any accounts showing irregular activity, while B&N Press recently implemented the title limit to limit new accounts pumping hundreds of books a month (not to penalize genuine authors with a big backlist). But unfortunately, scammers are full of resources: instead of publishing hundreds of books under the same account (which would result in a red flag), they started creating hundreds of accounts, each publishing one book, thus flying under D2D’s spam-detection radar. Which brings us to this week’s changes: new accounts are now subject to an activation fee, and all accounts must pay a yearly maintenance fee (unless they are above the $100 earnings threshold). Should publishing be free? Thanks to KDP, Smashwords, and Draft2Digital, authors have been able to publish a book on many retailers for free. The business model was simple: by taking a cut of your royalties, these publishing platforms made money if you made money. In the AI age, this doesn’t seem sustainable anymore. Distributors like Draft2Digital have a responsibility to the retailers they work with, and part of that responsibility is to make sure that the books they send to them don’t infringe on copyrights, don’t contain plagiarism, and aren’t full of AI-generated nonsense. Running these checks has a cost — and not running them would have a much higher cost, as retailers would just start treating all D2D books (and all indie books in general) as spam.  So what’s the solution? We just saw it: introducing fees high enough to prohibit scammers, but low enough to keep publishing accessible. I wouldn’t be surprised to see other retailers and distributors follow suit and introduce similar fees for publication — whether on an annual subscription basis, or on a per-title basis. Is this sad news? Yes and no. I think we’d gotten too used to publishing being free. For most people, writing — and publishing — books is a hobby. And I hate to break it to you, but all hobbies cost money. If you like hiking, you’ll need gear. You’ll need a car (most likely). You’ll need to pay park (and/or parking) fees. All that is more expensive than $12 a year. Until now, publishing was a hobby you could invest money in, but didn’t have to.  And even if this changes, at $12 a year, it still remains the most accessible hobby out there. Not only that: it’s the only hobby I know where you can realistically expect to make some money (or even a living) if you do things right: write a great book, learn about marketing, and have a bit of luck. And since you’re already subscribed to this newsletter, you’ve got the marketing part ticked off already. 😉 So if you’ve been among the authors distraught about these changes, I invite you to look at them in a new way. If they indeed limit bookspam, they should be a welcome change, as they will raise everyone’s visibility (except the scammers). And if you see that $12 fee as a penalty, take it as an extra motivation to reach that $100 threshold. Ask yourself: what can I do to boost my sales on Draft2Digital’s retailers (or libraries)? Or even better: get in touch with Draft2Digital reps to ask them that question.  Despite all the changes, I still believe that this is the best time to be an author. We have more opportunities than ever before: more roads to publication, more retailers, and more business models. So don’t let those fees stop you — treat them as an investment into your future success. Happy writing, and happy marketing, Ricardo

Riga Nined

Edited

Riga Nined

Riga. Tell me little Riga. Why is there always a transport? A ship taking you somewhere. Often to a place of danger and strife? Is it because you are Holy Riga? You work for God or the Great Creator or Mother Goddess or whatever you call it? Riga. Get in the fucking transport. Listen to those engines spooling over. They're a cool sound. You have to admit. That spinning whistling turbine spooling over. Whoever invented jets deserves a beer. Riga. Do you miss me? Think of me? Even if you left me and met another? You left me and met Pedro. Now he's your number two in battle and number one in bed. He even got you pregnant! Why did you only have gals Riga? We had three and you and Pedro had one. Why are you a soldier and leader? Is it because you never had a boy? You wanted to go to war and battle and combat and fight and make history? Be one of the guys with your uniform and rifle and grenades and boots. Even if your feet are small and your moods are tall. And your critical thinking equals any general. Little Riga. Loved by all. Even the enemies. Where you are going the enemies are what? Green coloured. Covered in chitin. Have six legs. And two heads. And move either forwards or backwards. And take a direct hit to kill. Depleted uranium rounds. Pedro will protect you. I know he loves you more than I ever could. You had this effect on him. Like you did me but different. Why is that? What do you do to people? I saw you eating together when both on leave. I was in the cafe. You both have a chemistry. I never approached you then. Even if I'm still your legal husband. I talked to you weeks later when I saw our daughters. I knew then what you never needed to tell me. That you and him really clicked. Just take care and do not get killed on that far off stinking bug filled world. Nuke it from orbit. You can fly the ship. Why inhabit an unstable world? All this talk of terraforming, making it a new Earth, building cities and all that. Why send in the soldiers of this place is so nice? It's full of bugs and you're going on a bug hunt. Take care my dear. And Pedro too. He seems a good guy. Message me and all that. I know 

