Den Valdron

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A PASSIONATE PERSPECTIVE

There are actually quite a lot of troubling issues around AI which really don’t seem to be discussed, or get discussed in the shallowest way.

The thing that everyone, and I mean everyone overlooks, is that AI is not a public resource. It is private property. It’s owned. And the owners are pouring money into it, with the intention of getting a profit out of it.

In pursuit of their profit, they are literally stealing everyone’s information. The works of artists, the works of writers of books and novels. We’ve seen language inserted everywhere to try and allow AI to take your zoom conversations, your phone calls, your social media posts, all taken without permission or compensation, for the ultimate purpose of the owners of AI and their investors to make a lot of money.

It was recently revealed that one of these AI companies early on considered paying for peoples work, they decided it was too expensive, and they’d just steal it instead. Wow. Well, that’s a completely ethical stance. Decide to steal, and then argue a self serving justification, and throw a bunch of lawyers at it, maybe buy a few judges.

I have to say, I find that viscerally offensive. Let me explain where I’m coming from.

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WRITER’S YEAR, 2024 WRAP UP

Well, here’s my writer’s year in review. What have we got? Another year of nothing much, unfortunately. Another year of spinning the wheels. Six books in all, though I didn’t write one of them, and only partial for another. I’ve been doing this the last few year, trying to keep track of what I’ve been up to and how far along I’ve gotten.  I went back and reviewed the last few roundups. It’s rather distressing – basically, plugging away hard, the same projects slowly advancing or not advancing year by year. Word counts piling up, but an uncertain sense of accomplishment.  Anyway, let’s jump in.

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STARLOST UNAUTHORIZED – Now Available

The giant Earthship Ark, drifting through deep space over eight hundred years into the far future, its passengers descendants of the last survivors of the dead planet earth, locked in separate worlds heading for destruction… The Starlost (1973)

Starlost, a Canadian television series, running sixteen episodes in 1973. The premise was interesting – Earth was long gone, the last survivors of humanity had fled in a giant generation ship composed of interlinked domes. But something had gone horribly wrong, an accident had taken out the bridge crew and locked the domes away from each other, and the ship had drifted out of control for four hundred years. Now it was heading on a collision course with a nearby star, and only Devon, Rachel and Garth, three exiles from a rural dome, understood the danger and faced the almost insurmountable task of trying to save what was left of humanity.

Originally, it got off to a great start with names like Harlan Ellison, Ben Bova, Doug Trumbull, Keir Dullea, Walter Koenig and Ursula K. LeGuin attached to it.  But things went wrong – Harlan Ellison threw a tantrum, scripts weren’t ready, the revolutionary special effects system didn’t work. The big names departed, leaving the show in the hands of an inexperienced production crew who had no time, no money and no experience. The verdict was catastrophe, one of the worst series ever produced in the sci fi genre.

But was it?  I just wrote a book saying different.

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STARLOST KICKSTARTER – FINAL WEEK

Starlost Unauthorized by D.G. Valdron — Kickstarter

Hello Boys and Girls and Other, Children of all ages, Sapient beings of any description!  Welcome to my Starlost Kickstarter!

I am thrilled to say, that we exceeded our initial goal in the first week!  We are now into our Stretch Goal of $2000 – $2500.

It’s been a great experience, I want to thank everyone for their support.  But now I want to do the final push. If you’ve pledged support, god bless you, and thank you so much.  I’m not asking you for money.  If you’d like to support, but don’t have money, that’s okay too.  But what I am asking for every single one of you, is to help spread the message, pass the word, email, post, repost this, send it to friends, send it to groups you think might get into it.

This is going to be a hell of a book, I am passionate about it. Help me make it great!

TIPS AND TRICKS DOING BOOK COVERS

At this point, I have published well over two dozen books for myself and other writers, and as a writer, I can say that covers are a pain in the ass.

So I thought I’d jot down a few notes to maybe help out other writers, including self publishers and people working with small presses.

Apart from either doing book covers myself, or being an active participant in the design of covers, I have a few other qualifications. Back in the day, when newspapers were laid out by hand, I was a production manager on small newspapers and magazines. Following that, I went on to design posters and promotional materials for stage plays, short films and arts and cultural events. As this was going on, I maintained a steady interest in art and audited art history classes. I don’t pretend to be some great authority, but I do know enough to make my way around a page.

