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badchoicesposts · 4 years

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Loyalty Or Royalty

Chapter 13

Summary: Mia Bhatt spent years trying to escape her past, trying to escape the feeling of betrayal that was left in her heart after the fire, and she finally had. She was marrying the King of Cordonia and was finally going to get her happily ever after. But, after a momentary lapse in judgement caused her to send a wedding invitation to someone she was sure had forgotten about her, she realizes that sometimes the past has a way of crawling back to you.

Author’s Note: In this fic Anton and The Sons of Earth were caught before the wedding. Also this story will contain flashbacks that will be in italics.

Pairing: Liam x MC (Mia Bhatt), Platonic!Colt x MC, Past!Logan x MC

Word Count: 4,401

TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF SELF HARM (No specifics were mentioned, but there is talk of self harming. Please don’t read if it is a trigger for you)

Taglist: @flowerpowell, @dcbbw , @texaskitten30, @kingliam2019 @hopefulmoonobject @lovehugsandcandy @los-cafeteros @desireepow-1986 @lovemychoices, @kimmiedoo5

Catch Up: Masterlist

Mia opened her eyes, the feeling she had become so used to over the past three months of Logan’s arms wrapped around her waist and his chest pressed against her back very obviously missing. She turned over in bed and noticed that his side was empty before sitting up and glancing around the room. The soft moonlight that was seeping into the room from the loft’s high windows illuminated his sleeping form on the couch.

Mia pushed the covers off and walked over to the couch, kneeling down beside it and beginning to gently run her fingers through his hair. Logan moaned softly in his sleep and nestled deeper into the couch causing her to giggle softly to herself.

“Logan, wake up,” she mumbled, pressing a gentle kiss to his bare chest.

He slowly opened his eyes, smiling at her momentarily, before immediately removing it. Mia furrowed her eyebrows in confusion as he sat up.

“Are you okay? What are you doing on the couch?” she asked, sitting down next to him. “When I fell asleep you were in bed next to me.”

“Uh, yeah, I just wanted some more space,” he stammered out, nervously running his hands through his hair.

Mia was surprised and confused by his words. Logan literally slept on top of her half of the time. She used to hate cuddling, but he was always extremely physically affectionate with her and she became used to it in the time they had been together. The couch was also a great deal smaller than the bed, so if he wanted space it would have made more sense to just move over on the bed. However, Logan had been acting strange lately. He had been pulling away from her, distancing himself.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, anxiously tugging at the hair tie on her wrist. “You’ve been acting strange lately. Did I do something to upset you?”

Logan turned his head to look at her, a guilty expression on his face.

“No, I promise it’s not you,” Logan said.

“Please, don’t say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’,” she interrupted him, causing him to laugh softly.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled him into his side. Mia settled there comfortably as he began to gently run his hand up and down her back.

“It’s just… Kaneko’s been asking me to do some things that may make us being in a relationship a bit complicated,” he finally admitted, pulling her closer.

“What kind of things?” she asked nervously.

“I think it’s best I don’t go into any details,” he confessed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to be with you while doing what he wants me to.”

Mia felt like a pile of rocks were sitting in her stomach, her chest beginning to hurt because of his words.

“So, are we breaking up?” she asked, feeling a slight stinging behind her eyes.

“Mia, I don’t want this to be over. Please, believe me when I say that,” he said, raising her chin up and looking deeply into her eyes. “I… I love you.”

Mia pulled herself out of his arms and wrapped her arms around herself.

“You can’t say that now. Not when you’re ending this,” she said, wiping away her tears.

“Mia, please, I don’t want to do this. You mean so much to me,” he pleaded with her.

The two sat in an uncomfortable silence for a while. The tension in the room was thick and almost unbearable.

“I love you too,” she finally said, staring at the wall straight ahead of her. “But that’s not enough is it?”

“I’m sorry,” Logan said, pulling her back into him.

Mia sighed and leaned back into him, neither one of them talking.

“So that’s it then?”

“No, it isn’t. Mia, you’re the most important person in the world to me. You’re the first, the only person I’ve ever loved,” he said softly. “Not only that, but you’re one of my best friends. You’re one of the only people in the world that I actually trust.”

Mia scoffed and threw her legs across his lap, curling into his chest.

“You’re making this break up really hard,” she tried to joke, although he could tell she meant it.

As she lay in his arms, she was painfully aware of her heartbeat. However, she couldn’t bring herself to move out of his embrace. Not when she knew that this was probably the last time they would be together like this. They sat in silence for over an hour before Mia finally dragged herself out of Logan’s arms and pulled him up with her, leading him back over to the bed.

“We still have to live together. We might as well be comfortable,” she said, laying back down. “But, no cuddling. I don’t know if I can handle that.”

