Current events

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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CONVENTIONS UPDATE

CONVENTION SCHEDULE
Well, even though I’m not able to attend the World Fantasy Convention in Niagara Falls, October 17 – 20, 2024, in person, I will be participating as an online member.
I’m confirmed for two panels:
STOLEN VALOR
World Fantasy Convention – Friday, October 18, 2024 – 10:00 a.m.
* Fiction is about creating believable and/or identifiable characters. But can an author write the “other” successfully without offending those they hope to portray? How has cultural appropriation impacted the genres? Do sensitivity readers help ensure real representation? How do we make sure that actual disenfranchised people get to the table?
Panelists
Maurice Broaddus
P Djeli Clark
Pat Murphy
Vanessa Phin
D.G. Valdron
CROSSING BOUNDARIES: BLENDED GENRES
Saturday, October 19, 2024 – 12:00 p.m.
* Blended genres such as romantasy have extended the boundaries of fantasy and horror. What boundaries are being crossed in today’s genre fiction? What new boundaries loom on the horizon?
Panelists
Casella Brookins, Moderator
Heather Graham, Guest of Honour
A. T. Greenblat
Mica Scotti Kole
D.G. Valdron
Assuming my eyes hold up and travel is permitted, I hope to be attending Can-Con Literary Festival in Ottawa, November 1-3, 2024.
I’m scheduled for one panel there:
TWISTING THE TROPES – OVERDONE?
Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 2:30
For a long time, one frequent piece of writing advice has been to take a common trope and turn it upside down: the chosen one is weak and useless, and their followers are the heroes; the surprise villain; the monster is just misunderstood. Is reversing or twisting a trope still solid advice, or is it rarer now to see a trope played straight? How are writers still using this strategy and standing out? How do we ensure there is still space to play, without excluding authors who haven’t had a chance to do so yet?
Panelists:
Claudie Arsenault
Aysha U Farah
Kari Maaren
D.G. Valdron.
In addition, I’ll be participating in a book launch at McNally Robinson:
TWILIGHT OF ECHELON BOOK LAUNCH
McNally Robinson, Winnipeg,
November 26, 2024, at 7:00 pm
At Bay Press hosts the Launch of the collaborative work based around the Twilight of Echelon painting series by famed artist Robert Pasternak, with collaborating writers Den Valdron, Loverne Kindzierski, Alex Passey and Blaize Moritz.
That should keep me busy. I did drop the ball a little bit, the Winnipeg Comic Con, October 25 to 27 was apparently looking for people to do panels. Sadly, I was distracted by vision problems in September, and a full work schedule, so I let that go by.
Still, I’ve already done 24 panels and workshops so far. This will bring me up to 28. And I have or will have attended six conventions and about eight other professional events. So I think I’m working it pretty hard.

Season 14 Review – Doctor Who Stumbles Along

Well, the verdict is in, at least for this season.

So what have we got?

Disappointment I’m afraid.

So far the Gatwa era consists of an extended cameo in David Tenant’s “The Giggle,” the Christmas Special, “Church on Ruby Road,” and an eight episode season starting with Space Babies and Ending with Empire of Death.

Overall impressions? Deeply uneven. Mostly unsatisfying. Three brilliant episodes, two unfocused sub-par efforts that we’ll generously call mediocre, and an opening and closing set of dumpster fires.

The larger problems?  Gatwa’s overacting masks an underlying lack of commitment or emotional depth. RTD has become a shallow parody of himself. And critically, the show is deeply stagnant and failing to evolve or change.  We’re getting the same old same old, as we got fifteen years ago, just tired and worn out.

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PERVERSIONS & INFIDELITIES, DEUX

Eve St. Albert returns with her second volume of Perversions and Infidelities, three more novellas of desire, transgression, sex and satisfaction. Perversions and Infidelities is a four book series being produced by Fossil Cove Publishing, with Dawne Dominque as the cover artist.  The first three books each contain a series of novellas featuring erotic tales for a women’s readership. These are stories of empowerment, adventure and satisfaction. Of women breaking free of their normal lives, embarking on transgressive sexual journeys, exploring power, identity, fantasy and desire and ultimately, finding their true selves.

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NASFIC, DAYS 3 & 4, July 20 & 21

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[photo from File 770, the Doctor Who Panel]
NASFIC DAY 3 AND 4
I AM A LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR… that was my throwaway intro on my first panel. But I liked it, it felt right, so I used it for the rest of my programming. I think I’ll make it my catch prhase. Sometimes I’d follow up with, ‘…. a lawyer’ or sometimes ‘…. and also a lawyer.’
The humans would laugh, I’d smile at them, and we’d just get on with things.
     But I’ll tell you, there’s something really satisfying about beginning with this moment of honesty. It starts things off on the right foot.

