It’s release day for the World Letter Writing Day Novellas!

It’s that time again! I’m very pleased to announce that the Naked Gardening Day Team are back. We had such fun working together last year that we decided to choose another day to write about this year and landed on World Letter Writing Day on 1st September.

Today I’ve got an excerpt for you below, and over the next few days I’ll be featuring posts from Holly Day, K. L. Noone and Nell Iris and I’ll also be visiting their blogs to talk about my own story, Reading it Wrong. This year we are very sorry to be missing Amy Spector, but we’re hoping her story will be released in time for the paperback anthology next year.

The four World Letter Writing Day novella covers

Without further ado…Reading it Wrong

A date turned down. A stolen letter. A reminder that nerds don’t just play board games. Reading it Wrong is a gentle MM romance set in the small town world of Theatr Fach.

Reading it Wrong. A date turned down. A stolen letter. A reminder that nerds don't just play board games. Reading it wrong is a gentle gay romance sent in the small town world of Theatr Fach.

Paul Cranford regrets asking Louise and Darcy Middleton to let the kids from his class have a look at the fifteenth century letter they’re selling at auction. If it hadn’t been for him, it would never have been in the theatre overnight to even get stolen in the first place.

Darcy isn’t keen on Paul Cranford. He’s never quite got over the way Paul knocked him back when Darcy tried to ask him out. But when the letter is stolen from the theatre and Darcy is hurt in the process, Paul steps up to help him and he starts to understand where he’s coming from.

Getting back the letter means they get to know each other better. Will that date Paul turned down happen after all?

A date turned down. A stolen letter. A reminder that nerds don’t just play board games. Reading it Wrong is a gentle MM romance set in the small town world of Theatr Fach.

