This was one of the last ones I did just because it wasn't really important. The background wasn't white but just a blah grayish:
I would have liked a picture of the ball in New York or something but the only pictures were shot from the bottom up and didn't really work well. So since the story is set in DC I found this picture of fireworks in DC that's OK. Better than plain gray.
Happy New Year! Or as I think of it, the last year of American democracy.
This was a silly story I wrote in 2019 and had no real problem with publishing it then. The cover just used a plain white background with this collage of a girl:
The story is about a guy who goes to Hell and is sentenced to come back to Earth as a compilation of his fetishes. The idea was to bring together a lot of the various traits I'd used for stories. Since he went to Hell I found a fiery background to put in. What's the worst that could happen?
Well, Amazon "Blocked" it for...reasons. They had published it for 4 years with no problem but all the sudden it was violating their content guidelines. Yeah, right. Probably some dork in India thought it was naughty. Sure, the company that produces Hard-R-rated shows like The Boys, Gen V, and Invincible should be lecturing me on content.
Anyway, I didn't bother to argue. It sold 0 copies this year and only 4 last year. So I just put it on my Payhip store instead. Still, they're so annoying.
Most of these I used the same original character just for the sake of familiarity. A couple though I decided to upgrade a little. Like with Transformed for Christmas Too it had this pretty boring one originally:
I decided to find something sexier. I found the woman and background separately. I think this is a little upgrade:
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day!
This was the original cover for Office Girl, part of the Dark Gender Swap series
Finding a nice office that could be for the CEO of a big company was surprisingly hard. Most "Office" graphics would be a conference room or just look small or dumpy or something. I finally settled on this and cropped the picture so you can see a bit of the city outside the window to get that this office is really high up.
Maybe not the greatest but better than using the landing of a local library stairway like the MST3K/Rifftrax movie Time Chasers.
This was one of the last entries of the 24 Hour Gender Swap series as a Halloween special. It wasn't that great and the cover wasn't either. It just had a sexy witch with no background:
I looked around for backgrounds and found this one with a graveyard with a moon and crow. I made sure to crop it so the moon, tombstone, and crow were till visible. Halloween I usually use orange for the font color but I liked the white to go with the background.
Pretty creepy, right? Not really.
This was one of the first I really thought about redoing, though it took a little while to find a new picture for it. Back when I first did it, I used this picture, which definitely wasn't great:
The story is about a writer who gets bonked on the head and becomes part of the story he was writing about a schoolgirl who becomes a succubus but like Spawn or Ghost Rider uses her power against evildoers.
So I found a new picture of an Asian schoolgirl who has a sword. I forget if she has a sword in the story or not, but maybe she does at some point. The background I kinda like because the sky is reddish and it's about fighting demons from Hell and stuff.
A weird thing with the title as it is now is sometimes the "L" in "Girl" seems to kinda disappear when I look at it on Amazon. It blends in with those lights a little too well. I originally put the font in a red like the sky but it was too hard to read.
This was another of those with a pretty long title. The original didn't have a background.
Since it's in medieval times, I had to find something medieval. I liked this one because she's kneeling and the ground lines up so it looks like she's kneeling on it.
Not a perfect picture, but better than nothing...maybe.
24 Hour Schoolgirl was the second book in the 24 Hour Gender Swap series. I used a schoolgirl picture but it had no background.
On a stock photo site I found this hallway background. Like the last entry it might not be exactly to scale, but I think it came together pretty well. And there's a clock clearly visible to go with the "24 Hour" thing.
This was one of the rare series where I didn't put the series title on the book because it's kinda redundant.
This one wasn't too hard to do. I wrote this story a few years ago for "the big game," aka the Super Bowl. I just used a plain white background. Boring!
I looked online for a football field and found this one. I think it goes with the character pretty well, though it might not be to scale. And like the character, there aren't any logos or anything to get me in trouble with the NFL.
So there you go, pretty cool.
This book is perhaps the one I have the hardest time spelling, to the point I usually just copy and paste it. I think when I listed it originally I had to check the dictionary just to make sure I had the spelling right. I know some people have released books with a typo on the cover, but I didn't want to do that.
Anyway, it's From Restaurateur to Waitress, about a big-time chef who becomes a white trash diner waitress. The original cover has this blonde in a uniform showing some thigh on a white background:
For the background obviously I wanted to find a diner. You'd think that might be easy, but it's really not. The problem is all of these stock photo sites you have to search by keywords. But a lot of these photos are loaded by people in Russia or Ukraine or somewhere like that. In other words, people who don't really know English very well. So you get weird descriptions and keywords that make it really hard to find things.
So when I type in "diner" I get a bunch of weird stuff, like fish on a platter or some damned thing. Because that's what I meant, right? It's too bad "AI" isn't any better at understanding simple concepts in English or maybe that could help the search.
Anyway, with a lot more effort than I'd have liked, I found a diner image:
In the background is a blurry Betty Boop for some reason, so I positioned the waitress to cover as much of that as possible without completely erasing the stools and counter.
What's kind of annoying for something like this is the title is longer, so it's harder to fit it in. Though not nearly as hard as this:
That also was an annoying background to search for because apparently people in Russia or Ukraine don't know what a "gym" is. Maybe their schools don't have those?
There we go. One week down and a couple more to go.
So I mentioned on Monday that I decided to change one of my old covers, to jazz it up a little. I did that by taking the background out of the old picture with this site and then finding a new background on a stock photo site.
Since I did one, I figured I should do more. And I didn't feel like doing anything useful, so why not? One that turned out pretty nice (to me) is Transformed Into Twins. The original has a picture of twins and no background. Boring!
But what could you use for a background? I guess just anything really. I thought maybe a bedroom or something but nothing really caught my fancy. Then on this Unsplash site I just typed in something like "twin background" and it came up with this duplex or whatever where half is pink and half is blue. Eureka! I dropped that in and changed the fonts. To mimic the background, I changed the text colors so one part is blue and the other is pink, only they're opposite the background to stand out:
I think it's pretty neat. Better than the old one.
