Category: My Fiction

Here are my own stories. Science fiction and fantasy mostly but other things may be added too.

Ay, There’s the Rub

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Lately there has been an enormous storm of controversy about AI being used in fiction writing.  Recently it came out that a self-published story that became quite popular was subsequently picked up by a major publishing house and re-issued with the full weight and authority of this powerhouse including professional editing and a new cover.  But then someone looked closely at the self-published edition and saw that not only was it significantly different from the professionally published edition but that the original was obviously a product of AI.  Now, that caused a firestorm and the publisher withdrew the book permanently.

But a cloud of questions swirl around the affair.  Surely the editors who revised the self-published edition must have recognized that they were dealing with a product of AI writing.  Why would they have purchased this title.  It’s assumed the reason was because the book had already found a ready audience and so the motive was monetary.  But there are other factors.  The authoress Mia Ballard is African American and Native American.  In other words, in the world of intersectional identity bingo she was a three-fer!  And so, she was exactly the kind of person that Hachette wanted for their imprint.  But there still remained the fact that she got a bot to write her story.  And that someone blew the whistle on her.  Of course, she claimed that it was an editor who added the AI sections and what she had written was her own.  Oh boy, that’s gonna be a bunch of lawsuits (or it’s just talk that won’t go anywhere).

Of course, the editors are defending themselves by saying that AI detection programs are far from infallible and so they aren’t to blame.  But supposedly the content was pretty obviously terribly written.  Of course, that really makes it interesting that the self-published book was such a hit on Goodreads with over four thousand reviews.  And that would once again jibe with the idea that the “bio” of the writer was one of the big reasons the book was so popular.

The whole scandal seems to show just what a mess the publishing industry has gotten itself into with identity politics becoming the most important factor by which authors and storylines are selected by big publishing houses for their imprimatur.  I guess the same problem is playing out with books that Hollywood is suffering from with their heavy-handed woke propaganda pictures.  People are staying away in droves and the monetary losses have finally gotten so severe that they’ve been forced to drop most of the woke plot elements just to lure paying customers back to the theaters.

Well, now that I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to self-publish a book I can say that a large part of the satisfaction in writing a book has to be because the author enjoys his creation.  Other than the one in a million phenom that finds the sweet spot in the self-publishing universe everyone else is talking to a small audience and in my opinion the only real failure is if you know that your book isn’t good enough for you yourself to read it for pleasure.

But how soon before AI slop is better than Shakespeare?  Ay, there’s the rub.

Book Writing and Blogging

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Writing “The Sniper” was a massive learning experience for me.  Not only does it take up a lot of time but it also makes it much harder to do other things at the same time.  And vice versa!  Working, blogging and taking care of my other responsibilities really slowed down my book writing performance drastically.  And the time has come to begin writing the sequel.

So, something is going to have to give.  My decision is to cut back on the blogging.  Believe it or not even knocking out five hundred words has been taking a couple of hours.  And when I’m doing it at ten or eleven at night the quality has been way down.  The old brain just doesn’t click like it used to at that hour.

So, what I see happening is the posts will be hit and miss.  I’ll be able to keep the photos and quotes going without much strain.  But if I find myself scrambling for a theme, I’ll let it slide until I’ve got one that makes sense.  Quality over quantity.  It makes sense.

So, my apologies for my laziness but I am a man with definite limits.

Keeping My Options Open

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One of my oldest friends has been advising me on the possibility of making a film treatment out of my book and sending it to Hollywood to become the next “Project Hail Mary.”  What immediately came to my mind was Hollywood taking the story and making the evil president, Donald Trump and making Bogey a leftist trans-woman.  Yikes!

But what was surprising is that there is actually an AI capable of taking my story and converting it directly into a film treatment.  And it has an enormous capability to annotate the details necessary for actually filming the thing.  There are notes on casting each of the characters (appearance, age, personality, voice), locations, special effects, visual effects, weapons, special personnel (e.g., armorer), special equipment, weapons, etc.

And then it used the dialog from the book and adapted it for the screen; shortened and elided from it to bring the screen time into a realistic movie length.

Now I haven’t finished going through this document but so far what I’ve seen seems very interesting.  It’s basically my book.  And that’s exciting.  I was assuming the story would be too long for a movie without very serious pruning of scenes that I’m attached to.  But we’ll see.