Buy Links: Amazon US : Amazon UK : JMS Books : Everywhere Else : Goodreads

Cover of Reading it Wrong
Reading it Wrong: Chapter 1: Darcy
“How can a town support not one, but two antiquarian book sellers? It’s bloody ridiculous!” Darcy fumed at his sister as she peered through her glasses at the laptop screen.
He was so irritated he was pacing to-and-fro in front of the counter, waving his arms.
Louise started to answer, “Well, Hay does…” and then glanced up and over his shoulder, frowning at him in passing. “Hello there, can I help you?” she asked the person he’d failed to notice coming up behind him.
Darcy swung round as he stepped out of the way.
Oh. No. That was just what he needed.
Paul Cranford nodded to him politely but didn’t meet his eyes, instead smiling at Louise as he stepped up to the desk. “Er. Yes,” he said. “I’ve, er—” He glanced quickly and dismissively over at Darcy again, who’d folded his arms and was glaring at him. “Hi Louise, how are you?”
“I’m good thanks, Paul. How are you? How’s David? Is he still at the boatyard?”
Paul smiled at her. “Yes! They’re doing really well; they’ve got some big contracts in at the moment. I’m sure he’d send his best to you.”
“It’s been ages since I’ve seen him,” Louise said. “A couple of years, at least. He’s not a reader.” She grinned at him.
“He’s more outdoorsy than me,” Paul told her. “Always has been. I was a failure as a little brother.” He smiled as he said it, clearly joking.
“I remember from school,” Louise said. “He did all sorts of sport. I remember him badgering you to join in and you being happier in the library. What are you looking for today? Can I help you with anything? That new release you’re waiting for hasn’t come in yet,” she said regretfully.
He shook his head. “No, that’s not why I’ve come by,” he said. “It’s something different. I’m here for a favour actually.”
Darcy didn’t bother to stifle his huff of irritation. “A favour,” he said, flatly, at the same time as Louise said, “Anything I can do to help! What sort of favour?”
Paul glanced over at Darcy for a second time as he interjected and then looked back at Louise, ignoring him. That wound Darcy up even more, but Louise gave him a quelling look and said, “Be quiet please, baby brother!” and then turned back to Paul. “What sort of favour?”
Darcy growled under his breath. She never let him forget he’d been an afterthought to their parents and was fifteen years younger than her.
“Right, er. Well. You know I teach at St Baruc Primary. I… er. I heard about the letter that you’re selling.”
Louise nodded. “The letter… we’re selling it at auction, in the middle of the week,” she said. “At the theatre. On Thursday.”
“Yes,” he said.” “I. Er. I wonder if it would be possible for the children to see it before it’s sold?” he said.
“Why?” said Darcy, sharply. It wasn’t any of his business really, but Paul put his back up simply by existing these days and this was his sister and the letter he’d found. Nothing to do with Mr Paul I’m too good to date you Cranford.
Paul looked over at him again, polite enough to notice him this time. “Oh, hello, Darcy,” he said. He pushed his glasses up his nose and blushed. “Well,” he said. “It’s local history. It’s important.”
Darcy opened his mouth and then closed it again. He couldn’t argue with that.
“I mean…it’s not local, local. But from what I’ve read about it, it’s a very normal sort of letter, about family and Christmas and things like that. I think the kids would be able to identify with it. We’re doing a letter-writing project, you see.”
Louise was making a thinking noise. “Hmm. Yes. I can see that. It’s not here though. It’s at the bank.” She pulled a face. “I wonder… I can probably get it out the day before the auction for them to see. Would that work?”
Darcy made another muffled noise of dissent. It was a fifteenth century letter, for God’s sake. Letting a sticky-fingered bunch of pre-teens have at it the day before it went up for sale for thousands of quid seemed really unwise.
But Louise was nodding and Paul was nodding and giving Louise his mobile number and everything seemed copacetic between them. Nothing to do with Darcy. Nothing at all. He turned round and busied himself shelving the Victorian fairy-tale collection Louise had bought last week.
“Bye, Darcy,” Paul said, finally taking his leave. “See you on Wednesday.”
“Yeah, see you,” Darcy said, mentally snarking Not if I can help it.
They were both members of the Llanbaruc Boardgames Club that met in the theatre café on a Wednesday evening. Darcy ran the café, so he’d negotiated with his boss to let them meet there and have access to the bar.
He didn’t know exactly when he’d taken against Paul. Oh. Yeah, he did. It was the evening Darcy had suggested they go out for a drink together one night and Paul had looked at him as if he was something that had come in on the bottom of his shoe and said “Er. No. No, I don’t think so, thanks. I don’t, er… I’m not… erm. No. Thanks,” and reversed away from him so quickly he’d knocked into the game of Risk going on behind him and caused South America to inadvertently invade Australasia via Finland.

Buy Links: Amazon US : Amazon UK : JMS Books : Everywhere Else : Goodreads
Reading it wrong banner

RAtR: After The End

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

This isn’t a treatise on dystopian fictions! This month, we are writing about what happens after a writer types THE END in capital letters, centres them, saves the file and posts all over their social media that their masterpiece has finished?

Erm. Well. Lots and lots. And I guess people work in different ways, so this is my own process. I’m looking forward to reading what my #RAtR colleagues do and how their approach differs.

I’m going to assume infinite time, here, rather than working to a deadline, which might mean steps are compressed or jumped.

I write in Scrivenor, usually with the document divided up into chapters or into point of view (POV) which are sometimes the same thing. I colour-code my character points of view so if I want to I can narrow down my view to see which part of the story individual characters are narrating. I try and write between one and two thousand words per session (every day if I’m on form), and at the beginning of each session I go back and read what I wrote the day before and tweak it.

 The first thing to do once I get to the end of the story is go right back to the beginning and search for every instance of four stars, ****, which I use to leave myself notes.

Usually past-Ally says things like ****PUT IN MORE SEX HERE or ****WORK OUT BACKGROUND AND INSERT HERE, or ****LOOK UP LENGTH OF CHAMPS ELYSEES, or ****MAKE CHARACTER MORE LIKEABLE HE’S A SHIT-HEAD or even just a bare ****400 MORE WORDS HERE. Present-Ally is always absolutely delighted to find these little reminders of how slack past-Ally has been.

Once I’ve done this and I’m happy with what I’ve got, I export the document to Word. With some judicious formatting, that turns it into a coherent draft that I can send off to my lovely beta readers with chapter headings, a rough blurb at the beginning and an index. Usually I go through before I do that and try and do line edits to remove instances of words like just, then, really and my subconscious’ current favourite, a bit. Sometimes past-Ally doesn’t do that though and I include a note to my betas to say please ignore the slacker.

