Arm Update: Bullshit Reprieve!

So, after a week and a half of tremendous tension, the orthopedic consult for my arm was an anticlimax in the best way. The orthopedist freed me from not just the sling but the constant xrays, followup appointments, work restrictions, and painful, elaborate physiotherapy! Normal use and a few stretches are all I need! 

(It would have been nice to know this before I booked another 8 weeks of all desk work all the time. I haven't laid hands on a patient of my own in months. But I will be excited to get back to direct care after that!) 

Social Media Note

So, I am also on Discord under this same username. I haven't posted it as publicly as my other social media accounts, mainly because it's not my main account on the service. I use Discord on mobile 99% of the time, and on mobile Discord has chosen to make it very difficult and annoying to switch accounts, so I just stay on my fandom account on my phone, and log into saxbrightwell on my computer or tablet once every few days to check in with a few writing friends and AuntyTrashy. 

That said, I love to chat! You're welcome to seek me out there; just please be patient with friend requests, because as I said I tend to go a few days between logins. I logged in today and there was a friend request from someone, but as soon as I clicked to see who they were it disappeared? If that was you and you're reading this, please do send it again! Or you could just slide into AuntyTrashy's Discord server, where I can be found perpetrating writer-in-residence nonsense like this: 



(I've been told I should have added a bow on the horse's tail in the third panel. Perhaps I will at some point!)

Book 5

Drafting book 5 is going well! I made inroads on Chapter 6 today, and realized a parallel is emerging between Maunammi (I'm embarrassed about how long I called them Bhimmaunat) and Fiyevret that I'm going to enjoy chewing on. 

It's a good day for my stable of what I've learned are called "spinoff fodder" characters, with only two piping up about the whole-ass standalone books they want written about them after I finish Book 6. There are many more haunting me quite often. I suppose if I ever want things to calm down I need to keep chipping away at the books in front of them, so! Until next time!

Core Keeper

I took the last week off writing to explore the 1.0 patch of the game Core Keeper. ( More about that... ) I got over my classic neurospicy fear that not doing something for a few days means I've completely forgotten how to do that thing (I get the same anxiety every time I have to return to work after a long weekend) and wrote a good chunk this morning. Back in the game, baby! Just in time to have another brutal week of work, but I've mentioned before how that seems to be, paradoxically, good for my writing output. Yeah, I don't think I'd do well trying to write as my only source of income XD

Draft2Digital Courting AI

I, like many others, was emailed a link to a survey where Draft2Digital was asking about writer and publisher attitudes towards an opt-in function to sell works hosted on D2D to scrapers to feed into the databases for Large Language Models (LLMs). The questions were mostly multiple-choice and heavily slanted to "how would you like us to do this?" as opposed to "should we do this at all?" with only two free-text boxes, which I used far more freely than they wanted me to.

Now, I'm aware this is a bit hypocritical of me, when I'm willing to use graphic models like Adobe Firefly (where the database was bought and paid for or legitimate public domain) and audio models like Google Play's digital audiobook utility (which provide serviceable text-to-speech for free but give nowhere near the value of a human reading), but I am not kindly disposed to text models. When they first emerged I thought they were quite interesting for how closely they appeared to imitate thought, and I couldn't bring myself to care about the idea they might be 0.00001% influenced by scraping my fanfic on AO3 any more than a human writer might be influenced the same way. Now, though, it's clear they were badly implemented from the get-go and have already half-destroyed the internet with their gibberish sludge output, just as the venture capitalist investment money is starting to run dry. Had LLM companies begun with an approach like, "We want to buy scraping rights to your book for $10,000" the landscape might look very different for them now, but they didn't do that, and it's too late to try to build that goodwill retroactively.

