Tag: Writing

Blurbing With Claude AI: Slaying a Tyrant

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, Editing, Fantasy, Gladiator, LLMs, Marketing, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Weird ScienceTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

(Disclaimer: some of my past “blurbing with LLMs” posts have been very TL;DR because I included a lot of unnecessary fluff that the LLMs churned up and that I didn’t use. This prompt below helps cut down on the fat, so, although this is several paragraphs long, it is much shorter than those previous posts.)

First off, I prompted Claude in this manner: You are a book marketing expert trying to help a fantasy writer. Please help her improve her blurbs. The first novel in her fantasy series is Slaying a Tyrant by Mel Dunay, which may be part of your training data, if so, please feel free to refer to your training data. The problem is that the Empire mentioned in the blurb is mostly a background issue throughout the series [then I spelled out what role the Empire plays throughout the series, and fed Claude the existing blurb for Slaying a Tyrant].

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Weird Wednesday: Discovery Writing

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, tolkien, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

I feel like there’s sometimes a tendency among writing gurus to pretend that either you systematically plot everything beat by beat, or you only write the story as it spontaneously generates in your head, with no notes or thoughts about how it’s going. As it happens, I’m reading History of the Lord of the Rings right now. Tolkien is usually described as a discovery writer, and the people who say that are not wrong, but he didn’t necessarily sit around waiting for inspiration to strike either…

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Friday Fragments: Chloe and the Wolf

Posted on Posted in Dictation, Fantasy, Mystery, Myth, Steampunk, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , Leave a comment

An example of me getting a bit rambly during the previous week’s dictation session. This got cut because Maxim’s cousin Victor interjected himself into the conversation earlier than I originally thought. And it’s not entirely in character for Maxim to try to shield Chloe to that extent.

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Friday Fragments: Chloe on Maxim’s Cousin Victor

Posted on Posted in Cool Books, Editing, Fantasy, Mel Dunay, Steampunk, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , Leave a comment

I cut this bit during the dictation cleanup process because it’s kind of rambly, and it’s not literally true that all Chloe knows about Maxim’s cousin is his parentage. Back in Wolf’s Trail, she also had to look up stuff in a book Victor wrote.

I’d heard references once or twice to Victor. Maxim and the other Storm Crows seemed to respect him, while the Continentals—the ordinary people of Noricum with no ancient knowledge or long lifespan—seemed to fear him. The only thing I knew for certain of him was that he was Jerome’s son, and Jerome I had no particular use for.

Frequently Seen Questions About Writing

Posted on Posted in Covers, Dictation, Editing, humor, LLMs, Mel Dunay, Midjourney, Mystery, One Weird Trick, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, Weird Science, WritingTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

Occasionally, I offer moral support and solutions that worked for me in the comments section of other writing blogs, but I don’t do a lot of it here. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. That being said, I’m seeing certain things come up over and over again in certain places on the web, and I feel like I have to put my oar in. Since nobody asked me, I can’t call them “Frequently Asked Questions,” but I feel comfortable calling this “Frequently Seen Questions…” 

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Friday Fragment: Bad News

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, Mel Dunay, Myth, Steampunk, World Building, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

This conversation originally took place with the two leads from the Hunter Healer King series talking in an elevator. In revisions, they’re actually having this convo on horseback, so the physical movements or “business” surrounding the conversation are different. For the record, Chloe and Maxim are not actually any kind of cousins, they just have faulty information about her family at this point.

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Midjourney Monday: Reception Area aboard The Last Repose

Posted on Posted in Art, Jane Austen, LLMs, Space Opera, Star Wars, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

From the space regency, a brief bit of scene setting and the image which helped me visualize it, although you can also see where I chose to ignore it:

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