Fathom PublishingREMINDER: You still have TWO opportunities to meet Fathom author, Teena Helmericks, who will be signing copies of her book, Life on the Edge of the Arctic Ocean, at Fred Meyers in Fairbanks.
🔗For more information: http://dlvr.it/TSCfVS
REMINDER: Fathom author, Teena Helmericks, will be signing copies of her book, Life on the Edge of the Arctic Ocean, as a participating member of the National Authors in Grocery Stores program this week.
🔗For more information: http://dlvr.it/TS9hwJ
We are excited to announce that Fathom author, Teena Helmericks, will be signing copies of her book, Life on the Edge of the Arctic Ocean, as a participating member of the National Authors in Grocery Stores program this week.
🔗 Check out our website for more on the opportunity to get your signed copy and don't forget to share with a local friend: http://dlvr.it/TS8WgZ
PageTurnersBlogAnderson's Bookshop is hosting Leigh Bardugo for her picture book debut that she created w/John Picacio. The Invisible Parade is a story to help everyone deal with grief and loss.
Tickets are still available - let's sell it out! August 27, 2025 in #Naperville #Illinois
#AuthorSigning #chicago
D. MoonfireWhile I was at the #AuthorSigning on Sunday, I ended up talking about how I consider LLM to be horrible and destructive, doesn't let any improvement their craft, and the usual things I say here on a frequent basis. I was happy how Ingram and Amazon both ask if you if LLMs were used to write a book.
One of my local friends admitted to using LLMs while writing. This left me with a sinking sensation as they were justifying it.
I just use it to write summaries of my chapter.
Okay, I guess. I take pride in that I write summaries as I write chapters and put them in the YAML metadata. Coming up with the synopsis is hard though, so I could almost forgive someone for using it even though I never would.
Occasionally, I use it to come up with ideas for the title so I can come up with one.
And that's where the sinking sensation came from. If you don't want to bother coming up with a title, then call it "Chapter 1". Personally, I think chapters (and epigraphs) are a critical part of writing chapters. And they part of a style. I mean, if my chapter talks about beautiful, sunny days, there is probably going to be a Red Wedding in the chapter. That's me and my hatred of the bright burning thing in the sky.
I really didn't like hearing that.
And then about an hour later, they were talking about how they just got a powerful instance to run a local model to come up with some possible suggestions for dialog and facts for their stories.
And it was in that exact moment, I consider their future writing poisoned. Which sucks because they have been a good friend for over a decade. They are in my writing group. They are also someone who was going to ask me to do the publishing through Broken Typewriter Press because I love typesetting and formatting ebooks and bookkeeping.
But, I won't do AI. It is an ethical limitation. Which means at some point in the near future, I will have to tell a friend I will never publish a book of theirs. And I don't know if I can accept their feedback either.
And some of the other writers at the signing were talking about how awesome LLMs were, and how they loved this friend's feedback. I felt like the only one who was wholly against using a computer to write or summarize or do anything. Given that all of them sell better than me, it was very discouraging.
This is also the pressure from coding side where a large number of people are in my circle viewing my anti-AI stance as being backwards thinking and elitist. (My manager was defending the team's use of Copilot in attempt to keep up with my skill set.)
This is also after I spent an hour talking about how LLMs were horrible. And they still said it. In some ways, I wished they would have just lied to me but they didn't, so something has to change.
"Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?"
--- Panic! at the Disco, I Write Sins Not Tragedies
My phone did die as I was trying to swipe the sale, so I had to ask a friend to swipe.
Sold a single book to someone in the writing group. Other than that, not a single nibble.
I'm going to tag most of my posts with #AuthorSigning so you can ignore me since I get talkative when I'm nervous. I'll probably post pictures or idle thoughts between now and 17:00 CT.
Wow, I'm almost out of copies of Flight of the Scions. I was feeling discouraged, but I appear to only have two copies left.