First, the news. I received an email last night advising that Kindle Vella is being shut down by Amazon. That means that the one and only story I have published there (which I later edited and published as a book) will be taken down within the next few months.

I’m not exactly upset at this. In fact, I’m kind of surprised the platform lasted as long as it has. As I’ve noted in the past, the platform is ridiculously difficult to use from a reader standpoint, because the only things shown on the main page are stories that have the absolute highest ratings and have since the beginning, and trying to find something new is damn near impossible. Basically, unless you’ve been given a direct link to a story you’re interested in, you’re not likely to find what you’re looking for.

Funnily enough, in the very first line of their email, Amazon stated their reasoning for shutting Vella down was due to “the program hasn’t caught on as we’d hoped.” I mean… DUH. Of course it hasn’t. You can’t find things without direct links, searching for titles/authors is a joke, and (the worst part) YOU CAN’T ACCESS VELLA ON A MOBILE DEVICE. Other pay-per-chapter platforms (Wattpad, Radish, Readict, etc.) all have apps you can use to read, but Vella requires you to use a web browser. The only avid readers on Vella were made up of 90+% authors (who were probably just ‘reading’ in order to promote their own works, like I described in this post). I don’t know why they even bothered attempting this without building out an app so that readers could really try it out. Most things are mobile these days.

Anyway, I have deleted my Kindle Vella page on this site, moving the story’s direct link to just below it’s book listing on the Aurora Reese page. I’ll remove it closer to when they shut down, which is currently listed as February 2025. I won’t really be losing anything, as I didn’t make that much from it, and the story is already available in book form.

Now, I’m going to go into something a bit darker. You’ve been warned.

As I mentioned in my last post, my father passed at the end of July. I traveled to my hometown to help my sister (who was his caretaker) with some of the not fun tasks, and just to kind of help each other grieve. His death didn’t hit me as hard as our mother’s, but I’m starting to think that I’ve been prepared for this to happen for so long that I’ve already gone through it. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t last a year after Mom had passed, let alone seven.

While I was up there, we were porting my sister’s phone number over to a new carrier so that it would be less expensive for her, and in the process, we had to make sure her saved voicemails were transferred somewhere for safe keeping. After she moved things around, she went to play one just to be sure they weren’t corrupted, and there, standing in the middle of a big box store, I heard my mother’s voice for the first time in seven years.

It hit me like a tidal wave. I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced something like that before. I wasn’t expecting it, so I wasn’t prepared, and in an instant my entire body flooded with every emotion I’ve ever had regarding my mother and her absence. I barely had enough control to say that I needed a minute and walked off to find a place to sit and deal.

From a purely logical standpoint, I understood triggers. Hell, I even understand them from a point of when I can see them coming in a novel or film/TV show and make an effort to avoid them. (I don’t like the suffering, torture, or death of innocent creatures, like animals or infants, even if it is only ‘simulated.’) But I’ve never been blindsided by one before. If I’d been driving when I heard her voice, I’m not sure I would have been able to pull the car over before I lost control.

My point with these thoughts is that trigger warnings are important for many (if not all) of us. If there is a situation where we can avoid them, such as when reading articles or fiction, or when watching films and TV, then I believe we should be provided with the information necessary for us to make informed decisions. It’s why I have a list of potential triggers for my stories on this site, and why I’m doing what I can to make them both informative and narratively vague (to avoid spoilers). We can’t control what happens around us in life that may cause a spiral, but we can absolutely prevent causing spirals in the media we use to escape.

Because an escape is meant to comfort, to entertain, and to enjoy. We should not be forced to suffer emotional punishment during our escapes.

-K