Month: September 2026

That Has Such Movies In’t

photog 2 Comments Current Events, Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , ,

What is called artificial intelligence or more specifically LLMs (Large Language Models) that can generate images and even video directly from text (Generative AI) is one of the most exciting technologies to emerge from the whole AI surge.  I have seen examples of video that looks as good as anything Hollywood creates with a mix of live action and CGI.  Which I guess isn’t surprising in one sense since this Generative AI, basically, is just another name for CGI.  But what is amazing to me is that what formerly was a technology that tech companies sold to movie studios for millions of dollars is now at the beck and call of anyone with access to ChatGPT.

And honestly, I can’t claim to know just how usable these AI videos are from a commercial point of view.  Could someone with a reasonable understanding of movie-making produce something that people would pay money to stream?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But what is fascinating is that I believe it’s already starting to happen.  Recently several movies have gotten into the theaters that weren’t produced by Hollywood.  Several YouTube “influencers” have parlayed their eight-figure viewing audiences into a multi-million-dollar box office payday by producing their own movies.  Now granted, these forays into independent cinema haven’t been particularly dependent on Generative AI.  Just the opposite.  The two most popular examples I can think of used almost nothing but “practical effects.”

But recently several completely AI generated movies have been exhibited at major film festivals and even streamed on Amazon.  Now none of these have made any appreciable money.  But that may be because the movies suck as stories.  After all, Disney has proven that you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a CGI masterpiece and still produce a story so stupid that no one wants to see it.  But the point is if you are at all tech savvy you can now make a short sci-fi movie that looks as good as Hollywood for between $500 to $5,000.  That is earth-shaking.

To me that means we are less than a couple of years until we will see tiny studios making movies that are good enough to see in a theater but have no gate-keepers whatsoever between the creators and the audience.  That is a startling thing.  Some young version of Stanley Kubrick will make his version of 2001: A Space Odyssey in his basement with the help of a “film crew” of less than a dozen people.  He’ll make a masterpiece for about $20,000 and it will make a billion dollars and an earthquake will swallow up Hollywood completely.  Think of it, all of the bloated, studio budgets and absurd rules that dictate which and how many DEI hires have to be directors, actors and producers will disappear overnight and some much saner award will be handed out for the movie that gets the most views and the highest viewer ratings.

Well, anyway, that’s the dream.  How it really turns out will be interesting.  Amazon, Netflix and the rest of the streaming services will be the ones to harness the new creators that will appear along with these new video tools.  But they’re not entrenched in the old studio systems, at least not to the degree that Hollywood is.  I think they’ll see opportunities aplenty in nurturing independent studios; at least after some of them produce stories people want to see.  And that’s already happening.  “O brave new world, / That has such movies in’t!”

 

15SEP2026 – Quote of the Day

photog 2 Comments Quote of the Day ,

In the first place, it is not improper to observe, that the law of cases of necessity is not likely to be well furnished with precise rules; necessity creates the law, it supersedes rules; and whatever is reasonable and just in such cases, is likewise legal; it is not to be considered as matter of surprise, therefore, if much instituted rule is not to be found on such subjects.

William Scott

The End of Marketing

photog 1 Comment My Fiction, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Sunday, it rained cats and dogs so no antique car show.  Now, maybe they had the car show anyway but standing out in the pouring rain to look at and photograph old cars isn’t something I’d do without a compelling motive.  So, I spent the day staring at my Amazon dashboard deciding whether day five of the promo would over- or under- perform.  As it turned out it was a very good day.  Here it is 8:40 pm and the order count for the day has already exceeded 600 and that drives the grand total for the five days well above 3,500 books.  Interestingly, these free books haven’t slowed down the Kindle Unlimited page sales.  In fact, the count so far today is 688 pages which is the best I’ve ever had.

I can assume that the final book count will be between 3,500 and 3,700 books.  And I think that is a very nice result.  I would say 3,500+ books will be a fair test of the theory that a large promo giveaway will provide a noticeable increase in the visibility of the book.  And the fact that my Kindle Unlimited sales have increased seems to be the first evidence of that.  The other hint I’ve seen is an uptick in the rate of Amazon reviews showing up on my book page.  And by the way, the latest three have been five star, which doesn’t hurt.

I’m assuming the sale ends at midnight and by Monday morning when I awake “The Sniper” will have sunk well below the top 100 in the Kindle Store.  But the fact that it reached 60 on that list and was seen by all kinds of readers will (hopefully) convince people that even $0.99 isn’t too much to pay for a masterfully crafted book.  And $0.99 is where the price will remain for the remainder of the Based Book Sale ending Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 12:00 AM PDT.  After that I’ll restore the normal $4.99 e-book price.