The two of them settled back down into bed and Mia turned away from him, hiding the tears that were streaming down her face as she silently cried to herself.

~~~

Mia let out an angry yell as she brought the axe down on the log of wood. Drake replaced it with another and she repeated the action once again.

Her past with self-harm was one she didn’t like to think about. It’s not that she was necessarily embarrassed about it. She was proud of how far she had made it in her mental health journey. Sure, she still struggled with some things, but she had made it a long way from the girl she used to be. However, thinking back to those days too much always made her feel upset. It brought her back to a time where she felt so desperate and miserable and out of control that she just didn’t let her mind wander there.

The last time she had felt the urge to hurt herself had been at the beginning of Liam and Madeleine’s engagement tour. She was trying to process everything that happened with Tariq and all of the terrible things that it had caused. Mia had always known that people could be cruel. She knew it well. But, the things people were saying were vile and predatory. She was also worried that Liam hated her and struggling with seeing him and Madeleine together. Her self esteem was at an all time low and she didn’t feel safe or comfortable in her own skin. She had been so distraught that she had gone to Drake and confessed that she felt the urge to fall back into her old bad habits. She knew where to cut to make sure that no one would be able to see the scars. So, Drake had taken her to his cabin. He had given her an axe and a pile of logs and told her to cut the logs for him so that he would have firewood.

At first she had thought that it was ridiculous. She had no idea how something like that could have taken those urges away. However, she went through with it, and it had actually done wonders to help her get rid of all of the tension she had been feeling. She had never told anyone else about that. Not Liam or Maxwell, not Olivia or Hana. It had always been their secret, and she knew that Drake had been concerned about her for a long time after that. For weeks he barely left her alone, always making sure that either he or Maxwell was with her. At the end of the day, he had been the only reason she hadn’t gone too far during that time and chopping firewood had been an odd but welcome solution. So, she figured it would be the perfect way to release all of her emotions this time. She continued swinging the axe around until she couldn’t raise her arms anymore and dropped the instrument, taking a moment to catch her breath.

Drake gathered up the wood, bringing some of it inside and starting a fire as Mia dropped down onto the cabin’s small sofa. Drake grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen and two glasses, pouring a finger in each of the glasses and handing one to her.

“Thanks,” she said softly as he took a seat next to her.

“No problem. How do you feel?” he asked, throwing his arm over the back of the chair.

Mia felt his hand absentmindedly playing with the bottom of her hair, and she sighed softly.

“Tired.”

“Are you stable now?” he asked, bringing the glass to his lips and taking a long sip.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” she said, almost embarrassed that she needed to do this again. “Thanks for letting me do this.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Mia opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t seem to bring herself to say the words out loud. She chugged the whiskey and rested the glass on the small coffee table, pulling her feet up under her and settling down comfortably.

“Is he right?”

“Who? Your dad?”

Mia swallowed thickly at hearing him refer to Kaneko as that.

“Yeah. Is he right about me and Liam?”

“Bhatt, you know Liam loves you,” Drake said.

“Yeah, he does. I know that, but how much does he love me? Throughout all of the crap I went through in the social season and the engagement tour he was never there. He never once put me first when I did everything I could to make things work between us. I’m not really enough for him am I?” she asked, her voice breaking as she felt her bottom lip starting to tremble.

Drake let out a soft sigh and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. She cried into his chest for a few minutes before calming down and sitting back up. She wiped her eyes and took a few deep breaths, reaching for the whiskey bottle and refilling her glass.

“Bhatt, Liam loves you more than anything. I’ve only ever seen him actually happy, not royal ‘smile for the cameras’ happy, when he’s with you. You guys bring out the best in each other. Talk to him. I’m sure you’ll feel better once you do,” Drake tried to reassure her.

Mia nodded, but she didn’t feel any better. If anything, the more she thought about it all the more upset and irritated she became. She had always been bothered by the way things had been handled during the time they were separated by Madeleine. However, she had always kept it bottled up. She didn’t know how to go about speaking to him about it because a part of her felt that she didn’t deserve to feel that way in the first place. She knew that it had all been hard on him as well, and she wanted to believe that he was doing his best given the circumstances. But, she had still been bothered by it all.

“What do you want to do?” Drake asked.

“We should get back to the palace,” she said, not really wanting to get back but knowing that she couldn’t hide out forever.

“That’s not what I meant,” Drake said. “I mean what do you want to do to fix this whole thing with your dad?”

“What do you mean fix this thing with him? There’s nothing to fix.”

“You had him arrested,” Drake pointed out, causing her to roll her eyes.

“Yeah, because he committed treason,” she said.

“But, he’s your dad.”

“That doesn’t automatically erase all of his sins,” she said.

“No, it doesn’t. But, having him arrested and then pretending that it doesn’t bother you isn’t going to make you feel any better. Besides, he helped make sure we caught Anton,” Drake said, causing her to groan.

“Ugh, when did you become the voice of reason in my life?” she asked sarcastically, rising to her feet and pulling him up with her.

All through the ride back to the palace her mind was reeling with the possibilities of what she should do next. They got back to the palace and Drake followed her to her and Liam’s apartment. Hercules immediately bounded over to her and a soft smile graced Mia’s lips as she reached down to scratch behind his ears.

“Mia!” Liam said, rising from his spot on the couch and running up to her.

Mia smiled softly, but couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. He leaned down to press a kiss to her lips, but she turned her head quickly so that his lips instead landed on her cheek. She passed it off as if she were just turning to walk over to Colt who was sitting on the couch as well, along with the rest of the crew, and looking angrier than she had ever seen him.

“Colt,” she said, however he cut her off before she could continue.

“What the hell were you thinking? I get that you’re mad but are you really going to punish him for the rest of his life by having him arrested?” he asked, his voice laced with anger.

“Okay, I acted in the heat of the moment, and I probably shouldn’t have, but it’s not like he’s innocent,” she said, immediately getting defensive.

“God, you’re so self righteous!” Colt exclaimed, getting to his feet. “All you know how to do is play the victim.”

Mia felt her chest begin to tighten at his words. She could feel her stomach start to churn, and she fought back a wave of nausea. However, she was too tired to keep arguing. She felt like she didn’t have any more fight in her. She leaned back into the couch and stared off into space as Colt continued to throw insults and criticisms her way. She felt the couch dip next to her and looked over to see Logan giving her a sympathetic smile.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“That seems like a loaded question,” she said tiredly.

Logan rested his hand on her knee and squeezed it comfortingly, and Mia felt eyes on the two of them. She looked up to see Liam staring at the two of them closely, and she tried to smile at him, but knew that it didn’t really meet her eyes.

“I know what we all need!” Leo said, rising to his feet and clapping his hands together. “A drinking game. I’m going to text Maxwell, Hana, and Oliva.”

Leo took out his phone and quickly messaged the only other members of the group that wasn’t there, before making his way to the bar cart at the corner of the room and beginning to pour drinks.

“Leo, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Liam began to say before Mia interrupted him.

“I’m down. What are we playing,” she asked, holding her hand out for him to hand her a drink.

“How about a good, old fashioned game of Never Have I Ever?” Leo suggested as Maxwell joined the group, soon followed by Hana and Olivia.

Everyone simply shrugged in agreement and settled down once they all had a drink in hand.

“Who wants to go?” Maxwell asked.

“How ‘bout I start? Never have I ever asked someone to be my mistress,” Mia said, smiling sarcastically in Liam’s direction.

“Oh, boy,” Drake grumbled into his drink, tossing it back before refilling his glass.

Liam looked at her, a mix of shock and hurt on his face, but took an embarrassed sip of his drink anyway.

“Never have I ever lost my virginity to a car thief,” Mona piped up after an awkward silence, causing Mia to groan loudly.

She and Ellie both drank, causing both Logan and Colt to smile proudly to themselves. Mia elbowed Logan in the ribs and he swatted her away with a good natured smile on his face. To everyone’s surprise Toby drank as well.

They all took turns for a few rounds, Ximena revealing that she had never gone to a school dance before and Olivia saying that she had never actually stabbed anyone although she had threatened to do it several times.

“Never have I ever lived in my car,” Mona said.

Mia and everyone else in the crew besides Ellie drank, causing Maxwell’s eyes to open widely in shock.

“You never told me that you lived in your car, little blossom,” he said sadly.

“Yeah, it was only for a week after everything went down and the garage burned down. It was before I called Annya and moved to New York.”

“What happened to your car?” Toby asked. “I loved that car.”

“I sold it to pay for my first semester of college. I cried like a baby, but it was good money,” she said, nonchalantly.

“Never have I ever had my own father arrested,” Colt said, once it had come back around to him, causing everyone to go silent.

Mia’s hand closed tightly around her glass before she drained it, maintaining direct eye contact with Colt.

“Never have I ever found out that my best friend was my sister and kept it from her for seven years!” she shot back angrily.

“Never have I ever eaten lunch alone in a bathroom stall because I didn’t have any friends!”

“Never have I ever plotted to murder a group of cops!”

“Never have I ever tripped over my own feet and fell onto a trash can!”

“Never have I ever cried while watching Annie!”

Colt gasped loudly at her confession and recoiled like he had been slapped.

“You bitch!”

Mia smirked in his direction and crossed her arms over her chest.

“We agreed to never talk about that,” he ground out, glaring in her direction.

“Yeah, we also agreed that we would always be there for each other, but then you left for seven years,” she shot back.

Mia rose to her feet and placed her glass down onto the coffee table.

“I’m going to bed,” she said, starting to walk out of the room and feeling Liam reach for her.

“Love,” he began to say.

Mia knew that he was just trying to make sure that she was okay, but in her inebriated state she was agitated and didn’t want to be around him. She was mad at him for everything that Kaneko said, and she was mad at Colt. She just wanted to be alone and go to sleep.

“Don’t,” she said harshly, pulling her arm out of his grasp and running upstairs.

