Category: Books

AI joins my marketing team

Working cover for the Roger Mifflin Collection edition of The Note-Books of Samuel Butler.

The next project in my “Roger Mifflin Collection” series is an edition of The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, of which Mr. Mifflin said, “If your mind needs a tonic of iron and wine, and a thorough rough-and-tumbling, try Samuel Butler’s ‘Notebooks’ or ‘The Man Who Was Thursday,’ by Chesterton.”

Having already tumbled my mind with the Chesterton book, which is #4 in the collection by the way, I’m working my way through Butler. The longest Mifflin book so far at almost 700 pages, my goal is to release it by the first official day of spring.

Part of the process of preparing a book for publication is writing the blurb that will promote the book at various online retail sites. I have to admit this is not my strong point, so I “cheated”: I asked the artificial intelligence at ChatGPT to “please write three sample blurbs for The Note-Books of Samuel Butler.”

I have to admit, the SkyNet ChatGPT AI made me want to read the darn thing. I will probably combine the best of each idea into the final version. This is how AI can be a useful tool for authors and publishers.

Here’s what it wrote:

— — —

“The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” is a collection of reflections, musings, and observations by one of the greatest minds of the 19th century. Samuel Butler was a man ahead of his time, and his notebooks are a window into his unique and insightful worldview. From his thoughts on religion, politics, and science, to his critiques of Victorian society, Butler’s notebooks are a treasure trove of wit, wisdom, and intellectual curiosity.

In this book, readers will discover Butler’s thoughts on some of the most important issues of his day, as well as his insights on the human condition. Whether you’re a fan of Butler’s writing, a student of Victorian literature, or simply interested in the history of ideas, “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” is an essential read. With its fascinating blend of humor, philosophy, and cultural critique, this book is a timeless classic that will captivate and inspire readers for generations to come.

— — —

“The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” is a must-read for fans of British literature and anyone interested in the thoughts and musings of one of England’s most enigmatic writers. This collection of notebooks and essays offers a rare glimpse into the mind of Samuel Butler, the man behind such classic works as “Erewhon” and “The Way of All Flesh.”

In these pages, Butler writes candidly about his thoughts on life, literature, and society. His writing is both witty and insightful, and his observations are as relevant today as they were over a century ago. Whether you’re a fan of his work or just looking for a fascinating read, “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” is sure to captivate and inspire. So why wait? Get your copy today and immerse yourself in the world of one of England’s greatest writers.

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“The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” is a collection of the celebrated author’s reflections, musings, and observations on a wide range of topics. Compiled from his personal journals, these notebooks offer a glimpse into the mind of one of the great thinkers of the late 19th century.

With his unique perspective and sharp wit, Butler tackles subjects such as literature, art, science, religion, and human nature. His insightful commentary is both thought-provoking and entertaining, and his writing style is engaging and accessible. Whether you’re a fan of Butler’s work or simply curious about his ideas, “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of literature and philosophy.

So why wait? Get your copy today and dive into the rich world of Samuel Butler’s thoughts and observations.

I discover I wrote a trilogy

I’ve been doing some reworking of Echoes of Freedom Past, my 2022 book that I must admit has underperformed compared to my expectations. I moved the short story “Letters from Camp” to the back to make it more of an appendix or bonus track, if you will. Plopped in the middle where it was, it felt more like an interruption of the musings, which flow better now. I added a Table of Contents, which was sorely lacking from the first edition, and now begin each musing on a new page as in my other books. I think the book breathes better now and is easier to negotiate. It re-launches Feb. 21.

Oh, and I also made it closer to the same size as my other books. I originally had Echoes published with the same dimensions as the Domino Project books of about 10 years ago, a sort of homage. But even the Domino Project books have since been republished in a somewhat larger size.

I consider Echoes of Freedom Past an extension of my Refuse to Be Afraid, and both are in the same neighborhood as my latest book, it’s going to be all right, which is kind of a hybrid of the first two and my encouragement books, because it attempts to fulfill its subtitle, “Reasons for hope in troubled times.”

And these are indeed troubled times. But still, aren’t they all? Haven’t we always talked about how we live in troubled times? Isn’t there always something that needs fixing?

It’s 15 years now since I had the epiphany in mid-sentence as I finished writing a piece called “An election party where nobody came.” I decried a system where would-be presidents run a gauntlet that results in a choice between two horrible finalists — a system that has deteriorated even further in the ensuing years. 

I was going to conclude by saying, “Freedom is not about having the right ruler.” When I saw the words on my screen, I was compelled to add, “Oh wait, yes it is. Freedom is understanding that I am the boss of me.” I realized that freedom is when you take the reins of your life and “rule” yourself. 

When you reach that understanding, it no longer matters that when you meet the new boss, s/he is the same as the old boss, because they’re not the real boss of your life anyway. That’s when you start refusing to be afraid, freeing yourself and dreaming. It’s when you start reclaiming and restoring those echoes of freedom past. And it’s when you understand, at last, that it’s going to be all right.

