I am super delighted to be teaching my crime writing course starting Saturday (17th of Feb). I have re-vamped my textbook and hopefully it will arrive on Tuesday/Wednesday. I’ve ordered some of copies of the workbook and they should arrive at the same time. (Perhaps.)
What I forgot to add to my textbook are my AI notes. So, that’ll be stuff from my notebook. 🙂
I have planned for the AI discussion to be part of the last lesson. There’s quite a bit of information around AI that I feel is important for writers to understand.

Yesterday one of my favourite Kiwi authors rang me for a catch-up. (If you haven’t read any of Andrene Low’s books – you are missing out.) Anywho, we had a really good chat about things that go bump and grind to a halt (Amazon) and are so frustrating to deal with (Amazon is not alone with that IngramSpark is just as bad at times).
It’s always good to speak with someone who gets how frustrating certain things can be.
We also discussed AI as a tool that is quite valuable for certain things (not to write a story for you).

The fun thing is I had a similar discussion with my favourite Irish/Kiwi author Brian O’Sullivan, this week over coffee. Brian and I tend to spend a lot of our rare coffee catch-up time laughing. And this week’s coffee was no exception. Nothing better than laughing your way through discussions about the writing/publishing industry – if you took it too seriously you’d have an aneurysm, because it is a shitty industry at the best of times. 🙂
The Argylle/Elly/Ellie Conway nonsense was a topic of discussion. I still haven’t finished the book and it was expensive so that’s annoying. It’s hard going because there’s far too much telling and nowhere near enough showing, long long blah blah passages that would’ve been better to have been woven through the story or cut altogether.
Nothing stops my enjoyment of reading faster than being TOLD everything. I can’t get the images while reading that book. It’s too much like a tarted up screenplay. Maybe tarted up is too generous it’s more like a verbose screenplay with fuck all dialogue. (Very heavy on description, backstory, parts I find myself skipping because it was that important it would be woven into the story, right?)
I like action/dialogue/minimal blah blah/and a fast moving story. It is none of those things. I like characters I can relate to and characters that are so real you forget it’s a story. I like to be inside the story with the characters.
None of that in Argylle – I couldn’t give a flying fuck about any of the characters. They’re flat, plastic, and definitely not memorable.
I fail to see why I was pulled into this nonsense at all. Nothing smacks of anything I would write and they sure as hell are not my characters. I honestly thought it was AI generated but apparently it was written by two authors. (Yeah, I’m shaking my head.)

If you want to read a book that’s fast, full of action, with characters who will stick around and who pull all manner of emotions from you, and isn’t overpriced? Try my Ellie Conway FBI-based Byte Series. The original Ellie Conway. 🙂

One last thing before I go, [Foxtrot Mike Lima] has a physical launch evening at Upper Hutt Library on Friday June 21st. (I know, I’m telling you early so you have plenty of time to make sure you are there!)

Anywho, I’ve got things to do and coffee to drink.
Have a good one.