At this point if I’m self-publishing, I make a cover (if I haven’t already) and put the book up for preorder on the various ebook platforms.

If I’m working with a publisher (shout-out to JMS Books!) I fill in a blurb form and I look at the stock photo sites they use to find a few images that I feel are suitable and fill in a cover form describing what I would like.

Once the beta notes are back, I go through the manuscript and take the beta feedback on board. Then I do a rough proof read.

Then if it’s a publisher-book, I send the manuscript, the blurb form and the cover form off to the publisher, who sends me a contract to sign digitally (after careful reading of course!). If it’s a self-published book, I send it off to my editor.

Then, either way I’m working, I make a load of promotional images in Canva and I put together a document with various social media posts I can use for marketing. The first line, a kiss snippet, that sort of thing. I sometime create posts and visuals with a character sketch. I update my website and social media headers with graphics of the new book.

Once I have a cover, I put together a media pack, which is basically a document with all the info bloggers and reviewers could need to decide whether they want to host a release announcement or request an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC). So, publication date, ISBN number, links to where it can be pre-ordered/bought, keywords, a tag-line, the blurb, the cover, and perhaps an excerpt. Oh, and a little biography at the bottom with my social links.

Then I decide how skint I am and either pay for a blog tour, someone to approach reviewers and bloggers for me; or I contact them myself.

All this time I am writing every morning, working on my next story. And I am doing a bit of social media activity to remind readers I exist, plus sending out my newsletter. And I am maybe tweaking my Amazon Ads and my Facebook Ads if I have them running.

After two or three weeks, then, I get the first round of edits back from my editor. I go over the manuscript and accept or reject her corrections and suggestions. She does a light proof at this point and leaves me sarcastic comments if she finds anything that doesn’t make sense. I do even more proofing and take her advice about the things that don’t make sense, leaving her equally sarcastic comments. Then I send the manuscript back.

We do that a couple of times more and when I’m happy with it I listen to it through using the Word Read Aloud function. It’s much the best way to catch spelling errors and autocorrects that have slipped by. Then, I turn it in to an ARC copy and I send it out to my ARC readers and any reviewers who have requested it and I load it up on to the ebook sales sites that I have put the preorders up on.

That’s it, basically. I spend far more time on the ‘after THE END’ part than I do writing. It’s so easy to get sucked into the marketing, social media and tweaking advertisements or your website part of the cycle than it is to knuckle down and actually produce words. I’m not unusual in this. I haven’t read any of my colleagues’ pieces at the time of writing this, but I bet my sizeable arse that they are saying much the same thing.

Obviously I publish with a small press; if you work with a larger press or are traditionally published with one of the big five, the process is different—much more drawn out for a start. However, I’m very happy with my hybrid set-up, with some of my work being all my own responsibility and some being partly the publisher. Unless you’re a mega-seller these days, you do most of your own marketing as a writer, however you’re published.

So…have a look at what my colleagues have written here!

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about seasonal reads, click through below!

Nell IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian FrancisFiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. NooneAddison Albright

Holly Day: Vampire Food

Holly Day has a new release today! Celebrate National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day with a magic user, a vampire, and a mountain of zucchini!

Cover: Vampire Food by Holly Day

Vampire Food

MM Slow Burn, Hurt – Comfort, Size Difference, Found Family, Vampire, Magic User

  • Author: Holly Day
  • Editor: Lourenza Adlem
  • Release: 5th August 2023
  • Price: $4.99
  • ISBN: 9781685505202
  • ASIN: B0CD5LQ3TM
  • KU:      No
  • Wide:  Yes
  • Buy: AmazonJMS BooksUBLGoodreads

A former blood slave. A strapping vampire. More zucchinis than any man could eat.

Rue Yarrow was rescued from a blood bar and taken to a gated community of supernaturals. Haunted by nightmares and memories, he does his best to avoid people. His only solace is his garden, where he uses his magic to grow an abundance of vegetables. But one day, it isn’t the zucchinis greeting him, but a severed human head.