Since this is about twins, let's twin the entry! Here's the one I did for the sequel Transformed Into Twins Too:
It was a chore back then just to find a picture of the same woman looking normal and less so. I think once when I posted that someone complained about the poses, but I didn't have a lot of choices back then. Maybe I could have searched for new models but I decided to keep them. Only I resized them so they overlap this time:
It was kinda neat (to me) how the arm of the one sort of fits right into the curve of the other one's chest. For a background I just found some picture of DNA because the "twins" are made in a science experiment gone wrong like in that old Star Trek where the transporter separates Kirk into good and evil Kirks.
So there you go, doubled your pleasure! (Or pain.)
For Veteran's Day I decided I should put my 2016 story Sisters in Arms on sale because it involves male soldiers turned into women who have to prove they still have what it takes to be soldiers. I put the book on sale and then thought, "That cover looks kinda boring."
Back in the old days, removing a background was kind of hard unless you were a PhotoShop expert. But now there are "AI" tools that can do it in seconds. I've used this one a bunch because it's free unless you want the "Premium" package, which I can do without. So I found the picture I used originally and dropped the background out.
Then on a stock photo site I found a free image of an American flag. I put it vertically not as any kind of political statement but just so it'd fit.
And then I put the title on in a different font. The problem with the title was at first I used a darkish green that when I loaded it to Amazon didn't show up great in smaller sizes. So I changed the green to more of a tan and reloaded it and it looked better.
Then with some Forrest Gump logic, I thought, "Well I did one cover, so why not some more?"
A lot of the early ones I did had just plain white backgrounds because the stock photo was hard to remove the background. Especially when I was essentially homeless from September 2014-March 2015 and was just using a cheap laptop with PowerPoint on it. But now that I could do that, why not do it? And make the covers a little less basic.
So for the rest of the year I'll put some before and after pictures of other covers I did. Maybe they're better. Maybe they're worse. You decide!
On some Facebook group I saw this question:
I know most authors refuse to consider AI to write books, as I understand it AI stinks at it and authors hate it, but can you use it to write a synopsis of a book? I have to write several synopsis for my books and I suck at it. Can you use AI to write them or would they be just as useless?
And I answered that I don't have a lot of experience with "AI" chatbots but the ones I've used on Bing and Chrome you can't just feed in your book and it would spit out a syllabus. So basically you'd have to tell it your story so it could then tell you how to write the syllabus, which seems pointless.
Except then the light bulb goes off. Maybe if you have trouble with your syllabus or blurb, you should try this as a mental exercise: Imagine what you would tell the "AI" chatbot about your story. Describe it in one sentence, one paragraph, and then several pages.
It can be hard for us humans to distill a story into short bits like that, but maybe if you think of a specific audience like that it might help. Maybe. I don't really do that stuff anymore, so if you try it and it works, let me know and I'll have an "AI" write a book about it and sell it for one million dollars on Amazon.
And now next week I'm going to close out the year with some special posts. Brace yourself...
I don't know exactly where or when I heard this, but there was a study done that showed people who worked angry were a lot more effective than people who weren't angry when they work. Which made total sense to me. When I get payments in the mail, people and companies are usually stupid enough that I start to get annoyed and at this point it's kind of just part of the process of getting myself psyched up for the battle.
It's kind of like Michael Jordan or other athletes who are not very nice before and during a game. Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown actually keeps a list of all the wide receivers drafted ahead of him to remind himself of all the players teams thought were better than him. I've commented before how teams love the "No one believes in us!" argument to get themselves motivated.
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| Maul would be a great writer! |
That was probably a benefit of working in coffee places or Panera Bread or wherever; I'd have all these stupid people being stupid around me to get me grumpy and thus want to actually finish what I'm doing. That can happen even when I'm writing in the car in a parking lot and some jackass nearly hits my parked car to save like 0.05 seconds. Or someone leaves a cart like five feet away from the cart corral. Stuff like that can help to get the grumpiness going.
Though I'm not sure you really need to be grumpy. Sometimes I think all you really need is love a simple goal of some sort. I might goof off more in the early morning or afternoon, but once it starts getting closer to lunch or dinner, then I'll get more focused. Or maybe I just have to piss or shit and so get focused to finish what I'm doing so I can pack up and go do that.
Anyway, if you're in a slump, maybe try changing things up and instead of the tea and New Age music, drink some Red Bull and turn on some Megadeth or whatever. See if that fires you up. Or just remind yourself that no one believes in you! No publisher or agent wants your story! No one wants to read it! It's you vs. the world!
Let the hate flow through you. Good...good...
And so on...
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I got thinking that maybe the problem with the MCU lately is more than "superhero movie fatigue" or even that they've lost most of the original cast. Part of the problem recently might be that they're making the same mistakes as DC did with its ill-fated universe.
When it started, the MCU was very patient, probably because they (and Disney) weren't really sure it'd work. They started with Iron Man and Incredible Hulk. The former was a huge success and the latter mostly a failure so they left that one behind and did another Iron Man movie two years later. (2009 was the only year in the MCU era with 0 movies released to theaters or streaming.) Then the next year they took it to the next level with Captain America and Thor movies. And only then after the main four heroes had been introduced (and Nick Fury, Black Widow, and Hawkeye in supporting roles) did they bring out The Avengers. The whole thing took 4 years to put together. I still don't think it's a great movie but it was ambitious and entertaining and the plot hangs together well enough.
Anyway, looking at recent Marvel offerings you can see where they rushed a lot of it. With The Marvels, two of the characters were only in TV series; Monica Rambeau was only a supporting character in WandaVision. Even Captain Marvel was only in one solo movie and a supporting role in Endgame both back in 2019. (The character of Captain Marvel in comics only goes back to 2013; before that she was Ms. Marvel.) So you can really excuse audiences for not being hugely excited about a team-up of characters they're barely familiar with--if at all.