~~~

Mia rolled over in bed and sighed softly. She allowed her eyes to adjust to the light for a few moments before turning her head to see Liam already awake and sitting up in bed.

“Good morning, my love,” Liam spoke from her side.

“Morning,” she replied, staring up at the ceiling.

“I think we need to talk,” Liam said, causing her to sit up next to him.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, shrinking back into herself at the thought of the conversation they needed to have. She knew she had started this, but at the same time she was worried about it.

“I’m sorry for how I acted last night,” she said quietly, anxiously tugging at the hair tie on her wrist. “I shouldn’t have brought that stuff up in front of everyone. Kaneko just got under my skin, and my actions were fueled by my emotions. But, I think the reason it bothered me so much is because some of it seemed true.”

Mia heard Liam take in a sharp breath, and she could tell that he was choosing his words carefully.

“What did you think was true?”

Mia opened her mouth to speak, started to rethink her words, and stopped again to gather her thoughts. After a moment she decided that it would be best to start from the beginning, to let him know what was really going on in her head.

“Your engagement to Madeleine was a really hard time for me. I was still trying to process everything that happened with Tariq. I was scared, and I felt violated. The terrible things people were saying to me and about me were overwhelming. I… I went to a really dark place, and it wasn’t good. But, I kept that side of myself away from you,” she said.

“It seems like you’ve kept a lot of sides away from me,” Liam said.

“You’re right, and that’s completely on me. I hid the things I was scared you wouldn’t be able to love because I didn’t want to scare you away. That was wrong of me, and I’m so sorry for it. I hope that you can forgive me for that,” she said, hugging her knees tighter, her arms aching from swinging the axe the day before.

She was uncomfortable. She hated confrontation, and she hated knowing that she had hurt him. He was right and she should have told him the truth. However, he had hurt her too, and she knew they needed to talk about that. Their relationship would never be as strong as it should be if they kept the bad things bottled up and hidden away from each other. Liam placed a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched at his touch. He immediately recoiled, a hurt look on his face, and she felt a tear stroll down her cheek. She reached out and grabbed onto his hand, squeezing it tightly in hers and offering him a weak smile.

“All through the engagement tour I felt like I was falling apart, but we barely had any time together in the first place and I couldn’t bring myself to say anything in the short time we did have. I should have and I know that. I almost went back to New York,” she confessed. “I felt scared and tired, and I feel like I was fighting a losing battle. I felt like I was fighting so hard for our relationship but that you didn’t seem to care.”

“What?” Liam asked incredulously. “Mia, you have to know how much I love you.”

“I love you Liam. I loved you so much that I stayed despite all of the horrible things that I had to deal with. I stayed and I fought for us and I tracked down Tariq all while everyone threw names and insults in my direction and you pranced around with Madeleine on your arm,” she said, visibly getting angry. “Everyone was there for me. Maxwell, Drake, Olivia, Hana, hell even Bertrand. But, you never were.”

“I was trying to protect you! I thought that someone dangerous was trying to hurt you, and the best way to keep you safe was to keep my distance in public,” Liam tried to defend.

“Is that why you still stayed engaged to her after we found out your father was behind it?” she asked.

Liam’s face fell at her words, a look of guilt soon making its way there.

“You asked me to be your mistress, Li. The fact that you were willing to reduce me to that was like a slap in the face. It’s like you were giving up on us. I gave up so much for you, but you never once fought for us or sacrificed for us. And when it all came down to it I had to beg Tariq to tell the truth. It wasn’t enough for you to know that your father did it and then have us move on when you knew I was safe. I had to go to the man who assaulted me and beg him to tell the world that I wasn’t a cheating whore and that those pictures were of me getting assaulted. It was humiliating. Did you ever think about how hard it was for me to do that? But I did it for us. And what were you doing all that time? You were still parading around with Madeleine. You didn’t break things off until my name was cleared because then us being together didn’t affect the reputation of the royal family. I need to know that you love me enough to love me all the time. Not just when it’s convenient for you. Not just when your image is going to be affected by it. I need to know that you’ll still want me when things are bad. I need to know that you’re going to fight for me as much as I’m willing to fight for you, as much as I have fought for you,” she said. “If we hadn’t found Tariq or if he hadn’t agreed to admit what he’d done, would you have still married her? Even knowing that your father was behind the scandal.”