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NASFIC AND MARKETING

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     My last panel for NASFIC was on Marketing. I shared it with J.F. Holmes, former military guy, small press guy – Canon Publishing, a military SF publisher ; and Michael Green Jr., a well traveled data scientist.
    Marketing is a tough subject. It doesn’t come instinctively to writers – the skills and mindset necessary to write a novel, are not necessarily the skills and mindset to go out into the marketplace. But appallingly, it’s being dumped on writers more and more.
    Unless you’re a runaway best seller, or they sniff that about you, major publishers leave marketing to writers. So much so, that Amazon has a special program where traditionally published authors can buy advertising – imagine that, pouring your advance into advertising your own book, so that the publisher can make enough money to give you another book, and an advance that you can pour into advertising for them.
    Small Presses, also mostly leave marketing to the writer, although some of them make efforts for you. I’m sympathetic mostly – running a small press is incredibly hard, requires all kinds of time, more skills than any one person has, and is typically a labour of love. They offload marketing to the writer because they have no time, no money and not the first clue about marketing in many cases.
    Of course that makes me less interested in small presses. If they’re not doing anything that I can’t already do for myself, and the area that I’m weak in is the area that they’re weak in… what’s the point. A small press that partners and helps teach or educate you on marketing is great, I’ll sign up. If not, then why bother?

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NASFIC DAY TWO, JULY 19, 2024

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Picture – Electric Tower, Buffalo downtown. Steel frame art deco building built by the local utility company in the early era of electrification.
NASFIC – Day Two
     No walking around exploring the City. Just no time. Went to a convenience store and stocked up on bottled water, that’s about it. Not much in the way of attending Panels. I sat in on a reading. Attended a panel on Anthologies, and another on Small Press. Mainly, activities were preparing for panels, re-reading, psyching up. There were a lot of them – I had six programming items, five panels and a reading, and I was moderating three panels. It took a lot of my focus.
    * 11:00 am – Public Domain with Leigh Grossman and Vaughne Hansen. This went really well. We filled half the room on a friday morning, which was incredible to me. I moderated, we through a lot of information at the audience, people asked questions, everyone was engaged. Got along really well. I felt we were scattershot, but everyone seemed thrilled and happy to have learned stuff.
    * 3:00 pm – Current SF on TV – Chuck Rothman, again Cameron Calkins, Fingers and Maria. I thought this would be my toughest one – there’s just so much SF on TV, it’s impossible to keep up. But it went well. We all just kept on talking.
    * 5:00 pm – Impact of AI on SF Writing and Art – my second AI panel, this one I’m moderating. Neil Clarke again Ira Nayman, and Alex Shvartzman. The big one – we got the Grand Ballroom to work in. I moderated again. Went extremely well. Wide ranging discussion, at points we verged on conspiracy theory, but the reality is that the corps that are pushing this have an extralegal strategy. The message – keep watching, talking pushing back.

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NASFIC, DAY ONE, JULY 18, 2024

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NASFIC – Day One
     Slept in. Showered. Studied notes. Registration didn’t open until noon. So about 11:30, went downstairs, talked to people. Got registered. Ate at the local restaurant. Went outdoors for a walk – got to get those 10,000 steps in. Found a funky little bookstore – Fitz’s Books and Waffles. Didn’t see any waffles.
     Came back in time for the Dealers Room and Art Show to open. Wandered around there. It was a little awkward, a lot of dealers looking at me with puppy dog eyes – I felt guilty about not buying things. Saw Joshua Palmatier and Ira Nayman and a couple of other people I knew vaguely.
     Chatted with Ira in the Dealers Room. It turns out, he’d mixed up his boxes, so he’d travelled all the way to Buffalo and had none of his own books to sell – just anthologies of other people’s stuff. Damn. I was frustrated. Last time I’d seen Ira, I’d bought one of his multiverse books, and had been half way through it when it accidentally fell into the toilet at the airport. I tried drying it with a hair dryer, but no go. I was hoping to buy a replacement and see how it turned out. Damn.
     Then I ran into JF Garrand. I met her at CanCon last year, she’s a small press publisher, and we’d bonded over our mutual love of Hong Kong Vampire flicks. We hugged, weird experience, I’m not really a touchy feely person. We chatted for a bit, turns out she’s dealing with family grief. I know what that’s like. I plan to try and catch some of her panels tomorrow.

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