There was the same problem with Ant-Man 3 where they shoved so much into it and by some reports half-assed the effects. The whole Kang thing they had vaguely brought up in the last couple of episodes of Loki and now he's the main villain for that Ant-Man movie and the foundation for the next two phases of the MCU?
Or look at Black Panther 2 where they ham-fistedly shove in "Ironheart" and half-assedly introduce Namor. The latter was in part due to rights issues but still for a character basically as old as Marvel itself it was pretty weak. The Ironheart thing was pretty unnecessary and had no real setup beforehand, not even a TV show. And the character is pretty new in comics as well, so she really needed some introduction ahead of time.
Dr. Strange 2 was less of an offender but the main villain hadn't even really taken a heel turn before we see her pop up in the movie. So, again, kinda half-assed.
And then you have the Eternals with all that stuff just thrown at you, leaving a lot of questions like, "Where the hell were these idiots all this time?"
The only one I think that doesn't fall into this is Shang-Chi. That went back to the traditional Marvel formula and while it has a couple of unnecessary cameos (Abomination, Wong, and Ben Kinglsey) it was probably the best of recent Marvel movies in my mind.
Getting back to the title, I think at this point Marvel is making the mistake DC made. After a moderate success with Man in Steel, DC decided to just throw their whole Trinity together in a movie and ham-fistedly introduce three more: Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg. And then do a Justice League movie a year later when there hadn't even been solo movies for any of the characters except Superman and technically Wonder Woman, though they were basically shooting her solo movie at the same time as Justice League. And at the same time throw together Suicide Squad with a bunch of villains not shown before. It was just throwing a lot at audiences in movies that weren't that good, so it's no surprise it fell flat. DC only had any success when they did solo movies with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Shazam.
Then for some dumb reason they decided to say the hell with that and throw a bunch of junk in The Flash and just throw a half-assed Justice Society together in Black Adam. And those also fell flat, though there were extenuating circumstances with the Flash one too.
Anyway, the point is that maybe part of the "superhero fatigue" is just these movies throwing so much at people who, unless they read comics, aren't that familiar with all of it. And Disney insisting people watch TV shows first just makes it harder to get casual fans into it. If you think about it, if you have all these characters together in a 2-2 1/2-hour movie there's just not much time to do much with characters, so unless the audience is familiar with them, they aren't going to have much opportunity to know the characters or care about them. It's been the problem with X-Men movies and especially with Transformers movies where they insist on wasting 2/3 of every movie on human idiots so there's no chance to give the robots more than rudimentary personalities, thus all but 2 have basically been interchangeable. A team-up like The Avengers worked because there had already been 5 movies to introduce the main characters.
Largely I think the problem for Marvel is the bar got set so high that they felt pressure to top themselves and keep the interest of audiences. After the huge team-up in Endgame, how do you top that? They really can't but I think they figured they couldn't just go back to simple solo movies like those early ones. You have to shove in more characters. Plus then the pandemic messed things up by pushing back movies and forcing more reliance on Disney+ to introduce new characters.
There's probably also some hubris. After the first 11 years where they were pretty much invincible, Kevin Feige and company probably thought they could do no wrong. But now that they've had a few bad movies--with The Marvels likely to be an actual flop unless it does big business internationally--the narrative is shifting and Marvel seems very vincible. It's basically what happened to Star Wars after The Last Jedi alienated so many fans. In that case it took getting back to basics with The Mandalorian to start righting the ship, but they still haven't had a movie since Episode IX, whereas Marvel already has movies like Captain America Brave New World that have wrapped or like Deadpool 3 are almost done. It was easier for Star Wars since they didn't have any movies upcoming for them to recalibrate and make changes; it's going to be a lot harder for Marvel with movies already in the pipeline. It's like a football team adjusting during a bye week vs. having to adjust spontaneously during the game; it can be really hard to just change direction instantly. At this point it might be throwing bad money after bad.
Anyway, it seems like they've made the same mistake as DC in rushing too many characters too quickly and it winds up turning audiences off because they aren't invested in it. There will still be people who go to watch it as spectacle but it really opens the door for something else to take over.
That's how you kill the golden goose.
Here are a couple of Facebook posts on product fails I experienced recently. The first one is about ice packs that you sit on for hemorrhoids when you are literally butt hurt.
Something irritating on Amazon (almost literally) is I bought a product that's supposed to ice hemorrhoids. "Just sit on this with your clothes on (definitely don't sit on it naked) and it'll get it cold!" Well predictably all it does is get your butt cheeks cold. I look at a couple of reviews on Amazon and people give it 4 or 5 stars while saying that it doesn't work as directed but with some ingenuity they got it to work.
To me if a product doesn't work as they tell you it's supposed to then it shouldn't get more than 3 stars at most. Giving a product a rave review when it only worked because you modified it doesn't help people like me who are deciding on the product and scroll through to see it got all these great reviews without actually going through to pick out the details.
I was thinking it's like giving 5 stars to a pickup that claims it can haul 50,000 pounds but actually doesn't unless you go and modify the suspension and bed and tires and whatnot. Basically the company lied and it only worked when you spent a bunch of time and money to get it to work.
Anyway, I'm just saying there's a time to be nice and polite but sometimes you need to hold companies responsible for products that don't work as directed. You're not doing anyone any favors by being "nice" about it.
In a similar vein, people gave 4 or 5 stars to this:
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| Potato? Po-tah-to? Or Avacado? Or pear? |
It says it's a potato. Sure, potatoes are widely known to be green and have brown stems, right? I mean, OK, potatoes are green before they're ripe, but do you really believe that's what this is supposed to be? Come on. Clearly it's an avocado or pear or some damned thing like that and some company in China put the wrong word on there because they don't know English.