“What?” Liam asked.

He looked completely hurt and it made her feel terrible knowing that he was feeling that way because of her. However, she needed to know.

“Would you have let me go and just married Madeleine and moved on?” she asked, hating that she even felt the need to ask the question.

Did that make her selfish? She tried to be understanding that he was in a difficult position throughout this all. There were things about being a royal that she still didn’t understand, but at the same time she couldn’t keep the negative thoughts in anymore. It was like all of the terrible thoughts that had been plaguing her throughout his and Madeleine’s engagement tour started flooding out of her mouth and she couldn’t stop them.

“Mia, I know I’ve made some mistakes in our relationship. I can’t make excuses for that. I was in a difficult situation, and I acted in the way I thought best, but please, don’t ever doubt my love for you. You are my whole world, and I would do anything to prove that to you,” Liam pleaded with her, reaching out to try pulling her to him.

“Answer the question, Li,” she said, moving out of his grasp.

Liam remained silent for a few moments, and at first Mia thought that he was trying to figure out what to say. However, she soon realized that he actually had no intention of answering her. He looked up at her, his expression both a mix of guilt and regret. That was all the answer she needed.

“I’m late. I have to meet Bastien,” she said, turning her back on him and closing the bathroom door.

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kootenaygoon · 5 years

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So,

At first, I was nervous about tackling news stories.

I knew the stakes from my summers at the Whitehorse Star, had seen how small fuck-ups could have large consequences. Telling someone else’s story is a huge privilege, a power you have over them, and it can be intoxicating. But if you do it wrong, you will hear about it. I preferred the lighter elements of the job, like taking pictures at the Pride Parade or typing up an exhaustive feature on the Capitol Theatre’s production of Chicago. I was a hype machine, excitedly Photoshopping my images and then sprawling back in my desk chair with the newly printed paper’s pages flung open to reveal my handiwork. I floated through the summer of 2014 high on the experience of it all, letting myself fall in love with each new artist I interviewed.

Some people believed the proliferation of artists in the Nelson area was thanks to the town being situated on a bed of magical quartz, but I figured it was more a case of kindreds being attracted to one another. People were looking for a life less ordinary, far from the city. Most locals had some sort of regular job and then spent the remainder of their time investing in creative endeavours, whether that meant painting a mural, starting a food truck or playing in an 80s cover band called Val Kilmer and the New Coke. I started learning the names of local authors, meeting up with poet Tom Wayman and short story writer Myler Wilkenson. I wrote a feature about a photographer named Ryan Oakley who had crowd-funded a book called Humans of Nelson, based on the viral hit Humans of New York. It featured daily portraits of people he met during his lunch breaks, along with a pithy quote that captured their essence. One young singer named Anilah had just landed her Enya-esque tracks on some TV show, a spoken word poet named Magpie Ulysses was releasing a chapbook and a popular saxophonist named Clinton Swanson was playing relentless gigs around town. I giddily funnelled their stories on to Facebook and Twitter, where I obsessively watched the engagement numbers climb. Within a month or two our web presence had exploded, and pretty soon Calvin was bragging that we had the best social media numbers in the Kootenays.

But every now and then, things got dark. The first heavy story that landed on my desk involved a quartet of teenagers who had gone missing the day before I arrived in town. It was eventually discovered that they’d commandeered a canoe and gone adventuring right into a windstorm on Slocan Lake—a body of water so enormous it almost looks like the ocean in places. Authorities were able to recover the canoe pretty quickly, and found a young girl near death. Though they rushed her to medical services, she died in the hospital. There was no trace of the others, three dudes ranging in age from late teens to early twenties. The grief was heavy in the community, and right away I felt it settle in my chest — a clenched fist of empathy. I interviewed the RCMP as they conducted a large-scale search, checking in each day to hear if there was anything to report. At one point it looked like they were going to call it off, but then the families hired a husband-wife duo from the U.S. who had a submersible specially designed for these sorts of retrievals. Within a few days they’d located the boys, down in the darkness, and dragged them back up into the light. I shuddered when I thought of how they must’ve looked after that long underwater, after being cradled to the surface with a claw. The people I interviewed talked about the closure that brought to the families, and I quoted various people silver lining it, but it was the sort of tragedy that was so random it felt cruel on a cosmic level. Like a deity reaching down from heaven to smudge out a few people with his thumb.

“We cannot presume what happened. Our best speculation is misadventure. It wasn’t a very big canoe,” RCMP officer Darryl Little told me.

“It was more of a swift water canoe than a lake canoe. There wasn’t much space below the gunnels and we figure the wind came up and that was it.”

During those weeks I kept running into people who knew the kids, and saw the impact plain on their heartbroken faces. One woman burst into tears while I was renewing my car insurance. I decided to interview the school district psychologist, Dr. Todd Kettner, to get his insights into the community’s grief process. We met at Lakeside Park and shot a video of him sitting on a park bench, calling out the provincial government and Premier Christy Clark. They had docked his pay during the teacher’s strike, right while he was in the midst of putting in overtime to coordinate a critical incident crisis management plan for the Slocan community. He was the only psychologist for the district, which according to him was chronically under-funded. For him it wasn’t about the dollars they took off his cheque, it was the overall neglect rural schools were receiving that really set him off. In an online open letter that went viral around the province he laid out some of the routine cases he was dealing with from day to day, underlining the ways the community was failing to support students with mental health issues.

“I was awakened Sunday morning by a phone call informing me that a student at one of the 21 schools I’m responsible for was on life support in ICU after an accidental drug overdose,” he wrote.

“Monday morning, while continuing to support the staff at the school where the hospitalized student learns, a dedicated and caring school administrator and I were informed that we were needed at another school to help the staff there prepare to gently inform their students that their classmates’ parent had been killed in a tragic accident.”

Kettner was eventually reimbursed for his pay cut, but didn’t see any change at an institutional level. At the end of the day he was still doing his job the best way he could in seemingly impossible circumstances. In the newsroom Tamara filled me in on the realities of SD8, and the issues were deeply systemic. The whole system was cash-starved because the undeclared income of the cannabis industry meant that, on paper, it was the poorest district in the province. The local high school was past capacity, there were multiple elementary schools that should have been demolished years ago, and sitting through board meetings meant hearing about financial snafus of the highest order.

