Now that our latest novella has officially published on Amazon, Glynn and I are hoping the story will find an audience, that those readers will think it’s a satisfying addition to the overarching tale but a corker of a read in and of itself, and that some of our buyers will feel motivated to leave a review on what we’ve written. I don’t care what kind of review as long as it’s honest, but Glynn is a sensitive sort. If any of our work gets less than 5-stars, he feels like we’ve let those readers down.
 
Consequently, he feels like we’ve let people down all of the time.
 
The other day, he wondered out loud how our kitchen sink’s sponge holder could receive 400 five-star testimonials on Amazon while our novel, The Runaway Mail-Order Bride, has thirteen. I told him his question was easily answered. More people bought the sponge holder, more people reviewed the sponge holder, and the company that produces the sponge holder offered their Amazon buyers… well, bribe is a harsh word. They offered those fortunate souls a $10 gift card if they’d leave a positive review on the site. And by “positive”, they were demanding 5 glowing stars of admiration. Otherwise, no ten-spot.
 
The sponge holder cost us less than thirteen bucks. (Checking Amazon at this minute: yep, still cheap.) To be fair, it probably cost less than three bucks to make the gizmo.
 
Since when did buying reviews become a thing? On principle, I refused to write anything about the stainless-steel sink caddy, even though it does a fine job of holding sponges. It would be almost amazing if it didn’t. Later, I started to wonder if the company really did send those reviewers the promised gift card. Seems kind of shady to me.
 
It turns out, the Sink Caddy Consortium aren’t the only ones who pull these kinds of shenanigans. (I write mail-order bride novels. Of course, I’m going to use a word like “shenanigans.”) On Valentine’s Day, Glynn gave me a rechargeable hand warmer. No chocolates or flowers for this girl; the boy knows what I like. When the hand warmer arrived, it included a card offering a $15 Amazon gift card for every buyer who gave the warmer a 5-star review. A hefty reward for something that only cost 17 dollars.
 
After two weeks of use, I decided I loved my portable little warmer. I left a very happy review because (a) it was as good as advertised; and (b) I had an insatiable need to know if these outfits actually made good on their offers. Hand Warmer, Inc., did, and promptly. Then… two days after I received my digital payment, the hand warmer quit working. I edited my review to reflect this, then used the gift card they’d sent to buy a different rechargeable hand warmer.
 
Wouldn’t you know, that $18 replacement hand warmer arrived this week with its own offer of a $20 gift card, provided I told Amazon buyers that I held five stars of admiration for their teal-colored wonder. Not this time, fellows. I’m out of the reviews-for-hire game.
 
If you’re wondering how the company makes a profit, paying $20 for every $18 purchase, the answer is simple: volume. (Old SNL gag.)
​ 
I’ve drifted a bit from the main point here. One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother is on sale! Although we offer no gift cards in exchange for reviews, Glynn will likely curl his lips in an icy smile if you say nice things about the story.
 
Also, the new hand warmer? So far, it’s great.

​For the last few weeks, Glynn and I have been polishing/tweaking our published One Bride for Seven Brothers novellas in anticipation of finishing the series. Sunday, the polishing was completed and Glynn loaded the revised manuscripts onto Amazon Kindle. At my request, he returned the series to the way we’d originally numbered it. The original One Bride is, as it has always been, the first story in the series. The Second Brother is, once again, Book Two. Third Brother, Book Three, Fourth Brother, Book Four. As you would expect.
 
For now, the Bride stories exist only on Amazon. That will change in about four months when we go “wide” with the series, placing it with Draft2Digital, Google, Apple and the like. We’re a little uneasy about leaving the Kindle Unlimited nest – every month, the Amazon tribe sends us a little something in royalties – but this feels like a good year to try new things.
 
While Glynn was doing his digital magic to upload the manuscripts – which I happily leave to him. I love magic, I struggle with digital – he discovered how to set-up an Amazon pre-order for our new novella, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother. It’s the penultimate story in the series, paving the way for the very last tale to be told. He tells me the step-by-step process is very easy and I’ll trust him on this. I have no intention of learning how to do it on my own.
  
The Fifth Brother is written, but will officially be published on March 7th, a couple of weeks from now. If you've read the other stories in the series, thank you. If you're interested in doing the preorder thing on this story, go here and we’ll all find out if Glynn did this properly. Or not.
 
The last of the series, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Last Brothers, isn’t yet available for pre-order. It’s much longer than the stories that came before it and Glynn needed a little more time to work on its formatting. We’ll have it on preorder by next week, too, with a publication date of April 4th.
 
Finally, if you’d rather wait to read the entire collection at once, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Complete Saga, will be released on May 2nd. That’s coming out as both an eBook and a paperback, so Glynn has his work cut out for him. Our Saga is rather massive for one of our romances, wrapping at almost 200,000 words. In word count, it’s a little longer than Moby Dick.
 
Writing the words, “longer than Moby Dick,” I can only think of inappropriate things to say. I can be such a child.