Now this one actually does look like a potato:
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I've seen a few other fails like this where these cheap Chinese companies don't proofread the product any more carefully than the description or instructions. There was a whole line of handbags with "Me" and "Other X-Years-Old" instead of "Other X-Year-Olds." Yet of course someone will still give it a rave review, probably not even knowing that it's wrong.
This next product fail I experienced the same day as the first one. It was "AA" batteries that were not exactly AA batteries
Another product fail today: I got some rechargeable "AA" batteries a couple of months ago. I had a foaming sanitizer dispenser that needed batteries so I put four of these "AA" batteries in. But they didn't work and then I found out I couldn't even get them back out. When I examined a couple of the batteries I still had left and compared them to Energizer batteries, I realized these were slightly wider than actual AA batteries. Which in a lot of things probably doesn't matter, but in this case it really mattered because the slightly larger "AA" batteries couldn't be retrieved and thus I lost 4 of them and had to throw out the sanitizer dispenser because it doesn't work without batteries.
A problem I've noted on Amazon Vine is these off-brand Chinese companies make batteries that look like AA, AAA, or C batteries but they're actually slightly different and so might not actually work. Buyer beware.
So as you're out there buy, buy, buying remember to be skeptical and if possible avoid cheap Chinese brands that probably won't last more than a couple of weeks and are very low quality. There's a lot of junk out there, especially on Amazon.
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Another good example of it is in Vine this year they've had a lot of knockoff toys or repackaged toys. This bundle of Power Rangers mini-figures was especially lame. On the listing page they don't show any Hasbro branding but when you get them there is Hasbro's logo on the front and you can see where they slapped a label over the original Hasbro packaging on the back. I got an Iron Man and Captain America 12-inch figure that were both like that as well.
And the thing with all of these is they're basically Five Below or Dollar Tree-quality items. I mean, shit that's too crappy even for Ollie's to carry. And with this Power Rangers bundle they were charging $27! I suppose that's a deal if they sell these at Five Below for $5 each but it's a ripoff for Dollar Tree. I think the Iron Man and Captain America figures were going for $12 or so when they'd only be $5 at Five Below.
Probably with the pandemic there was a surplus for these things and so some enterprising people in China figured they'd sell them on their own. And then put them in Vine figuring dumb Americans (see above) wouldn't know the difference or be too polite to say anything negative.
So, yeah, there's a lot of low-quality junk and among good deals are plenty of bad deals too. A lot of that's also true about books as well. As if anyone is buying books today. lol
By all accounts, Generation X starts at 1965 and goes to roughly 1980. That means my generation ranges from 58 to 43 years old. So you'd think since we're in the 60-40 age bracket we'd be seeing more representation by now in big leadership positions. But pretty much all the people in positions of power are Boomers or Silent Generation: Biden, Trump, Bernie, McConnell, Pelosi, etc etc. The closest Gen X has really had to a president is Obama and even he's a couple of years outside our generation.
The saddest thing is when they talk about Biden's age and saying he shouldn't run, I can't even think of anyone better who isn't also old. My generation hasn't produced a JFK, an MLKJ, an RFK, an RBG, or even an LBJ. The closest to a spiritual leader we probably had was Kurt Cobain, who died in 1994.
Unfortunately it seems the only Gen X candidates are on the Republican side like Ron DeSantis, who is a year younger than me. Barf. I'd really hate to think that dumbass is the voice of my generation.
I don't know how to explain why we aren't playing a bigger role in things now. Is it that Boomers and Silent Genners have gummed things up too long? Are Gen Xers just too cynical to create an inspiring movement? Is it because politics takes so much money and not enough of us have the money to run for office?
It just seems like we should be taking over and yet there doesn't seem to be anyone looking for the job--at least no one good. Not to say there aren't Gen X movers and shakers because obviously there are CEOs and celebrities and athletes and all that. It's just thinking of the election next year it's all these frail, senile old bastards. For the generation that pretty much invented "alternative" music, maybe we should be looking to create some alternative leadership.
Just don't look to me to do it. lol
A couple of weeks ago, thanks to AI the Beatles came out with a "new" song. It was really just cobbled together from a demo tape John Lennon made and some guitar licks of George Harrison and then some new beats and singing(?) by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the only two still alive. Then with computers this whole Frankenstein monster was put together and unleashed on the public.
I didn't really listen to it because I'm too young to care that much about the Beatles. Some people I follow said it was pretty mediocre. Definitely no "Yesterday" or "Hey Jude" or whatever your go-to Beatles hit is. I commented on Al Sirois's Facebook post that it reminds me of books I read that came out after the author died (or were really feeble in the case of Go Set a Watchman) and most of them wound up being bad to mediocre, which is probably why the author didn't publish them in his/her lifetime--or in the case of Go Set a Watchman when she was lucid. Then someone said, "Aaaaactually..." and blathered about demo tapes, which had nothing to do with what I was saying.
Anyway, there really aren't a lot of posthumous books I've read that have been any good. Hard Case Crime released a few by the late Donald Westlake and only one rose to the level of decent. One was called Memory about this guy who like Memento has trouble with short-term memory. This was written in the early 60s and the first third is this whole Walden thing of him saving money to get back to New York City. And when he does finally get there everyone's just a huge dick to him and no one seems to understand that he has a mental handicap. So it's just really sad and depressing and really different from Westlake's other stuff, which is mostly heist thrillers.
Another one was supposed to be a James Bond movie--the one that eventually became Tomorrow Never Dies. Westlake had this idea for a story involving a businessman in Hong Kong when it's about to go from British rule to Chinese. The guy has some scheme to get money that involves drilling underwater or something to set off bombs or whatever. Parts of it were pretty interesting but you can see where it really needed rewritten because characters would drop out for a long time and the focal character seems to change from the first part to the end. Another draft could probably have brought everything together better.