“Those school board meetings, Will? Worst part of my job, easy. You wouldn’t believe how boring they are. All the ‘motion to accept this’ and ‘motion to accept that’. Makes me want to blow my brains out,” she said.

“The key is, you have to get to know the trustees, the superintendent. Once you have them as a connection, they can pretty much talk you through anything.”

“You think the strike will last much longer?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Those teachers are pissed, and they’re not going to back down.”

Around this time I came to an instinctive conclusion about the type of reporter I wanted to be: not aloof, or unfeeling, but the type that engages to an almost scary degree. If I was going to write a story, I wanted to understand it on a far deeper level than I needed for the paper, I wanted to be the guy in town that was the ultimate expert on that topic — right down to its human nuances.

The story commanding my most fervid attention was the trial of Andrew Stevenson, the bank robber that Cass had told me about. Calvin, Tamara and I spent a good half an hour scouring through Facebook trying to find a photo of him and his co-accused, Krista Kalmikoff, so we could have something to illustrate Greg’s stories about the court hearings. We were unsuccessful. The guy was being charged with seven robberies over the course of about six months, of both banks and pharmacies. The NPD had identified addiction as the driving force behind the crimes, and had been able to predict the exact day of his last robbery: April 25, 2014. In my free time I interrogated anyone who knew anything about what happened, picking up scraps of information here and there. A drunk woman at a party described seeing him come careening out of the bank’s parking lot on a bike, cutting in front of city hall and hurtling down towards the lake as cops sprinted after him. I wanted, so badly, to know what this guy looked like. Calvin sent me down to the court to get a shot of him walking in handcuffed—a goon shot—but then it turned out he was appearing by video link. Foiled!

As I got to know the NPD cops, attending one of their award ceremonies, I met a soft-spoken sergeant named Nate Holt. He had thickly muscled arms, a neatly trimmed blond beard and spiky hair that was nearly white. Not only was he holding an award for bravery, he was also one of the guys who was at the bridge that day, with Andrew Stevenson's stolen money raining down from the tree like confetti. I pictured the bank robber squirming on the rocks, trying to crawl away, while they descended on him like blue wraiths. The thing about Nate was you could feel the toll his work took on him, and you could see it in the way he carried himself. He was piggy-backing a lot of sadness. One suicidal dude came at him with a butcher knife and Nate didn’t even pull his gun. No, he got close enough to tackle him in a bear-hug, wrestle the knife out of his grip and save both of their lives. Sometimes I thought about those two men, rolling on the Baker Street sidewalk in that guy’s blood, while shocked residents looked on. I couldn’t believe that someone could have an experience like that and return to work the next day. But that’s exactly what he did.

Before Paisley moved into our new place, Muppet and I got a few days of lackadaisical meandering. I took her to Kaslo May Days with me, slaloming along the highway up Kootenay Lake in a state of giddy bliss, thinking yes I think I made the right decision while I gazed out at the water. I spotted a weird gargoyle sculpture on top of a house on Front Street, and wondered to myself what the deal was there. I spent a lot of time wandering through parks with my camera, approaching strangers and asking to take their photos. Cass would later jokingly call these spreads “All the people Will met at the park the other day”. Eventually I decided I had to see this bridge Andrew Stevenson jumped off, so I got on the highway out to Castlegar and went looking for it. We turned off the highway and followed a switch-back down to the Columbia River, just a few kilometres up from a massive hydroelectric dam. I parked at one end of the bridge and walked Muppet out across the dusty concrete to the middle so we could see the spot it happened. It was a clear, sunny afternoon, and I eventually identified the small cedar he’d attempted to jump into. Below was nothing but a rocky slope to the river, twenty feet further on. This was where it all ended for him, after evading the cops six times. Maybe it was the new pot I was smoking, or maybe it was something else, but I was feeling an electric need to understand this story. I’d been struggling for years on a novel that wasn’t coming along, partially because I was finding it difficult to invent new parts of the narrative, but here was a true fucking story that I could actually throw my weight into. I stood there for a long time, while cars rocketed by in the distance and wind hurtled through the canyon. The air smelled delicious.

I stood there drinking a Slurpee while Muppet panted happily.

The Kootenay Goon

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mybookplacenet · 5 years

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Featured Author Interview: James Nathaniel Miller II

