Julia Benally's Blog, page 8

The Walmart shopping trip on Veteran's Day

Of all days to run out of food in the house, it had to be on Veteran's Day. I think everybody else ran out of food, too, because everybody was at all the stores. I had to go to two stores because one was having a major sale and the other was Walmart, the bane of my existence.

There were whining children everywhere. It wasn't that whine that says "I'm hungry, my diaper needs changing, my sister hit me, my brother took my toy, I got hurt." It was that squealing howl that demands to be first, to have that toy, to run wild in the store until someone runs them over, and just overall BRAT.

I was trying to find the right personal watermelon by knocking on the surface to hear a hollow sound. But every time I knocked on the rind, that same kid would squeal. I waited for it to stop and then knocked on the rind again. Squealing as you never heard it! I waited again. I knocked on the rind and the melon howled again. So I knocked on it for ten seconds straight, hoping for a break in the infernal howling so I could hear the melon's sound. Total whining for ten seconds straight.

That was a kid who needed to stay home for my benefit.

I finally got the melon I wanted and then went looking for the rest of the sales. Gone. The woman with the howling spawn probably took all the Clementines.

The place was way too crowded while I walked along. These two idiots who sounded like either late teens or early twenties started walking behind me. In these nasally "I'm a total dweeb who thinks I'm tough" voices, they talked about people being in their way. As if everyone should get out of their way because there was supposed to be room and they were privileged to have the whole aisle.

I told myself, "Just keep walking. Don't turn around and start biting people. That won't be good."

I finally got out of that place only to find out the cashier ripped me off on several items.

I got to Walmart then and the shelves were quickly emptying. Some were as empty as when COVID-19 hit for the first time. Boxes were all up in the aisles because Walmart just got a shipment. There were millions of people in each aisle. Social distancing was beyond impossible.

I got lost from my party so I decided to stand in the aisle between the food section and the clothes section. Sooner or later, my party would come back and find me. But no. I stood there a good twenty minutes. My mask was hot and no matter how I adjusted it, my glasses fogged up. Since Walmart took away all its benches, there was nowhere to sit and wait.

People went by looking at me funny. It could have been my foggy glasses. I grew impatient. People were yelling on their phones. All the kids were whining. Their parents looked ready to kill. I was abandoned in the Walmart and I couldn't see! I was about to rip off my mask and glasses, throw them at somebody and start screaming.

And then I saw in my head the newspaper headlines:

Woman goes mad in the Walmart and starts shrieking at the top of her lungs.

"On Veteran's Day, Julia Benally, author of the epic fantasy Nri Kryne went mad in the Walmart and started biting people. She threw her mask and glasses across the store and allegedly started slapping people and breaking their phones. The police carted her away in a straitjacket."

So I calmed down.

I started examining my surroundings. Across from me was a large case of Budweiser. The box was decorated in small Christmas Trees, strings of lights and garland. It was the oddest case I'd ever seen. This guy walked by it and suddenly stopped. He turned like he'd seen a gorgeous woman. He smiled at the box and began caressing it. He was ready to start making out with it in a few seconds, but he had to go.

I went and found my party after that.

Upcoming Short Story Collection

This has been on the back burner for a while, but I have finally decided to put together a short story collection with several new stories added in. I'm going to self publish it since I don't feel like working with people. These stories have already been published in magazines so they're already edited, which is really fun. The only thing I need is a cover and a blurb (which I hope I can do successfully.)

I'm not sure which stories will make it in and which will not, or if I'll just grab them all. Anyway, it'll be fun nonetheless.

Stress Reliever

I once went to a basketball game between elementary schools. It was an away game. Being on the reservation, basketball is HUGE. It doesn't matter the age group. We drove about an hour or so to the rival school's gym. It was a very small gym with only standing space on the sidelines, but the court was the proper size. It was PACKED with rabid basketball fans.

I maneuvered my way to the stage and climbed up on it with all the kids to watch the game. They had the right idea, sitting on the stage. The game was nearing the end. My school was one point behind. In the last minute, they made a basket. Fifty seconds left and the other team made a basket.

If you don't know, every basket equals two points. So the score was neck and neck. Thirty seconds left and my school made another basket. The other school made a basket. Ten seconds left.

The crowd was already shrieking. The walls were rumbling. The floor was about to come loose. The windows were rattling. I think my heart rate was 3,000. I was about to faint. Five seconds and my school made a basket. Two seconds and the other school just threw the ball across the court. The ball hit the rim and bounced off. My school won.

I'd never had so much anxiety in my life. I wanted to throw up. My legs were jelly. It was the most amazing basketball game I'd ever seen and it was played by nine-year-olds. NBA eat your heart out.

These elections started doing this to me and probably to you. So, this calmed me down. I love watching this series. Come on over and watch an episode. It's very short.