​​Although I’m spending a lot more time in the house these days, this doesn’t mean I’ve spent those hours cleaning every nook and cranny. It’s not as if I don’t have the basic skills. Years ago, I worked as a housekeeper at a historic hotel not so far from here and the experience changed me. Following that period of employment, whenever I’m a guest at a motel, hotel, or inn, I tidy up after myself. Each day of our stay, Glynn leaves a warm note of thanks to the staff (my handwriting is terrible) and we always, always, tip the housekeepers for the work they do.
 
If you’d seen what I saw, you’d do this, too.
 
Tired of all of the nooks and crannies, I was pleased when Glynn came home with two cartons of Clorox Bleach & Blue. According to the instructions on the box, if I dropped a tablet of B&B in the corner of my toilet tank every few weeks, the tablet would clean, deodorize, and prevent toilet bowl stains for months. Months, I tell you. Where we live, the water is so hard, it’s practically a solid. As a result, everything the water touches gets stained. If the Clorox Company’s little round wonders would keep me from having to scrub the porcelain thrones on a semi-regular basis, I was all in favor of using them.
 
For the first few weeks, that’s more or less what happened… and, then, my toilets stopped flushing. Lifting a tank cover to investigate what had happened, I discovered the Bleach & Blue tablets had dissolved into an ungodly blue goo nesting at the bottom of toilet tank. That cerulean ooze was so thick that it held its form beneath the water. It appeared the ooze had stretched its tendrils into each of the toilet’s inner workings and poisoned them. They were too gummed up to work.
 
With a pandemic happening, I don’t allow visitors into our house. Not even visitors with babies, which are my favorite kind of guests. Glynn suggested we might make an exception for a plumber. I didn’t love the idea, although a plumber carrying a baby would have been exceptionally tempting.
 
With a sigh, my co-writer and partner in crime told me he thought he could get things in working. He also pointed out how much he hated working with water. Then he asked if I’d make him homemade chicken pot pie once the toilets were working again.
 
Which, in a very small way, opened my eyes to the plight of Mrs. Hiền. I found her story on Kiva.org, the nonprofit crowdfunding group that lends money to the world’s disadvantaged. According to the company’s website, the lovely Mrs. Hiền lives in the province of Thanh Hoa in Vietnam, a very poor area, and her home lacks a hygienic toilet. Seeing her story, I felt a certain kinship with her. Listening to Glynn in the background, cursing Clorox Bleach & Blue as he struggled to replace flush valves and fill valves, flappers and floats, I sent my Kiva our first donation in a while.
 
Oh, and he noticed an orange stick in each of our toilet tanks, something we’d overlooked for the past twelve years. That sticker reads, Warning: Larks’ Vomit. No, the sticker actually reads, Warning. Do not use in-tank cleaners.
 
Live and learn, eh, Clorox Company? I’m just glad we can flush again and I hope Mrs. Hiền can soon do the same.

​Two or three years ago, whenever it was that I pulled my blankets over my head and decided to spend my time creating gourd art and reading manga instead of writing fiction, Glynn contacted a young artist to create an image of the two of us as if we were characters in the Soul Eater anime. This was the result and, although it isn’t very Soul Eater-ish, it does capture Glynn’s image alarmingly well. Right down to his arthritic fingers.
 
(I’m teasing. He doesn’t have arthritis in his fingers yet. He will, he tells me, because his many beloved and ancient relatives all suffer from that miserable inflammation. The weird thing is, he tells me this like he thinks I’ll find it sexy.)
 
Although my enjoyment of manga remains strong, the time came when I was ready to write again, and that’s what we’ve been doing the last many months. We’ve completed One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Last Brothers and One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Complete Saga. The Complete Saga is huge, over 900 e-pages, and the Good Witch thoughtfully reminded me that there are no romance fans willing to read anything that long. The Good Witch has been wrong before – remember when you told me I’d look good in low-rise jeans? – so I’m hoping she’s mistaken here, too.
 
We’ve also wrapped the first and second drafts of The Reluctant Mail-Order Bride, our first novel in a long time that didn’t involve anyone from the McCown family. All of these stories will come out this year.  In anticipation of this happening, Glynn proposed that we develop more of a social media presence.
 
A new blog each week for at least a year. Then we needed a home on Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. GoodReads. And how did I feel about doing a podcast on YouTube?
 
Currently, I don’t do any of those things, and this website is the only thing I enjoy doing. All of the others… well, talk about a Soul Eater. I asked him to fetch my blankets and bring me some manga.
 
Once I discovered that my blogs could be transported to Facebook at the touch of widget, we made an agreement. AnneGlynn.com is returning to life with a new blog every seven to ten days for the next year. I’ll post those blogs on Facebook, as long as the Weebly widget is working. I currently have a single FB friend. He’s a lovely writer who’s really Glynn’s pen pal, but felt sorry for such a friendless fellow author. Yes, he’s a pity friend.
 
In the course of the next 365 days, will anyone else care to see what I have to say on the world’s most popular social media platform? I’m curious to see.