We’re receiving the first reports of the Library edition of A SEA OF SKULLS showing up in private libraries across America. Thanks to those who have sent in pictures confirming their receipt.
It’s really great to see all five volumes together like that. I’m looking forward to eventually being able to display them all on my own shelves. It’s also a little remarkable to think that the collected Selenoth books and stories now exceed the core Middle Earth collection by 144k words, although of course they’ll never come close to the complete Tolkien that contains 14 volumes of unfinished tales. And there is still another 300k words to publish before the series will be complete with the two volumes of A GRAVE OF GODS.
There are already copies available for non-subscribers at NDM Express. My next three books published, in no particular order, will be as follows:
- SIGMA GAME
- DEATH AND THE DEVIL
- OUT OF THE SHADOWS
The latter two have been completed very quickly, as I have utilized textual AI generation to produce them. The results, particularly in the case of the MIDNIGHT’S WAR precursor, are excellent. In my opinion, the various protests of professional authors using textual AI are both idiotic and obviously false. I know for a fact that virtually no one can tell the difference between pure organic fiction and man-machine collaborative fiction because some chapters are one, some are the other, and no one except me has any idea which are which.
In fact, we’re planning a little A B test next year, and I strongly suspect the results are going to shock some people, because the fact is that properly produced collaborative fiction is actually superior in terms of quality to the purely organic fiction produced by the vast majority of bestselling authors. Sure, you’re no more going to get AI-Shakespeare than you are AI-Mozart, but AI-Correia or AI-Gaiman are observably better than the human variants.
In fact, I think the next big thing in AI fiction is going to be AI revivals of various dead writers. Which, no doubt, will spur further lamentations among the literary Luddites. But who cares what they think. When good authors can produce 20,000 words per day instead of 1,000, and those words are actually much better than those produced by the average fiction author, the logic is inevitable.
But I will not be using any AI text in finishing A GRAVE OF GODS, in part because using it for other works means I can proceed with it without it being delayed by them, and in part because the fans have made it clear that they’d like the entire series to be consistent. Well and good.
There are only a few days left to acquire the two Homers. But we’re going to offer one more book to help support the Bindery, and specifically, permit us to a) acquire the much-needed new casemaker, b) fix the foil feeder that broke on Thursday, and c) acquire a backup foil press. The new book will be our first Signed First edition, a la the old Franklin Library, and it will be announced on Thursday on Arkhaven Nights.