Now, I’m aware that Hollywood doesn’t make movies from books that don’t sell millions of copies.  They’re looking for a built-in fan base for their product.  So, no studio in their right minds would take a chance on spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on an unknown story.  But it’s always fun to dream about these things.

And that brings me to Andy Weir’s story.  He self-published “The Martian” on Amazon and only eventually got a book deal when he had already built up an audience for it on his own.  And now he has two hit movies made from his books.  Think about that.  Someone who couldn’t get a publishing contract ends up with a smash hit movie that everyone in Hollywood probably hates because it has a white guy as its hero and he doesn’t have the usual diversity cast to allow the movie to be an Oscar contender.  They broke all of Hollywood’s rules to make this movie by not having a girl-boss as the hero surrounded by the usual multi-cultural struggle session ensemble.  It just brings tears to my eyes.

Chances are I won’t be duplicating Weir’s experience.  My book is not an uplifting tale of human endeavor.  Mine is a tale of revenge and destruction.  I openly attack the Left and my heroes are identifiable people on the Right.  So, no.  I won’t be getting a Hollywood deal.  Ever!

But despite all that I’m excited about what is now happening in Hollywood.  The Ellisons bought Paramount and have now shut down the travesty that was Star Trek – Star Fleet Academy.  They’re buying Warner Brothers and they’ll probably shut down the people making terrible stuff like “Supergirl” that’s coming out soon.  And now we see Amazon/MGM making stuff like “Project Hail Mary (PHM).”  That’s a pretty good chunk of Hollywood already.  And with PHM looking like it’s going to break the $600 million mark and become a big moneymaker, even places like Netflix and Disney will say to themselves, “Hey, why can’t we get into some of that “normal film-making” that those other guys are doing and make money for a change?  Let’s call that photog guy and get an option on, “The Sniper” before the Ellisons scoop it up.”

Or something like that!

How the Mighty Hath Fallen

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So, I put a chapter of “The Sniper” up on Royal Road about a week ago.  And shortly afterward I received a rejection from them because the story was also on Amazon and this website (OCF) and I had to prove to them that both those copies belonged to me.  They wanted me to add in my Amazon Jake Barter author page that I was putting the story up on Royal Road.  So, I had to figure out how to do that and whether this would cause a bad reaction by Amazon.  After all, Amazon sells my book for money and Royal Road lets people read it for free.  Well, the day before yesterday I tried putting up the statement about Royal Road but the author page rejected the edit.  It turns out that I couldn’t use Royal Road’s actual internet address on Amazon but I could just use the name of the site.  And then I had to prove that OCF was my website by a similar message and then, voila!  They put the first chapter of my book up on their site and so far, nine people have read it.  Well, that not much.  But I figure it’ll be fun to see if I can get much interest on that site.

Apparently, Gen Z frequents the site to read fan fic called “Lit RPG.”  Now, my book is neither fan fic nor Lit RPG.  So, it’s not certain that I will find an audience there.  But I’m interested in testing the waters.  I also put it up at BookFunnel and the good folks over at Whatfinger were kind enough to put up a link to that site and I got 14 e-mail addresses of people who downloaded the book there.  So, a little at a time I’m getting more visibility for the book.  I’m at 187 sales on Amazon and I’ve accumulated 34 ratings and 29 reviews with a cumulative rating of 4.7 and some very nice reviews that were definitely encouraging.

Once the experiments on Royal Road and BookFunnel have run their course I intend to put the book on KDP Select which requires the book to be exclusively on Amazon for at least 90 days.  Supposedly the low-cost barrier to reading on this program will attract the maximum number of “eyeballs” to the story and I’m very curious to see how that effects sales.  And I’m not particularly hoping to make a lot more money that way but rather I’m hoping for much more exposure.

So, the great book publishing experiment grinds on.  My hopes for international fortune and fame have been dashed on the sharp rocks of harsh reality.  My dream of movie studio executives battling each other in front of the Compound to see whose blockbuster offer would land the movie rights to this timeless masterpiece has gone up in smoke.  At this point I’m negotiating with the Dunwich Middle School to have the sixth grade put on a one act play version of Chapter 1.  Is this how Heinlein got started?  How, the mighty hath fallen.