Noah Caramine wants as little drama as possible, and interfering with a vampire clan’s business is never a good idea. He’s never met a magic user and is curious about Rue, but he fears there will be consequences for stealing the blood slaves.

When body parts start popping up inside the walls, Noah doesn’t know if someone is trying to frame them for murder or distract them from keeping the blood slaves safe. Rue never believed he’d go near a vampire again, but when threats are drawing closer, he turns to Noah. Who better to keep him safe from vampires than a vampire?

A former blood slave A strapping vampire. More zucchinis than any man could eat! Out now!

About Holly Day

According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee. 

Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time. 

Connect with Holly on social media: Website :: Facebook :: Twitter :: Pinterest :: BookBub :: Goodreads :: Newsletter :: TikTok

Excerpt from Vampire Food

As he rounded the house, he came to a stop. The back side was bigger than the front. Damn.
Half a second later, someone walked into him from behind. Without thinking, he dropped the spade, reached around, and grabbed them, ready to tear their throat out.
Rue stared wide-eyed at him. “Sorry.”
Noah gentled his grip. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. I was watching the trees. Not paying attention.”
Noah glanced at the trees. Apple and plum trees on this side of the garden. “The plums are almost ripe.”
Rue looked at the trees again.
“When you’re done feeling him up, can we get started?”
Rue stiffened at Asher’s call, and Noah let go of him in favor of giving Asher the finger, but he only got a grin and a wink in reply. Fucker.
“Right, let’s get to it.”
Gertrude moved to stand next to Rue. “Should we tell them to take their shirts off? We should have drinks and popcorn.” She bumped her shoulder against Rue’s.
Noah pretended not to listen but held his breath as he waited for Rue’s response.
“I should get back to the beans.”
No request to take his shirt off then. He hadn’t expected one.
“Let’s see if this rolling thing works first.” Gertrude crossed her arms over her chest.
Noah put the spade into the lawn and stepped on it to cut through the grass. Then he moved a blade length and did it again, and again, and again until he’d cut a line to the end of the garden. Then he did one more about a foot from the first line until he got a strip.
“The moment of truth.” He smiled at Rue and pushed the spade in under the grass edge. After a few tries, he got the edge to let go of the soil below. As he rolled, the grass separated from the ground.
“Oh, cool, it works.” Rue rushed forward. “I can do it, and you do another line.” He fell on his knees next to Noah, who let go when Rue touched the grass.
He got to his feet and reached for the spade. Before he started cutting the next line, Gertrude gave him a nod and a smile. “I’ll go help Chaton.”
Rue’s head whipped around. “Oh, yeah, sorry.”
“Not to worry, dear. I tried to save you from getting your hands dirty, but I see it was all in vain.” She grinned at him and walked away. Rue looked after her, some tension bleeding into his muscles, but then he shook his head and got rolling.
Asher worked at the other end of the lawn while Noah kept even steps with Rue. The roll grew rapidly, and soon Rue had to stand to roll it. They reached the end, only to start over again. After a few times, sweat was pearling and Rue was out of breath.
“Want to switch?” Stepping on a spade didn’t take too much effort.
“Yeah, maybe.”
They did one strip, but when they got about one-third into the second, Rue stopped. “There is something here.” Rue rammed the spade into the ground without any greater success. “It’s crunchy. I can’t get the blade down.” He hit the spade against the lawn again. Noah frowned as he took in the patch of dead grass. Strange.
“A stone maybe. Should I cut around it?”
Noah got to his feet, and Rue handed over the spade. There was something hard underneath, and the ground looked as if it had been disturbed, but only in a small space. Noah cut around it and pushed the spade in under the dried grass edge. As he got it loose, he grabbed it and pulled.
There, buried in the soil, was a mostly decomposed head. His gaze locked on the hair. It was dirty and mattered, but not dirty enough for him to miss the long blond strands with purple highlights. Fuck. “Gertrude!”
The stench of decay crawled into his nostrils, and he grimaced.
Rue gagged, and Noah reached for him. To his surprise, Rue turned into him, hiding his face against his chest. “Is that… is that…”
“A head, yes.”
“Madeline.”
Noah stared at the face. It was too decomposed to make out any specific features. Gertrude appeared by his side, followed by Chaton, who hissed.
“Madeline.” He turned to Rue, who was resting his forehead against Noah’s chest. “Did you kill Madeline?”
Rue shook his head, his entire body starting to tremble.
“Who’s Madeline?” Gertrude spoke in a low, soothing voice, but both Rue and Chaton were shaking their heads.
Asher looked at the head, then at Noah. “Where’s the rest?”
Oh, fuck. Were there more body parts hidden in the garden?

