Phew!

Let's give a big round of applause to the customer service team at Amazon who have managed to sort out my problem, sanitise my account (whatever that means) and put a stop to any potential damage. Access has been restored.

I thought it was fixed yesterday, but when I went to my Kindle account it was saying I didn't have anything published, which was a bit worrying. I've only got two things there, but even so... I had a long conversation with an operative, who was very patient and, well, I don't know what she did behind the scenes, but everything is now back as it should be.

It's a bit of an odd day today. I have stopped teaching yoga on a Monday morning and this is the first week when I didn't have to rise at the crack of dawn in order to eat and digest my breakfast before class. I still woke up very early, though, so I've already written an article for Smallholder, broken the back of a monthly subbing job for the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and polished and posted a competition entry - and it's barely lunchtime. I may have peaked too soon.

Accepting feedback

I sent a selection of stories that I've written to two of my friends for their opinion. They are both keen readers and they have each been a source of advice and inspiration in their own way over the years. I trust them and value their honesty. Even so, it was a bit of  a 'gulp - here goes' moment when I posted the envelopes.

Well, the results are in and I know what I have to do to improve what I've written. What I found interesting was that while Reader 1 gave me some honest feedback on the actual writing from a technical perspective, Reader 2 had a much more emotional response. As a result, while there was a clear favourite with both of them (the same story), the ones they didn't like so much were different. On these grounds it gives me comfort that the reason I have varied success in competitions is not always because what I'd submitted wasn't any good: it could just be that it wasn't to the judge's taste.

This week's task is to rework as necessary. I was going to publish on Kindle again. However, I had an email from Amazon this afternoon informing me that the email address linked to my account has been changed. Not by me it hasn't! Amazon has frozen my account while this is investigated, which is reassuring, but not a little annoying. I just hope the rogue who has invaded hasn't ordered anything embarrassing in my name.