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.
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.
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.
After a great deal of deliberation and screw ups, I think I *may* have finally figured out a smooth first three chapters of this novel. It’s taken me a lot longer than I would like, but it’s done.
Now, I’m going to reread the “finished” chapters then see if I can finish up the first act again before I get back into the second act where I’m going to have to do a huge amount of rewriting. I have already do a lot of futzing with the outline of the “fun and games” part of the novel (the first half of the second act.)
But my goal of just finishing something, anything and then querying it remains. I don’t know how long I’m willing to stew in my juices when it comes to querying, but I do know that at some point I’m going to start to work on a new novel, even while I’m waiting for querying to pan or not pan out.
Querying is going to be a whole new era for me. I really will have no idea what I’m doing and I know I’m bound to make, many, many, MANY mistakes. But, maybe in making so many mistakes I’ll know how to do it right the next go round.
I am a little uneasy that my first novel is a mystery-thriller while most of the other novels I have rolling around in my mind are just Andy Weir-like scifi.
I’m completely obsessed with the Webstats of this site to a ridiculous degree. So when I see someone randomly pop up pinging a specific URL without any referring site…it makes me wonder.
From what I can tell, only about maybe 30 people — at most — look at this site on any particular day. And, yet, I think because some people access the site in a way that looks like a robot is looking at it, I don’t see some views on the backend.
So, I suppose it’s reasonable to presume that the FBI or NSA looks at this site on occasion just to keep an eye on me because they think I’m some sort of crazed nutjob from some of my rants. (Trust me guys, I’m harmless.)
And instead of only about 30 people looking at this site, it may be closer to 100.
Anyway. blah, blah blah. Nothing matters. I just need to work on my novel.
It’s growing more and more clear to me that I need to cut back on my drinking — maybe entirely. I’m not getting any younger and I keep getting some pings from my body that maybe…drinking is no longer in my future.
And I know a number of people around me — maybe all of them — think I’m an alcoholic and I hate that so much that just proving the point to them that I can stop drinking is, unto itself, enough.
I keep thinking about how Stieg Larsson dropped dead within days of finding out his novel(s) had sold. I just don’t want that fate to happen to me. But, I suppose, I don’t really have much control over it other than trying to live a more healthy life.
So, I’m going to *try* to either stop drinking altogether or cutback significantly to the point that I’m essentially sober.
I pretty much took a break of a year working on this novel because I was moping because no one liked the finished novel I produced. They generally said it was too spicy — with one person almost being embarrassed that I would even ask them to read it in the first place.
But, after a year of moping, I’m back at it. This latest version of the novel is not nearly as spicy on a consistent basis — even though there are some spicy scenes early on. In general, though, I think I’ve come up with at least an interesting novel, if nothing else.
If I can get people to read all the way through is a different matter. The novel isn’t really a thriller, it’s more of an intriguing murder-in-a-small-town mystery. But I really have enjoyed working on it and this time I swear I’m going to just query it, no matter what.
If it’s clear that it’ll never get published traditionally, I guess I’ll finally put it aside and focus on one of the numerous other novel premises I have rolling around in my mind. But I’m going to give it a few months, if nothing else, before I throw in the towl.
I am well aware that it will be like winning the lottery to get a literary agent. But I would rather fail in a spectacular manner than just write little short stories that can be dismissed.
I’m determined to start querying this novel either this fall or next spring. I’m tried of writing and rewriting things and I’m prepared once this version is done to call it The Final Version.
As such, I know that the first thing any literary agent who is actually interested in this novel will do is search my name on the Internet.
I just can’t help who I am — I’m something of a kook and that’s just who I’ve always been. So I have to work under the assumption that I could write the great American mystery and, lulz, literary agents will think I’m too big a kook to take seriously and that will be that.
But that’s not going to stop me from trying. I’m going to query this novel anyway and see what happens. It will be fun, in its own way, to watch people who are clearly literary agents that I’ve contact poke around this Website at some point in the future.
It will be “fun” in the sense that I will at least be able to see in real time why it is I can’t sell the novel in the first place.
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