Attention Span of Readers
I believe the attention span of readers is much less what it used to be.
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Fall 2025 Winners – WritersWeekly 24-hr Short Story Contest.
Well, I was hoping for a better position but being an Honorable Mention / Special Recognition winner of the Writers Weekly Fall 24-hour short story contest is okay. I’ll take it!! I did a search to see how many, on average, submit to the Writers Weekly contests and AI told me they have a limit of about 500. I was hoping it was more. ha! Anyway, I love the 24hr format and will try again in the Winter contest. For your entertainment, here’s my entry. The Blood Moon Two brothers, Lloyd and Wyatt Bernard, sat in decrepit folding chairs on a sagging porch. The boys were tired after a day of fixing the family still. They took turns swigging from an old crockery jug. This part of Kentucky had once been a moonshining capital and a business legacy for the Bernard family going back generations. Now, business was slow. The rotting porch faced a well-used dirt road, and beyond lay a field of rotting pumpkins. Behind, to the west, stood a ten-acre wood of pin oak and felled trees mostly covered with overgrown kudzu. Posted signs every ten feet read: No Trespasin, and we mean it! The thicket made access to the shack housing the ancient still nearly impossible. Lloyd pointed to the sky. “Oh shit, Wyatt, look at that.” Wyatt nodded. “Yeah, we better get inside soon; the moon is turning.” He handed the jug to Lloyd, who slung it up for a swig in a single smooth motion. He sat the jug on the bleached, splintering floorboards between them. Lloyd agreed. “Oh yeah. That bigass blood moon is gonna be turning orange soon.” Wyatt’s eyes squinted as he tried to adjust his eyesight. “The hell is that?” Lloyd strained to see, then echoed, “The hell…?” A young girl
Continue readingFall 2025 Winners – WritersWeekly 24-hr Short Story Contest.
The Three-Act Structure
Not being a pantser this time. … Continue readingThe Three-Act Structure
Thoughts on the Dr. Roman Yampolskiy Interview
Roman V. Yampolskiy (Russian: Роман Владимирович Ямпольский) is a computer scientist at the University of Louisville, mostly known for his work on AI safety and cybersecurity. He is the founder and as of 2012 director of Cyber Security Lab, in the department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering of the University of Louisville. Source: wiki Steven Bartlett interviews Dr. Roman Yampolskiy on his The Diary of a CEO podcast which Spotify Wrapped ranked fifth in its list of the top five most popular podcasts in 2024. The interviews are always long, giving the listener (or viewer if you watch on YouTube) a good sense of the person being interviewed but this video is only about 20 minutes. As I’m collecting my thoughts, character arcs, conflicts, and other pieces of my Something About AI sequel (not yet named, I just call it Book 2) I’ve been watching a few interviews like this. It’s a way for an outsider like me to keep up with what’s happening in the AI space. These are some of my thoughts about this particular interview. Yampolskiy uses a term I haven’t heard before but now I won’t forget it: Uncontrolled Super Intelligence 1:07 Here we’re inventing a replacement for human mind. We are inventing a replacement for human mind. I’m intrigued by the idea that never before have humans invented something that can invent things. You rarely see AI referred to in this way. It’s easy to see how, in this context, AI can take over all the major aspects of human civilization. 1:58 “We as humans have this built-in bias about not thinking about really bad outcomes and things we cannot prevent.” This is something I’ve marveled about with regard to climate destabilization. In this case it’s not just
Continue readingThoughts on the Dr. Roman Yampolskiy Interview
Save Yourself Some Heartache
I was about nine years old when I wrote my first story, “Sawdust Tears”. It was my expression of grief over the leveling of our neighborhood woods. A place where all us kids played pretend, had a rigged up clubhouse, bike paths, and daily imagined our fantasies. It got leveled for a gas station. I let my father, my favorite parent, read the story and he laughed. I learned right then to not trust family and friends when it came to understanding or even appreciating my writings. This has been a lesson that has served me well through my life. It is a lesson in expectations. If you are a writer you will find that you, hopefully, have a handful of friends and family members who support you. Perhaps they’ve never even read what you’ve written but they are proud of you for your accomplishment. And, again, hopefully there will be a few who do and they’ll provide helpful constructive criticism and motivational support. Those people are treasures. I hope you have a few, like I do. That said, the vast majority will not. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve asked someone to read something or they’ve asked to read something and then the whole matter simply disappears never to be discussed again. Even if I’ve sent said masterpiece (ha!) to them. It is very important you not hold a grudge against these folks and here’s why. If you’re a reader you know that there are books you love, page turners you can’t put down, books you want to love but just cannot get going (I had to start Iain M. Banks’ Against A Dark Background four times!), books you try to read but just can’t understand (for me olde English kind of stuff), and stuff you just
What About Copyright?