In which I back up the Jeep

So — Have you noticed how often people start telling a story with the word “so”? Do people realize the word isn’t necessary?

So I moved the scenes that I’ve deleted (for now) from Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus to a separate place outside the main manuscript (It’s easy to do stuff like that in Scrivener), and all of a sudden the book is nearly 2,500 words shorter, and instead of being 14,000 words away from finishing a 40,000-word novel, I have more like 16,500 words to go.

Even though I plan to reinsert those 2,500 words at a more strategic point in the story, it still feels like a step backward, even though I know I had to go back so things can move forward better and faster.

I frustrate myself all the time: I know what I need to do, and often I know how to do it, but a little piece of me just up and refuses to do it. I probably lingered a month knowing that I needed to excise those scenes before I pulled the proverbial trigger. And now I’ve only tinkered around the edges of resuming the story instead of plowing ahead.

It’s like at some point I finally realized that I am the boss of me but then decided the purpose of my life is to defy the boss. The novel could have been written, polished and published years ago, but that obstinate little rascal in the back of my brain goes, “Sez you,” and parks himself in from of the TV or picks up the guitar or writes books of essays and prose poems or anything except writing, polishing or publishing the novel. 

Who is this guy? I now have almost 20 years recorded on various iterations of this blog bemoaning my tendency to procrastinate, and while I’m pleased to say I’ve procrastinated my way to publishing 12 books as an author and nine more as an editor, the original idea was to write and publish 12-21 novels. And don’t get me started on the “learning how to market my books, making a plan and executing that plan” part of the equation.

Yawn. I’m bored with this part of me. I’m going to set the whine down and fire up the story teller guy for a while.

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Daring to dream on a cold, windy day

I have always needed to create. Our father took scrap paper home from work, with dittoed or mimeographed stuff on one side, and we drew and wrote on the blank side. Comic books, songs, maps of imaginary countries — when I had a blank in front of me, I felt I had to fill it with something.

And so it is with these journals. Even if it’s silly or incoherent nonsense, I feel better if I’ve filled a page or three, and oh how sweet when I can’t stop and suddenly am well down the road to 10 or more pages.

I have a legal pad next to me this morning, hoping to scribble a map of the remaining chapters of my novel in progress, or the rest of my novelette/novella, or two of the other novels I’ve stalled on.

But I have cat food and dog foods and stamps to buy, and newspaper stories and photos to develop — bills to pay, places to go — and there’s a windstorm blowing snow around outside.

By the time I am 80, or when I am finished, whichever comes first, I want to have told the story I envision that takes Jeep Thompson and her friends over six novels; it would be nice to extend her friends’ stories into their own series; and finish some of those other unfinished novels and write the novel that’s only a concept today; and preserve as many of the books that Roger Mifflin loved as I can; and tell more of Myke Phoenix’s adventures — they’d have to be novellas or novels, because otherwise the title of the “Complete Novelettes” book would become a lie.

I have all these pretty stories to tell, and maybe I can release them if I do it just for the halibut — forget those dreams about someday paying the bills with the proceeds from my stories, just telling the stories for the fun of it, and if the stories pay the bills, that’s nice, but if the bills get paid by making newspapers and selling my mountains of old stuff, that’s nice too.

Dark worries come next — If I can’t remember what Red told me a minute ago or asked me to do five minutes ago, how can I piece together stories and books anyway? — but those worries are the enemy, nipping at my heels. Who is this enemy? Not the fading of my head, but fear of the fading. I stand (figuratively) and put fear behind me. 

I will tell the stories and pay the bills and all the rest, even though first I must feed the cat and dogs and find the calm in the storm. The wind chimes by my window defy the storm with music, and so shall I.

The mind-boggling power of words and music

And here I go again, looking at the books and records lined up on the shelves and contemplating how many hours or days it would take to read all of the books and listen to all the waiting music.

I think about how long it takes to craft a book and send it to market, and the years spent learning to read and write and play an instrument and combine the playing with other musicians to create a song, and here are hundreds and perhaps thousands of songs and stories surrounding me just in this room.

Many of the souls who created these works have moved on to wherever souls go when their bodies are spent, but their creations remain, and they come alive again when I open the book or play the recording. Our bodies do not live forever, but the words and the music survive and flourish.

What is humanity’s greatest invention? I say words, and music close behind. They unite us in ways all other inventions can only approximate. Oh, they can divide us, too, in the wrong hands, but what we have in common is always stronger.

Update at 900

Back in August 2020 I challenged myself to make sure I added something to this blog every day for three months, a 92-day commitment. Today is Day 900 of that challenge.

This is my most successful attempt at a writing discipline ever. If I could translate that discipline to my efforts at fiction, I’d be gold.

I did have a breakthrough during this latest 100-day sprint. (I’ve found that reviewing progress every 100 days can be useful.) It happened after I left my latest novel-in-progress in a jam for a very long time.

You may recall the book’s working title is Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus, and I’ve been struggling with it for, what? At least three years, I think. But I was finally cruising along, passed the halfway point and getting at least a few words in almost every day. I even got a major plot twist in.

