AuthorJim Flynn is a humorist, writer and novelist. He is available for speaking engagements. To contact email: [email protected] Archives
March 2025
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Free Audiobook!2/24/2024  It’s expensive to create an audiobook. I won’t drag you though the economics, but it’s much different than publishing a print or ebook on Amazon. Unless you sell thousands of copies, it’s hard to merely break even in audio. For that reason, many modestly successful authors forego the audio version. My last three books I haven’t bothered with audio, even though Losing Lola won an audiobook of the year award.
So when Audible offered me an opportunity to participate in their Beta Test for AI narration I decided to try it with The 10 Greatest Golfers of All Time. I chose from one of eight Artificial Intelligence narrators, and was able to make some adjustments, like phonetically correcting mispronounced words. If you are an Audible user, you can listen free. Go to Audible In the search box type: 10 Greatest Golfers. This will take you to the book. You can download for free. No strings attached. Give it a try. Remember, it’s still a Beta test. There are times you can tell, but most of the time it sounds like a real person. It asks questions, it tells jokes. Naysayers about Artificial Intelligence like to point out that AI makes mistakes. Yup, it does. It has flaws. Two points:
BTW, the picture of the guy narrating the book at the top of the page? AI generated, not a real person. More about AI next week.
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The Ethics of A.I. for Writers2/13/2024  Meet Toni Anne Laudano. An MIT dropout, a genius at data encryption, a baseball fan, she became a self-made multi-millionaire in her twenties. Toni Anne then volunteered to work for U.S. Cyber Command for a salary of $1 per year. Ms. Laudano has a vocabulary that could make a sailor blush, and her tendency to speak her mind has made her enemies in high places, including the current Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.
She considers herself the world's greatest cyber warrior, among her accomplishments is a stunningly successful sting operation directed at the President of Russia. Her boss, a four-star general likes to quote The Rolling Stones when describing Toni Anne: She is practiced at the art of deception. Ms. Laudano is one of the three Point of View characters in the book I'm writing, Useful Idiot. The story is delivered through the eyes and thoughts of one of the Point of View characters in each scene. What does this have to do with A.I.? The picture above was generated by AI. I typed in a description, and four pictures were generated. I refined my description, and after about 20 tries the perfect Toni Anne emerged. I've generated pictures of all the main characters. I have two computer screens, on the main screen is the book in progress, on the smaller screen are the pictures of the main characters. As I write, especially about a Point of View character, I look at them. What would they be thinking? What would they say? How would they say it? What are the ethical implications? If I had an illustrator create these pictures, it would have cost at least hundreds of dollars. As a practical matter, I wouldn't have done the pictures. But there are other things AI can do that are more practical, and displace real people. Something came up just today. More next week.
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Which Way Do I Go?2/10/2024  The above sign is simple compared to the advice you get from writing experts. Much of the advice contradicts other advice.
Five years ago, after some modest success with my first effort, I set out to write another book. My initial work was a fictional humorous memoir. I was advised to branch out and write a novel. It would expose me to a broader audience. How hard could it be? After all, I've read novels. I'd just write a book like that. Oops. I found that a fledgling novelist could spend the rest of their lives reading and listening to advice, and never writing anything. That's a problem, because the hardest thing for me about writing is sitting down every day and typing the first few words. I swim for exercise, and compare writing the first few words to jumping in the pool. When it's 10 degrees in January you feel stupid dragging your butt to the local YMCA to go swimming. To get things started I always go to the deep end and dive in-I call it diving, others cruelly make fun of my form. I consider it a successful dive if I don't hurt myself. Nevertheless the hard part is over, now I do the easy work, swimming 1,600 yards. I wish I knew five years ago what I know now. Next week I'll go over some of that. |
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