Mostly Rocks

18th century Unknown artist - Louis Antoine de Gontaut-Biron, duc de Biron

(Palace of Versailles)

Anyway do you think the writers realized that their sequel retcon of making Evie the reincarnation of the skeevy pharaoh's daughter in an effort to up the villainy factor of Imhotep and Ankh Su Namun also implies that it's, uh, pretty likely that Evie's past incarnation is the reason Imhotep became an apocalyptic undead horror in the first place?

I don't even mean that she's the reason the medjai probably knew that more people than just Ankh Su Namun murdered the pharaoh, though there is that, but like... the reason Imhotep become the titular Mummy and not just a very dead high priest, is because the ancient medjai executed him by sealing him alive inside a sarcophagus with flesh-eating scarabs and doing (presumably) a bunch of other stuff to ensure that he would be locked in eternal agony, which as a side-effect also guaranteed that if he ever got out he'd be... y'know. Still occupying his corpse and able to muster up high level dark magic and create sand storms and shit?

The first movie keeps it fairly ambiguous as to who gave the order for Imhotep to get the Curséd Revenant spa special, but like, it probably wasn't actually the medjai themselves who just up and chose it. They knew what it entailed and that it would mean that countless generations of them would have to guard this one tomb to make sure no one ever let Imhotep out, which just sounds impractical, to be honest. Especially when there are many other ways to fuck Imhotep's afterlife over and just be rid of him, even with torturing him a lot before he actually dies. This is Egyptian mythology (loosely), just deleting the sonofabitch would be an option. They could even still bury him alive if they want!

However, 'torture him for all eternity' does sound like the kind of shortsighted sentence that someone who really cared about the murdered pharaoh might ask for. Especially someone who might, additionally, feel some degree of guilt (perhaps for losing the deciding match on who would bodyguard their dad to one of his future murderers?) and be lashing out without much foresight to the whole "btw if we can't successfully guard this one tomb forever then we're all fucked" loophole. Like a rich person with a very skewed concept of scale and the practical requirements of tomb-guarding, for instance.

So yeah I think Nefertiri is the one who had the medjai curse Imhotep, which is the reason Imhotep becomes a Problem later, and also the reason why Evie is the one who has to release him (accidentally) and then resolve the issue (on purpose) and why Nefertiri got locked into a reincarnation cycle instead of just moving on to her own afterlife too. The ancient Egyptian gods were like, yeah nah, and yeeted her back to the world to live out countless lives until Imhotep's soul was either pacified or destroyed.

lake inferior

lake normal

lake offtario

lake hurton

Lost Kitchen Scrolls

It has a huge variety of historical recipes from different regions, taken from manuscripts, transcribed and translated, and a whole section of notes about the context for the recipe. It's really fun and I AM going to try a couple of these recipes.

Look at how this lamb recipe is presented:

This is just such a fun way to learn more about historical foodways and discover traditional cuisine.

Look at all the filters you can use:

Maybe if I can forage some good blackberries this year, I can make a 300 year old recipe for blackberry wine!

They do not offer paperbacks or hardbacks at this time.

But their digital market has the same e-book and audio market reach as D2D/Ingram and allows for library lending. So if you are an indie author who was mostly using D2D for that library access, and for whom the maintenance fees would be prohibitive against your earnings, you can use Kobo for free.

I haven't used it, because I'm not affected by the D2D fees and I didn't want to mess up my market listings by having duplicates, but when I heard about the D2D fees, I started researching so I could hopefully find a free alternative with comparable market reach. And good old Kobo was there.

It allows for the same subscription model as KU, but doesn't enforce an exclusivity clause, so you can still mass sell through the global market and also be hosted in libraries.

I know it seems risky when KU is so established, but Kobo+ subscriptions are increasing quite a bit as even the most stalwart of Kindle fans get sick of Amazon, and my Kobo+ numbers are starting to eclipse Kindle, which is delightful.

The more we as authors push readers to Kobo+, the more freedom we'll have, so I think it's a worthwhile endeavor, for us and them.

I know copperbadge uses Lulu Printing, and while they do have some access to the global distribution market, I don't think it's as wide as either Ingram/D2D. (I also think the global pricing with Lulu is a bit bonkers in comparison, but I haven't looked at it in a while, so it might be different.) And before anyone suggests Lightning Source or whatever, they're owned by Ingram. A lot of print houses people recommend when this comes up are owned by Ingram. They have monopolized a huge chunk of the market, for better or worse. Usually worse.

If you want to get your ISBN's back from Ingram, you need to go through customer support to get your books de-listed. If they fight you over the ISBN's (like they did me) those ISBN's belong to you. You paid for them, they are yours. You are within your rights to use them with a different printer. You just need to get it decoupled from Ingram.

They are starting to limit how many books you can publish with them to combat AI slop.

The new max is 100, which I think includes ebook and paperback and hardback of the same book, so there goes three of your allowed books off the bat.