News & Notes

Why I Won’t Use A.I. to Write

Just in case any of my readers were wondering, no, I won’t be using artificial intelligence to write, create cartoons, or really, to do anything creative. I don’t want there to be any doubt about that, and I thought this post could serve as my general statement on the matter. I’ve done enough reading about how these LLM (large language model) tools work (pattern recognition on a massive, massive scale), as well playing around with ChatGPT, Bard, Dall-E, and some of the others to appreciate their possible uses, but for me … it’s a big fat nope.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t use them the way I occasionally use a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or the Chicago Manual of Style (and they’re a long ways away from being accurate or trustworthy enough to be useful even in that regard), but I won’t be using them to create. You see, it wouldn’t be me, and the point of fiction, cartoons, or any art or entertainment is to communicate a voice and a point of view. As Stephen King has said on more than one occasion, writing is a form of telepathy, a way of transmitting my thoughts and emotions to you.

What would be the point of using an A.I. to do that?

I think some people are fooled by these things just as there are people who are fooled by master illusionists. If anything, they’ve proven how far from A.G.I. (artificial general intelligence) we really are. They don’t know anything. It’s very doubtful they’ll ever develop a theory of mind. They’re just stochastic parrots, regurgitating patterns to please you. And while I don’t quite agree with Noam Chomsky that they essentially amount to high-tech plagiarism, I think you can definitely make a convincing argument that’s the case. Sure, humans copy and borrow all the time, and almost all art is derivative in some fashion, building on the works of others, but this is something different. I do agree with Chomsky and Gary Marcus that what these LLMs have done is prove just how remarkable the human mind really is.

Right now, most of what they create is just boring, which is no surprise considering how they work. It’s like taking all the ingredients of a delicious beef stew and putting them into a blender. Yes, all the same overall contents may be there, but I can assure you it’s not going to taste nearly as good.

Even if they could do it “better,” however you define “better,” it wouldn’t matter. It still wouldn’t be me. It wouldn’t be my voice, my point of view, and my decisions. What if it made my life easier? That’s another common rejoinder. And to that, I say this: I don’t write because it’s easy. I write because I enjoy it—even when it’s hard, maybe especially when it’s hard—because when it goes well there is a kind of magic that happens, a beautiful transmission from my mind to yours. It can happen across vast distances of time and space. You may be reading this post five minutes after I wrote it in a house just down the street from me me. Or you may be reading it five hundred years from now in your dome on a moon colony around Jupiter. Who knows.

It’s a beautiful thing, when it works. I’m always chasing that outcome. It’s worth the struggle to get better at it.

I suspect most people agree with me on this, which is why I’m not all that worried about losing all of my readers, but I thought it worth stating my opinion on the matter. If I put my name on something, I created it.  Simple as that.

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Run of the House, Now in Full Color

While I love the black and white version of Run of the House, I’ve been been debating about adding color to the strip for a while, and I finally decided to take the plunge. Since I do much of the finishing work with Adobe Photoshop anyway (after scanning in a hand drawn comic), it wasn’t that big of a leap to add color. The above strip is one that was sent out to subscribers a few weeks ago.

Why the change? While I fell in love with black and white comics in the newspapers (you remember what those things are, kids?), those limitations were mostly due to printing cost, and I don’t have those issues for a comic that’s published digitally. Yes, using color will increase my printing costs too down the road, if and when the comic is collected in book form, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I like all the options that using color gives me.

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Fall Update, Pictures of Mendocino

First, an update on the current book in progress, especially since many of my readers have asked: Yes, I’m working on the next Garrison Gage book. I hope to have it out this year. That’s pretty much all I can say about it at this point, since I’m always hesitant to talk about works in progress, but the book is coming.

In the meantime, I hope many of you are enjoying the third book in the Karen Pantelli series, Dead-Eyed Drifter, where Karen faces off against a serial killer. Some wicked twists and surprises in that one.

In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, we’re definitely transitioning to fall. Although we’ve just entered a rainy stretch, we had some wonderful late summer days lately, which is pretty common in September here, but the days are getting shorter, the nights cooler. The leaves are just starting to turn on many of the oaks, maples, and other trees. It’s one of my favorite times of the year.

Hard to believe summer’s almost gone. In early August, Heidi and I spent a fun week down in Mendocino, California, which is on the rugged and beautiful Highway 1, about a three hour drive north of San Francisco. We drove down from Oregon over two days, staying in the same Cape Sebastian area we stayed in last year. Here are some shots from the Oregon part of our trip.

  • Near Coos Bay
  • Bandon, Oregon
  • Cape Sebastian
  • Chetco Point (Brookings)
  • Brookings
  • Sunset view from our Airbnb in Cape Sebastian Area

While I’ve been down to the California Redwoods many times, this was mostly in the areas around Crescent City, so it was fun to finally drive through the Humboldt Redwoods and the Avenue of the Giants. The place we stayed in was just across Mendocino Bay and had a spectacular view of the city perched on its rocky coastline.

Why Mendocino? It started with Murder She Wrote, of all things. We’d been watching it occasionally in the evening, as something light and fun that wouldn’t engage our minds too much, and we wondered where the “Cabot Cove” episodes had been filmed. The answer was Mendocino, California, which, after admiring its beauty online, eventually led to our latest road trip. Some of the other highlights of the trip included visiting Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden in Fort Bragg, riding the Skunk Train, and of course exploring Mendocino. I’ll end this with some shots from the California part of our adventure.

  • Avenue of the Giants
  • Mendocino Bay
  • Mendocino, in the fog
  • Our Airbnb
  • From the deck
  • Jessica Fletcher’s house
  • Rosie at the Botanical Garden
  • The Skunk Train in Fort Bragg
  • Otter Point

New Book Published: DEAD-EYED DRIFTER

I’ve got a new book out!

Here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, we’ve had a nice stretch of 80 degree days. Although I’ve gotten a few nice hikes in recently, I’ve been a bit more homebound as of late, puttering around the house and the yard when I’m not doing my creative work. My wife has been fostering kittens from the Humane Society, so that’s provided plenty of entertainment without even leaving the house. I just lifted one off my keyboard . . .

If you’re looking for a break from your own puttering, you might be interested in my new book: Dead-Eyed Drifter. It’s the third in the Karen Pantelli series, a character who got her start in the Garrison Gage books, about the former FBI agent who becomes something of a drifter . . . and this time she’s drifted herself right into facing off against a serial killer. 

That’s a long ways away from playing with kittens, isn’t it?

Loads of action and suspense in this one, plus a few shocking twists. More about the book is below, including links to retailers. 

Dead-Eyed Drifter

A Karen Pantelli Novel

He hunts. He kills. He walks among us. Nobody knows he exists … until now.

Former FBI agent turned full-time drifter, Karen Pantelli pursues a promising lead on her long missing mother to Orcas Island, Washington. Toiling as a hotel maid, she reaches a dead end until an encounter with an eccentric math professor raises a gruesome possibility. Her mother may have been murdered by a serial killer, the work of a cunning monster who has claimed hundreds of lives and evaded detection for decades by camouflaging his kills as accidents, suicides, or random acts of violence.  

Aided by recent advances in artificial intelligence, the professor believes he can finally predict the killer’s pattern. But then a stunning twist changes the game, propelling Karen across thousands of miles on a desperate mission to save innocent people before the trail goes cold forever.

Ebook: Amazon | B&N | Kobo | iBooks | Google Play 

Paperback: Amazon