Next week, Dead Country hits shelves. Earlier this week my monkey-mind was more restless even than usual, in a way that often signals nerves, or a grievous mistake as regards caffeine intake. I found myself going on deep dives, spiraling about machine learning and ChatGPT and fiction and politics and all the other things you’re seeing in all your other newsletters, and, well, you’ll probably see me write something about ChatGPT in this space when I have enough time to play with it (the only times I’ve been able to visit, the site has been death-hugged) but for the moment I’ve really valued Robin Sloan’s take, particularly the infrastructure/longshoreman analogy, and Cat Valente’s recent newsletter for sheer gutfeel. At any rate, I was so sure I was nervous that it took a while to realize I’m actually excited.
Here we are: new Craft books. A new chapter and a new direction for the series. I’ve been working toward this for years, and now I get to share it. SOON.
I’ll be back in your inbox soon to talk about the release and the state of the project; today let’s kick up our heels and relax. In the meantime, I have a few gifts for your ears, along with the Les Mis earworm above.
Earlier this week, Brian McClellan hosted me on his podcast. We talked about writing fantasy series, reading for fictional technique, animation, and a host of other things. It was a really fun peer-to-peer conversation, with lots of -good back-and-forth about different perspectives on book and series writing, in fantasy in particular, and about shifts in writing style over time. Give it a listen!
Bookburners is back! The fine folks at Realm (formerly Serial Box) are releasing the full run of Bookburners as a podcast, free and clear on the open wi-fi. Bookburners is an urban fantasy procedural co-written by Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, Andrea Phillips, Brian Francis Slattery, and yours truly. Our tale follows an eclectic team of investigators working for a Vatican’s secret Archive, tasked with finding magical and demonic books around the world and locking them away to protect the populace. Between kick-ass monster fights and hidden temple exploration and magical tattoo parlors, the series goes long on questions of censorship, power, transformation, revolution, rebirth—of whether ‘saving the world’ is possible or even to be wished. And XE Sands’ narration is tremendous. We were number 2 on the US Podcast Fiction charts recently (number 1 in Canada)—see what all the fuss is about.
Take it easy. Order Dead Country. I’ll see you in a few days!
Damn you Max! I JUST got that out of my head after my husband started school on Wednesday!
I’ll start here and say that ChatGPT and its Bing equivalent scare the hell out of me. On the most minor level, I get to endure the rants from my husband and other programmer friends who are correct in that there is no true AI. These boys are recombining and regurgitating what is fed to them on the net. Which is how we get reports of them trying to talk people INTO mass shootings.
My fear is not of the not actually intelligent artificial intelligences. My fear is of the not actually intelligent humans using them.
Also, I’ve had Dead Country pre-ordered for what feels like years.