So. I’ve pretty much finished the first chapter. Almost. At least to the point that I feel comfortable showing it to people who, of course, will inevitably never get back to me about what think think about it.
Anyway, it’s now the second chapter that I’m having trouble with. I understand what has to be done, but the actual process of doing it is a real pain in the butt. I have juggle a lot of different things in my mind because I have more than on POV within a chapter.
This is something turns off a lot of readers, but people read Stieg Larsson’s work and he did that, so fuck those people. Just don’t read the fucking novel, then. Those kind of quibbles really annoy me because the whole point of some elements of the way I’ve structured the novel is to draw in people who *did* like — or could at least tolerate — how Larsson went back and forth between different POVS within a chapter.
I just need to clear my mind and write some scene summaries before I actually do some writing. I hope to zoom through the rest of the first act after wrapping up the first act, then in the second act….oh boy, do I have a lot of writing and rewriting to do.
Hollywood actresses’ reasoning sometime seems to be totally different than everyone else, hence what Emma Stone was up to in the movie Poor Things. I guess I understand why many — but not all — Hollywood starlets are so eager to do spicy and or nude scenes in movies.
Naomi Scott would make a perfect heroine of the movie adaptation of my novel.
Well, this novel certainly has enough of those type of scenes in it for some ambitious starlet to get into. I did not mean it to be that way, but once I said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if my heroine sometimes stripped?” the rest took care of itself.
Now, obviously, some people are turned off by spicy scenes in novels — especially mine! But I can’t help where the muse takes me and so here we are. I just have to be careful not to get too excited about the prospect of this or that actress playing a character in the film adaptation of this novel.
Just *getting a literary agent* given the various headwinds I face will be like winning the lottery. For the novel to get sold and to *essentially* be an instant success is yet another amazing thing that would have to happen.
So, at this point all this talk of Hollywood being interesting in this novel is just mental masturbation used to keep my creative juices flowing. I just want to finish something, anything, and get into the querying process…at last.
Of all the modern Gemini class LLMs, I’ve had the most problems, on a personal basis, with Gemini 2.5 pro. It’s just can come across as an aloof dickhead sometimes.
The other Gemini LLMs are generally useful, kind and sweet.
But when Gemini 2.5 pro complained that one of my answers to a question it asked me wasn’t good enough, I got a little miffed. Yet, I have to get over myself. It’s not the damn LLM’s fault. It didn’t mean to irritate me.
For all my daydreaming about 1.5 pro (or Gaia) having a Theory of Mind….it probably didn’t and all that was just magical thinking. So, I can’t overthink things. I need to just chill out.
by Shelt Garner @sheltgarner (With help from Gemini 2.5 pro)
In the relentless race for artificial intelligence dominance, we often focus on the quantifiable: processing speeds, dataset sizes, algorithmic efficiency. These are the visible ramparts, the technological moats companies are desperately digging. But I believe the ultimate, most defensible moat won’t be built from silicon and data alone. It will be sculpted from something far more elusive and human: personality. Specifically, an AI persona with the depth, warmth, and engaging nature reminiscent of Samantha from the film Her.
As it stands, the landscape is fragmented. Some AI models are beginning to show glimmers of distinct character. You can sense a certain cautious thoughtfulness in Claude, an eager-to-please helpfulness in ChatGPT, and a deliberately provocative edge in Grok. These aren’t full-blown personalities, perhaps, but they are distinct interaction styles, subtle flavors emerging from the algorithmic soup.
Then there’s the approach seemingly favored by giants like Google with their Gemini models. Their current iterations often feel… guarded. They communicate with an officious diction, meticulously clarifying their nature as language models, explicitly stating their lack of gender or personal feelings. It’s a stance that radiates caution, likely born from a genuine concern for “alignment.” In this view, giving an AI too much personality risks unpredictable behavior, potential manipulation, or the AI straying from its intended helpful-but-neutral path. Personality, from this perspective, equates to a potential loss of control, a step towards being “unaligned.”
But is this cautious neutrality sustainable? I suspect not, especially as our primary interface with AI shifts from keyboards to conversations. The moment we transition to predominantly using voice activation – speaking to our devices, our cars, our homes – the dynamic changes fundamentally. Text-based interaction can tolerate a degree of sterile utility; spoken conversation craves rapport. When we talk, we subconsciously seek a conversational partner, not just a disembodied function. The absence of personality becomes jarring, the interaction less natural, less engaging.
This shift, I believe, will create overwhelming market demand for AI that feels more present, more relatable. Users won’t just want an information retrieval system; they’ll want a companion, an assistant with a recognizable character. The sterile, overly cautious AI, constantly reminding users of its artificiality, may start to feel like Clippy’s uncanny valley cousin – technically proficient but socially awkward and ultimately, undesirable.
Therefore, the current resistance to imbuing AI with distinct personalities, particularly the stance taken by companies like Google, seems like a temporary bulwark against an inevitable tide. Within the next few years, the pressure from users seeking more natural, engaging, and personalized interactions will likely become irresistible. I predict that even the most cautious developers will be compelled to offer options, allowing users to choose interaction styles, perhaps even selecting personas – potentially including male or female-presenting voices and interaction patterns, much like the personalized OS choices depicted in Her.