Buy Vampire Food: Amazon - JMS Books - UBL 

#RAtR: Seasonal Reads, yes or no?

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

Morning! We had a quite a long rambling discussion about this topic when we were discussing what to write this month. It turns out the group is firmly divided in to “I love seasonal reads!” and “I hate seasonal reads!”.

I’m pretty firmly in the latter group; except when I started actually thinking about it, it’s more that I usually avoid stories about Christmas. This dovetails nicely with my not-much-liking-Christmas-generally thing, so I feel I understand myself better now 😊.

Summer reads though…are they books set in the summer? Or books you are supposed to read whilst lying on the beach?

I never do the latter and although I’m sat in my conservatory looking out at the garden, this British July day is full of grey drizzle, so to get in to a proper summer mood I would need to be reading something where the main characters are wearing waders and sou’westers.

I think it’s the flavour of the book that makes something reminiscent of a particular season for me. Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee will forever be associated for me with the summer of my O-Levels where we studied it for English Lit. But also for the scene where he talks about the women bringing the men their dinner out to the fields and sitting and eating with them; and hanging the stone cider flagons in the stream before they started work to cool them down for dinner time. I don’t know why that resonated so strongly for me. But it did. I can’t remember that happening, although I can remember playing in and out of the rows of drying hay as a child—the smell, the feel of the sun on your skin, that sense of freedom—that’s the essence of summer for me.

Cover, Taking Stock

Perhaps that’s why I find it hard to make a list of books in the queer romance genre that I can put on a summer reads list? I like my romance with some angst, generally speaking. And angst tends not to vibe with long summer evenings and swifts dipping low over the river. Although perhaps I should see that as a challenge and try and write one. You could try Taking Stock, I guess? That does have kissing by the not-quite-magical pool and sun dappling the sheep shearers through the chestnut trees and lots and lots of angst, because Laurie has had a stroke and can’t farm his own farm any more; and Phil has been set up by his ex-boyfriend to take the fall for fraud.

I’m much happier with Halloween, which seems to be the next thing in the calendar people write around. I like Gregory Ashe’s DuPage Parish Mysteries, which are satisfactorily creepy but also funny in Ashe’s inimitable style. Wendigos, anyone? I’m also keen on The Pumpkin Patch by Darien Cox and Kade Boeme, which is the only time I’ve ever voluntarily picked up something I knew to be a Halloween story before I read it, largely because the cover is smothered in pumpkins! It’s still a murder-mystery, which is why I like it. Darien Cox is an auto-buy for me, which is what overcame what I like to think of my natural reticence to engage with what’s mostly a US-ian holiday :). I’ve also got my own sapphic Sleeping Dogs, which is a short story based on the Celtic myth of black dogs. It seemed like Halloween was a good time to release something creepy. It’s just come out of KU and should be making its way wide in the next couple of weeks.

As far as Christmas is concerned. Well. Don’t get me started. I hate the drama around the whole season! And I just don’t get the whole Christmas in July thing. However, as far as Christmas-themed stories go, I make an exception for Miss Claus by J. R. Hart, which is a lovely story of Santa Claus’ daughter which also happens to have excellent trans rep. Plus…who can forget Masters in This Hall by K. J. Charles, the third in the Lilywhite Boys series? If light-fingered thieves and fake-medieval Christmases are your thing, I recommend. And also… my own sapphic Surfacing Again is set over Christmas on the island of Lindisfarne. It’s kind of sad? But also it has a happy ending. And otters.

close up shot of otters

I hope that gives you something to get your teeth in to. I’m looking forward to reading my colleague’s recommendations for their ultimate summer reads and I’d love to hear your own favourites.