Tell us about yourself and your books.: Becoming a writer wasn’t even on my bucket list. My professional life had been spent in the aviation business. I’m now 71 years old, and it astounds me how God could have blessed someone like me—one who has made so many mistakes along the way. Our aircraft companies supported outreaches to destitute people around the world, and even sponsored a chaplaincy program in a Texas facility for troubled youth. But I became burned out after so long and decided to retire at the age of 52. That’s when the real trouble started, the beginning of a sixteen-year-long wilderness in my life. First, we lost 80% of our retirement in the financial markets crash of the year 2000. After that, I lived in a state of depression and panic for several years. It was a type of PTSD, I realize now. I tried hard to trust God through it all, but eventually I didn’t even trust myself any longer. Thereafter, I failed at everything I tried. After sixteen years, I was so defeated that I could no longer see any purpose for my life. I ran out of options, and the boredom coupled with failure was killing me. I reached the point of wanting God to just take me home. Through it all, my wife Carla was a rock. She never wavered in her trust for me or for her Lord. She’s my hero. I wish I were more like she is. After I came to the end of myself, something miraculous happened. One night, out of nowhere a story invaded my head about a US Marine pilot who . . . well you get the picture—Cody Musket, a man who has reached the point of desperation, who meets a heroic woman whose faith is unbreakable. The story grew in my head for months, but it never occurred to me to write a book. (Doofus!) I even asked God to take this story out of my head because it was disrupting my life. Finally, after about six months, I told Carla about the story. I told her I was gonna go crazy if I didn’t at least write it down. She said, “I think you should.” That’s it. “I think you should.” I began to write feverishly and could not stop for two years. I studied hard to learn how to write fiction. No Pit So Deep, The Cody Musket Story was released in 2016 as a stand-alone novel, and I have now expanded this saga to a four-book series with a combined 440 customer reviews from around the world, many of which reveal lives that have been impacted. The first book has been on the Kindle #1 Bestseller list twice, and has won several awards. So, there I was just a few years ago, thinking my life was over. Feeling abandoned. But if my life had not slowed down to an agonizing crawl, I would never have written this story. If I had achieved the retirement I had always dreamed about, I might have missed a greater destiny. Do you have any unusual writing habits? Writers’ habits differ according to personality and purpose. I’m not striving to become known as an author, but I would love it if my character, Cody Musket, and his counterpart, Brandi Barnes, became household names. Their stories represent us all. What authors have influenced you? When I was 8 years old, I read The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley. Even though I was a kid at the time, that one still stands out. The Zorro character had honor and purpose. At the age of 12, I read Serenade to the Big Bird, a personal memoir by Bert Stiles, a WWII US bomber pilot. In recent years, Wild at Heart by John Eldredge and The Three Battlegrounds by Francis Fragipane both had a tremendous impact on me. Do you have any advice for new authors? I can only advise myself, because we all have different goals. Here is my personal mantra: Write better but fewer books. I feel that many authors sell themselves short because they are rushed, thinking that the more books they write in a given amount of time, the more popular they will become. That only works if your finished product is the very BEST you can produce. Our modern culture is held hostage by time. Time can be a tyrant, ticking away like a relentless metronome in your mind, robbing you of your best creativity. Don’t be afraid to set aside your book for a few weeks, then come back to it and read what you’ve written. You will be surprised at what you see. That’s when my greatest creativity seems to kick in. What is the best advice you have ever heard? “Don’t try to be just like everyone else. If you want to make a difference, set a new path.” – James Nathaniel Miller (my father) What are you reading now? I am reading The Ground Kisser by Lisa Worthey Smith, the riveting true story about a 12-year-old girl who escaped from Vietnam in 1979 in a small boat. She endured pirates and storms on the high seas, then nearly died from dissentary before finally achieving freedom. What's your biggest weakness? My greatest weakness? I am not a geek when it comes to cybertronics. I can handle social media just fine, but I am limited in marketing techniques. What is your favorite book of all time? Proverbs of Solomon What has inspired you and your writing style? My writing style? That's difficult to answer. I like authors who keep the story moving rapidly, and I have been compared to several, but I never think about that when writing. I write what I feel, and my goal is to help the reader to experience each page the same way I feel it. I cannot name just one author who has inspired me, and I can't describe my style, except to say that I like to keep the plot moving without fillers and excess words. What are you working on now? Right now I am in the process of producing audiobooks for my novel series. I'm getting requests for audiobooks, and I feel this is a worthy investment. I am also mulling over ideas for a 5th book in my Cody Musket series. What is your method for promoting your work? I love doing guest-hosting live online, answering questions, interacting with readers. I've recently experimented with a new way to introduce my books--letting one or more of my fiction characters join me online and tell their own stories as if they were real This has been extremely well-received and highly successful. It keeps readers engaged. What's next for you as a writer? Many of my readers have asked me to write a 5th book in my Cody Musket series, but I am reluctant to write again until I have another gripping and unique story with a plot that has never been told before, and one that has something to say that’s vital. I believe that is what my readers expect more than anything. How well do you work under pressure? I purposely do not work under pressure. I do not place time-limits on my projects, and I don't self-impose unrealistic goals. I cannot speak for everyone, but for me, pressure is a roadblock to inspiration. How do you decide what tone to use with a particular piece of writing? For me, the tone is situational. Fast action, romance, and humor all require different tones. My books have all three, and I love the transitions from one to another. I feel this puts more genuine feeling into a novel and keeps the reader guessing and inspired. Author Websites and Profiles James Nathaniel Miller II Amazon Profile James Nathaniel Miller II's Social Media Links Facebook Profile Read the full article

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a-breton · 5 years

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How to Survive the Ongoing Confusion With SEO

Search is one of the most vital – and misunderstood – components of a content distribution strategy.

The ongoing algorithm shifts initiated by the search engines make it hard to be confident that you’re doing everything you can to optimize content performance.

As part of CMI’s new Mastering Content Marketing video series, we asked Courtney Cox Wakefield, digital marketing manager at Children’s Health, to share her view on trends shaping the search landscape, and the challenges and opportunities they hold for content marketing.

You’ll find the highlights of our conversation filmed at Content Marketing World 2018 in the video below. Keep reading for a more detailed analysis of some of the key issues Courtney discusses. I also offer a few steps you can take to preserve your brand’s search influence and authority – even in the face of Google’s ongoing assaults on outbound link building.

youtube

New ranking factors rock the boat

One of the most talked-about shifts in the search world this year has been Google’s transition to mobile-first site indexing – i.e., crawling the mobile version of a site page to analyze its content and determine its ranking rather than using the desktop version.

Though Google insists that having your site content included in its mobile-first index is not a consideration in its ranking algorithm, the company notes (in a series of tweets) that overall mobile-friendliness of your site content is (and will continue to be) a ranking factor.

Courtney offers her take on what this shift might mean for marketers:

Mobile is really the most recent thing that’s made a big impact because Google used to look first at our desktop factors – so, what was going on our desktop – in order to figure out how they were going to rank us. Recently, within the last year, they have slowly started rolling out mobile-first rankings; so, they’re basically saying, ‘OK, we’re going to look first at the ranking factors for mobile. What are you doing on mobile, on your mobile site?’ Whether that’s a responsive site, or a separate mobile experience, or no mobile experience at all, they’re going to be ranking every search based on those mobile experiences.

Google is going to be ranking every search based on #mobile experiences, says @CourtEWakefield. #SEO Click To Tweet

Consider: In his analysis of the subject, SEO strategist Mike Murray contends that, whether or not mobile-first indexing directly affects rankings now, the fact Google shifted its priorities strongly suggests that meeting its high standards for mobile-friendliness and content quality is something marketers should pay extra attention to.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Slow Page Load Time Not Always the Culprit in Poor SEO Rankings

Latest word on voice

In her Content Marketing World presentation, Courtney discusses a sleeping giant among search ranking factors that’s poised to crush other factors under its tremendous weight – voice search.

Indications already are appearing that the growing smart-speaker market will make a huge dent in the way consumers search for information. For example, data from Alpine.AI reveals that over 1 billion voice searches are conducted every month, and comScore estimates that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice-based.