But then the story went dry. No, that’s not true. It went stone cold.

The story just wouldn’t move past the discovery of, well, it’s a big discovery that changes a key relationship in the story. I even set the book aside for at least a month or so, hoping that Jeep’s next move would come to me.

It’s frustrating. I usually know how the story ends. I wrote the last paragraph of Chapter 26 of my 27-chapter first novella, The Imaginary Bomb, before I wrote anything else, for example. Not only do I know how Lost Prince of Venus ends, but I know the general sweep of four Jeep Thompson books. Sometimes, though, I’m in too much of a hurry to get from here to there.

And finally, a few days ago, I realized that’s why Jeep stalled this time: I was in too much of a hurry. That plot twist that changes a key relationship came way too early. It’s a pretty nifty twist, and I can’t wait for the reader to find out — but not yet.

The solution involved abandoning a chapter and a half and rewriting the moment of the big discovery to make it more of a what-the-bejeebers moment that won’t really make sense until the discovery is made at a more appropriate time. 

Was laboring over the now-deleted chapter a waste of time? Of course not. Should I be carefully outlining books instead of doing this “discovery writing” where I know generally where I want the story to go but let the characters show me how they get there? Probably not; I once outlined an entire trilogy, but the process of developing an outline so satisfied my desire to tell the story that I lost interest.

So I’ve been meandering around Venus with Jeep Thompson and her pals, and this little detour did something interesting: The fire to tell this story is back. And when she does get to that big discovery, wow. Oh, wow. Just not yet.

I do have a definite goal for these next 100 days, though: I will finally finish the draft of Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus before the 1,000th blog in the streak. I’m more confident about that than I’ve been in a long time.

I’ll let you know how that works out in, oh, about 92 days.

Everything old is new again

One of the first books I read in 2023 was The Year of Less by Cait Flanders, which chronicles a year in which she put a moratorium on buying new stuff and, in the process, reduced the amount of stuff she owns by 70 percent. It got me to thinking about all my things.

I’ve collected books and music and movies and old TV shows by the thousand and built what I always considered an archive of entertainment and enlightenment that I can explore in my retirement, if no time else. I’d be hard-pressed to think of something I would like to have owned that is not now somewhere in this house, waiting to be enjoyed. Could it be time to let go of it all, or at least catalog it so I know what I have? There’s something appealing about Flanders’ journey, but there’s also an appeal to the stuff.

The process of transferring stuff to my new/old wall of bookcases showed me just how much stuff I have — even though they are huge pieces of furniture, I have bins of books that did not fit on the new shelves. Meanwhile, I realized that in the last three weeks since Christmas, I bought four more books anyway. Enough is enough, you would think.

I declared a Cait Flanders-style moratorium on buying new stuff for myself, which was fortuitous because the next day I discovered that Bruce Springsteen is selling CDs and downloads of hundreds of his live concerts. I sampled samples from 1984, the year I saw him in concert, as well as more recent years, and I would have been sorely tempted to grab one or two if not for my newly minted moratorium.

I even toyed with the idea of selling off some of my “archives.” Would I really regret not having such-and-such a book or record on my 90th birthday? On the other hand, would I pass on to the next world regretting that I never sold off enough stuff to take Red on a trip to such-and-such a place?

“Whoever dies with the most toys” most definitely does not win any kind of race, but there may come a day when I want to pull down that Nathaniel Hawthorne book again, or play those century-old 12-inch platters by Sir Harry Lauder. (Funny that those examples were the first that came to mind.)

In any case, some cataloguing is certainly in order. What treasures have I accumulated without remembering? What words and music are in my possession waiting to touch my soul again or for the first time? That’s a big reason for pausing before I buy anything more: As I’ve been vacuuming up possessions I have reached the point where I’m not entirely sure what I own. I haven’t had, or taken, the time to review all the piles and make sure I can find what I’m looking for when I look for it.

For example, I know I have at least three copies of “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa Brewer on 78, once because I forgot I had one, and another time because it was in a lot of records that I purchased to obtain several other tunes. Put another nickel in, and I bet I have more than a few other things that I bought not realizing that I already had one.

These musings sent me down to the attic (Fun Fact: My podcast “Uncle Warren’s Attic” was filled with recordings that I pulled from the storage room in our basement) to do a little exploring and maybe begin that catalog. 

I came upstairs with an album of 78 rpm records that I’d picked up at an online estate auction and listened to such gems as Kitty Kallen’s No. 1 1954 hit “Little Things Mean A Lot” and a delicious swing version of “All of Me” by Louis Jordan with fellow vocalist Valli Ford. When I bought my beloved Audio-Technica turntable a few years back, I invested in a separate headshell specially designed to play 78s, and I was again impressed by how crisp and clear a 70-year-old record can sound if the owner took good care of it and it’s played on the right equipment.

Yes, I could downsize significantly and rely on digital versions of the same recordings (see below), and I know the day is coming when that’s not only more practical but necessary. In the meantime, though, there’s a special joy in holding the real thing and watching the stylus float through the grooves as the sounds of a long time ago burst forth like old times.