America is definitely neither totally fascist nor totally free. Living in such a luminal political space is call an “anocracy.” With the shooting of a hapless driver by ICE today it’s possible Trump may get his chance to invoke the Insurrection Act.
For people like Trump, the Insurrection Act has taken on mythical proportions. They see it as a cure-all to all their woke cancel culture mob problems. Ugh. Anyway, I have long said the only way we get out of this situation is a general strike.
But, alas, not even fucking ICE murdering people in cold blood is going to get us to that point. I think we’re totally and completely fucked.
I think there won’t be free-and-fair elections and this is it. We’re just going to be Trumplandia for the rest of my life. We will get poorer and more fascist as things progress.
It was great living in a free America while it lasted, I guess.
While I still have three books on querying to flip through, I’m hoping to wrap up the first act of this novel fairly soon. Maybe in a week or so. If I’m really lucky. I’m so fucking moody when it comes to actually sitting down to write that I never can quite tell how long it will be.
But, in general, I have pretty good vibes for this novel. The only thing that makes me wince a little bit is the sex worker part of the novel. And, yet, that gives the novel stakes and, well, it’s point.
While *I* really like the sex worker element of the story, I’m afraid there will be a vocal minority in the audience that will hate, hate, hate it. But it’s too late now. Unless, that is, Black Mirror does an episode that steals a creative march on me and I have to piviot to a different story.
That would really suck, but it’s a real possibility — especially if I don’t get my act together and hurry up to wrap this damn thing up ASAP.
We live in a very, very dumb age. We have a Mad Emperor doing crazy shit here in America and we seem powerless to do anything about it.
The chief example of this is Trump’s fascination with owning Greenland of all things. It’s very, very dumb for lots of reasons because we can get everything we want from Greenland without going through the trouble of upending the entire global order.
And, yet, here we are.
It definitely seems as though Trump is going to destroy NATO in his quest to own Greenland. I suppose that was always the ultimate end goal of Trump’s foreign policy — to destroy NATO.
It’s times like these when I think Trump has got to be a Russian agent, or, at least, a Russian stooge of some sort.
I gave the first scene of the novel to someone else and they were generally praise worthy. But one thing kind of bothered me. They essentially effused over my writing being better on a practical basis.
This made me blanch because what they were noticing was me leaning into AI to write the scene. So, in essence, what they were saying without realizing was: my native writing ability sucks.
This is enough to throw me into intensive psychotherapy. But maybe not. Not only am I going to make a one final pass of the novel’s text before I query to make sure it’s as much my own style and tone as possible, I also look at it this way: what’s the difference between using AI to help write a novel and using it to spellcheck?
I am a horrible, horrible speller. I always have been, always will be. So bad that the only way I ever got any journalism gigs was…because of the existence of spellcheck.
So, as long as I do as much hard work as possible, I don’t really see there being *that* much of an issue when it comes to leaning into AI when working on a novel. And I do a whole lot of work. I really do.
One thing I probably need to tweak when it comes to my workflow is to totally not use the expanded scene summaries that AI generates for me directly. What I need to do is read those expanded scene summaries…and then do my own writing. I have gotten into the bad habit of using going through and directly using the expanded scene summaries as the basis of scenes.
Bad author, bad. Don’t do that!
Another observation the guy I sent the first scene of the novel to is that my hero was quite “likeable enough.” I hate that. Given what happens in the novel, I fear that is a problem that will only grow. And, yet, who knows.
The key thing that is going to delay me querying this novel is going to be the one last pass I’m going to make of the text to tweak things like hero likability and the vague “AI slop” quality of some of the writing. I’m the writer, I have to actually do as much of the writing as possible.
I am just about to wrap up the first act of this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on and, as such, I’ve looked over some of the beginning scenes. And I’m pleased but for one thing — they definitely are a bit…too…polished.
They suffer from “AI speak” a little bit too much for my liking. I just hate the idea of people rolling their eyes and saying the only reason why my writing is any good is I used AI. (This, despite me still thinking that the way I use AI is simpler to how I might have used spell check a few decades earlier.)
Regardless, everyone and everything is horrible so to prevent me from having to endure the slings and arrows of people accusing me of producing AI slop, I’m probably going to go in and simply rewrite scenes as necessary completely in my own hand.
That way, even if the end product is “worse” at least it will be my writing and not AI.
Trump is so nuts I could totally see him accidently on purpose doing the “right thing” and actually helping the people of Iran overthrow their tyrannical government.
If he was successful in doing so, I would be stunned. He would have actually done what needed to be done — help the people of Iran free themselves from bondage. Only a crazy, deranged person like Trump would, with total disregard for the international order, do something so crazy.
And it gets even more crazy in the context of what Trump did with the president of Venezuela. For him to do two crazy things on the world stage back-to-back. Oh boy. And that doesn’t even begin to address the idea that Trump might slide into the DMs, as it were, of Greenland by sending American “Little Green Men” to gradually snatch that huge rocky island.
Anyway, if Trump succeeds in freeing the people of Iran, I will give him proper credit, in an unironic manner.
Given the situation on the ground, rather than come in all bombastic with Greenland, I think American “little green men” would slowly creep into Greenland and slowly take it over.
That way, there would not be any big confrontation, but at the end of the day, the USA would effectively own Greenland. (We already do, but lulz, Trump’s bonkers and wants a big win like taking Greenland by force.)
Anyway, as I keep saying, no one listens to me and I could get this right and no one would notice or care.
Over the holidays, I showed the first scene of the novel I’m working on to some relatives. They gave me generally positive comments and we’re generous and supportive, but here are the comments that caught my attention.
‘Funny’ names One relative said my names were too weird and that took them out of reading the novel. I validate that, but one man’s “funny names” are another person’s “interesting names.”
“Nuk” I use “Nuk” as the nickname for a character and one reader didn’t like that because it reminded them of a baby’s nuk. I don’t quit know what to do about that one. I don’t think it’s bad to use “Nuk” per se, but…I may have to think about that some. No one else has mentioned that as a problem
Terminology I have a very specific — and mildly humorous — term for my androids or synths that I use an one reader wanted the origin of that terminology expressed spell out. I think in the context of marketing that that won’t be a problem, but just to be sure, I stuck a sentence in that explained the nomenclature.
This is already happening, but I do think that the difference between podcasts and talk shows will be pretty much moot by the end of 2026. This, especially since if we can’t get Stephen Colbert to run for office, he will probably go into podcasting bigtime.
So all the talk about a “pivot to video” that has happened over the years is finally going to happen now.
So, about 20 years ago now, I started ROKon Magazine. It is the greatest story never told, in my opinion. Anyway, if I was an expat in Seoul now, I would start a podcast.
What I would do is, we would have a regular podcast — maybe once a week — and then as part of that podcast, we would have a regularly updated Website that would have content that would otherwise be in a magazine.
There would be a symbiotic relationship between the podcast and the Website.
Too bad the only way I’m ever going back to Korea it looks like at this point is if North Korea collapses and there’s a dire need for English teachers there. Otherwise, I will be 80 years old before I can return (unless I somehow finish and sell this novel I’m working on.)
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