Why does it matter whether consumers search for information using their voice or their fingers? Well, for one thing (as I point out in my recent deep dive on the topic of voice technology), digital assistant devices deliver only one search result per inquiry.

Digital assistant devices deliver only one search result per inquiry, says @joderama. #SEO Click To Tweet

This makes reaching the coveted top SERP spot a heck of a lot more important. It also makes the path to achieving this critical goal – and measuring the impact of your content’s progress to achieve it – a lot more complicated. It’s a pressing concern, Courtney admits, that the industry isn’t adequately prepared to handle:

Voice, the things that we can do for it now, they’re limited because we don’t have a lot of measurement for voice. It’s not separated out in our Google Analytics. There’s not a lot of things that we can say, OK, I know this works because I can point back to this metric that shows that my traffic for voice is going up. The number of impressions I’m getting for voice is going up. We don’t have those things. What we have to look at is these proxy metrics, which nobody really likes, but they’re there and it’s what we’re stuck with right now.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Voice Search: Is Your Content Prepared for the Verbal Revolution?

How Voice-Activated Tech Will Change Content Marketing

Google gobbling your lunch?

Since the beginning of search, there’s been an altruistic exchange in play between content marketers and the big G: Brands allow search bots to crawl and index their site content for free in order to supply the useful information and answers consumers rely on search engine results pages (SERPs) to provide. In turn, Google offers outbound links that direct back to the marketers’ site pages so the brands can capitalize on the extra attention and continue the conversation on their home turf.

But Google (and other search engines) has slowly and slyly started to rig the system against content creators by developing no-click features that ensure that the consumers’ path of discovery stays firmly within Google’s walled garden. The increased prominence of Google’s self-hosted solutions – including its answer boxes and featured snippets, Google posts, and knowledge panels – may provide greater convenience for consumers who want immediate gratification. By breaking the terms of this unstated social contract and killing organic reach, Google is leaving content marketers little choice but to make a few strategic changes of their own.

In his recent presentation at Brighton SEO, search expert and SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin admits it won’t be easy for content marketers to keep the Google goliath at bay, but he offers strategic and tactical moves brands should prioritize in their content optimization efforts. They include:

Emphasizing tools, interactive features, data-driven stories, and other types of content experiences that drive clicks rather than providing quick answers

Doubling down on branded demand creation so that consumers are incentivized to search for you directly (rather than for broad keywords that you may or may not rank for)

Creating content for the platforms Google prioritizes (e.g., YouTube, G News, Google Maps)

Building brand profiles on the sites that rank well in your space and/or forging content partnerships with influential publishers that dominate the SERP for your top keywords

Think beyond SERP-based metrics

With Google seemingly set on cannibalizing brands’ traffic, another area where Courtney thinks marketers urgently need to make some changes is measurement:

We have spent a lot of time as an industry using clicks and traffic as a metric for success, and we’ve called other things vanity metrics, but I think clicks and traffic are vanity metrics. Ultimately, the only real metric is ROI. What money are you making from this?

This may be accurate from a pure search engine marketing (SEM) perspective; however, in the world of content marketing, the path from a click on a SERP to a sale isn’t as direct as it might be with pay-per-click advertising. This is where some of the softer ranking factors – influence and authority – are likely to come into play – something Courtney acknowledges and addresses:

I think we’re going to have to shift majorly as a marketing industry to say we’re going to lose clicks – and that’s OK because we’re building influence, and that’s what’s most important.

And that’s where getting more proficient with your content marketing holds a distinct advantage over relying on marketing techniques like SEM because the discipline is built on compelling consumers to view your brand as the go-to source of valuable, trustworthy information on the subject at hand. As Courtney says:

Just because you don’t get a click, it doesn’t mean you’re not building influence. It doesn’t mean that somebody doesn’t see you as that source where that content came from. So what if they get their answer right there? If they see that the recipe that they’re looking at came from allrecipes.com, well, the next time that they need a recipe, they may just go straight to allrecipes.com. It’s really hard to track that success back to that time that you showed up in the answer box. Ultimately, it builds influence and it makes people more likely to search you out as a brand in the future.

Just because you don’t get a click from SERP doesn’t mean you’re not building influence. @CourtEWakefield‏ Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Are You Measuring Right in Your Content Marketing?

Content conclusion

Even if you can’t compete with Google’s self-serving strategic shifts and ongoing algorithm adjustments, your business still stands to reap strong benefits from search’s value exchange – as long as you focus less on counting the clicks and more on creating content experiences that satisfy consumers’ underlying needs. As Courtney advises:

One of the things with SEO is making sure that people stay engaged with your content and don’t leave and go back to the search engine results page and click to somebody else. Google is tracking that type of behavior. They know when people aren’t satisfied with the content that they get on your page. Building engaging content, like what Drew (Davis) was talking about in his (Content Marketing World) keynote session; and making sure that people are engaged, that you keep that tension, that you really answer their question but have that big payoff at the end, that is so important. Even though it’s not a direct ranking factor, it influences a ranking factor that can really make a difference for your content and your ranking.

Got a topic you would like our team to tackle in a future installment of the Mastering Content Marketing series? We would love to see your suggestions in the comments.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Are You Still Content Marketing Like It’s 2018?

Road Map to Success: Creating the Content of Your Audience’s Dreams

Courtney presented at Content Marketing World 2018. Will you be a presenter at CMWorld 2019? Speaker proposals are due December 14, 2018. Submit yours today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2BbiIyt

#Online Marketing

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lucyariablog · 5 years

Text

How to Survive the Ongoing Confusion With SEO

Search is one of the most vital – and misunderstood – components of a content distribution strategy.

The ongoing algorithm shifts initiated by the search engines make it hard to be confident that you’re doing everything you can to optimize content performance.

youtube

New ranking factors rock the boat

Courtney offers her take on what this shift might mean for marketers:

Google is going to be ranking every search based on #mobile experiences, says @CourtEWakefield. #SEO Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Slow Page Load Time Not Always the Culprit in Poor SEO Rankings

Latest word on voice

In her Content Marketing World presentation, Courtney discusses a sleeping giant among search ranking factors that’s poised to crush other factors under its tremendous weight – voice search.

