New Blog

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I’ve finished writing the last book in a six-book series. I thought it would be finished about a week ago, but it had other ideas.

A few nights ago, at 11:45 pm, the first draft of the final story about a certain warspawn rogue was finished. First draft. The ugly, little nugget is far from a polished gem.

When I emerged from my writing cave, blinking in the harsh winter’s light, I felt a bit empty, a bit ‘loosendish’, like I’d just woken from one of those really vivid dreams, the kind that stay with you, the kind that clings like cobweb. But I was happy to have finally, after a year and a half of shenanigans, got to this point. As all know, life sometimes gets in the way of even the best laid plans.

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Anyway, we’re here on the final lap of what has been one hell of a ride. I’m not even going to look at the manuscript for a couple of weeks, put some distance between me and it. When I go back in to do the first edit, I’ll be able to look at it dispassionately without all the fevered emotion that drove the narrative and hopefully some nice, juicy bits of word spaghetti will have stuck to the wall. After I’ve gone over it a couple of times, I’ll reluctantly hand it over to a real editor. Alas, I have never had an editor tell me with tears streaming down their cheeks that there is nothing they can do to improve upon my genius. As usual, they will fix my word-mangling feckery— little quirks like playing fast and loose with grammar rules and spelling a character’s name fourteen different ways.

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Editing funsies aside, something I found more amusing (YMMV), is that all the ‘great ideas’ that have been auditioning, nay, clamouring to be the NEXT BIG THING have stfu in the last few days. It’s a proper tumbleweed rodeo in the brain-meat bullshit factory. I’m not sure I like it; it’s all dark and echoey.

So, there you go. Thanks for sticking around and watch this space for updates about pre-orders and all that other book related stuff. I’m off for a curry and a pint.

Rejoice! The Spider and the Fly audio book has been released. I’m sure most of you have read it already, I mean, why wouldn’t you? But you can now listen to the adventures of the noble yet insecure arrachid warrior, Shey Jing, and the misadventures of the foppish demon-with-a-blade Sebastian Schiller.

It is available at your local Amazon, you can click on the picture above to go there….

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In other news, I’m sure by now you’ve all heard of ChatGPT. The language AI along with its visual companions like Midjourney are rocking the creative industries. I’ve visited forums where people have been ecstatic about how it’s going to write books for them and speed up productivity which sounds soulless to me, but each to their own. I’ve also read doom laden comments from writerly/artist types who are fearful for their futures.

To say it is a divisive issue is an understatement. Rather than wax lyrical, I thought I’d go straight to the horse’s mouth with a question.

There were a few moments of cogitation as ChatGPT searched the world for the bestest words with which to formulate an answer, and please, bear in mind this is a baby a mere neonate in the infancy of its infancy. I’ve edited its answer for length because the full response ran to 4 paragraphs and was repetitious. NB: I haven’t altered meaning, just taken out repetition.

Does ChatGPT signal the end of writing as a career?

No, ChatGPT does not signal the end of writing as a career. While AI language models like ChatGPT have the ability to generate high-quality text, they are not a replacement for human creativity and critical thinking. Writing is a highly skilled profession that involves a deep understanding of language, audience, and subject matter. […] These are all skills that cannot be easily replicated by machines.

AI language models like ChatGPT can be seen as a tool that complements and enhances the work of human writers. By using these models to generate ideas, gain inspiration, or automate certain parts of the writing process, writers can focus more on the creative aspects of their work and spend less time on repetitive or tedious tasks. This can lead to more efficient and effective writing and may ultimately result in better quality work.

[…] AI language models like ChatGPT may change the way that writing is produced and consumed, they do not signal the end of writing as a career.

ChatGPT

And there you have it. Or at least there you have #1 iteration of ‘it’ according to this lil’ baby Al. Now, sure as eggs is eggs some folk are already using it and programmes like it to ‘generate content’ for novels and short stories. Some magazines have even shut down submissions due to being inundated by machine written ‘work’. 

It is what it is I suppose; the genie will not be put back in the bottle. 

I hope that people will always be able to distinguish my writing from that of an Al and a weirdly masochistic part of me is curious to see if that will always be the case. I don’t write to a formula; I never try and engineer what will ‘work’. The story is what the story is.

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There are formulas for writing fiction, the most famous is probably The Writer’s Journey’ which riffs off Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ from his seminal work(s), The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 

You’ve seen it a thousand times because Hollywood has done the hero’s journey to death. 

And that’s it in a nutshell. Formulas are finite, predictable, mechanical. Human imagination and the unique connection forged between the mind of a reader and writer, not so much.

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All the best,

K.T.

“Like acid, the cruel honesty of daylight began to eat into the night, leaving an ugly grey stain around the increasingly less interesting, shadowed bones of the city.”

That aside, I’ve just shitcanned 15k of Breed 6. It wasn’t shit; it just wasn’t the story. It was ‘a’ story, but not ‘the’ story.

The subversive part of me, my dark half (the one we all have but rarely acknowledge) is laughing its arse off right now.
It’s saying, “Nobody cares. The sum of the enjoyment of the novel you finally finish isn’t going to be enhanced one molecule by the weight of effort you put into writing it. F**k you, f**k your whiney bitch ass ‘sacrifice’. Go fish bodies out of the Ganges for twenty bucks a day then come back and tell me how hard your ‘writer’s life’ is. All that matters for you, snowflake, is that people like what you put on the page. Now piss or get off the pot.“

Yes, my subversive self is a bit of a c**t, but it’s right. I can call myself a professional writer because I earn my living writing and I like that. But all jobs have their ups and downs.

My current down is that I’m finishing a series. As much as it makes me sad to say goodbye to an old friend and many cherished enemies. I’ll also be saying goodbye to a bunch of readers and that bites too. I’ll miss my readers; I’ll miss hanging out with people who loved this character or that character (see me avoiding saying the B word). It is the end of the affair.

Ah, but I’m no tragic hero. I’m a cad and a bounder, I’m already cheating, already flirting with new, shiny characters. It feels a little treacherous but as exciting as hell. I’m speed dating, swiping right and left, hunting for my next, great passion.

Unfortunately, rather than sinking a few Campari and sodas in the Cabana Cabaret Bar, my literary assignations take place in an old A4 notebook, (this is rock and roll writer style, baby).  They go from a rough ‘what if?’ concept to a thumbnail sketch. If a character makes it this far they had better have a good story to tell. And that’s the trick. I mean, we all have stories; I have a story, it just happens to be boring. Characters in novels carry the weight of worlds on their shoulders, or to put it another way, at least 85 thousand words.

But I digress.
I’m mostly engaged with writing the long goodbye; the end of a six-book series spanning seven years, many highs, and many lows. My youngest has covid, which means any day now I’ll probably have covid and that prospect does not fill me with anywhere near the sadness and trepidation of not only saying goodbye to an old friend but giving them a worthy send-off, even if they are a bit of a prick.

KT