A year or two ago I bought licenses for using Publisher Rocket and also Atticus so I am on Dave Chesson’s email distribution list. Mr Chesson is the CEO of Aegis Investments, and the founder of Publisher Rocket, Atticus and more. In an email received today, subject: Why copyright registration just became non-negotiable, Dave had this to say: “Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model, scraped hundreds of thousands of books from pirate sites. When the case went to court, the judge ruled that using pirated books isn’t fair use. The result? About 465,000 books were identified as part of the case, and the rights holders of those books are now eligible for payments of around $3k per title. But here’s what most people missed: Not every impacted author gets a check. Only those with registered copyrights are eligible.” So, is it true? Is this something else indy authors need to do? I had checked this out previously and from the copyright.gov/engage/writers page they state the following: If you want to dive into this deeper, on the Copyright.gov site, specifically the registration of literary works page, there are a bunch of resources for your learning experience that are as follows. Rather watch than read? The U.S. Copyright Office also has a YouTube channel. So, I thought, what the hell. I’ll do it. Some notes from the process are as follows. Here is where you create an Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) account: https://eservice.eco.loc.gov/siebel/app/eservice/enu?SWECmd=GotoView&SWEView=VBC+User+Registration+Initial+Form+View&SWERF=1&SWEHo=&SWEBU=1&SWEApplet0=VBC+User+Registration+Initial+Form+Applet&SWERowId0=VRId-0 Once I logged in I used the One Work by One Author I went through the eCO process and here are some of the decisions I made. After I finished I realized I’d probably made a mistake. I have two ISBNs assigned for my novel. One for the hardcopy paperback, the other for the eBook. I decided
To or Not To Create an Audiobook
The old school cassette recorder is funny, right? I had one just like that. When The Beatles album, Let It Be, came out I recorded it on a cassette so I could take it with me everywhere. At night I’d listen to it in bed using the one little ear bud that was the norm for such things back then. Ah, today there are many choices. I have been trained and have done voice over work (games & training videos). I wanted to do some audiobook recordings for LibriVox some years ago but dealing with the technical aspects of Audacity were tedious and I gave up. So when my cousin begged me (she said Please) to create an audiobook of my SAAI novel the first thoughts I had were how tedious that would be because I assumed I’d do it myself using Audacity. Me. The AI immersed silly woman did not, at first, think of using AI to convert my book. Me. The author who always uses the “Read Aloud” function in Microsoft Word as part of my editing process. I crack myself up. There are so many options out there for creating audiobooks it’s kind of hard to decide so here’s what I’ve learned in my pursuit of knowledge in that area. Of course, I eventually get around to asking my AI Assistant for help and was advised as follows. Q: What are the most secure (not risking my copyright) methods of using AI to create audiobooks? A. To create audiobooks using AI while protecting your copyright and creative control, you’ll want to focus on tools and workflows that respect authorship, offer licensing clarity, and minimize the risk of voice misuse or unauthorized distribution. Here’s a breakdown of the most secure methods: 🔐 1. Use AI Tools That Offer
Contests Motivate Me
Look for ways to challenge yourself. … Continue readingContests Motivate Me
Using AI on my novel: Something About AI
on my novel, Something About AI
… Continue readingUsing AI on my novel: Something About AI
KDP versus Barnes & Noble Press
A comparison of self-publishing on Barnes & Noble … Continue readingKDP versus Barnes & Noble Press