Draugameistari Chronicles - Author's notes

 Once you see it you can't unsee it.  Everyone is afraid of Pangram these days and wondering whether their prose seems like it was written by AI. You all have heard the usual tells. Em dashes. Not X, but Y. Delve. Tapestries. Intricate. Whatnot. Those aren’t the tells of AI-written text these days. How do I know? I tried it. I use AI in my free time and at work (I am an occupational health doctor doing workplace hazard audits) for different tasks, but more on that later. It does not write my prose for me, though, because it is BAD. As Horowitz put it, we humans are better, and I am better, even though my grammar sometimes disagrees. Except now I let it write for me. Here is an example of how AI writes. I may have edited it a bit. Can you guess what parts are mine? The Silence Between Us The storm raged outside, rain lashing against the windows, the desperate fingers of a thousand forgotten ghosts scraping the glass. The house groaned under the pressure of the moment, its ancie...

I have been trying to figure out how to best build an "author brand" or whatever. Meaning how to get people to know you exist and what you are doing so that maybe they'd like to read the book. You know, the basics.   I am not a social media gal. I have my private Instagram, which I occasionally overuse to ramble about whatever random things have caught my hyperfixation at the moment, but mostly I am quite passive.  I follow cool people and comment on their reels every now and then, but I have zero desire to be a famous influencer.  Or even famous.  I was living under the illusion that if you get a traditional publisher deal (which I don't have, since I haven't even queried agents yet, but it's better to plan things out well in advance, aye?), they handle the marketing.   Well, they don't.   Publishers demand that authors do the marketing themselves too and sometimes to pay for their own part  out of their own pockets. It helps if you sta...

I like this. Brings back memories.  I also created a site on Substack, but the algorithm worshipping there is just too much. Can't. "You have to post on notes to get subscribers to your newsletter!" And then in notes, post after post "I want to read your writing, post it here" Correction, "I pretend to want to read your writing, please post it here and boost my algorithm." Am I a little sour, maybe? Hell yes. That sort of fake social dance is just not for me.  Also, I somehow hate the thought of paying (or asking for money) for simply subscribing. I mean, some people do write for a living, and they should get payed if their stuff is good enough, but most there aren't that special (me included) that people should pay to read their random thoughts. Books, yes. Art, yes. But a fucking newsletter? Ugh.  And yes, I swear. Here I can swear in peace. And everyone is an author there, actual readers are probably somewhere else. I once had a somewhat popular...

  Inverness, late March 2030. "It's you." I spat three times to my left. " Hverfa! " "Now, is that any way to greet an old friend?" the trespasser on my back porch said, as the wind blew a cold, wet shower on my face. "Get lost." "Oh, Cas..." I wiped my face and crossed my arms, staring at Matthias and trying to force him to turn and get lost with the power of my mind. Didn't work. Shame. "Why are you here?" I scanned the shadows behind him, trying to see into the pitch-black darkness the rain had created. I had this terrible itch inside my mind, telling me something was off, and it wasn't just the weather. A boom of thunder rolled from the distance. There was a man standing several steps behind Matthias, looking like he was trying to merge with the shadows. He was dressed head to toe in dark colours, his hood pulled up against the rain. I had almost missed him, since he was standing so still that he was half-hidde...

How do people invent the name for their fantasy series? Or a book? I suspect they have an easier way than I do. Or at least I hope they do. Pick two glamorous nouns, add Chronicles , and call it a day, aye? Or, if you do it my way, you pick a name after a rigorous search for availability and credibility, then you create a company named after the picked right word, and then start to play the Devil’s advocate with yourself. So, naturally, I needed to dig deeper and create a pseudo-scientific, logical reason for the said word. Draugameistari. What does that even mean? Well, in Old Norse (and luckily in modern Icelandic), it is a combination word of Drauga (genitive plural of the word draugr, which means undead or a ghost) and meistari (master in English). Basically, it means Master of the Dead. But it is not a common hybrid, but it is not grammatically wrong either. My first choice was the Necromancer, but as you can imagine, that was NOT a unique choice, and I want the name to be unique....