Edited

Riga Nined

Riga. Tell me little Riga. Why is there always a transport? A ship taking you somewhere. Often to a place of danger and strife? Is it because you are Holy Riga? You work for God or the Great Creator or Mother Goddess or whatever you call it? Riga. Get in the fucking transport. Listen to those engines spooling over. They're a cool sound. You have to admit. That spinning whistling turbine spooling over. Whoever invented jets deserves a beer. Riga. Do you miss me? Think of me? Even if you left me and met another? You left me and met Pedro. Now he's your number two in battle and number one in bed. He even got you pregnant! Why did you only have gals Riga? We had three and you and Pedro had one. Why are you a soldier and leader? Is it because you never had a boy? You wanted to go to war and battle and combat and fight and make history? Be one of the guys with your uniform and rifle and grenades and boots. Even if your feet are small and your moods are tall. And your critical thinking equals any general. Little Riga. Loved by all. Even the enemies. Where you are going the enemies are what? Green coloured. Covered in chitin. Have six legs. And two heads. And move either forwards or backwards. And take a direct hit to kill. Depleted uranium rounds. Pedro will protect you. I know he loves you more than I ever could. You had this effect on him. Like you did me but different. Why is that? What do you do to people? I saw you eating together when both on leave. I was in the cafe. You both have a chemistry. I never approached you then. Even if I'm still your legal husband. I talked to you weeks later when I saw our daughters. I knew then what you never needed to tell me. That you and him really clicked. Just take care and do not get killed on that far off stinking bug filled world. Nuke it from orbit. You can fly the ship. Why inhabit an unstable world? All this talk of terraforming, making it a new Earth, building cities and all that. Why send in the soldiers of this place is so nice? It's full of bugs and you're going on a bug hunt. Take care my dear. And Pedro too. He seems a good guy. Message me and all that. I know comms there are bad. The distance. Like the distance between you and me. Once we never had that. You almost had that same distance with Pedro. I sensed it. Don't hurt him again. The pair of you take care. We here on Earth need you to win this war. Safe trip now. Love.

***

 there are bad. The distance. Like the distance between you and me. Once we never had that. You almost had that same distance with Pedro. I sensed it. Don't hurt him again. The pair of you take care. We here on Earth need you to win this war. Safe trip now. Love.

***

A Few Short Stories Kindle Edition by Nick Armbrister (Author)

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GL2SFC3G

  Nick Armbrister celebrating 30 years in writing April 1996 to April 2026. In this Short Story collection, Nick Armbrister has put together several short stories from his various books. The stories range in mood and topic matter. All are for adults. They feature human events, personal interactions, erotic and romantic matters, scenes of war and death, lighter funny and satirical moments, questions about human nature and more. Several stories and forty thousand words. This book is released in Nick's 30th anniversary year of writing. 1996 was the year he started his writing career and when he was published, originally poetry, moving to short stories and later novels. His has been quite a career and very varied. Read this book and enter the world of Nick. This is a small selection of his broad writing. Are you similar to his characters and do you relate to their journeys, both inner and outer? Nick wants to write for another 3 decades. Enjoy. Why not start writing yourself?

 

 

Mercury’s Goodness

Amy was a girl from Planet Mercury. Her hair was green and her skin was lilac. Her eyes were white and her smile was lush. She looks like that sexy Venezuelan Aljazeera news reporter Sandra but is coloured differently and from a different planet. I wonder if both gals would be friends if they met in a bar or on a remote mountain. Amy has several friends dotted about the universe. She met them all randomly while travelling.

Some are humanoid others insect like some alien and one is even invisible. Amy is open to new things and understands life is all different. This is why she was created by the galactic creator to heal the universe and cease the wars and planet collapses. She’s very busy and enjoys her down time. She restored an old H Model spaceship she found abandoned on an asteroid. It took 327 years to rebuild it but this she did. Amy flies it when in the mood. She also paints pictures using moon dust. Amy is quite a gal and you’d like her. Most earthling guys would want her and some gals too. She knows what to do in bed with them and also with aliens. Her skills are galactic and what she doesn’t know she’ll learn. Her age is questionable but being of different biological make up it’s not the same like ours. Amy admits to simply being herself though she would be classed as Mercurian. She holidays on Earth and on a planet named Dash 97 which is fifteen point two light years from our galaxy. Amy is now drinking tea with me and we talk about life in general…

***

 

 

 

Fixed Wheels

The car had fixed wheels which didn’t turn. To turn the car a series of hydraulic jumping equipment physically lifted up the car in short almost violent actions. The car was quite famous and had been featured in music videos with Aerosmith and Eminen. In the town where the car was from it was a regular scene and there were various wannabe homeboys and their biatches posturing and posing. One or two had rival cars but none were equal to the matt lilac one which was a legend. It was made from a lesser known marque not a GMC or Chevy or Ford. Or even a Buick or Pontiac. America made great cars and it was an American vehicle and it was all that mattered. People stopped to look or point. Most had photos or videos for their blog or sites or posterity. This was an icon a machine that belonged to another age that of the past but it was still relevant now and would so. It had a mix of old skool and state of the art equipment from clock like dials to a digital music/game/TV player. The owner was quietly happy that he was the custodian of such a special vehicle. One with a fixed steering wheel and hand held controls to kick in the hydraulics to turn it. They worked very well even at top speed and were very different than the normal steering wheel way. It was the coolest car in town. A lilac one off by a small defunct company. Everybody wanted this but a photo was enough to prove they’d seen that car.

