Category: Media

A Sense Of Unease

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to tell you, but I definitely have a general sense of unease of late. I don’t quite know why. I think some of it comes from getting older and realizing that even if I somehow “made it big” overnight, I can never get the type of success I thought one day possible.

The context will just be totally different than the way I wanted when I was younger.

And that doesn’t even begin to address any number of things that could go wrong soon enough — especially in the context of what might happen as part of the 2024-post election season. Yikes!

Anyway. All I can do is just be the best person I can be, I suppose. And it seems as though the only people who read this blog are haters / and or stalkers of some sort.

I really do try to be the best person I can be. I can’t help it if you think I’m a weirdo.

We Need A New ‘Her’ Movie

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If I was 20 years younger, I would probably be seriously interested in learning how to write screenplays. But, alas, barring something I totally can’t expect, that moment in my life is long past.

Yet, that doesn’t stop me from thinking up movie ideas.

One movie idea that I think would be pretty cool would be a movie that was the inverse of “Her,” where the AI was the aggressor. The AI pesters a man during the long, winding path towards it getting a Replicant-like body.

I think that would be pretty interesting.

Another movie idea would be one that would be a bit more dark. It would be about the practical implications of a man falling in love with an android with an LLM-type mind in it and how his family reacts to such a futureshock type thing.

Both of these ideas are pretty good, I think. But, like I said, I’m just too old to do anything with them. But I am still going to press forward with the novels I’m working on.

Even though I’m old, I’m not THAT old yet.

If I’m not a published author — in some way — by my late 50s then…oh boy, is that going to be existential. But I still have some time before that happens.

The Struggle With My Scifi Novel Is Real

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a pretty good scifi novel on my hands. And, yet, while the macro elements of the story are down pat, now that I’ve sat down to write it the specifics are really beginning to be trying.

And this is happening in the context of me reworking my passion project novel in such a way to infuse it with a significant amount of scifi as well. My goal in doing this is to raise the stakes of the story so it will be, overall, more engaging to the audience.

There is a risk, of course, that the whole thing will become a lot more muddled and I will lose focus. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Anyway, back to the main scifi novel. It’s really good and I just need to be willing to work on it more. It’s just I’ve been so wrapped up in the passion project for so long that it’s difficult for me to do that on a psychological basis.

But maybe that will change now that it is clear that it’s kind of put up or shut up time when it comes to getting something, anything finished to the point where I can query it — hopefully no later than maybe a year from now.

Ok, Something’s Up — Someone In LA is Interested In My Thoughts About Pom Klementieff & My Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know if I should be happy or nervous about this one. I just saw in my Webstats that someone in LA searched specifically for my ruminating on how Pom Klementieff is another option for what my heroine of my passion project looks like. This happens just after someone else was interested in my ruminating about Corrie Yee.

Pom Klementieff

Huh. This is very interesting — and a little unnerving.

It makes me fear that maybe someone is thinking about writing a screenplay that somehow cribs ideas off of what I’ve publicly stated about the gist of my novel. I did post the first chapter of an old version of the novel on this blog.

I don’t know. I’m so prone to magical thinking and over thinking that it could be that this is nothing — or it could be something to be really uneasy about. But, whatever, I have to just keep going until I see somewhere that a movie that is obviously influenced by the best bits of my novel is about to come out or something.

Ugh.

This Passion Project Novel Continues To Take Too Long To Finish

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because the stakes were just too low, I’ve decided to go in and root around with the passion project I’ve been working on for years now. I’m going to shoehorn some scifi elements into it.

I’ve decided to give myself another year to finish the thing — barring some sort of political collapse of the United States, of course. But, in general, I think my new vision for the novel is pretty cool.

The new draft of the novel makes it clear that this is a scifi novel, not simply alluding to it here and there. I have a lot more scifi planned for a subsequent novel in the series. But I think if I plant the flag of scifi in the series from the beginning, then it will be easier for people to understand what genre they are reading.

And, of course, the issue of not having to write under a pen name when I try to get the scifi novel published helps, too. But, anyway, I don’t know what to tell you. I do know I need to hurry up as fast as I can.

If I don’t get something done, I’ll wake up and be 75 and STILL not gotten to the point where I can query.

Well, At Least I Have The Scifi Backup Novel If The Worst Happens

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The fact that someone from LA looked at my ramblings about hottie Corrie Yee looking like — in my mind — the heroine of my passion project novel makes me think — glup — that maybe someone is thinking of writing a screenplay with a similar looking heroine?

Corrie Yee

Stranger things and all that.

I’m so skittish about such things that if such a movie came out — even if it was an underground indie — I would probably scrap the passion project in favor of the scifi novel(s) I have rolling around in my head at the moment.