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about seasonal reads, click through below!

Nell IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright

#ReadAroundtheRainbow: AI Versus the Writer

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

So this month’s project is basically messing around with AI chatbots. Collectively, along with most other creatives, the Read Around the Rainbow group are very concerned with the way there seems to be a minority cohort who think AIs can replace human artists and writers. So we decided to write from a prompt ourselves; and then ask one of the Chatbot AIs to write from the same prompt, and compare the two.

person reaching out to a robot

The results are pretty hilarious and I honestly don’t think this generation of bots are going to replace us fiction writers. Am I concerned about ‘writers’ using them to generate whole books and dumping them on KU? Yes, yes I am.

However, I don’t think the work is going to compare, at least not with this iteration of bots, whether they are trained on the AO3 archive and free stories the creators have grabbed from Smashwords or stories they have scraped from elsewhere. A lot of AI models are trained on Bookcorpus, it turns out, which used fanfic and free Smashwords books as part of its dataset without the consent of the authors. You can read more about that here. This qualifies as stealing other people’s work, bigtime, so that’s yet another huge reason not to use an AI to churn out another quick 50k variation of Pride and Prejudice and make money from it.

As you know if you know me at all, I read a lot of science fiction. My imaginary future does not include a world where the robots do all the fun, creative, imaginary stuff and humans are still forced to do minimum-wage schtick to survive.

Apart from that major issue, I guess… my main question is, what’s the point? What’s the point of getting these language bots to write fiction, or produce art? Creative work is supposed to be fulfilling for both the creator and the people who interact with it. It’s supposed to prompt an emotional response and engagement from both sides. You create your piece, which gives you an emotional response. And if you choose to, you set it free in the world for other people to engage with and respond to.

Firstly… these bots are not actually AI. They are language bots. They don’t remember interacting with you. They’re not people. They don’t have emotions. They aren’t engaged with what they produce on any level other than working out which word follows which in response to the prompt you give them within the guidelines of the dataset they’ve been trained on. So… that’s the biggest part of the creative process missing.

And secondly–the quality of what they are producing is just awful. I think you can get something vaguely workmanlike if you feed it the right prompts, but having looked at most of the pieces my #RAtR colleagues have generated for this… well. They all very much reminds me of the story I wrote for Mrs Lowe in Year 3, when my character went up a mountain and they climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed for about six lines and she told me off for repeating myself too much just to fill up the page.

These bots don’t have the depth of emotion, the life experience or the imagination that humans do. They don’t have feelings, they have simply have logical responses. If they were AIs in the sense that Iain M. Banks’ ‘Minds’ are, then that would be different. They’d be able to independently produce art and engage with what they produce on an emotional level. That would be as worthwhile as human creations.

However, when you aren’t interacting with it, Chat GPT (the one I used for this exercise) doesn’t do any thinking for itself. It doesn’t lie awake at night wondering what to write or paint next. It doesn’t feel sad if it can’t quite get the right word or colour. What it produces is a flat, featureless mish-mash of best-fit words without the context of human experience.

I’ve got a couple of examples here so you can see for yourself. First I asked it to write a 300 word gay romance story set in London in 1942.