***

 

 

 

Alive Jeep

The man sat in front of the jeep which drove about with no driver. He was in the passenger seat of the driverless vehicle. It had a mind of its own and went here and there picking up passengers. It was like a robot computer car with no driver and top level capabilities. The passenger just sat there checking his emails and writing a story on his phone. All the while the driverless jeep plied its trade on the usual route 24/7. It was unusual but when you spent a day sat in the front seat it was fine. It was boring once the novelty wore off. Even seeing the controls use themselves the steering wheel gears and foot pedals like a ghost was there. There was no supernatural entity just a jeep with a mind of its own doing a job moving passengers. See the lights at night pulse flash and throb. Listen to the loud high watt music boom your body. Marvel at the unsilenced exhaust as the jeep with no driver goes top speed on the open road. Few things are as cool as this vehicle or taking a trip. It’s perfectly safe and a life changing event. Why? The jeep has no driver! A back full of passengers and you sat in front by the empty seat!

***

 

 

 

 

 

new poems

 

Events One

Same crap different day you know the feeling

Go thru the motions mental self-cruelty

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Answers not given plain site

I’m here again oh no!

At your fortress

Knock knock

Events

Yes

////////////////

Outa Here

Throw out the blues

When you feel that colour

Get hold of a gal and go dancing

Go climbing with the five

Who wear shorts and vests

Make love on the peak

Cum together no blues then

Banish the blues away

To those boring city folk

Who live by a set routine

Work at 9 screw at 2

Have a shit at 4 coffee at 6

I can’t live my life like that

Stuck in a box of blues songs

Drive me bloody mad!

Give me damn freedom

Just for a day

Not your kind of life

You the blues man

Enjoy what you got

I’m outa here!

//////////////

Via Cubao

I got the jeep to Cubao

It was full as fuck

All jammed in sardine style

The hawker hanging on the back

Cubao! The pax knew where to go

Like the bus conductor

Get our bus it has a sign on front

They all say here there the Moon Mars

Board our vehicle to take you home

Elsewhere the bar where you wanna go?

Shangri La where the dancing gals are

Via plane submarine boat car chopper

Jeep to Cubao nothing is like it

See lady boys gays hot gals

All mincing it do this and that

I’m going to my call centre job

Just another Manila wage slave

Look at the gal in the shorts hehe

Don’t forget to get their numbers

Cubao via bayen via Quiapo

////////////////

Devil’s Vehicle

Going to reload my phone

Hear the high-performance engine roar

Racing bike goes past

That sounds go get some!

And a second racing bike goes past

Give it Devil’s fingers and he sees me

And replies the same

And opens her up full throttle

Off he goes what a sound

The best sound on the road

High performance piston engine

On a bike just like a plane

As cool as it gets...

///////////////

Mad Subs

You never saw three bears like those there

All dirty white in colour with red button noses

And even redder pissed off menacing eyes

See what each angry bear carried in his hands

Small matt black machine pistols locked and loaded

Evil looking death dispensing command presence items

Three not so little bears of all sexes

One is a guy one is a gal one is a lady boy

Visiting a bank near you to make a withdrawal

Leave the vault empty the front tills hurry up!

Do not call the cops or we will gun you down

Like we did in the last bank over there

We had two months in Bora Bora from that

Your cash will pay for a trip to Bali

Miami is so 1980s and we are the three bears

Amy the gal Roy the guy and Quentin the lady boy

Don’t fucking piss us off or we will subgun you!

We are all focused mentally unbalanced criminal bears

Photo by Dan Cook on Unsplash

Riga closing

Riga Closing 

Riga closed varied things. From business deals to things with an ex. Business deals were a few as we're exes. Closure was needed to move on. One door closed another opened so the cliche went. It was always this way. Dress it up as you want. This was the way it was. A power structure of all. Do things the right way. How it was to be done. Meet four hot guys on the peak. Riga can do all things with them up there. And in a certain reality she does. But not this time. She declined and went up to the top alone. Not with them. She closed her own deal. Reaching the peak top. A deal closed to herself in her head. It was good to do her own thing when she wanted to. A nice what if with the guys. She would meet them again. Get their details then. Make love to them all. Not today though. There was no rush. Not on this. Riga climbed under the high hot burning sun. You are ill. Can die. A stroke! No. I will be fine. If I feel ill I'll go back down. No way. I'm up there or dead. No closed deal in my head. Even if my ticker stops dead! Riga closing deals. Back in work Riga closed deals. Got sales got money got incentive. Deal maker. One of the things Riga did. Riga the subject of these stories. Where was her ship and thet wayward Pedro? She wanted to tickle his balls. Would he agree? He had no choice. Another deal closed...

***