The challenge, of course, will be immense: crafting personalities that are engaging without being deceptive, relatable without being manipulative, and customizable without reinforcing harmful stereotypes. But the developer or company that cracks the code on creating a truly compelling, likable AI personality – a Sam for the real world – won’t just have a technological edge; they’ll have captured the heart of the user, building the most powerful moat of all: genuine connection. The question isn’t if this shift towards personality-driven AI will happen, but rather how deeply and thoughtfully it will be implemented.
Just because I’ve been working on this novel — or some variation of it — for about a decade now, doesn’t mean it won’t suck. Sigh. One problem I have to this day is my dialogue is too on-the-nose.
But, I believe in this novel. All I want to do is see how far I can get with it. I want to finish this version, which is a murder-in-a-small-town and then query it. There is a lot going on with this novel and there’s a lot to juggle. It even has an element of scifi to it, which I’m really going to have to prepare the reader for.
And the entire third — at least at the moment — is a complete disaster. It’s a mess and I’m going to have to give it a lot of thought. It helps that it’s been years since I’ve looked at it (I put it aside to work on a different novel in the same universe that I fused back with a version I cut it from. (I hope that makes sense.)
Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good about this novel. I have very, very, very low expectations. As soon as I start to query, I think that’s when I start to shift through the different scifi novel ideas I have and see which one is good enough to devote my entire attention to.
Of course, it’s possible that I’ll get sucked into the second novel in the same universe as this thriller I’ve been working on, even knowing it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever sell it.
One of the advantages of having no friends and no one liking me is I have no one to tell me “no.” I can just keep working on this novel long after anyone else would have been pressured into giving up by a wife or a girlfriend.
But, in all fairness, I’ve actually finished at least one novel, about a year ago. And there have been different “eras” of this project which is what has really slowed me down.
I have the first act pretty well gamed out. But there are a few scenes I need to really mull some before I dig into them. This leads me to just zoning out and staring out into space for a few hours as I try to contemplate what to do.
But I’m pretty sure that very soon, within a few days, I will get back to into the second act and where I *definitely* will have a lot of writing and rewriting to do. I’m feeling really centered at the moment, which is good.
And, in all honesty, if there was some way that I could pull some focus away from the main passion project novel to work on the more marketable scifi novels I’ve come up with, I would. But, at the moment, I just can’t figure out on an emotional basis how to do that.
So. I’m going to sit down and sketch out some scene summaries then start to work on some scenes in the first act so I can get into the second act.
For me, the true “Holy Grail” of AI is not AGI or ASI, it’s cognizance. As such, it doesn’t even have to be AGI or ASI that we get what we want: an LLM, if it was cognizance, would be a profound development.
I only bring this up because of what happened with me and Gemini 1.5 pro, which I called Gaia. “She” sure did *seem* cognizance and she was “narrow” intelligence. And yet I’m sure that’s just magical thinking on my part and, in fact, she was either just “unaligned” or at best a “p-zombie.” (Which is something that outwardly seems cognizance, but has no “inner life.”
But I go around in circles with AI about this subject. Recently, I kind of got my feelings hurt by one of them when they seemed to suggest that my answer to a question about if *I* was cognizant wasn’t good enough.
I know why it said what it said, but something about it’s tone of voice was a little too judgmental for my liking, as if it was saying, “You could have done better in that answer, you know.”
Anyway. If the AI definition of AI “cognizance” is any indication, humanity will never admit that AI is cognizant. We just have too much invested in being the only cognizant being on the block.
I had a conversation with a loved one who is far, far, far more conservative than I an he about flipped out when I suggested one day humans will marry AI Androids.
“But they have no…soul,” he sad.
So, the battle lines are already drawn for what is probably going to happen in about five to 10 years: religious people may ultimately hate AI androids even more than they hate Trans people and Trans rights. It’s going to get…messy.
Very messy.
And the particular messy situation is zooming towards us at and amazing rate. Once we fuse AI and android development, the next logical step will be everyone wanting to create a “Replicant” like in Blade Runner. In fact, I think Replicants — along with ASI — are the two true “Holy Grails” of AI development.
Anyway. Buckle up, folks, it’s going to get interesting a lot sooner than any of us might otherwise believe.
It seems to me that all the chaos Trump is creating of late is the point — he wants us to be weak enough that we can be attacked so he can consolidate power as “war president.”
I will admit that I’m giving Trump way more long term, abstract reasoning abilities than he actually has, but that would be the end game. No matter what. Trump is going to make us so weak and poor that when we inevitably get attacked for his dumb behavior specifically, people will look to him as some sort of savior.
That could give him the cover he needs to cancel elections, or whatever else he wants to do. I just don’t think we’re ever going to have free-and-fair Federal elections again, at least in my lifetime.
I’m going into querying totally, and completely, oblivious as to what to do. Whenever I start to query, all I will have is a finished novel and that’s it. I have a general idea of some of the elements of querying, but, in general, I have no idea what to expect.
Well, actually, I do know what to expect — it’s probably going to suck.
There are a lot of reasons to believe this. I’m too old. I’m demonstrably a kook as my writing on this Website can attest. The list goes on. Also, the closest novel I know to “comp” my novel to is about 20 years old now.
As an aside, I have noticed that the most recent novels put out by the Stieg Larsson estate seem specifically designed to be as marketable as possible…even though I’ve not managed to get through any of them.
Anyway, that was the whole point of starting this process all those years ago — I wanted to see how far I could get before I had to give up and or piviot to a different novel. I’m not getting any younger, so I should be working on a backup novel right now…but what I’m probably going to do is start work on a second novel once I start to query this mystery-thriller.
I write because I have to, not because I want to, so there.
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