Digital assistant devices deliver only one search result per inquiry, says @joderama. #SEO Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Voice Search: Is Your Content Prepared for the Verbal Revolution?

How Voice-Activated Tech Will Change Content Marketing

Google gobbling your lunch?

Emphasizing tools, interactive features, data-driven stories, and other types of content experiences that drive clicks rather than providing quick answers

Doubling down on branded demand creation so that consumers are incentivized to search for you directly (rather than for broad keywords that you may or may not rank for)

Creating content for the platforms Google prioritizes (e.g., YouTube, G News, Google Maps)

Building brand profiles on the sites that rank well in your space and/or forging content partnerships with influential publishers that dominate the SERP for your top keywords

Think beyond SERP-based metrics

With Google seemingly set on cannibalizing brands’ traffic, another area where Courtney thinks marketers urgently need to make some changes is measurement:

Just because you don’t get a click from SERP doesn’t mean you’re not building influence. @CourtEWakefield‏ Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Are You Measuring Right in Your Content Marketing?

Content conclusion

Got a topic you would like our team to tackle in a future installment of the Mastering Content Marketing series? We would love to see your suggestions in the comments.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Are You Still Content Marketing Like It’s 2018?

Road Map to Success: Creating the Content of Your Audience’s Dreams

Courtney presented at Content Marketing World 2018. Will you be a presenter at CMWorld 2019? Speaker proposals are due December 14, 2018. Submit yours today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Survive the Ongoing Confusion With SEO appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/11/survive-confusion-seo/

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eipolani · 7 years

Link

This is my happy birthday to Amanda Palmer. (It’s longwinded. I’d like to say that’s a tribute to her as well, but it’s just for my being longwinded /:) Sadly I’m too poor to be one of her patrons right now on Patreon, but follow her for the “one day” that’s going to happen (it will!) that i can say i am! From following i saw her birthday wish request to share her art and something meaningful about it.

The link above is to a video she created along with other talented artists I absolutely adore called “Wyken, Blynken and Nod”. It’s also a song from an amazing album she created with her father. Both of these and her other works of art are independent and fully funded by patrons subscribing to her Patreon. If anyone out there can afford to contribute to her and other artists on Patreon it’s a beautiful thing for not only being a part of helping these creations come to fruition, but also for artists to continue to be able to create free of limitations that come from answering to labels, etc. https://youtu.be/bWa2w9pYuWQ

Why this piece and the artist means something to me may be weird and convoluted, perhaps not mean anything to anyone else, but it’s her birthday wish. 😋 So here goes …

I’ve lived under a rock for most of my life, but especially these past handful of years. I crawled out from under it largely in part for my son. His coming into being was such a hugely miraculous and transformative experience i never thought i’d have in my lifetime and he continues daily to reshape my world and everything i thought i knew about life. Erik and i are proudly geeks. When we first had an inkling of the babe we decided to name him after a character from a story we both loved feeling it would be an auspicious beginning for him. It was from a memory of a happy time we had from an impoverished holiday and our fondness for how we made the best of it. It was tied to the very first conversation Erik and i had when we met awkwardly talking about books and the one author we happily could agree on. When i was pregnant i stumbled across the book in one of Erik’s old storage boxes with the receipt still in it citing it was purchased a few months prior to when we met. I read it aloud while i was pregnant to happy kicking in my belly. It seemed our odd little creature was made for his name before he was even an inkling.

I thought i’d given up art, but through pregnancy and after he was born it nagged me constantly that i had to return to it for his sake. Not to be another story of “i gave it up for you” (guilt, guilt) but instead being one of “i want you to be proud of me being your parent”. In order to do that i had to get over my issues with showing it again and social media. I’m not into fandom, it’s just not really something i fully get, but to feel comfortable getting back on social media i chose to follow the author of my baby’s namesake as he’s renowned for insightful posts, cultivating creativity, encouraging activism, social responsibility and engaging in meaningful dialogue with others. To commit to it i even sent a dorky message to him thanking him for creating our baby’s namesake and received a very nice reply. (Thinking to myself … “i’m the 50,000th person to write this to him!)

From following him i was surprised to see he’s married to Amanda Palmer (i said i was living under a rock … there’s the proof!) and they’d had a magical bub just days or weeks apart from our own who also seems to possess wildling dna as ours does. 😊 I saw his posts about her and was in awe of her voice creatively and as a human. I don’t look up to many women for oft times not feeling like i can relate, but what she does and how she is really resonates with me. I’ve just turned 40 and she’s one of the first female role models i’ve found kind of wishing i’d run into her far earlier in life for wondering what greater influence looking up to her could’ve had on me. If that’s the potential of fandom, than i guess i can understand that. I’ve never met her in my life, probably wouldn’t know what to say if i did, but her art and newsletters have encouraged me greatly in relating to a stranger connected strangely through caring deeply about creating art, similar timelines of huge life events, the things we both care about on this earth, long windedness (hallelujah!) and being inhabitants on the same planet.

This video popped up on my feed late one night while feeling exhausted taking a break from marathon nursing my inexhaustible baby. He’d FINALLY drifted off to sleep looking like the utter picture of beauty and serenity. I most likely looked like a disheveled mess, but felt oddly inspired to create just looking at him. What … i didn’t know, so i turned on twitter to find this video. I was mesmerized, jaw dropped, soothed to go to sleep happily for knowing whatever needed to be created from watching a babe sleep already had been and perfectly the way my heart felt it. I swear a lot in real life, but not in my posts. This being a birthday present for her I’ll break my policy to say … it truly is a fucking beautiful video! (And funded by her subscribers on Patreon!)

So, that’s my rambly why. Happy 41st birthday, Amanda! From the odd highways and byways of the internet and social media mess! Wishing you a sublime day away from technology! Thank you for your art! (My baby fucking loves it too!)

Oh! And for the love of stop motion please also watch her glorious new collaboration: "The clock at the back of the cage”!! It’s so phenomenal!! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kavYGYedkuI

Also as per another birthday request: American Gods premiers tonight on Starz and after will be available on Amazon Prime! Watch it!! I’ve been loving the book and even if it wasn’t her birthday request i would still say: Read it! Watch it!

And the link to her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/amandapalmer

#amandapalmer #happybirthday #wynkenblykenandnod

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