I'm back!

2026 was the year I almost quit Vocal. The frustrations encouraged me to take a break and focus on other things. All the sites I used to love going on either no longer exist or are changing for the worse. I hope enough people voice out their complaints so Vocal will be accessible to everyone again. Stripe is too complicated and long winded and doesn’t work in most countries. A PayPal option would be great.

When they did all the changes on Vocal, I was unable to post or verify my account. It was frustrating because I had sent a lot of support tickets, commented on Justin's page and went to Stripe & Vocal, but Vocal didn't start replying until Stripe got involved, and I think that's what got the ball rolling. I had to do everything from scratch, and I had to do my passport and selfie ID three times to get it to work.

I had been posting on Discord, Facebook and everything, and I felt like the staff were ignoring me or getting pushed through AI bot loops. I think if it wasn't for the support of others here, I would have given up on Vocal. It sounds like this is the first obstacle to overcome cause I have been seeing other users having different issues to me.

Technology is meant to make things easier, but I think it gives more challenges than anything else. The good news is that I published Heavenly Seas on Amazon, and it's now available to buy on Paperback. I'm really happy with how it's turned out, and I'm gonna show people in the writing group what it looks like tomorrow when I go to see them.

I got a Vocal subscription again, and I noticed I was given a discount for it. The discount was not available to me before, so it sounds deliberate. I think I deserved it after all the problems I had with Vocal, really. It made me want to stop coming, and I was thinking of deleting my account. But there was something that stopped me. A lot of the stuff I have on here, Vocal is my only copy, and if I lose that, then I will lose everything I have written in the past ten years. Some of it I don't mind going; it needs to burn, but I have written some gems out there.

I don't have any plans to write any new books soon. I think I want to go back and make all the ones I've already published better. Maybe update the covers and make the books that are small have more content in and make sure of the better editing softwares that are available now.

I don’t agree with a lot of the changes Vocal implanted, and I don’t like the way it’s been added on so suddenly. Having to pay to be actually able to access the money we’ve earned and made feels like corporate greed. I think it’s a shame they haven’t made a big post and announcement with all the issues going on. Members deserve the chance to have their voices validated. If they’re really concerned about ai content steeling from organic creators then don’t let them have top stories.

I think everyone who’s had major problems with the site, and are actively contributing towards it should get some sort of compensation. Cause without us, there would be no Vocal. A lot of people are going to Substack and Medium, but I don’t think I would get on with it. I was in Medium for a bit but the paywalls put me off.