Thinking of Humor

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If you go through my entire book looking for moments of humor, I think there are fewer than ten.  And that is counting sarcasm as humor.  I’m guessing that in an adventure story that’s probably not unusual.  With a team of men that know each other pretty well, there will be a certain amount of banter which can be defined as humor.  But, I don’t feel like I’ve fallen below some critical thresh-hold of comedic content.

But, at the same time, I have to confess that comedy is one of the things I greatly enjoy in stories.  To my mind stories that do not have a certain amount of humor seem flat and lacking in interest.  And for that reason, I was recently wondering if I could introduce a character in my next book that is a “wise guy.”  And by wise guy I’m not thinking of the Good Fellas definition of an Italian American mobster as a wise guy.  I’m harking back to my childhood when every block had at least one guy who was the clown.  In my neighborhood we had a kid who today would equate most closely to an insult comic.  He was a mimic and he could find a way to mock anyone and everyone.  This often earned him at least a mild beating if the victims of his mockery pooled their strength to grapple him to the ground and pummel him until he shut up.  But it was almost as if he couldn’t help himself.  He was a slave to his craft.

Now I don’t intend to try and recreate that type of juvenile humor but I think I could make a character who doesn’t know when to shut up.  I’m guessing I’d have to do a lot of work editing the dialog from this character because obviously that’s the kind of thing that pretty easily can be taken too far.  As an example, look at the movie Dead Pool.  This character shoots an almost endless series of insulting jokes at every other character in range regardless of whether they’re friends or enemies.  For the most part it’s entertaining but at some points it can become wearisome.  So, I understand that doing comedy “right” is a matter of balance and skill.  And the other part of it is providing the “comic” with a foil; a straight man.  So Dead Pool needs the haplessly earnest Colossus as the butt of a lot of his jokes.  Building up a duo like that must be handled carefully so that these two characters can be more than caricatures.  And all of this mustn’t take away from the main action of the story but merely come off as the personalities of the characters involved.  It needs to seem organic to the relationship of the people involved.

Now after talking all that through, it seems like this would be a lot of work for not much gain to the story.  But for whatever reason, I’m excited by the idea.  Making the characters real seems to be as important to the writer as making the action exciting.  I’ve found myself actually caring for my make-believe people as if they were real.  Well, anyway, tonight I was thinking of humor.

It’s a Wonderful Life

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Since I’ve had to use YouTube to learn how to perform the various tasks associated with publishing a book, my YouTube feed has filled up with the various subjects that authors seem to get involved with.  So, I’ve been bombarded with videos on every aspect of writing, editing and marketing books.  But this week I seem to have arrived at the crazy outer reaches of the book publishing ecosystem; namely, sensitivity readers.  Now I had heard of alpha readers and beta readers.  These are the first people you give your book to in order to get feedback on the story from normal people.  This all makes sense to me.  But sensitivity readers are something entirely different.  Apparently, these are people who go through your book looking for reasons to be offended by your story.

Sensitivity readers will read your book and then provide you with hundreds of notes on all of the ways that whatever you say can offend a multitude of easily “triggered” types of people.  One video talked about how story lines and even characters can upset a whole host of fragile readers.  Women, minorities, blind people, deaf people, paraplegics, quadriplegics, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, queers, “non-binary,” all the various kinds of “trans” people, women wearing septum rings, antifa supporters, pacifists, the homeless, meth heads, heroin addicts, other drug addicts, women with blue hair, the lactose intolerant, the gluten intolerant, vegans, poor people, pedophiles, other sex offenders, dyslexics, the neurodivergent, ADHD individuals and many, many more.  The only ones they left out were the red-green color blind.  That really ticked me off.

I looked at this list and realized that many of the people on this list might be offended by my book.  After all my protagonist unleashes a non-lethal chemical attack on an antifa riot that includes many blue-haired women with septum rings and several sex offenders in their ranks.  Without even trying I had unknowingly transgressed against the boundaries meant to be protected by sensitivity readers.

This made me sad.

Then I found out how much these people charge for their service (0.5 to 2.0 cents per word).  For my book that would come out to between $325 to $1300.  So, that’s a lot of money!  Plus, I read that they literally come up with hundreds of items that must be “fixed.”  Hundreds.  That would take weeks to edit.  So, I would be paying someone many hundreds of dollars to make even more work for myself at the same time as she made my book much less enjoyable for my target audience; normal people.