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Probably the best one was Call Me A Cab that wasn't published for some reason until after Westlake's death. I think a lot of it was like Memory it wasn't really his usual heist/crime kind of story, but this was a lot more fun than that one. Other than being dated, since it's from the 60s or 70s, it's a pretty decent story. A woman hires a taxi driver in New York to take her across the country and so he does for a big payday. Some hilarity and mayhem ensue! I actually watched a similar movie years ago that I think was more of a romantic comedy. Anyway, that one was decent but the rest weren't great and you could see why they weren't published before he died.
One good posthumous novel I did think of was A Confederacy of Dunces. But that was sort of a different thing. That wasn't an established author, but someone who had been rejected by publishers. It was only after his tragic death that his mother and author Walker Percy got the book published and people realized it was great. Anyone who's tried to get into the business knows how difficult it can be, even back in the 60s or 70s or whenever. Agents and editors can reject you for a variety of reasons, some of which are pretty ridiculous. Mostly it's just subjective nonsense. It's different from an established author who puts something in a drawer and never gets back to it. And certainly by the time he died, Westlake had the clout to get those books published if he'd wanted to, just as Harper Lee could have published Go Set a Watchman if she'd wanted to. That they chose not to says something--at least to me.
If anyone looked through my drives after I died, they could find bits and pieces of some stories that I never finished. There are probably even some I did finish and didn't self-publish even. Sometimes you just get started on an idea and it doesn't work out like you want. Or you get busy with something else and just never get back to it. To me, if it really was a great story (in my mind) I'd fight to finish it and publish it. If I didn't, then that says I didn't really care enough to do so. If I don't care that much, why should a reader?
Of course there's money to be made from a "new" Beatles song or "new" Prince song or "new" book by some deceased author. Even if they are pretty consistently mediocre--at best--people will always line up to listen or read because if you really like an artist in any medium you always want more. We're just all greedy that way and the even greedier record companies/publishers know that.
I mentioned the other day I was using Bluesky, the Twitter clone from the founder of Twitter. I heard...somewhere that authors Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi used it a lot so when I got on Bluesky I followed them. Which then brought up the question in my mind of what authors should talk about on their social media.
Of course you don't want authors to just pimp their books all the time. Whether you're a famous author or not that gets tedious. Politics, religion, etc can alienate some of your readers, though you'd think most of your readers would be from a similar part of the political/religious spectrum.
The problem with famous authors is if they're just shooting the shit that's fine, but you can't really talk to them because they have so many followers that they're not likely to ever notice you. So it really makes it a one-sided conversation and it's disappointing when they don't talk to you and talk to some other freak asking or saying something dumb. Then the jealousy sets in.
And why the fuck should I care about your cat or what you're making for dinner? I should care because you're literary famous? Which is barely famous at all considering 75% of the country doesn't even read a single book. (OK, I made that number up but it's still pretty horrible.)
And as such I also don't really want you rubbing your prosperity in my face, showing off your cool office and reading nook and garage of cars or whatever. I guess some people do like that Lifestyles of the Rich and (Literary) Famous or Cribs kinda thing, but I really don't. By the same token I really don't need you to name drop who you're having lunch or dinner with or whatever. And also I will never care about your spouse/significant other, children, siblings, etc. I'm just saying.
Also, I don't really need to see you "shut down the haters." Just ignore them. On Bluesky and X there is literally a Mute button. Or block. Arguing with trolls is for losers like me; you're so much more famous that there's no point getting in the muck with haters.
Like 10 days ago Gaiman mentioned that there was maybe going to be part of an episode in Good Omens 2 where the angel and demon (Michael Sheen and David Tennant) were going to be women in the 60s or something. Then one or more person got a bug up his/her/their ass saying the angels and demons should have nonbinary people playing them or some damned thing. Gaiman showed a lot more class and restraint than I would, but then he's been dealing with people like that for a while. Still, as someone said, it was giving this silly argument a lot more attention than it deserved. Gaiman's response was that if he doesn't respond then those people get upset, which is probably true, but from experience I know people like that generally aren't going to be satisfied or stop arguing. There's really not much point to it. And I'm sure there were a lot worthier uses of his time.
The next day some woman claiming to be from Ukraine was shouting at John Scalzi because in his newest book someone is described as "Russian or Ukrainian." "You think we're the same! That's supporting genocide! You're erasing us!" Or something like that. I'm sure that wasn't the intent; I haven't read the book, but probably it's just the POV character wouldn't know the difference between a Russian and Ukrainian because they aren't that hugely different unless you live there. Scalzi just blew her off with something like, "Sorry you didn't like this. Hope you find something you like." Maybe it's a little cold, but people like that woman are probably just looking for attention. It's probably better to just not say anything at all and ignore them but that's really the next best response.
It occurred to me that when I read volumes of short stories and such what I really like is to read the stories about the stories. You know, how they came into being. How the idea was born and how it went through the writing, editorial, and publishing processes. The old war stories, so to speak--or type. Especially with older authors like Lawrence Block or Robert Silverberg it's kind of a window into another world.
But the problem on social media is I suppose you wouldn't want to discuss that all the time or you'd probably run out of war stories. And a lot of your "followers" probably aren't writers and thus don't really care. They probably would care more about what you're eating for lunch or whatever.
Once or twice I've tried asking people on here what they'd like me to blog about and I usually get non-helpful answers like, "You should just do what you want." Sure, but then people don't read it, so it's sort of pointless. In the same way I suppose as worrying about what to talk about when you have no followers.
Anyway, if you follow any literary famous authors on X/Bluesky/Mastodon/Facebook/etc what do you like them to talk about? What drives you up the wall?
Since Elon Musk took over destroyed Twitter X there have been several attempts at coming up with a replacement: Mastodon, Facebook's Threads, and Bluesky, which is from the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. The thing about Bluesky is you can only get in with an invite code. When Al Sirois had a few he wasn't using he gave one to me. I wasn't begging for it, but if he had a spare one then what the hell, I'd see what the deal was with it.
