A good book

 Sometimes you run into a book, and it is so good, it motivates you to get writing. I wanted to spotlight for a moment a book I read recently that I enjoyed. Itarah 1: Rabbit Hole has some interesting, almost reverse, tropes. The main character is kind of the kid, well, grandson really, of authority in a repressive order. You can read the full review here.

Having something so unconventional is inspiring in a way. After all, Maleki is a very unconventional story. 

I’ll also disclose here that it was a while ago that I read this book. And if you saw my last post on the blog, you know I’m not in the best place right now. Maybe finding another good read is what I need to do next. And actually, if you have a really good read and want me to review it, feel free to send it to me; maybe it will be the thing I need to get me out of this funk.

I've been in a funk.

In theory, I'm supposed to share updates on how the book is going. We were supposed to be launched at this point. Unfortunately, I'm in a bit of a funk right now. I kind of don't want to explain why, so you can listen here. 

In light of everything, I'm not sure when Brotherhood of Light ARC copies are going out. If you want one though, here is the sign-up. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjqRajmdqzC4m6vjW4moxfQ0yX0_BWjdPfom-w2sOKKnlUXg/viewform?usp=header

Book Accompanying Video Game - Stratagem: Flagbearer

    In anticipation of the first book release in the Realms of Manetera Anthology, I commissioned a game to assist its marketing. Stratagem: Flagbearer is a companion to Brotherhood of Light by Ricky Hirschi.

    While the development time for this game took 2 weeks, the preparation actually was closer to 10 years. About 6 years ago I had this idea to make a modern chess, yet turn-based strategy had existed for quite some time however both sides being balanced not as much. I'd even spent 6 months studying chess and different strategies to win a match.

    Most of the inspiration comes from The Third Age (Lord of the Rings) on the Gameboy Advance. My papa had told me that when he was younger he'd played a lot of Game of Generals. Which to me is the spiritual successor of chess. So to make this game I combined the original chess, game of generals (not to be confused with Stratego), and some turn-based strategy to make this one. I hope you enjoy, here are some screenshots as well as the cover art! You can find the game on evergreenrealms.com.

Curating the AI Art into Fine Art

We'd done a post about some of the principal characters of Brotherhood of Light, and I figured they needed to be more accurate to the book. Additionally, these are some of the better art that AI had generated (Gemini, Co-Pilot, Chat-GPT). Chat-GPT or as I call it Chat-GPG used to be peak at making edits to photos, right now it is merely mid. You can still sort of guide it to where you want yet now after the update a week ago that includes an update to not edit messages sent, it now takes 3x longer to get a photo how you'd like it. The one with Brundin and Eloisa took several attempts and in my opinion should've only taken two. 

Needless to say it is like Gandalf the White entering the Hall of Edoras and saying, "Your courtesy has lessened as of late Theoden King!" If King Theoden was under the spell of mediocrity and mid-ness. Alas! It is a notable downgrade, down from 5 stars to 3.5 in my eyes.

My sincerest desire that our audience is looking forward in anticipation for Brotherhood of Light. Going through it now to do some proofreading.

Two moon-crossed lovers. 

His leg is sinking into the sand.

Hammer Time. Brundin taking a ceremonial photo 

Exuding stoicism.

Little Grey. No this is not a bearded halfling!

The little troublemaker himself.

The author Ricky wanted him to wear primary color green clothes. Yet I do feel that is too cliché as green is a rather safe choice for fantasy people's. He said that it is meant to be a joke, his clothes and name should not match. What do you all think, funny?

Yet another status update

 Editing is tough. I guess that is the gist of everything I have to say right now. I’m still working through some of my editor’s comments on Brotherhood. It is taking way longer than I thought it would. I guess with Maleki, after getting my editor’s comments and reading through them, it took me a full year or so to pick the book back up and edit it. So, in that regard, I guess I’m doing better. Still, I hope to eventually get my books in front of a larger audience. Even my own mother doesn’t want to read them, but I guess that is because they are fantasy, which apparently isn’t her genre.

As I write this, I’m brought to reminisce about a book I recently finished reading for Leaf Bound Review called Stray. In this book, some of the sections are writings on a message board of sorts, kind of like this blog in a way. The poster at times says there are perhaps a few Ukrainians who read his work. I kind of feel the same way. I say all this into the ether and hope something is heard. I’m not sure it is. In any case, though, the writing continues, albeit slowly.

By way of another update, I still don’t think I’ve figured out how to get email addresses for a newsletter. I guess that is something to explore shortly as well.

Ok, maybe some AI art

 Okay, so I might have overstated this in the last update. Lejus-Li is fine with AI art and actually likes it. His issue was that I was just including too many options in each post.

Still, I think the idea was kind of fun. I definitely overdid it because it was easy to make, and honestly, it was a little fun to see the characters I created visually. It might have helped my process a bit to see them visually like that.

In any case, if I wasn't clear before, I am still using AI to help edit the book. It's good at picking up my typos and whatnot. This isn't a replacement for a human editor by any means, and I have a human editor looking at Brotherhood and Maleki right now!

In fact, I think that's what the holdup is right now. Well, there are a lot of holdups. The other two are me reworking the covers and cover art (or, well, maybe getting some help in that regard), and coming up with a launch plan. I also used AI for that, so the plan actually looks pretty good. It's just a matter of executing on it, which is harder.

I hope to have a bigger email list for all this, too. I haven't had much success in that regard yet.

As I probably said before, it's easier now than ever to write and produce a novel. It's harder than ever to actually get attention for your writing. I'm definitely not going to solve that problem tonight. But hopefully, we can bring a fun story to some people.

No more AI Art

 Andrew isn't loving all the AI art content, so if you're reading this, it's probably the end of that. I'm not sure yet if we're going back to AI-written content either. I think it's pretty concerning to have a bunch of AI-written slop on our website while trying to convince people to buy a book that doesn't have any AI slop in it. That mismatch feels kind of problematic. So that leaves written content like this: me and a computer, probably a bit of a rambly mess, maybe talking about the struggles of the craft.

While I don't use AI to write the book, I do sometimes consult it during edits. AI is actually pretty good at catching typos and that kind of thing. It doesn't seem able to help much with a developmental edit, but it's often good at picking up mistakes on a line level. That said, it won't really tell you how to fix the error, or it will, but take it with a grain of salt. It's decent at identifying issues, bad at fixing them. You probably need to do that part yourself.

Anyway, the point of this post was to explain how I'm stepping away from AI usage, not to explain how I still use it.

If there's content you'd like to see, more behind-the-scenes of the writing process, more lore from the world, more character backgrounds, leave a comment below and we'll see what we can do. I might even do a podcast episode on it if that sounds interesting.