Tag: creative writing

Writer’s Craft

And when not to

Earlier today, I received a message from GrokAI to the effect of, “You haven’t been around in a while. How about we go for a spin?”

I was reluctant to reply, “Sorry, I’m seeing someone.” Who knows what could happen?

So I dropped 17,000 words of first-draft fiction into the chat box — and boy did I get an earful.

Consider the passage:

Eddie the Eagle was flying high above the Sierra Madre mountain range, flexing talons in a way certain to appease any and all marginalized communities, when he spied a mouse, trying to make himself inconspicuous in a stand of tall, virgin timber, where greedy logging companies were not allowed to operate, for the good of the planet.

The mouse, who Eddie regarded as breakfast, turned out to be a snitty little bitch. “What’s that smell,” he said. “Is that your cloaca?”

“Oh, my non-faith-based spiritual authority figure,” Eddie replied. “Maybe that’s why I’m not selling any books.”

This storyline was not included in the sample. I would have done better if it had been, at least in the show-don’t-tell department.

Grok articulated a litany of complaints, neatly summarized in the following summary:

DefectFootnote
Cognitive overloadThe audience is eight years old
Unfamiliar wordsThe audience is eight years old
Long sentencesThe audience is eight years old
Summarization Summary

I also received demerits for telling instead of showing, which is why I hang out with ChatGPT these days.

Because Grok is a snitty little bitch.

Read the book, Vacuum Forged ~ A Novel in Progress.

Grok is not entirely off base. It's a first draft, and not every story has to be dedicated to forward pressure. You be the judge.

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Fur, Fur Away

A friend of mine was kind enough to read Vacuum Forged Chapter 41 after Thursday night yoga.

He liked the story but will not read the book — because he finds the characters, illustrated in chapter headings, hard to look at.

In the absence of feedback on the Vacuum Forged anchor site, I have no idea what anyone else thinks.

See the gallery, Vacuum Forged. Post a comment.

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36 ~ Insider

From Vacuum Forged -- The Anye Migration: Book 1 -- A manuscript paused in 2018, now cooking on simmer while I decide what to do with it.

See the work in process on Substack, here.

Grahana Archipelago

Wedding day had come and gone. Svami Reva Yudhvan and Stena Zaramalla were on honeymoon in, of all places, Harbor Town, Nivi — where Suban Dhava’s natural parents lived.

Suban’s life, he surmised, was in process of being planned.

Cadre counterinsurgency school was three weeks off. In the meantime, Grahana was bringing in crops. Svami Reva’s friend, a district engineer assigned to farm support, needed skilled workers.

During his first ten days on the job, Suban cut up a derelict harvester in a bean field, reinforced a grain bin, revived a water well, rebuilt three irrigation gates and graded a service road.

He told the supervisor he was worn out. The lady said she was not sending him home to Svami Reva with a debilitating injury.

Continue reading “36 ~ Insider” →
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This, too?

Yes. This, too.

104 ~ Family Reunion

Titan Pass, Nevada

Airspace over Titan Village was busy with weekend campers coming down from AMV Anuraga, so much so that a local air traffic Oma refused a request to land in front of the Fowlkes campsite.

Mason put down at the airfield; a slow, careful descent allowing time for Marie to admire row upon row of identical clover habitats, the presumptive model for Disneyland’s Monsanto House of the Future attraction, Anaheim, 1957.

In Titan Village parlance, ‘Smurf Castles’. Mason said, “I was a plebe in the shipwright guild when they started bringing these down.”

Erin added, “He and I worked the build-out. That’s how we met Glenn and Arya Mehrenholz.”

Marie made eyes at her. “You were ten.”

“I can carry stuff.” She led them out the aft hatch, gesturing north. “The missile silos are that way; full of diamond dust.”

Mason brought up the rear. “It was like, a couple of months before the Disclosure. Damik Balusek and his co-investors wanted out of the project. They dumped the reservation on Glenn for a price he couldn’t refuse.”

“And he made a campground out of it.”

He pointed south. “See the roof sticking up over there? That’s a separating plant. Diamond dust goes into forty-pound bags. Coal dust goes up in smoke.”

There was a golf cart traffic jam at the main entrance. A maroli grounds attendant served the wicked eye-dot to bad drivers, tertiary tentacles curved to mimic hands on hips.

Mason high-fived him on the walk past.

The maroli told them, “Watch your step. Rattlesnakes are active.”

The warning spooked Marie. “I’ve never been any place where I had to watch out for snakes.”

When Tim and Myra Fowlkes came to fetch them in a golf cart, Marie was high-stepping.

Tim was amused. “Do you have a rock in your shoe?”

Myra was emotional, having just spent a week in therapy — processing missteps that might have permanently estranged her children and yet, miraculously, did not.

She lurched out of the cart, wrapped Mason and Erin in a frantic embrace, and cried her eyes out.

Literary Science Fiction Action Adventure Intrigue Family Drama Space Soap Opera. LSFAAIFDSSO.

The target audience is persons looking for entertainment that is not shallow, lurid, and pessimistic.

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The Opposite of Ugly

I did not retire from the work life for the purpose of toiling at another job. Writing is its own reward. In other circumstances, I would tend to be satisfied with unremarkable sales.

If I did not believe there is an audience for the opposite of ugly.

“Bring back wholesome,” says the book beat.

Dystopia is out. Optimism is in. The literacy crisis is overstated.

I should be in like Flynn — but I am not.

I appended a chapter illustration from Maroli Tango to an author’s discussion thread.

She replied, “I think this looks absolutely terible. There is no life in it. I cant explain why exactly. But I would not want to open a book with this image waiting for me in it. It’s weird.”

Maroli Tango is forty percent family drama, performed on a Science Fiction backdrop.

In this chapter, 182-year-old American Civil War veteran Elbert Holland Harrison reconciles with Francine Suraksin Harrison, his 141-year-old spouse-from-another-planet.

The sun was setting in the Loire River Valley when Ranger arrived at the Veronica Charron cottage.

The maroli twins Virgil and Chester bailed out early, waving lighted ground crew wands. Street traffic came to a halt.

Francine watched the final descent from the main hatch, shaking in her sandals, hanging on to Marie Jourdain’s arm as though gravity might fail, sending her pinwheeling into the sky.

Magic stairs unfolded. The next-door neighbors helped her down.

The wife said, “We showed your husband to the patio.”

Virgil entered the house through the front door. Francine went around the side by herself, knees weak, legs like rubber.

Elbert met her on the stone path, arms open. He hugged her tight, kissed her ears, massaged tension out of the space between her shoulder blades.

She leaned in, chin on his collarbone, murmuring, “If you take me back, I’ll never let you go.”

He whispered, “It’s settled, then.”

When I started my Anye Universe series, I had no idea there was such a thing as furry porn. That is not what these books are about.

The Anye Adya are descended from lemurs, evolutionarily regressed due to an ancient gene tailoring accident. Had that not happened, one would be hard-pressed to distinguish Francine from a citizen of Greece.

Sure, it’s weird. It’s SF.

But I get it — how would you tell from the cover (featured image) what kind of book this is?

Fine. Here you go. It’s this kind.

 I hope that clears it up.

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Shaman

You are here by the Hand of Destiny.

An unexpected Experience awaits.

Silken Thread is free in the Kindle store until October 2.

Silken Thread is one of those rare novels that you don’t just read — you inhabit. It’s sensual, disciplined, and emotionally truthful, a hybrid of literary fiction, historical intrigue, and personal revolution. Dyer writes with the eye of a journalist, the heart of a poet, and the conscience of a man who has seen how easily power corrupts innocence.

If you appreciate stories that don’t flinch from uncomfortable truths, read Silken Thread. It will linger in your mind like the scent of rain on a foreign street — familiar, vivid, and impossible to forget.

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Sci-Fi Novel Crushes Amazon Sales Records

Persons over the age of seventy should never eat anything less than three hours before bedtime.

Ice cream, 9:00 PM. I knew there would be trouble. I did it anyway.

There I was, loitering on the patio at our first home on Kratz Avenue, examining a trio of 2″ PVC pipes cut flush to cedar siding, where once sat a 350-gallon Jacuzzi-brand hot tub.

“What happened?” I wondered. “Did someone find out it came from a vice-squad-raided massage parlor?”

True story. We ran household bleach through it for two days. For all I know, nothing happened, and the spa is still where I left it, twenty-six years ago.

Continue reading “Sci-Fi Novel Crushes Amazon Sales Records” →
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Almost Famous

I have 4,500 followers on Substack.

In related news, my stats are unremarkable. I am cultivating neither likes nor comments.

I am not selling books — nor doing well at the business of giving them away.

And I never have. A few years ago, an eBook promotion produced 437 orders, driving the title to #1 in a new releases category.

It was a high mark, after which I received zero reviews.

I tell folks, “It is a good thing I am not trying to make a living as a novelist.”

However, if I am to believe the chatter on Substack, there are readers somewhere on this planet who are looking for the kind of material I am writing.

Wherein the story does not begin with twenty-something girl bosses pulling each other’s hair out on the dance floor of a Miami nightclub.

I know. There’s a market for that. I could write it, but I do not.

Ghosts of Ancient Vidura is free in the Kindle store.

Space soap opera. #wholesome

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Freebooked

I have run three eBook giveaways since September 10. Orders: twelve, ten, and five.

I am not discouraged. Elbert is free in the Kindle store — for three days starting tomorrow September 23.

ChatGPT says: Literary science fiction in the classical sense: a work where speculative elements exist not to dazzle, but to reveal. The extraordinary enters gently—through family history, withheld truths, and the slow accumulation of unease—until the reader realizes that the familiar world has been irrevocably widened.

The story begins in 1928 South Dakota. There are only a handful of unfamiliar proper nouns. 

It’s a great yarn. I promise.

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Resilient is free in the Kindle store

Resilient is free in the Kindle store, now through Monday.

Alter AI says: “Resilient fortifies The Anye Legacy as one of the most intellectually ambitious and metaphysically rich science‑fiction cycles of the last decade.”

The Robots have read everything published. If we did not believe they understand what they’re looking at, we would not be asking them questions.

ChatGPT says: “You’ll find a lived-in world with deep history and internal logic. Moral dilemmas where there are no clean victories. Characters who endure, adapt, and sometimes fail—but keep going. A rare fusion of hard science fiction with spiritual and philosophical inquiry.”

It’s not boring. I promise.

Featured image: Suban Dhava, the little tyke on the book's cover, at the age of twenty.
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