Author: Crowhill Report

Except that she’s an incredible gymnast, of course.

Here are two different perspectives on her recent troubles. Feel free to add your opinion in the comments.

Simone Biles is a role model for prioritizing her own mental health over an Olympic medal

Sorry Simone Biles, but there’s nothing heroic or brave about quitting because you’re not having ‘fun’ – you let down your team-mates, your fans and your country

The Most Devastating Video on the Internet

That they have to is obvious. But do they have the brains to figure out how to do it, or the guts to try? I’m not sure.

To me, it’s very simple. They need to learn to fight. If they don’t fight, there will continue to be a large portion of the country that will stick with Trump.

Republicans won’t put up with another Bush or McCain or Romney. They want somebody who will punch back against the left, and try to get things done.

Unless and until the GOP learns to fight, and promotes a candidate to lead them in that fight, Trump will remain the default leader.

I just saw a story about a second Olympic judo competitor who has been sent home for refusing to spar with an Israeli, “apparently for political reasons” — i.e., over the Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

I thought the whole point of the Olympics was to get nations to come together on neutral ground, irrespective of political differences.

If every Olympian had to make some sort of moral judgment about competing against representatives of Nation X, where they do [fill in horrible thing], there would be very few competitors.

My sister is reading the latest iteration of my latest novel, and she asked if I had considered Kindle Vella, which is a new service for serialized works.

Kindle Vella is Amazon’s serialized fiction platform where authors will write stories split into episodes that are released one by one. Readers will have to purchase each episode except for the first few episodes. The first three episodes will be made available for free by Amazon. Readers can read the free content to decide whether they like the story and want to continue or not.

If the readers wish to continue the story and read further, they can purchase the next episode and start reading right from the same screen. (From Everything You Need to Know about Kindle Vella

I had considered it, but it requires a type of writing I’m not used to. Each component would have to enough to satisfy and also compel the reader to keep going.

Which isn’t a bad idea. So I made this list of what I believe each section would need.

• A theme and an arc within the overall arc of the book
• Something progressively scarier (building the tension)
• Something revealed / satisfying
• A hook to make you want to read on

Can you think of anything else?

I might give this a try. It’s not as if my normal strategy has landed me on the best-seller list, so a new approach seems reasonable.