And as the headline says: it's just old Twitter. I mean, seriously, everything looks and works the same as Twitter before Musk's takeover. I was then a bit underwhelmed. As far as I can tell there aren't really any different features than old Twitter. I'm not paying for it so it's less annoying than if, say, they released Madden 2024 and it was the exact same game as Madden 2018. Sometimes I actually like old versions better, like Paint Shop Pro 4.12 is so much easier to use than later versions that try to be PhotoShop.
But, I don't know, it just seems weird that Dorsey takes Twitter public, leaves, lets it get taken over by a rich douche, and then goes and creates exactly the same product somewhere else. It'd be like if after Steve Jobs got fired by Apple in the 80s he started a new company that made computers exactly like Macs or Apple IIs and called them Red Delicious or Granny Smiths or some other kind of apple.
The big selling point for Bluesky is that because it's invite only there are a lot fewer spammers and trolls. I'm not sure how long that can last. It's like the old South Park where Cartman buys an amusement park and closes it so only he can enjoy it. But eventually to pay for the upkeep he has to start letting more and more people in. Unless Dorsey wants to pay for everything out of his own pocket forever, I'm not sure how long it can go on being invite only. The three scenarios I see are:
Maybe because I was never really into Twitter even before the Musk takeover, I'm not really that impressed with Bluesky. Since it's just a clone of old Twitter it also has all of the same problems. If you're a nobody like me, then it's almost impossible to get anyone to notice you. I can post all I want and no one will care because I have no "platform." It's fine for big-time authors like Neil Gaiman or John Scalzi because they have large numbers of fans who will clamor to hear whatever they have to say, even if it's not particularly that much more interesting.
It winds up where most of the people I really would have interaction with I'm also following on Facebook, thus making Bluesky largely redundant for me. And like I said, unless you have a "platform," it's really useless as a marketing tool. Maybe I can get a few bot hits for my blog, but that's really it. And that's probably true for most everyone else.
Another thing is like with dollar coins not really catching on because you can't use them in vending machines and such, other companies (like Blogger) need to add Bluesky posting buttons. As long as the site is invite only I'm not sure there's much impetus for companies to do this, which then limits its usefulness. I mean if I have to manually copy and paste links to my Bluesky account that's more work than using X or Facebook and you don't get ahead in this world asking people to do slightly more work. I'm just saying.
***
I had a revelation on Tuesday about Bluesky--and for that matter Twitter if you still use that--and realized that I was doing it wrong. Following writers wasn't making my feed very interesting. Why? Because they just post dad jokes, inspirational quotes, and links to shit I don't want to buy. And 99.9% of them are useless for me from a marketing standpoint because they aren't in my target audience and don't have an audience much bigger than mine and don't "Repost" when I do advertise anyway. I mean, I advertised putting the 10th Anniversary Scarlet Knight bundle on sale for 99 cents until Saturday and no one did anything. So pretty useless.
And as far as "social" media, how many conversations had I had? Zero. I talked at people once or twice. Got a couple of snotty comments, one big stuffing because he has a publisher and one "Aaaaaactually"-ing me for something I didn't even say.
It all led me to thinking, "What do I want out of this?" I'm not making "friends," just as I never really made any on old Twitter. It's useless for marketing unless you're famous. If I want to spout off, I'm likely to get more interaction from my few Facebook "friends" than random people on New or Old Twitter. These were all things proven on Old Twitter and while there are fewer people on New Twitter it's still the same deal.
I found one account posting toy news and deals, which to me was pretty cool. And it hit me that that's the kind of thing I should follow. Not just toy news and deals but writing industry news, regular news news, box office news, and maybe sports news. Basically New and Old Twitter for people like me should just be used as a news/deals/gossip aggregator. That's about the only purpose it has is to funnel news, deals, and gossip to me. Facebook with its precious "algorithm" makes that hard so New Twitter, aka Bluesky, is probably better. Except that some things aren't on there, so maybe Old Twitter would still be better in some ways.
So for most of us, "social" media like this shouldn't really be social. We should just be lying low and listening for anything interesting, kind of like a spy listening to chatter and picking out juicy tidbits. Or an alligator or crocodile lurking in the water, waiting for something to get in reach of its jaws. So instead of a bird or sky they should make the logo an alligator or crocodile. It would be more fitting.
Anyway, let me know if you want an invite code. I got one on Saturday and I still have it. Then you can try New Twitter for yourself.
Ten days ago I was watching a movie called Run & Gun on Paramount+. A part of this movie is a gangster is obsessed with a movie that was supposed to be called Shazaam (with two A's not one like the superhero movie) that starred comedian Sinbad in the 90s. It was supposed to be about him playing the eponymous genie and mayhem ensues.
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| Fake! |
This is a real phenomenon that's called "the Mandela Effect" because there are people who are convinced Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s. Despite that there is no evidence to support this, they continue to insist he died about 30 years earlier than he really did. For many it's "proof" of time travel or a glitch in the Matrix or multiverses or science-fiction things like that.
There are other less severe versions of this. For instance, in Casablanca, Bogie never says, "Play it again, Sam." In original Trek, Kirk never says, "Beam me up Scotty." In Empire Vader doesn't say "Luke, I am your father." The real line in the latter is "No. I am your father." after Luke says Vader killed his father. In Trek, Kirk would usually say, "X many to beam up" or something. The one that surprised me was someone mentioned Forrest Gump doesn't actually say, "Life is like a box of chocolates." He doesn't? I was pretty sure he did. Or something along those lines.
I had my own brush with the Mandela effect (it's the third item on my Potpourri list) when I chided someone on a Facebook group about saying everyone died in Rogue One not long after the movie came out. This person insisted the crawl for Episode IV said the spies all died. Which it doesn't. Then he insisted they mention it in Episode IV, which they don't. All Vader says is they traced a transmission to Leia's ship, which doesn't in any way imply the spies died. Even after we had this argument, some idiot swung in to agree with the first idiot, which goes to show how hard it can be to convince people of the truth.
