Note: this was cut from a longer discussion about Maxim and Chloe dealing with the possibility of being too closely related to marry. Parts of this backstory may reappear in some other part of Hunter Healer King 3 This is dictation transcribed by Whisper and cleaned up by Claude AI, without additional revision. You may spot some misspelled place names below and some examples of why I feel obliged to revise and rewrite after dictation cleanup.
Continue reading “Friday Fragments: Alternate Geneaology Conversation”Category: Fantasy
Friday Fragments: The Wounding of the Quantum Tree
When I created the Jaiya setting, I thought it best, for various reasons, to use my own religion as the inspiration for the cosmogony and beliefs of the settings, rather than messing around with other people’s religions. So, here is Afaro Viamafar, “The Wounding of the Tree of Choices”, sometimes also titled “The Wounding of the Quantum Tree.” Parts of it are quoted as chapter headings in the novel Seeking the Quantum Tree. Apparently there are other scriptural writings in the setting (you can see passing references in the text below to at least two others), but this is the only one I ever wrote out in full, and one of the first things I wrote in the setting.
Continue reading “Friday Fragments: The Wounding of the Quantum Tree”Weird Wednesday: The Sorceries of Python and AI combined
So, I first became aware of Whisper, an LLM designed for transcription, translation, and subtitles, a couple of years back when I was writing Wolf’s Trail. Whisper was then the “backend” of a free website where I could upload my audio files and get a text transcription back. Then the free website went sideways around the time I started work on the sequel, Undead Flight, so although I did a little dictation on that book (speech to text in Word, cleanup by Claude AI, additional reworking by me), I wasn’t able to dictate on the road very much. So I found out that I could run whisper on my own computer through python, downloaded pytorch, downloaded whisper, and then realized I had no idea how to work with python. I abandoned the idea for 7 or 8 months, then took an online course in python on a whim, fiddled around trying to install some other stuff whisper depended on that I didn’t have, and then, after visiting about half a dozen “whisper in python” tutorials and asking Claude AI for help on the “write to text file” part, I came up with the following. Lines following a # sign are comments rather than part of the code.
Continue reading “Weird Wednesday: The Sorceries of Python and AI combined”
Friday Fragments: Jerome os Storm on Trial
The bit below the cut is a scene I wrote about half of and then decided I didn’t need for the current work in progress. Figured I’d share it here:
Continue reading “Friday Fragments: Jerome os Storm on Trial”State of the Author, Start of 2025
My plans for the New Year are always kind of vague, because “Mann tracht un Gott lacht” (Man plans, and God laughs).
Continue reading “State of the Author, Start of 2025”The Novels of Marie Belloc Lowndes: Hercule Popeau and Various Innocents Abroad
(Note: As previously indicated, the Lowndes books I have read are mostly available on Gutenberg and/or Amazon. In past reviews of early 20th century books, I have not made any effort to offer content warnings, on the assumption that anybody reading these reviews knows better than to expect present-day attitudes on certain topics from books of this timeframe. I am continuing with that assumption here.)
The second-most famous thing Lowndes did, (the most famous being her novel The Lodger), was to write a novel called The Lonely House, in which a sheltered, financially prosperous young Englishwoman fetches up in Monaco, only to be caught up in a love triangle and menaced by people who are after her money, although she has trouble grasping their bad intentions.
Continue reading “The Novels of Marie Belloc Lowndes: Hercule Popeau and Various Innocents Abroad”Stupid Fan Predictions About Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey
Everybody’s buzzing about this newly announced project, so I thought I’d lay down a few markers about how I think this is going to play out. Please note, I don’t have any inside information nor do I necessarily approve of the decisions I’m describing below, this is just a few thoughts from someone who finds both the Odyssey and Nolan’s movies to be kind of interesting.
Continue reading “Stupid Fan Predictions About Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey”Instead of Weird Wednesday, Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale
Hans G. Schantz is once again hosting the Based Book Sale on his substack and has graciously agreed to include Wolf’s Trail, currently listed at 99 cents. Click here to check out a wiiiide selection of discounted books!
If you’ve already read Wolf’s Trail, here’s a quick reminder that its sequel, Undead Flight, just released, and is free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
The Sorceror Casts Ctrl+C on the Python Shell
instructor in python coding: “If you don’t set the condition for the while loop correctly, the code will run continuously until you manually stop it with Ctrl+C.”
Me: “Now I know the spell for ‘Shut It Down Now!'”
Hunter Healer King, Book 2 is Here!
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. First I helped Maxim kill a werewolf, then I kissed him, and then I insulted him when I found out that he was roughly twice as old as he looked. Now Maxim is about to be crowned King of the Stormcrows aboard a luxury airship, and he has invited me to attend. But this ship feels more like a cage with each passing hour: a passenger’s horse has turned up missing, a crewman has turned up dead, and before it all started, I heard noises in the cargo hold. But Maxim has a mind as sharp as my banishing dagger, and between us, we aim to put an end to whatever monster lurks aboard the ship, no matter how awkward we feel around each other right now…
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. With my coronation mere hours away, something stalks the shadows of this vessel: a monster that answers to a human being..but who? And for what purpose? Despite our recent…complications, Chloe’s courage and loyalty make her my strongest ally as I pursue our enemies, and brace for the dreadful pomp and circumstance of my own coronation. The crown of the Stormcrows may await me, but first, we have a mystery to solve – together.
Jaglion Press 