Hans G. Schantz has assembled another epic book sale full of entertaining reads in the speculative fiction genres! This sale runs through next Tuesday. It’s a great chance to find something to read while you’re recovering from all the holiday shopping and togetherness. Mr. Schantz has graciously included my space opera Shadow Captain in the sale, and I am certainly thankful to him for that!
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Music by Suno Tuesday
If you know, you know. Lyrics adapted from the Chesterton poem.
PSA to Sherlockians
Ladies and Gentlemen, going forward in my travels on the internet, I am going to take any complaint that Peter Cushing was “too slight” or “too fragile” “or “weedy-looking” or otherwise some version of “too thin” to play Sherlock friggin’ cocaine addict Holmes, as a concession that he absolutely crushes your preferred interpreter of Sherlock Holmes in every other way. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
State of the Dictator, 2025
When I was talking to another writer on Discord, I realized that I tend to be somewhat vague and off-handed when I talk about my writing process, and assume people already know what I’m talking about, so I’m going to walk through the whole process here for transparency’s sake. This process includes the use of AI software for transcription and cleanup of dictated content, but it doesn’t start or end there, so if you are interested in that part, please, bear with me until I get there.
Continue reading “State of the Dictator, 2025”Fanficcing With Claude AI
So, somewhere around 2009-2013,
Continue reading “Fanficcing With Claude AI”Shadow Captain Joins A Book Sale!
Hans G. Schantz has very kindly agreed to include Shadow Captain, the first of my two space operas, in one of his gigantic book sales, which is going on right now. Click here to check out all the possibilities, and happy reading!
Friday Fragments
A conversation elsewhere reminded me that Whisper’s raw transcriptions of dictation can be a bit…alarming, so I am showing three versions of a text chunk below. This demonstrates my dictation workflow but in reverse order. For clarity, the first thing you will see is my final-ish draft, followed by what I was working from: Claude’s cleanup of a Whisper transcription, using the commands I’ve shown in the past. The last thing you’ll see is what Claude was working from: Whisper’s transcription of an audio file I dictated.
Continue reading “Friday Fragments”Saving a Queen is now working again
Safe to buy it now! Thank you for your patience. Between that hiccup and my failure to e-sign the hours worked for day job in a timely fashion, it’s been a slightly harrowing 24 hours, but both issues got sorted.
We now return you to our irregularly scheduled programming.
Please do not buy Saving a Queen right now
For some reason, a different book in the series is showing up with that cover when I buy it and look at it. I won’t get a chance to troubleshoot sooner than late this evening after dayjob. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Belinda, By Maria Edgeworth
Edgeworth was a popular “lady novelist” of Jane Austen’s time, perhaps best-known today for her novels (Castle Rackrent, etc) critiquing the Anglo-Irish gentry and their mistreatment of their Irish Catholic tenants. Austen admired her enough to namecheck Belinda in a positive way in Northanger Abbey, and sent her a copy of Emma upon publication. Edgeworth took a while to warm up to Emma and disliked Northanger Abbey even more heartily than I do, but thought moderately well of Mansfield Park, and when I read Belinda for myself, I saw a certain resemblance to Mansfield Park: the thousand foot view of the plot, the messy characters. The setting, the character types and the plot are very different though, and the craftmanship not in Jane Austen’s league. That’s the short version; if you want more details, along with spoilers for most major plot twists, plus me pontificating about adaptation possibilities, read on….
Continue reading “Belinda, By Maria Edgeworth”
Jaglion Press 