In the midst of war-torn London in 1942, a clandestine love story unfolded against a backdrop of danger and uncertainty. Meet William and Thomas, two souls entangled in a forbidden romance that defied the confines of a society gripped by fear and prejudice.
William, a stoic and determined young man, found himself in the chaos of war as an air raid warden. His duty was to protect the city and its inhabitants from the relentless bombings, a responsibility that weighed heavily on his shoulders. Yet, amidst the sirens and crumbling buildings, he discovered solace in an unexpected encounter.
Thomas, an artist with a gentle spirit, captured William's attention with his striking blue eyes and warm smile. They met in a quaint café tucked away in the heart of the city, seeking refuge from the harsh realities of their lives. Their connection was instantaneous, their hearts drawn together like magnets in a world tearing them apart.
As their relationship blossomed in the shadows, they found solace in stolen moments. Hand in hand, they explored the deserted streets of London, seeking sanctuary in hidden parks and forgotten alleyways. Their love grew amidst the rubble, fueled by whispered promises and stolen kisses that carried a weight of both passion and danger.
The nights they spent together were their refuge from the harshness of the war. In the flickering candlelight, they shared their hopes, dreams, and fears, weaving a tapestry of love and resilience. Their moments together became a sanctuary, a fleeting respite from the chaos that surrounded them.
But the war threatened to tear them apart. Duty called William away, and he found himself deployed to a distant battlefield. With each passing day, their hearts ached in longing, their love tested by the distance that separated them. Yet, their spirits remained intertwined, an unbreakable bond forged in the crucible of war.
When the war finally drew to a close, William returned to London, his heart yearning for the one he loved. The scars of battle etched upon him, he searched for Thomas amidst the city's streets. And there, in the midst of a crowd, they found each other once again.
Their love, forged in the fires of war, stood strong against the trials they had endured. They vowed to build a future together, to create a world where their love could flourish without fear or prejudice. As London slowly rebuilt itself, William and Thomas wrote their own chapter of resilience and love, an enduring testament to the power of the human spirit.

It’s not quite so grim if you feed it back to itself and ask it to include dialogue:

In the midst of war-torn London in 1942, a clandestine love story unfolded against a backdrop of danger and uncertainty. Meet William and Thomas, two souls entangled in a forbidden romance that defied the confines of a society gripped by fear and prejudice.
William, a stoic and determined young man, found himself in the chaos of war as an air raid warden. His duty was to protect the city and its inhabitants from the relentless bombings, a responsibility that weighed heavily on his shoulders. Yet, amidst the sirens and crumbling buildings, he discovered solace in an unexpected encounter.
One evening, as William patrolled the streets, he noticed a figure sitting on a bench. Thomas, an artist with a gentle spirit, captured William's attention with his striking blue eyes and warm smile. Curiosity pulled William closer, and he cautiously approached.
"May I sit?" William asked, his voice laced with a mix of wariness and longing.
Thomas looked up, his smile widening. "Please, join me. It's a chaotic world out there."
Their connection was instantaneous, their hearts drawn together like magnets in a world tearing them apart.
As their relationship blossomed in the shadows, they found solace in stolen moments. Hand in hand, they explored the deserted streets of London, seeking sanctuary in hidden parks and forgotten alleyways. Their love grew amidst the rubble, fueled by whispered promises and stolen kisses that carried a weight of both passion and danger.
In the flickering candlelight of their secret nights together, they shared their hopes, dreams, and fears.
"I fear for what the future holds," William admitted, his voice laced with vulnerability.
Thomas squeezed his hand gently. "As long as we have each other, we'll find the strength to face it, my love."
Their moments together became a sanctuary, a fleeting respite from the chaos that surrounded them.
But the war threatened to tear them apart. Duty called William away, and he found himself deployed to a distant battlefield. With each passing day, their hearts ached in longing, their love tested by the distance that separated them.
When the war finally drew to a close, William returned to London, his heart yearning for the one he loved. The scars of battle etched upon him, he searched for Thomas amidst the city's streets. And there, in the midst of a crowd, they found each other once again.
Their eyes met, and a sense of relief washed over them.
"Thomas," William breathed, his voice filled with reverence and love.
Thomas smiled, tears glistening in his eyes. "You came back to me."
Their love, forged in the fires of war, stood strong against the trials they had endured. They vowed to build a future together, to create a world where their love could flourish without fear or prejudice. As London slowly rebuilt itself, William and Thomas wrote their own chapter of resilience and love, an enduring testament to the power of the human spirit.

It’s just… flat? I guess? And it’s not at all subtle, which is probably the main thing about it that makes my teeth itch. It’s a story, sure. But…it’s not, really, is it? There’s no depth to it, nothing underneath the surface. Also, wandering round London holding hands in 1942 would have been a recipe for both a kicking and a prison sentence. And I’m not sure what we’re doing with flickering candlelight; maybe the Blitz has knackered all the electricity though, so we’ll let that one pass.