Well, I decided not to hire a sensitivity reader.  But I felt guilty.  So, to assuage my grief I instead watched a bunch of videos about sensitivity readers.  And it worked out great.  These videos are hilarious.  To hear the various absurdities that get brought up by sensitivity readers to these terrified writers is to experience comedic genius.  The things these people worry about are stunningly stupid.  They’re worried about elves and goblins in fantasy stories being mistaken as dog whistles for different races and ethnicities.  They worry about people being cured of diseases in the story making readers who have those diseases upset.  And the funniest thing of all, the readers and the writers look exactly how you would imagine people who worry about such things would look like.  It’s a wonderful life.

The Psychology of the Individual and What Not

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So now I have to start writing book two of my series.  And boy, that’s a wide-open operation.  You see I wrote the book based on the idea of a father’s revenge.  And all the stuff that grew out of that was seat of the pants writing that came to me as things that would make the story more fun.  I invented Connors to give Bogey a powerful friend who owed him.  I invented Cutter to facilitate the impossible task of Bogey being invisible to the surveillance state.  I invented Chastain to have a conflicted antagonist to provide resistance to the protagonist but also acknowledge the justice of his cause.  All of these major characters and the plot elements they involve just grew out of the desire to tell Bogey’s story in an interesting and dramatic way.  But Bogey’s crusade is over.  He won.  He steps out of the center stage.  Now what?

It’s not an easy question to answer because I need a direction to go.  Certain things are now baked in.  The United States government nuked some of its own citizens.  A shadowy tech giant took down Washington DC with a technology nobody (including me!) truly understands.  This weakened United States is struggling to hold onto the allegiance of many states that have seen its unjust criminal actions exposed and want to free themselves from its tyrannical control.  That’s a lot of stuff going on.  It’s like the cue ball hitting the racked balls on the nose and scattering them across the table.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put things back together again.  So, we have to dodge around the flying wreckage and wait for the ricochets to subside before planning the next move.  Of course, I could cheat and place the next story five, ten or even twenty years into the future and announce some faits accomplis as ancient history.  And I know that is the lazy way out but, after all, I am an extremely lazy man.

But all of that is still only the window dressing of the story.  Hanging together a future history is relatively easy.  What I really need is another character with as compelling a problem as Bogey had with his son.  But really the two elements are linked.  Bogey’s problem grew out of the injustice of the society he lived in and his war against this injustice gives the story its trigger but the larger effect also has to be an interesting story too.  So, I need another personal story wrapped up in the tumult I have set loose on my imaginary world.  So, what I’m looking for is a personal story that is tied up in the larger actions that I’ve unleashed and that takes the world in a direction I think will be interesting and lead to further stories and actions beyond.  The only problem is where to start.  Hmmm.

“I fear I have nothing to suggest at the moment, sir.”

“Come, come, Jeeves!” 

“I fear not, sir. Possibly after I have seen the lady—-“

“You mean, you want to study the psychology of the individual and what

not?”

“Precisely, sir.”

An Honest Review

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In the last few days, I’ve been getting a few more reviews on Amazon for the “The Sniper.”  And today I got my first somewhat negative comments.  Take a look.


4.0 out of 5 stars Uneven political thriller good for a slow day

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2026

Format: Kindle

The Sniper is a good, but uneven political thriller.
It’s not particularly deep, but entertaining. I liked the plot. I liked most of the characters.
The lack of a star was in the author’s (and maybe the editor’s) lack of basic writing. While the beginning of the novel is a great premise, the lack of detail is astonishing. It’s like someone describing a video game, but just the broad strokes. I read for the details.
The other nitpicky thing is that the basics of prose dialogue is ignored entirely. An exchange between two characters is all one paragraph. And then there’s the commas (or lack thereof). It’s the classic of “Is it Thanksgiving or cannibalism?”
It’s a casual read. If you can read past the details, the general plot is pretty good.

 

Very interesting.

The Good:

  • The Sniper is a good … political thriller.
  • … entertaining. I liked the plot. I liked most of the characters.
  • … the beginning of the novel is a great premise
  • … the general plot is pretty good

The Bad:

  • … uneven
  • It’s not particularly deep
  • … the lack of detail is astonishing. It’s like someone describing a video game, but just the broad strokes. I read for the details.
  • If you can read past the details

The Ugly:

  • The other nitpicky thing is that the basics of prose dialogue is ignored entirely. An exchange between two characters is all one paragraph. And then there’s the commas (or lack thereof). It’s the classic of “Is it Thanksgiving or cannibalism?”