I'm very fond of D2D. They're the best aggregator in the field, with the widest reach and the most useable website. I've been quite happy with them. But this move was ominous. As others have said, if they're testing the waters in such a pre-slanted way, they're probably already in much, much deeper behind closed doors. I wish I could tell their decision-makers they're so late to the party that the more profitable business choice would be to loudly repudiate all association with LLM companies forever and guarantee none of their hosted works will ever be scraped. "100% AI-Free, Always" is already the attractor, and "nOw wiTh ai!!1! put glue and rocks on ur pizza!" the repellant.

Still, I will probably remain with D2D until/unless they eliminate the ability to opt out of scraping. Even the presence of an "opt in in exchange for a fee" function is something I would make my peace with in time - not compensating creators for feeding models is how these companies shat the bed in the first place. But the fee would have to be VERY high to tempt me to participate myself.

Parting Thoughts

One of the writer's Mastodon memes I participated in recently had the question this week, "If you could write a story in any fictional world, what would you choose?" This question landed a little differently for me, as a writer with their roots in fanfic; I already can write in any fictional world I choose, and have done so many times! But I realised, with great delight, that the world I want to write in most is mine: Sleipnir, that flashy ringed moon swiftly orbiting his vivid blue ice giant parent, Mama Loki. He's filling up with alien fauna, and OCs patiently (and not-so-patiently) waiting for their own novels once I finish with my OTP for a moment. But that's still a queue of 3 books away, and I only just got moving again on the first of those 3, book 4. So I'd better get back to work. Until next month!

As you may have seen from my listings sticky, I assembled an omnibus edition of the first 3 books in my Secrets of Sleipnir series. The main reason I did this was to be able to order a print-on-demand author proof edition for myself, but I figured I might as well put the omnibus ebook up for sale at a discount as well. To my shock, there have been some orders for it! But I'm posting today because the proof has finally arrived: 

 

In The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard, the eponymous emperor says, "... every poet should see his work in book form at least once. It is good for the soul." I would say that's true of other writers as well. I knew I wanted this. I was very pleased to have sold enough ebooks to cover the cost of both the proof and the hideous shipping fee to my country. But actually holding it in my hands has been more moving than I expected. I spent a few minutes just hugging it.

All of which is to say, there is now a print-on-demand option available for the omnibus edition! Don't @ me about how much it costs; print-on-demand is not cheap and even at that eye-popping price I'm making the exact same royalties I make off someone buying the ebook version. It's there if you want it badly enough.

Writing Update
My hiatus is going on a little longer than planned, because the fanfiction I was playing around with for a vacation challenge has turned rowdy on me and I have to wrangle it into shape. But I expect to be well into the thick of book 4 by August!

I'm sure by now everyone has heard the aphorism "fast, cheap, or good; pick two." Well, my books are pretty cheap, so given the choice between fast or good, I choose the latter (although I'm still going fairly fast by some standards). I was hoping to have book 3 out before July, but in the course of editing the first draft I encountered a major plot point in the second half that just didn't sit right with me. Changing that has changed everything that comes after it, requiring a roughly 40% rewrite. I'm not thrilled with this! But I do feel it's necessary to tell the story I want to tell. It won't be *entirely* from scratch, but I think I've learned my lesson about confidently putting time estimates on things.

(My relationship with time is pretty shaky in general. I was just thinking the other day that a friend's baby must be nearly three months old by now. Reader, the infant is NINE months old.)

Which is to say book 3 will be ready when it's ready! In the meantime, watch this space for an announcement about the next Draft2Digital/Smashwords sale. I intend to participate, although at a discount this time instead of offering my books for free, since the sale lasts an entire month.

I didn't think I would use the Mastodon account much, but actually I do! I never got into Twitter, but the microblogging simplicity really is kind of fun. I'll see about getting a link onto my Dreamwidth page the next time I'm at a computer. (Did you know there's a mobile-friendly DW posting form? https://www.dreamwidth.org/mobile/post )

But I promised an update! I've COMPLETED the first draft of book 2 of Secrets of Sleipnir: High Dusk! I'm editing it now, and then I have a cover ready to go so there's only (oh god) writing a blurb and it'll be out there in the world! I'm so excited you guys aaahhhhhh