Anderson'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

While 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

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.

#AuthorSigning

Inspector Rebus is singing Jailhouse Rock, but Ian Rankin will be signing Midnight & Blue here from 4-5, Tuesday 17th, then laying down some beats, DJing at nearby Thorne Records later that evening. A great chance to get a signed copy for a Christmas present, or to get it specially dedicated!

https://edinburghbookshop.com/events-1/ian-rankin-midnight-and-blue-in-store-book-signing

#books #livres #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #Bruntsfield #IanRankin #AuthorSigning #MidnightAndBlue #CrimeFiction #RomansPoliciers #bookstodon #bookshops #librairies #SignedBoks