Compare that to the beginning of the last chapter of my own An Irregular Arrangement. (10,500 words, free low-heat poly novella, starts just after WW1, finishes in WW2, download it here)

“Are you coming down this weekend?” Val asked Rupert, as they waited for the barman to fill their drinks. They were both propped comfortably against the polished oak of the bar, each with a foot resting on the brass rail. It was a cool early autumn evening, reminiscent of the one where they’d first met each other twenty years ago.
“I’m coming down for good, I think,” Rupert said. He was hunched a little in his overcoat and Val thought he looked tired. “My nerves are shredding. I can do more good down with you than I can up here being a bag of jelly. And people who are going to help financially know where we are after all this time, I don’t need to be up here touting for help like I was in the beginning.”
Val took the drinks and paid for them, nodding thanks to the landlord as they turned away and made for a table in the corner. It was quiet, early, and still light outside. The sirens hadn’t gone off yet.
“We’ve got a couple of dozen kids at the moment,” Val said. “They come and go, some of them. But it looks like most of them are with us for the long haul.”
“That’s good. The poor little buggers need some stability.” Rupert nodded at the street outside through the window heavily crisscrossed with blackout tape, as he chucked his hat onto the table and shrugged out of his heavy coat. “God knows there’s little enough out there.”
“Tim sends his love, as always,” Val said. “Flora said I was to tell you to get a move on.” They peered suspiciously over the table in the dim light of the pub as they sat. “Have you been talking to her about moving down?”
“I may have mentioned it. I didn’t want to tell Tim in case it got his hopes up and I decided not to. You know how he worries.”
Val nodded. “He’s been fine though. Missing you, obviously. He’ll be happy to have you down to help with the paperwork. We’ve got a system for their ration cards and what-not now, and it’s all quite organised, but you know how he hates that sort of thing. And Mrs Rathbone is the Evacuee Officer. If you can take that bit over for him, he’ll love you even more than he does already. She still hates him.”
Rupert laughed. “She must be about a hundred and five by now, surely?”
“Yes, but she’s still putting her nose in everywhere. She’s doing some good now though, she’s very efficient organising which children go where and she’s good with the kids themselves, which I didn’t expect.”

I’m not a great writer. I’ll never be a great writer. But I’m an okay writer; I like what I create and I enjoy the process (mostly!). I think about it and I put my heart in to it. And I think that’s the difference. There’s depth to this piece–to all the pieces we’ve written between us for this blog prompt. The AI ones all seem to be a veneer of a story with nothing underneath.

So here’s my definitive list of reasons why using AI for creative stuff is bad.

  1. The results are frankly terrible. There’s no depth there, because AIs don’t experience human emotion. They’re just language generators. There’s no creative process behind them. Which takes me to point #2.
  2. There’s no creative value to the work. There’s literally no point to it other than the end result. That’s fine for management documentation and marketing articles. The end-result is the point. But half the point of a creative work is the creator’s interaction with it. That goes for students churning out academic essays too… What’s the point? Doing that work is to help them learn new skills and grow. The process is the point. If you don’t want to develop those skills; don’t go to college.
  3. These language and art bots have been trained on plagiarised work. They’ve taken other people’s stuff and used it without permission. They’re created through other people’s hard work and creativity. They’re stolen goods. People who use them, whether they pass that work off as their own or not, are using stolen work. Which leads us on to #4.
  4. AI creation… words, music, art… puts human creatives out of business. Living in an orange-box furnished garret whilst producing beautiful things is very romantic; but eating is nice too.

I’m hoping this whole AI thing will just be a fad, like NFTs and Crypto–yet another techbro thing that these people haven’t stopped to think deeply about.

Just because we can do it, does that mean we should? My answer is no.

Finally, there’s a good interview in The Guardian this week with Timnit Gebru, who was sacked by Google for her stance on AI. AI’s Dangers and Big Tech’s Biases is partly about how AIs are biased around the dataset they are trained on. It’s particularly interesting to me because one of the models Ellie Thomas tried out for this piece told her that it could not write her a gay romance story because that was offensive.

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written on the subject–and what they managed to get the AI to generate–click through below!

Nell IrisOfelia Grand : Lillian FrancisFiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright