AI-generated Artwork

This is an AI-generated image, resulting from a prompt on Bing's Image Creator. Allow me just a few paragraphs about the hot topic, before I move on. Microsoft does not permit images generated via its browser app to be used for commercial purposes, but I happen to like this particular image, and, besides using it to brighten this post, am currently using it for the face of my Apple Watch. It reminds me of my days playing "Blasers & Beasties". (Search this blog for more about B&B)

I do not advocate using cheap and expedient AI-generated art as a substitute for original human artwork in commercial publishing, and personally, I'll never do it. However, I'm not convinced it's always reprehensible. If it were, then all computer-modeled shapes, characters, and effects sold as original artwork deserve our scorn.

As a former college art major and one-time, award-winning illustrator, such snobbery sometimes comes easily to me. But until persuaded otherwise, within certain boundaries, I think an AI and a computer are just two more tools in an evolving kit available to artists. The boundaries I mean? Well-established artists with truly distinctive styles (and not yet in the public domain) deserve control over whether their artwork is used to train AIs. And when and if they permit it, every time their name or style is used as a generative prompt, they deserve to be compensated.

The controversy is new and my opinions may yet evolve on their own. I welcome your opinions.

13 Lives of Alice, Watership Sideways

I bring good news and bad news. If you want to own a copy of "13 Lives of Alice", you'll need to act fast. Black Hare Press plans to delist it (make it unavailable) after December 31, 2023. It includes 13 stories about the contemporary adventures of a grown-up version of Alice (of Wonderland fame). My contribution, "Watership Sideways" is chapter 7.

The silver lining is that a selection of these individual stories (or perhaps all) will be reissued by BHP during 2024 as "short reads", available for individual purchase. I have signed a contract this week agreeing to this repackaging. I hope more people are encouraged to read the story this way.

Until 2023 ends, you should be able to use this link to buy your own copy of marvelous this book: (https://books2read.com/13-lives-of-alice)

Poetica #15: "With Only Rocks for Tools"

Poetica # 15 is now available here! (https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/anthologies)

My poem, "With Only Rocks for Tools" is in this volume, alongside the poems of many of my writer friends.

After I had submitted this poem, I realized it should have been named "Only Rocks for Tools". The word "With" is superfluous, but, although in every subsequent mention of the poem, either in emails or on the "Inner Circle Writers' Group" Facebook page, I used the shorter title, I never outright instructed (begged) the editor to change it before it was published. Oh, well.

I hope you get to read the poem and enjoy it.

"The Quantum Oracle" to be featured in "Lockdown Sci-Fi #5"

 

My flash fiction story, "The Quantum Oracle" will be featured in "LOCKDOWN SCI-FI #5", a science-fiction anthology by Black Hare Press. I expect the entire book to be available to download for free. Here's the link: https://books2read.com/lockdown-scifi-5

Unity Volume 2: Angelic Series

This post, originally drafted in 2021 but never shared, announces my contributions to an anthology which has since been significantly delayed. Therefore, it is arguably timelier now, than it was then.

My contribution to the charity anthology Unity Volume 2 (proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders) will contain six angel-themed pieces! 

• Two cartoons: "2 Heaven" and "2 Tickets to Paradise";
• Three poems: "Where Angels Dance" (light verse); "Body of Proof" (a sonnet); and "Not the Whole Angel" (one of my best-liked poems, also technically a reprint*); and
• One short story (horror): "Wings of Hope", originally published in "Full Metal Horror 2" by Zombie Pirate Publishing, who have published several of my stories.

An anthology definitely worth owning, I'll post the purchase link when available. Meanwhile, here is the link to Unity, Volume 1 (also a charity volume for DwoB)

*Not the Whole Angel was first published in Dastaan World Chapter 4: Dreamscape, Sept. 16, 2018, on page 50. The once-free magazine is now defunct, and archive copies are only available for a fee.