I’ll update this sometime tomorrow morning with the final numbers before heading into work.  But I will say that the promo by Written Word Media (the company that controls FreeBooksy and the other lists) went very smoothly and without a hiccup.  And that is a welcome change compared with the many complicated and uncoordinated activities associated with writing, publishing and marketing a book.

Well, it’s time for me to stop tweaking my first book’s sales and start writing the sequel.  You know, after all this marketing “stuff” I feel energized to start putting together the new story.  As I told Camera Girl I want to outline this story thoroughly instead of “discovering” the plot like I did with the first.  In fact, I might even outline more than the next book.  I have an idea that I’ll be pushing separate books in very different directions within my “universe.”  I’m going to need a book just for Cutter and Mel.  And I think Connors will need a book that allows him to start a social engineering program.  And I want to figure out where Grace and her kids end up.  I’ll have to discuss with Camera Girl whether forcing Connors and Grace onto a “date” makes any sense.  Also, I need to create a few new characters.  One of them will be an extremely high IQ type with the obligatory anti-social quirks.  And I need wise guy to make fun of things.  He’ll be like me but less diplomatic and better at fighting.  And last but not least I can’t forget Bogey.  Last we saw he was headed to a country music venue with a cute waitress.  I want to find out how that went.

 

Update 8:30 AM

FINAL RESULTS OF MY 5-DAY PROMOTIONAL GIVEAWAY:

Best Sellers Rank: #60 Free in Kindle Store

#1 in Technothrillers (Kindle Store)

#1 in Political Thrillers & Suspense

#2 in Military Thrillers (Kindle Store)

(all best seller ranks maximum during promotion)

 

Overall promo total 9/14/2026, 8”21 am, 3,632 e-books

Order total for 9/13/2026 (including 25 book overflow into 9/14/2026): 717 e-books

Today is the sixth day of the Based Book Sale https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/the-2026-basedcon-based-book-sale

my 5-day Amazon giveaway promotion for “The Sniper” https://amazon.com/dp/B0G7WRJJPH

2026 Autumnal Activities

photog 10 Comments Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Photography ,

So, Camera Girl and I are walking through our annual farewell to summer ritual.  Today I picked the very last string beans and the crops of raspberries and her beloved grape tomatoes are visibly shrinking down to the end.  She picked the last eggplants but they were too small to eat.  The pool has been closed for a couple of weeks and now I’m putting away all the chairs and tables and stuff for the winter.  Even the Japanese beetles are dying off and today I saw one of the preying mantids looking lonely for something juicy to eat.  Although he seemed to be making due on small red dragonflies.  These fliers are still prevalent but also seem to be running out of food.  The various flowers are almost all dying.  The only thing that hasn’t bloomed yet are the Montauk Daisies and the Wolfbane.  I guess there are still plenty of bees; bumble and honey, but there seems to be a desperation in the way they jump around on the goldenrod trying to get all the nectar and pollen before their neighbors get to it.

And with the kids all back in school, it’s a little too quiet for Camera Girl.  She takes it to heart when the grandkids aren’t around for more than a week at a time.  I try to cheer her by reminding her how exhausting it can be when the summer schedule fills up a couple of weeks with back, to back, to back kids’ events.  Well, that wasn’t a good idea.  It just got her mad at me!  So, I just sympathize with her grandmaternal feelings and remind her that a plethora of birthday parties are sure to be starting up soon and she’ll be satisfyingly exhausted before she knows it.

And Camera Girl has lived up to her name lately she has spotted a number of photographic subjects for me.  She let me know that there was a hawk perched on the back of the bench that we put next to her new pond.  I got a bunch of shots through the living room window with the 400-600mm lens.  The contrast wasn’t as good as I would have liked but when I download them, I hope they’re passably good.  She also spotted a big green (so she tells me) caterpillar on a walk we took in the park.  We took it home for photos and it turned out to be a type of sphynx moth (white-lined sphinx moth; Hyles lineata).  I was trying to keep it to hatch out the moth but the darned thing didn’t know it was supposed to like tomato plant leaves.  So, I let the recalcitrant larva go on its way.

Tomorrow we are thinking about going to an antique car show which is something that people around Dunwich seem to do a lot.  But we’ll have to see.  Tomorrow is the last day of my five-day promotional book giveaway and I’ve been like some kind of fanatic watching the dashboard tickers recording the orders.  I’m kind of obsessed.  But maybe I’ll tear myself away to see Henry Ford’s innovative horseless carriages paraded down the streets of various Dunwich environs.  Enjoy the day.