Yes, very interesting.  First of all, this is honest criticism.  This fellow doesn’t know me from Adam and he doesn’t owe me anything.  That’s valuable to someone who wants to know whether his writing is any good.  So, look at the things he likes; “entertaining. I liked the plot. I liked most of the characters.”  Those are the most important basics of a story.  That’s pretty good.

Look at the criticism; “uneven, not particularly deep, lack of details are astonishing.”  He wants more!  Okay, that’s a problem.  This reader probably wants lots more technical description.  So, in terms of the mining equipment and the technology for collapsing the earth under a city he wants the details.  Fair enough.  Well, there will be sequels and we can get that stuff fleshed out to satisfy the technical type.  But since this book was about Bogey and he wasn’t a technical guy, I left that stuff aside.  When Connors and Cutter get their stories, I’ll geek out on the details.  So that’s okay.

Now for the ugly, I’m guessing that the reviewer was an author or an editor himself.  I decided not to use a professional proofreader/editor for the book.  I felt comfortable with the level of standard English I could provide.  The reviewer is obviously very sensitive to the conventions of professional editing.  And that’s legitimate but I’m guessing a lot of my readers won’t be as sensitive to that level of editorial finish.

So, I’m pretty happy with that review.  I got an honest review and four out of five stars is pretty damn good news.  So, I’m hoping to get a bunch more reviews and who knows I might even get an honest 3 stars from someone.  I can take it.

Time to Make the Donuts

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So, I’m busy, busy, busy with my giveaway on BookFunnel (here’s the link).  I’m also seeing if I can put part or all of it up on a site called Royal Road.  And I’m posting links on my X feed to try to connect with the wider world.  And if any of you want a free copy or have any friends who might like the story, please pass the link along to them.

Well, in addition to all this I’ve been drafted into a publicity campaign for the Dunwich Republicans.  I’ve got to awaken a “sleeping giant.”  But it’s more like a geriatric midget in a coma.  So even if I can drum up new blood, I’m afraid they’ll just show up, hear there’s work to be done and say, “Looks like you’re doing a great job.  CARRY ON!!!

But one must do the best one can.  As old TR used to remind us it’s “The Man in the Arena” that counts.  Unfortunately, I feel more like the Christian being fed to the lions in that arena.

Well, the weather is just as uncertain as ever with one day being seventy degrees and the next day featuring snow flurries but we’ve definitely turned a corner and the Great Southern Ice Sheet is barely a foot thick and receding rapidly.  All the spring flowers are budding and the turtles are sitting on the dead log in the swamp.  The mallards must be awaiting the hatching of their eggs and even the local pair of hawks seem to be hyperactive, probably getting food for their nest.

Listening to Andy Weir talk to the Critical Drinker about his book “The Martian” was kind of exciting.  I think anyone who writes a book secretly desires to be that guy who hits the jackpot and has the world beat a path to his door.  I mean, I know it’s ridiculously unlikely for a number of reasons for my book to be a big seller.  It’s in a very restricted corner of the marketplace based on politics and demographics and trying to get advertising is like pulling teeth.  But I confess I not-so-secretly dream of the book going viral and selling tons and tons of copies.  I guess when the dust settles, I’ll probably be in a funk for a while but I think it was still a good experience to try my hand at something I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager.

And I’ll say that I don’t think that writing a good book is beyond my talents.  But self-publishing and self-marketing is not for the faint of heart.  It takes money and a lot of hard work to promote a book in the current marketplace.  And that’s the part I don’t enjoy at all.  Playing cat and mouse with the Amazon algorithm isn’t my idea of a fun occupation.  It’s more like going to the dentist’s office than something associated with creativity.

Ah well.  Whine, whine, whine.  Time to make the donuts.  Onward and upward.  Excelsior!

Book Funnel Sniper Giveaway

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That’s right get your free pdf copy of “The Sniper.” All that’s needed is to provide your e-mail address and view my harrangue at the end of the book to leave a review on Amazon. What’s fairer than that? Don’t answer that! It’s a rhetorical question as part of my sales pitch.  Let me know if there are any problems with the download.  This is my first attempt to use BookFunnel.

 

Click Here for Link to Sniper Giveaway