THE CANVAS

In the old days, book cover design was pretty simple. Broadly, you had two sizes – paperback or pocketbooks about 4.5 x 6.5 inches, and trade paperbacks – loosely around 6 x 9 inches. Both had a width to height ratio of around 2 x 3. There was lots of variation, but those were decent rules of thumb.

The point being that you had a good idea of the space you had to work with, and the ratio you needed to work with, and subject to a little fiddling, you were fine. This may seem like mechanics, but the scope of the canvas dictates what you can and can’t do, or what works and what doesn’t work.

Now, however, it’s gotten more complicated. For books, we still have that 2 x 3 ratio, and pocketbooks and trade paperbacks. But now book covers are being presented in a variety of sizes, only some of which involve the physical books.

If you are browsing online Amazon or Barnes & Noble for instance, your first sight of the cover will be a tiny thumbnail, maybe 1.5 x 2.5 inches, and that first sight will be accompanied by a whole bunch of other similarly sized book covers competing for attention. That’s on a computer screen, if its on your phone, it’s even worse.

The key take-away is that for random online book browsing, your cover will be presenting under the worst conditions – a tiny image, with lots of competition.

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BOOK NEWS – DRUNK SLUTTY ELF AND ZOMBIES

Just a quick note.  DRUNK SLUTTY ELF AND ZOMBIES has been uploaded to IngramSpark.  It can now be ordered from the 40,000 platforms, including thousands of brick and mortar bookstores that IngramSpark spark!

Just a note of explanation – IngramSpark is to print books what Amazon is to Ebooks. They’re a giant publisher and distributor, hosting many titles, and providing services to small and independent publishers.  Getting onto IngramSpark is potentially a major breakthrough.

Does that mean I’ll be getting into real bookstores?  Probably not. The economics don’t quite work.

Basically, physical bookstores operate on a rip and return basis.  They order books, they try to sell them within a specific period of time. If they don’t, then they just rip off the covers, send them back, junk the rest and only pay for what they’ve sold.  Believe it or not, that’s the way it’s been working for a hundred years, and it’s been working fine… mostly. It’s the operating mode for books, magazines and newspapers.  And it works fine for big publishers, dealing in substantial volumes.

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TORONTO INDIE AUTHOR CONFERENCE

Well, the first annual Toronto Indie Writer’s Conference has come and gone. There will be one next year, and I’m signing up for it the minute they hang out a shingle.

It was great! 

Most writer’s conferences tend to focus on craft – how to write, what to write, the political and social issues of being a writer, the technique, and sometimes the fun stuff.  It’s all very literary.

This was about Trade – how to do a Kickstarter, the techniques of Facebook ads, that kind of thing.

We do get a bit of that in occasional panels at regular conventions – but usually it’s a group of people who are very experienced on the panel talking shop with each other. It’s like listening to a lively discussion in Greek.

This, on the other hand, was really focusing on working trade issues, mainly single presenters, exploring topics at skill levels in systematic ways. It was fascinating. Of the eight sessions and four round tables, there wasn’t a single dud in the bunch. Everything was useful or interesting, even if I didn’t necessarily understand it or wasn’t in a position to take advantage of it.

Honestly, some of it, was just totally above my level, I could barely follow along, but even then, it was good – If I couldn’t handle it now, I picked up enough to have some idea of how to learn, and the feeling was that I could master it eventually.

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2-24 TORONTO WRITING WORKSHOP

Back from the 2024 TORONTO WRITING WORKSHOP it was a bit of a whirlwind. Flyout Friday evening, do the workshop, and fly back literally immediately.

Literally immediately:  The workshop ended at 5:00, took the cab to the airport, went through security and back home a few hours later.

So … the experience?

This was a bit different from other Conventions I’ve attended.  There were two tracks of programming, a couple of morning sessions, a couple of afternoon sessions, but that was peripheral. What really drove this Convention was the opportunity to make pitches to Agents and Editors.

I did attend a couple of programming sessions. Marketing yourself and Ten Keys to Writing Succes – they were okay, mostly inspirational. There were some practical sessions I didn’t make because I was doing pitches that would have been useful. I’m sorry I missed those.

There programming sessions I couldn’t care less about. Twelve ways to start a story, crafting satisfying endings, that kind of thing. I’ve been writing thirty years; I’ve got multiple short story and book credits. Don’t teach grandma how to suck eggs.

The Pitches:  It was like speed dating. Or what I’ve read speed dating is like.

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