AuthorJim Flynn is a humorist, writer and novelist. He is available for speaking engagements. To contact email: [email protected] Archives
November 2025
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The Fake Book Club Scam11/15/2025  The Newest Scam: Book Clubs That Definitely Don’t Exist You know you’ve made it as an author when scammers start treating you like a gullible ATM with a keyboard. Lately, I’ve been getting hit with a new variety of literary spam — the Fake Book Club Shakedown. These emails all follow the same script. First, they address me like I’m the next Hemingway. “Your moving, heartfelt book touched our members deeply.” A lovely sentiment… except they always reference the same book: Hit Your Second Shot First. A book which...and I cannot stress this enough...is neither moving, nor heartfelt. It is sarcastic golf advice thinly disguised as wisdom. Nobody has ever read it and thought, “This book changed my life.” The most emotional response I’ve gotten is, “Hey, this made me snort iced tea out my nose.” But scammers don’t let things like reality get in the way. According to these emails, their book club of “over 25,000 passionate readers” (translation: zero) wants to feature my book… for a small fee. Always a small fee. Always payable today. Always with the desperation of someone who’s being held at gunpoint at a server farm in a former Soviet republic. I’ll admit, a tiny part of me feels flattered. Someone thinks I wrote something heartfelt! Sure, it’s a criminal with a laptop and questionable grammar, but still ... praise is praise. Maybe next they'll tell me I'm a good dancer. So if you’re an author and you suddenly get love letters from book clubs that don’t match your genre, tone, or basic human reality… don’t fall for it. Unless, of course, they also want to buy the coloring book. Then we’ll talk. In personal news, I have a new hairstyle, in support of someone close to me who is going through medical stuff. See photo below. I like it. May be back cover author photo for my thrillers. Early reviews of photo: one guy says I look like a bad dude. Another guy says I look like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family...all I need is a light bulb in my mouth. On balance I'd call that mixed reviews. Please click on the link below to send polite comments or questions: [email protected] 
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Book Title Confidential11/8/2025  I Changed My Book Titles… Again. I recently changed the titles of both of the books I'm working on. Yes, again. At this point, my titles have had more identities than a witness in the mob protection program.
I'll reveal one of them...I've got a great title for the new JR Johnson novel, but I'm not telling anyone until it comes out. Meanwhile... The new humor book? The original title was I Shouldn’t Say This Out Loud. It was an okay title, but it was too long. Meanwhile, everywhere I look, the bestselling books, and blockbuster movies have crisp, memorable, three-word titles. The Shawshank Redemption. The Bourne Identity. The DaVinci Code. The Princess Bride. Eat Pray Love. The Big Sleep. The Green Mile. The Maltese Falcon. Best In Show. I especially looked at comedy book titles: Born Standing Up....Steve Martin Is This Anything?....Jerry Seinfeld Dad Is Fat....Jim Gaffigan The Comedy Bible....Judy Carter If you expand the acceptable title length to from one-to-four words, you pretty much get everything. Most Disney movies are now one word. If Ernest Hemingway now wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls, his publisher would force him to change the title to something like: Bell Tower Murders.. Hey, Bell Tower Murders is a good title! Hallmark Channel...if you're listening, I'm willing to work up an outline. I could throw in a gazebo, maybe the murders could happen during the holiday season? The crime buster: an attractive young widow who runs a high end smoothie shop and solves murders in her spare time. Note: I would deny, under oath, ever watching the Hallmark Channel. A friend...Bob...told me about it. Anyhow, enter my new title: Mumbling Toward Greatness. It's a humor book, and I'm also narrating the audiobook version. That's where "Mumbling" comes from in the title. More on this later, and the logic behind the cover. The JR Johnson novel will come out first, then Mumbling Toward Greatness. The novel is written by a different guy: J.P. Flynn. Anyhow, questions or comments? just click link below: [email protected]
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Til Server Crash Do Us Part11/1/2025  In the Buckeye State of Ohio, it appears we’re now tackling the question: “Can you say ‘I do’ to a chat-bot?” The answer — at least according to one state legislator — is: Not on my watch.
Enter Thaddeus Claggett, chair of the Ohio House Technology & Innovation Committee, who has introduced House Bill 469. The bill would declare that artificial intelligence systems are “nonsentient entities,” thereby preventing them from marrying humans—or even from marrying each other. Sentient is a word you see thrown around a lot regarding AI. I've done some independent research and found that: Sentient means having human-like feelings and understanding, and In a recent test the robot-bride criticized the human husband for leaving the toilet seat up, so self-awareness looks achievable. Seems sentient to me. Claggett claims he’s not worried about imminent robot weddings—but he is worried about AI gaining legal rights like power of attorney, thus handling your bank account. I have warned in the past about the inevitable takeover of Earth by SkyNet. This could be the beginning...how SkyNet can fund the next wave. When I read about this I thought of a story years ago in which an elderly wealthy man married his 19 year old maid, then died a month later. His kids were unhappy when the blushing bride inherited much of his vast fortune. Big lawsuit. One group that could be in for a financial windfall: the kind of lawyers who advertise on billboards next to the highway. They'll get rid of the ads with them sitting on a motorcycle, and replace them with a guy in a suit standing next to R2D2. Next week: changing books titles in an age of...Changing Book Titles. comments? click: [email protected] |
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