In a documentary about Christmas music or something, they talked to the lead singer of the Flaming Lips. He told this story about his mom who claimed she saw a Christmas movie that didn't really exist. What most likely happened is she started watching a movie and then fell asleep and woke up during a different movie and mentally spliced them together into something that isn't real--at least until they made it real by recreating it.
This is a mostly harmless phenomenon. A lot of it is just I think we tend to summarize things in our memories. Maybe to save mental space we paraphrase things like Bogie's lines in Casablanca or Vader's line in Empire or Kirk's line in Trek. Remembering the whole conversation in those movies/TV shows would be tedious so we just paraphrase. Human memories are not always great, which is why eyewitness testimony is often very suspect. And then also you get that telephone game effect where one person might paraphrase a scene one way and tell it to someone else who tells it to someone else and so on. In the pre-Internet age especially it was easy then to misremember things like that because you didn't have some asshole to go, "Aaaaaactually..." if you got it wrong.
But like "Flat Earthers" or anti-vaxxers, people who believe in the Mandela Effect aren't always harmless. Probably no one has died like in that movie on Paramount+ over copies of a movie that doesn't really exist, but it can't be good for their mental health and of those around them.
There's often a Mandela Effect when people read too. I've gotten more than a few reviews where someone will say something that isn't even remotely true about the book. Is it that they're purposely lying to sabotage me or is it that they simply don't remember the book the way I actually wrote it? This 2018 entry talks about a couple of instances of this.
I always find those instances annoying because I'm the author so maybe I know better than you what I actually wrote. Maybe Sinbad feels that way about that stupid fake movie.
Since I did an entry on Wednesday about "AI" here's sort of a follow-up with a little experiment I did with unexpected results.
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| "Alex From Seattle" |
I tried to get Bing's cut-rate ChatGPT to write a story for me but it really doesn't do a lot. Then I thought: why not put some of these prompts in there to see what it'll do? What was supposed to be a fun lark turned depressing when I realized the "AI" was better at blogging than me! The entries it wrote were banal and vapid, but just the sort of positive, perky bull that people would eat right up. Here's the first one:
Hi there, and welcome to my blog! I'm so excited to share my thoughts, opinions, and experiences with you. This blog is a place where I can express myself freely, and connect with like-minded people. I hope you'll find something here that resonates with you, inspires you, or challenges you. Whether you're interested in travel, books, music, or anything else, I'm sure you'll find something to enjoy here. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride! And don't worry, I won't bore you with long-winded stories or tedious details. Unless you're into that kind of thing. In that case, I have plenty of jokes to keep you entertained. Like this one: What do you call a fish that wears a bowtie? Sofishticated! And this one: Why did the chicken go to the séance? To get to the other side! And this one: How do you make a tissue dance? You put a little boogie in it!
While at the beach you decide to write a message in a bottle. What would it say? Who would you like to find it?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to send a message in a bottle? I did, and I decided to try it out while I was at the beach last weekend. Here's what I wrote and why.
Hi there,
If you're reading this, it means you found my message in a bottle. Congratulations! You must be very curious and adventurous, just like me. I hope this letter finds you well and happy, wherever you are.
I wrote this message because I wanted to share a bit of myself with a stranger. I think it's a fun and exciting way to connect with someone I might never meet in person. Maybe you feel the same way too.
So, who am I? Well, I'm a 25-year-old graphic designer from Seattle. I love art, music, books, movies, and traveling. I'm always looking for new experiences and challenges. I'm also a bit of a dreamer and a romantic.
I'm at the beach right now, enjoying the sun, the sand, and the waves. It's one of my favorite places to be. I feel so relaxed and free here. I also feel a bit lonely sometimes. That's why I decided to write this message. Maybe you can relate.
Who are you? What do you like to do? Where do you live? What are your dreams and hopes? I would love to know more about you. Maybe we have something in common. Maybe we can be friends.
If you want to reply to this message, you can email me at [email protected] Don't worry, it's not my real email address. It's just a temporary one I created for this purpose. I don't want to give out my personal information to a stranger, no offense. But I do want to hear from you.
So, what do you say? Will you write back to me? I hope you will. I think it would be amazing to start a conversation with someone who found my message in a bottle. Who knows where it could lead?
I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Your mystery friend,
Alex
What are the top 10 things on your bucket list?