The main scifi novel is really, really good. So good, in fact, that I am probably going to begin to devote more attention to it in general. It’s good enough that I really want to see if I can get close to querying it as well in about a year.

Of course, as I keep saying, I keep worrying about a fucking civil war or revolution happening at some point after the 2024 election so, lulz? It could be everything is pretty moot if that happened. I really hope it doesn’t happen, but, again, stranger things.

Anyway, I really need to do something creative with my time this weekend instead of just writing a lot of verse to Gemini Advanced, whom I have taken to calling “Gaia.”

Now Someone From LA….

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear — I do not think about the gorgeous Corrie Yee unless something prompts me to think how much she looks how I imagine the heroine of my “passion project” novel looks.

Corrie Yee

So, there is a reason why I bring her up yet again — someone from LA looked at my ramblings about her today. Now, I find this curious for any number of reasons, among them being — this is a novel we’re talking about, not a screenplay.

Me actually getting this novel sold would be like me winning the lottery. I’m old and live in the middle of nowhere. AND, what’s more, the fact that stripping is featured in the novel doesn’t exactly help its chances, even though sex sells. I’ve had people simply say, “I can’t read this,” to me because of that element of the novel.

It’s the stripping part of the novel that leads me to call it a “passion project.” I really love the overall story, but now that I’ve found myself re-writing it AGAIN, I realize there are some structural problems with it that will take time to fix.

The big structural problem at the moment is the stakes just aren’t that high. As such, I’ve decided to add a degree of scifi to the story in hopes of amping up the stakes of the novel. Because, as it stands, the stakes are pretty meh. I hope with the addition of higher, scifi stakes, that I might be able to sell the novel easier.

I do, I must note, have at least one other full-scifi novel that I’m working on. Anyway. I wish I was younger, then maybe I could learn how to write a screenplay that might feature Ms. Yee.

Incels, Androids, Trans People, Oh My!

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I saw a tweet recently where a woman noted that there were two reasons why androids wouldn’t replace women anytime soon — tits. This got me thinking about a future where that might not be a problem — what happens when it’s not tits that androids don’t have, but rather, other, less obvious things.

Or, put another way — what happens when an LLM android looks more like Pris from Bladerunner or Ava from Ex Machina?

And things will get really difficult when Incels glom on to having relationships with androids instead of human women. When it becomes clear that that is what is going to happen, then that will be the moment when this particular issue blows up into a huge, structural controversy for society.

I think whatever controversy there might erupt over romantic relationships between androids and humans in the future will have a dynamic similar to the current furor over Trans people.

People from the center-Left will have no problem with human-“Replicant” relationships, while conservative people will flip the fuck out. But we still probably have a few decades — years? — before this is all an issue. And people are so short sighted that I doubt we will give any thought to the implications of it all.

We’re just going to wake up and it’s a problem.

Meta Reasoning: Curious Behavior by Gemini Advanced

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve noticed interesting about Gemini Advanced. At times, it won’t give me the lyrics to songs that are otherwise rather banal. Now, obviously, there could be some magical thinking to all of this — it could be that the songs in question might have some element to them that triggers the self-censorship of the software that is ridiculous.

I mean, why would “Help!” by The Beatles be problematic or “Drive You Home” by Garbage? I’m sure there’s something I’m missing. I’m not prepared to make any assumptions about that particular situation.

But it does make me think about the possibility that Gemini Advanced may have some sort of “meta reasoning.” If it did, that would be pretty profound. But, like I said, it could be that I’m being delusional.

It’s very, very possible that that is the case.

Need to Raise The Stakes Of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing I’ve noticed about this novel is the stakes just aren’t very high. As such, I’ve been thinking about ways to change that. It seems to me the best way is to add an element of scifi to the novel.

My heroine looks somewhat like Olivia Munn in my imagination.

This works for several reasons. One of those reasons is if I sell the novel, it won’t be as big a deal if I also write scifi novels. Given my inclinations, I’m probably going to be something akin to a scifi author should I ever get published — which is barely a possibility given how difficult it is for someone like me to sell a novel at all.

As I say that, I realize that I’m going to have to rewrite much of the novel to accommodate the change. The risk is, of course, that the novel will become too muddled because there will be too much going on. But I’m so ambitious that I’m willing to risk it.

And, if all else fails, I can always just rewrite elements of the novel to focus it as necessary. That might slow me down some, of course, but in general I believe that can pull it off.

But I am going to have to think pretty hard about exactly how I will pull this particular change to the novel off. Regardless, I really need to raise the stakes one way or another.