Hans G. Schantz, aka AetherCzar, is once again hosting a massive quarterly book sale for authors who care more about entertaining their audiences than preaching to the choir. He has graciously agreed to include Dragon’s Teeth, the third book in the Hunter Healer King Trilogy. Check it out and a ton more books to keep you amused over Memorial Weekend.
Category: Mel Dunay
Inside Longbourn: A Visual Tour
The Albion Courier, Features Desk
[During our video conference with Elizabeth Bennet, Member of the House of Resources for Longbourn Mining Company, she offered to show us around. What follows is an edited account of that tour, with images drawn from Longbourn’s public broadcast archive.]
The first thing you see when Elizabeth Bennet turns the camera toward Longbourn’s Great Hall is the mural above the staircase, except it is not a mural, but a curved screen showing a color enhanced view of deep space, relayed from a telescope on the asteroid’s surface. The effect, at the scale of a room that could comfortably hold a hundred people, is somewhere between sublime and vertiginous. The stars move too slowly to perceive.
Continue reading “Inside Longbourn: A Visual Tour”Book Quote Tuesday: Pride & Prejudice
AI as Writer’s Assistant: the Local Edition
Or, By The Sorceries of Python and LM Studio Combined
(Note: this is me rewriting a Claude draft post about this development. I had Claude do the initial draft inside the same chat where most of this python coding had been done).
After I wrote about my n8n automations back in February, my computer died in April, and was replaced by something newer and pinker. I resolved to do something different this time around: without API costs, without cloud dependencies, and without the kind of platform risk that bit me with Perplexity. The goal was to run my automations locally: local models, local inference, local Python scripts. No subscription fees beyond what I was already paying for Claude Pro, no data leaving my machine, no terms of service surprises. I have studied Python, but the actual coding was mostly done by Claude Sonnet 4.6. I’m not including the code itself, because your use cases may be different and your pet chatbot is probably just as good at writing python scripts as mine.
What follows is a report from the other side of that transition. TL;DR version: you can get an AI chatbot to write and troubleshoot python scripts which talk to LM Studio and do various useful support tasks for writers. Once those python scripts are finalized, you will be that much less dependent on the chatbots living out there on other people’s servers. Your “Skynet Secretary” will be living at home with you, instead of out there online. I also include some asides on how to do something similar with just a chatbot and without the python scripts and LM Studio, for people who care more about keeping things simple than keeping them local.
Continue reading “AI as Writer’s Assistant: the Local Edition”Video Thursday: Most Unseemly Parasocial Relationships
https://youtube.com/shorts/jfVDPU8g8P0
William Darcy, reclusive commander of the marcher-ship Last Repose, is doing research on Longbourn Mining Company. Somehow he keeps returning to an interview with Elizabeth Bennet. He finds his parasocial interest in her to be most improper. From Pride & Planetoids, a sci-fi retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in the Kuiper Belt.
đź“š READ PRIDE & PLANETOIDS NOW
#PrideAndPlanetoids #SciFiRomance #SpaceOpera #PrideAndPrejudiceInSpace #JaneAustenRetelling #slowburn #enemies2lovers #scifiromance #Darcy #firstimpressions
🎬 ABOUT THESE VIDEOS: These videos feature AI-generated visuals (Midjourney) and music (Suno). The stories themselves are 100% human-written.
The MP for Longbourn: A Profile of Elizabeth BennetÂ
The Albion Courier, Features Desk
[Elizabeth Bennet, Member of the House of Resources for Longbourn Mining Company, agreed to speak with the Courier via video conference. The resulting article has been lightly edited for length.]
There are Members of the House of Resources who treat their Parliamentary seat as a burden, a necessary inconvenience attached to their family business. Elizabeth Bennet is not one of them.
She is younger than you expect, dark-haired with lively brown eyes. She gives you her full attention without ever giving you the impression that she has forgotten you are a journalist. She answers questions directly and completely, and somehow by the end of the interview you find yourself with a thorough understanding of Longbourn Mining Company’s public position on every matter of policy and very little idea what Elizabeth Bennet thinks about any of it personally. It is, in its way, an impressive performance. She would almost certainly object to that word.
Continue reading “The MP for Longbourn: A Profile of Elizabeth Bennet “Book Quote Tuesday: Pride & Planetoids
Thursday Videos: Fire When Ready
https://youtube.com/shorts/6oPYHShn3AQ
A rogue asteroid is on a collision course with the Lucas settlement. William Darcy doesn’t wait for permission. He teleports the Last Repose alongside it and opens fire. From Pride & Planetoids, a sci-fi retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in the Kuiper Belt. Low heat should not equal low drama. đź“š READ PRIDE & PLANETOIDS NOW! #PrideAndPlanetoids #SciFiRomance #SpaceOpera #PrideAndPrejudiceInSpace #JaneAustenRetelling #spaceaction #asteroidbelt #marchership #scifiaction #competentheroes 🎬 ABOUT THESE VIDEOS: These videos feature AI-generated visuals (Midjourney) and music (Suno). The stories themselves are 100% human-written.
The Last Repose and Mr. Darcy: A Profile of Albion’s Most Private MarcherÂ
The Albion Courier, Features Desk
[William Darcy, Marcher of the Last Repose, declined multiple requests for interview. This profile was assembled from public records, Parliamentary testimony, and conversations with crew members who asked not to be named.]Â
There is a moment, when the Last Repose comes into view, when you understand why people find William Darcy difficult to ignore.Â
The ship is enormous. That much you know from the figures. At somewhere north of thirty kilometers in diameter, this is the largest marcher-ship in active service in Albion Space, and one of the oldest. What the figures do not prepare you for is the Repose’s shape. Where every other marcher-ship in the family wears its asteroid origins plainly, that characteristic lumpen potato silhouette, the Last Repose is a sphere. Not by design: the original asteroid was simply, and unusually, spherical, a geological accident that the first Darcy to claim her evidently considered worth keeping. Generations of maintenance have preserved that shape, pitted and scarred and dark with age, but unmistakably round.
Continue reading “The Last Repose and Mr. Darcy: A Profile of Albion’s Most Private Marcher “Book Quote Tuesday: Pride & Planetoids
Jaglion Press 