Locked Inside: Heat Domes, Smoke, Wet-Bulbs and New Podcast episodes, Oh My!

Lots happened this week from heat domes to wildfire smoke to new podcast episodes and the delivery of the final copy of Chaos Reigns. So let's chat!

Hello and welcome back! The heat wave wasn’t so bad last week since the temp didn’t go much above 90 degrees. It was very humid though so that plus the high heat meant I had to bar the door with my body to keep my scribe inside.

Melinda likes to walk. So she does that every day for an hour or and sometimes longer. But when it’s that hot and humid, it’s dangerous to walk for a long time because of this annoying thing called the wet-bulb temperature.

According to many places on the internet:

Wet-bulb temperature is a measure that combines heat and humidity to determine the lowest temperature to which air can be cooled by the evaporation of water. It mimics how human sweat cools the body, making it a highly accurate indicator of severe heat stress

When you have high heat and high humidity, your body can’t cool itself by sweating because that sweat can’t evaporate. When that happens, your core temperature rises and if it gets to 107 degrees, you can die.

But if my scribe dies, then I don’t get any more stories, and I don’t get to grow up. I had to avoid that obviously. So that meant, I had to keep my scribe inside where there’s air conditioning and sweat can evaporate and cool her down.

(This is Ran, Sarn’s son from the Curse Breaker Series. I know you didn’t have me giving you a science lesson on your 2026 bingo card, but here we are! My scribe likes science so I end up seeing a lot of science programming. Back to my rant since that’s why you’re here.)

I tried to block the door, but I’m still small and cute because I have not grown up yet, I'm not very tall. So I had to call for reinforcements. Papa made a shield and put it in front of the door and then my scribe had to stay inside.

We also had unhealthy levels of PM2.5 and PM10 from wildfire smoke wafting over NY state. We hope all affected took precautions and stayed as safe as possible. On social media, Melinda saw screenshots of air quality levels far higher than what NY experienced.

For our northern neighbors, we hope you got tons of rain soon to put out the fires and the help that you need. There wasn’t a consensus online that my scribe could find about where to donate to help. So if you know, please let us know.

Did I get any page time for my efforts?

You’d think so, but alas, I didn’t. Melinda wrote more chapters for Chaos in Chains and there’s another wild plot twist I really want to tell you about. But I don’t know where it’s going yet, so I’ll be good and wait even though it’s so hard no to talk about it!

Chapters 13-16 from Chaos in Chains published this week to paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack. That’s exciting because we’re getting close to the midpoint!

Melinda also finished the edits on Chaos Reigns, and she sent a copy of the final ebook to our three wonderful paid subscribers. The ebook went directly to their bookfunnel libraries.

If there’s any issue with that, please let us know and Melinda will fix that.

There usually isn’t an issue, but we weren’t sure about one subscriber’s bookfunnel library address. We emailed to ask, but never got a reply. Maybe our email went to spam?

So we just used their substack email, and we hope that’s their bookfunnel email address.

If it’s not, please let us know so we can send it to the right place.

New podcast episodes!

One episode, Melinda actually recorded a month ago and then she had to hold the episode because the book wasn’t up for preorder yet. But she got the official word that the book can be ordered now, so she published the episode!

In that episode, my scribe talked to Elliot Blake about his book, Into the Great. She put the “& more” in the podcast title to the test this week since Into the Great is not actually a fantasy book. But the public relation person from the publisher made such a great pitch that my scribe said, “why not talk to him?”

(I didn’t have a reason to say no, so she interviewed him.)

What is Into the Great about?

Well, it’s not about me. But that’s okay since the book is not written by my scribe. Sorry, I just had to go there. Sometimes, I can’t help myself.

What’s the book actually about?

Sparks fly when Lilah, a thief from a struggling freespacer colony outside the borders of the Federated Solar Republic, meets Bax, an FSR security officer stationed at an official colony within those borders, during a time of heightened tensions for humanity as the silent, staring, seemingly invulnerable aliens dubbed The Aureum begin to meddle in human affairs. A story about choosing the life you want to live in a time of unprecedented, rapid change beyond your control.

If that intrigues you and you’d like to hear more, then head over to listen to the podcast on YouTube:

You can also listen on Spotify.

The Other New Episode

This week, I urged my scribe to grab the mic and talk about our books. So she talked about Chaos Reigns since it was on her mind because she was editing it. That was my plan along, so I’ll put this in the win column!

Melinda doesn’t always listen to me, but she really should. I am just looking out for her.

So if you’d like to hear what she has to say about Chaos Reigns, this is your golden opportunity. It’s a short podcast since Melinda really wanted to talk about the big twists (yes, there are 2 now!) in Chaos in Chains because that’s on her mind right now.

But she refrained since no one is sure where those twists are going. So we’ve decided not to give any spoilers until we know more about the 2 big twists and what might happen. We don’t want to give you a false impression or promise something the story can’t deliver.

So we’re keeping quiet about them for now. Once we know how the book ends, then we can decide what to say about it.

Don’t worry. The 2 big twists involve immortal characters, so all your favorite characters are safe from it so far. They’d better keep those twists on their side of the afterlife if they know what’s good for them.

Actually, I just got word that one plot twist involves things in my world. How rude!

So head over to YouTube to hear what my scribe has to say:

You can also listen on Spotify to a less rambly version my scribe edited to death.

She’s not good at video editing, but Melinda used to edit the audio files for webinars at her day job once upon a time. So she learned to edit audio with the best of them.

That’s it for this week.

I need to go supervise a locksmith because the board where my scribe lives sent a letter around requiring all locks and knobs on the outside of the doors to be gold or else they will fine everyone an unspecified amount until that change is made.

So we need to get the hardware on two doors changed. I didn’t have that on my 2026 bingo card either. Have a good week! I hope you get lost in a good book too!

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