Like Mauricio Macri, Argentinian ex-president and known feline, once so wisely said: "Things happened". Heartworm got rejected from an editing house (I'll try to keep shopping it around so it may one day have a proper kindle release), I am trying to improve my output to be able to offer a bigger backlog on patreon (which is not seeing activity for the moment), and there is a BIG shitstorm about AI going on in the forums. It's also a rainy day so it's perfect to procrastinate and write this instead of Dirofil struggling to cross a layer of Borzoi
Borzoi. The long dogs. Not long in the body or legs but in everything. The "Let me do it for you" guys. Borzoi. Absolute canine units if you ask me, but funny looking.
Listen there are like 300 recognized dog breeds and sometimes I use the first one that comes to mind, okay?
That said you already saw a mutant Borzoi in the story and no, it isn't the Reaper.
Anyway, where was I? ah, yes, the AI debacle on the forums.
It would come across as a surprise to nobody who reads me, but I am against using AI to write, not because of moral concerns (they exist, they are a thing to consider, but they aren't my main objection to it.) or any sort of fear of them displacing the humans. I just consider it reads bland as fuck, as it removes one of the most important elements of a work: voice.
Authorial voice is not just the medium, not just the lens through which you see the story: it's what makes the story up. It's the molecular composition of the piece of literature. Heartworm here is not the idea in my head, the detached scenes so vividly spawned in my mind's eye. My image of Dirofil and your image of Dirofil look absolutely different, the battles aren't the same for you as for me, and I am not asking about the image you have conjured of Lyssav, just to preserve my sanity.
Heartworm is the text presented before you. It's the receipts for that wild mental ride I concocted. I really enjoy writing it, even if I often find myself getting blocked after just a paragraph. I take care with word choice, often go back to replace a word for another i consider fits better. I won't claim every word is meditated about or that i remember why i choose to write a sentence a certain way, and sometimes i have brain farts and errors happen, maybe my brain switches rails midsentence or midword and i end up with a despicable hybrid to be sacrificed ASAP. But i wrote these hundred thousand words by racking my brain and i can see parts of myself reflected not only in the characters, plot or setting, but in the very narration.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
And I like seeing this same thing unfold whenever I read others. As of late I did a Review swap with ElectrikBlue and their novel Whimpers of the Light (If you like zombie apocalypses, go read it, link in the author's note) and I loved how the novel had its particular, albeit rather dense, voice. It's not the typical curated fantasy prose that tries to be "windowpane", it holds no such pretense. And with its numerous weaknesses (as any product created by human hands) it has this pervading personality, this melancholic aura that makes you feel the apocalypse and doesn't just send you to snoozelands while using the most milquetoast "sophisticated prose" available, like AI often does.
I am sure I could get AI to write a chapter with the characters of Heartworm and the world of Heartworm if I prompted it carefully. But it wouldn't be a chapter of Heartworm. Without the fallible human element, books are not art, they are not literature. They are, at best, a showcasing of the capabilities large language models have to develop story prompts.
To put a closure to this idea, you can be sure Heartworm's prose will remain as AI free as possible, and I'll strive to deliver a nearly-constant quality until the end of book 3 or 4 (I planned a trilogy. But plans are feeble things.)
As for the rejection, well, i'll try again with another market.
As for writing faster: I am failing mom! I am failing! wheeeeee!