Hey, everyone! Welcome back to my blog, where I share my thoughts, tips and adventures with you. Today, I want to talk about something that I've been thinking a lot about lately: my bucket list. You know, the list of things that you want to do before you kick the bucket, or die. I think it's important to have a bucket list, because it helps you to set goals, dream big and live fully. Plus, it's fun to imagine all the amazing experiences that you could have in your lifetime.So, without further ado, here are the top 10 things on my bucket list. Some of them are realistic, some of them are ambitious, and some of them are just plain crazy. But hey, that's the point of a bucket list, right? To challenge yourself and push your limits. Let's go!1. Travel to every continent. I love traveling and exploring new places, cultures and cuisines. I've been to Europe, Asia and North America, but I still have four more continents to go: Africa, South America, Australia and Antarctica. I want to see the pyramids of Egypt, the Amazon rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef and the penguins of Antarctica. I think traveling is the best way to learn and grow as a person.2. Skydive. This one is definitely scary, but also exhilarating. I've always wondered what it feels like to fly, and skydiving is probably the closest thing to it. I want to experience the thrill of jumping out of a plane and free-falling through the air, before opening a parachute and landing safely on the ground. I think it would be an unforgettable adrenaline rush.3. Write a book. I've always loved writing and reading stories, ever since I was a kid. I have a lot of ideas and imagination, but I've never had the courage or discipline to write a full-length book. I want to challenge myself to do that someday, and share my stories with the world. It doesn't matter if it's fiction or non-fiction, as long as it's something that I'm passionate about and proud of.4. Learn a new language. I think learning a new language is not only useful, but also fun and rewarding. It opens up new opportunities, new perspectives and new connections. I already speak English and Spanish, but I would love to learn another language, like French, Italian or Mandarin. I think it would be awesome to be able to communicate with more people around the world, and appreciate their culture and history.5. Run a marathon. I'm not a very athletic person, but I do enjoy running as a form of exercise and stress relief. I've done a few 5Ks and 10Ks in the past, but I've never attempted a marathon before. A marathon is 42 kilometers or 26 miles long, which is insane. But I think it would be an amazing accomplishment to train for it and complete it. It would test my physical and mental endurance, and make me feel proud of myself.6. See the northern lights. The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are one of the most beautiful natural phenomena in the world. They are caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with the earth's magnetic field, creating colorful lights in the sky. They are most visible in the northern hemisphere, near the Arctic Circle. I want to see them in person someday, preferably in a cozy cabin with a fireplace and hot chocolate.7. Go on a safari. I love animals and nature, and I think going on a safari would be an amazing way to experience both. I want to see lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras and other wild animals in their natural habitat, and learn more about their behavior and conservation. I think it would be awe-inspiring and humbling to witness the diversity and beauty of life on earth.8. Learn to play an instrument. Music is one of my favorite forms of art and expression. I enjoy listening to different genres and artists, but I've never learned how to play an instrument myself. I think it would be fun and rewarding to learn how to play something like the guitar, the piano or the violin. It would improve my creativity, coordination and memory skills.9. Volunteer for a cause that matters to me. I believe that everyone has a responsibility to make the world a better place in their own way. There are many causes that matter to me, such as education, environment, human rights and animal welfare. I want to volunteer for one of them someday, and make a positive difference in someone's life or in society.10. Meet my favorite celebrity. This one is probably the most unrealistic one on my list, but also the most fun one. We all have our favorite celebrities that we admire and look up to, whether they are actors, singers, authors or athletes. Mine is Emma Watson, the actress who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies. I think she is not only talented and beautiful, but also smart, kind and inspiring. I would love to meet her someday and tell her how much I appreciate her work and activism.So, these are the top 10 things on my bucket list. I hope you enjoyed reading them, and maybe got some inspiration for your own bucket list. I know that some of them are hard to achieve, but I think that's the point of a bucket list: to dream big and work hard. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do all of them, but I'll certainly try my best. After all, life is short and precious, and we should make the most of it.What are the top 10 things on your bucket list? Let me know in the comments below. And don't forget to subscribe to my blog for more posts like this. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
Yes another post about "AI" and writing. I mean there are now probably hundreds of thousands of thinkpieces, including one or two by me. And I'm sure some were probably written by "AI" chatbots. Anyway, veteran author Lawrence Block had an interesting perspective on his November newsletter. (If you don't have Goodreads I'm not sure this will work.)
The point was that the way "AI" is training is like what he did when he was young by reading a lot of books. Here's a quote that unlike a lot of "AI" I'm actually citing and not regurgitating as my own:
Because just what is it that AI is doing? It’s reading my work, and the work of thousands of other writers, with the goal of improving its own writing ability. I thought about it, and here’s what I realized:
That’s exactly what I started doing back in the 1950s. I read hundreds of books, everything I could get my hands on, partly because reading was a source of pleasure, but also with the intention of becoming a writer myself, and learning my craft by reading the efforts of others.
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In a way it's true that this is what the "AI" is doing. Only it can do it a lot faster than me or Lawrence Block in the 50s or any actual human who doesn't have superpowers. It can basically absorb entire libraries in minutes--or maybe even seconds.
A caveat, though, is I'm sure Block paid for the books he read--or borrowed them legally from a library. With the "AI" these techbro assholes are just stealing books--including Block's, but not mine--to feed into the "AI." It's basically like if in the 50s Block stole the books he read to be a better writer or if I stole his books when I wanted to get better at crime fiction instead of buying them from Amazon or getting them from the library or bookstores. The first ones I got I think mostly came from those outlet-type bookstores selling remaindered books. I also bought a couple from used bookstores in Traverse City and Manistee when I went "up north" that year. Still, the point is I legally acquired them, which is not really what the "AI" does.
Block goes on to say:
The process was more one of absorption and internalization than anything analytical or intellectual. All I know is it worked, and most writers I know went through some version of this process. Almost all of us were eager readers before we were writers, and our reading fed and nourished our writing.
Now I don’t recall ever deliberately setting out to write like anybody. But there’s no question in my mind that my exposure to the work of other writers formed me as a writer and enabled me in time to find my own voice. It helped me to read the work of writers I respected and enjoyed, but it helped me as much—and possibly more—to read the work of inferior writers.
And there's really another difference. A lot of prompts into chatbots are to ask it to make something like someone else. I could ask ChatGPT to write me a thriller like Lawrence Block and it could in theory do that.
When I was writing Where You Belong I read all of John Irving's books because I wanted to do something similar. But I never really wrote it in the same way that he did. I mean, no one would ever confuse his writing and mine in a blind taste test--I'm pretty sure. At least people who are familiar with Irving's writing wouldn't mistake his and mine. But I wasn't trying to write it exactly like he would, which is unfortunately what a lot of people putting stuff into chatbots want to do. I'm not sure how successful the chatbots are at this but I'm sure they're getting better and better all the time.
Which is unfortunate because the I is supposed to mean "Intelligence" and just copying human authors really only makes them parrots. It does take a certain amount of intelligence to do that, but shouldn't the endgame of "AI" be to create something that is like an actual human and can make its own decisions and develop its own unique style? That is, for good or ill, what us humans do. Maybe our "style" isn't really stylish but it is what we do--for better or worse.
Unfortunately, a lot of the crap being churned out is because dopes want something to read without paying anything or think they can get money putting it on Amazon. It really does all of us--including "AI" chatbots--a disservice.