How to make custard pudding the Victorian Way

How to make your own lightning

Most everybody knows how lightning is made--okay, maybe not everybody. But there is one thing everybody can do: make their own lightning. It might not come with the thunder, though, and it could very well burn the whole house down. The sirens coming to rescue you can be the thunder. And when people ask what was the cause of the fire, you can sheepishly say you made your own lightning.

First you have to be like me and completely forget that metal plates do NOT go into microwaves. Say when you were young, you used metal plates often in your microwave and nothing ever happened. So when your mother said never to use metal, you had no idea why. You used metal in the microwave all the time when you were home alone. It heated the food perfectly and you just had to use your fingertips to get the metal plate out.

And then one day you got a modern appliance that broke within a year.

Stick the metal plate inside with a food victim of your choice. Turn on the microwave and BAM! You got mini bolts of lightning flying through the little oven and making tiny crackles that make your hair stand on end! And if you're lucky, your food will come to life and you can scream, "It's alive!!!!"

And if you're unlucky, you'll just scream.

My brain is running around with no head

Amazon's been giving me problems--again! Elections are a blight on this day. Godzilla 2014 is playing in the living room. On top of it all, I'm stuck on a part in the third book. I can't figure it out. I went so far as to say, "I think I'll just kill these off and be done with it." Then I realized what I was saying and decided to actually make my brain work.

My brain doesn't like to work all the time. It's out of shape and likes to lay around eating brain potato chips. It was in total protest during finals week at school. Just when it thought it had escaped at graduation, my brain was smacked with the hard truth. It had to learn how to type. It had to learn how to write. The poor thing thought it could already do all of that.

Now my brain is in terror because total strangers are picking up "Nri Kryne." These people can be as cruel as they want in their reviews because they've had no contact with my brain.

Now my brain is running around without its head trying to figure out how in the world is that certain part in the book going to be interesting. Sometimes my brain forgets it has an imagination and can make up any bull crap it wants to.

I have to sit down with my brain and talk soothingly to it, because it has a million emotions. There's all this bad, but then Thanksgiving is coming! So excited! My brain is extra alert today because it actually went to sleep early last night...well, earlier. It woke up some time in the night to give me bizarre dreams.

My brain says it's been working too hard, but I've been watching it. No, it has not!

Inaccurate Amazon Sales Dashboard

The Amazon Sales Dashboard is trash. It's all I can say about it. It doesn't report every sale you make in KDP. Also, the KENP reads is also inaccurate since it's a beta program. So don't get upset if your sales aren't doing too good, because they're probably doing better than you think.

Example: a woman said she had ordered a paperback of "Nri Kryne" on a certain day. The sales on Amazon for paperbacks don't come in until the book ships. Well, the woman already had her book, and there was no sale recorded anyway. I did see one shipped for Canada, but the woman lives here in the US.

The report will come in some day. In the meantime, this is a bunch of BS.

Sometimes the cheap reports tab you can click on from your bookshelf on KDP will have the sale marked. Of course, you can't trust that either. It's worse than the other one.

Guy downloaded my book on KU to "help me out"

Back when I was still trapped in Twitter, a guy posted a tweet saying, "I'm going to download books from KU, and I'm going to read the first chapter. I know authors need all the help they can get and get paid by the page. If you want your book downloaded, tweet it to me.

I needed help. The situation was dire. So I did.

He read my first chapter and I earned thirteen cents.

Help indeed.

May his pants fall off in public.

Happy Halloween!

Hello, everyone!

I've been saving this video for a long time, because it is so freaky! I saw it this summer and I wasn't right for several days. These are videos of paranormal activity caught on video, but they are more than just orbs and vloggers saying they hear something that nobody else does. Or it's obvious they walked into a drug den.

Remember to be safe, have fun (because that's very possible), and above all, eat lotta candy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnvPiEvUKLU

"Keepress" is finally coming out!

I periodically check The Scarlet Leaf Review to see if my story "Keepress" came out yet. It was supposed to be out in September. Of course, that didn't happen.

I checked back today, and there is finally a release date!

The editor is going to combine several issues together, which includes the September issue, and they're all going to be released on November 9.

Hopefully, by then I'll have an answer for my other stories, which have been waiting FOREVER.

I abhor waiting. So do my stories.

Correlations between blog views and book rankings

I've been noticing a correlation between views on this blog, impressions on my book, and it's sales rank.

Both go down at the same time and both go up at the same time.

I attribute this to Halloween is coming, elections are coming, and the whole world has gone absolutely insane.

The virus is to blame!

(Oh, I've decided to be a cat for Halloween, if anybody cares.)

The only thing to do is just not check anything, bury my head in the writing and be glad my rank is no longer in the millions, because it was. Quite depressing. It's not depressing anymore, though, thank goodness.

I'm in the middle of adding the details to the third book in the Monsters and Demons series. That book has been really fun to write.

As for my horror shorts, I'm still waiting on replies from the magazines.

I can't wait for Christmas. It feels like it's going to be a beautiful Christmas.