A big year
From AI to self publishing and hope, a few thoughts
Francis Donkin Bedford, 1880s, via artvee
Promotion bit
Obsessed with finishing the 1st draft of the new Crooked Medum book, I haven’t done much promotion. While it is past posting for Christmas date, check out Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds (available usual places). Plus hard copies can be bought directly from me. The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder is available on Amazon (print and eBook) also print via my website, and signed through the All Good Bookshop. (Also stocked by the Quaker Centre on Euston Road, London and the Portal Bookshop in York.) If you don’t buy eBooks from Amazon, email me. I am grateful for all support received.
Anything you can write, post, share or say would be appreciated. I keep running into people last week who’d firmly decided to buy it and yet just hadn’t remembered to do it. It is never too late to review it.
Also, the independent, indie friendly, AI hostile, cooperative run All Good Bookshop made it through the year, they do mail order and their membership scheme gives 10% lifetime discount on books only. Arts hub, home of my writing group, and a blow against corporate homogeneity.
Research ‘catch’ of the week
I noticed on the read through of the zero draft that I mention ‘the weekend’. In 1880s Britain, that wasn’t really a thing. Sunday was the Sabbath (although the brilliant postal service delivered on Sundays everywhere but London!) and there was a growing tendency for some employers to offer a half day on Saturday. I didn’t know until recently, that in some areas and trades, a secular “Saints Monday” was observed – basically a full Monday off, vigorously defended by the unions. Employers broadly found they got the same output with less sickness and injuries if they didn’t demand six full days work a week.
I also note that in my period, a Swedish woman who married someone born in Barbados would become, like him, a British subject. But a Barbadian woman who married a Swedish man would lose their British citizenship. Go figure.
AI: The trillionaires’ plagiarising autocorrect “will save us” update
The government consultation on whether creatives should control whether their work is used for AI training has reported. 95% of respondents think they should, most of whom believe creators rights should be strengthened. The government said it needed to seek a consensus.
Because after all, we need a consensus between burglars and people who live in houses, before we dare regulate burglary.
AI shills get increasingly shrill and the money folks are starting to wonder what they will get for the $1.5 trillion investment. I was one of 400 authors contributing to this report, which I hope the government actually reads.
2025 was a year.
I’m glad I self-published The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder. I felt published again. I achieved many things I wanted to – the book is great in appearance and content and doesn’t look out of place on a bookshelf. Such reaction there I had was pretty positive.
I also have serious interest in my novella Top Tips for Loving a Lizard with a small but mighty press; and I had a short story in the British Science Fiction Magazine Fission.
You won’t be surprised that I learned an immense amount and there are things I would do differently.
The thing about self-publishing is that it’s a bike ride uphill. If you stop peddling the marketing machine, it slows down and stops. I did three conventions (fun but exhausting), a prelaunch campaign, etc, and when I stopped, sales did too. Thinking about promotion and writing uses the same part of my brain.
A series pledge
I am writing a second spooky Victorian Murder Mystery, with Mrs Ashton, Braddie and Maisie as the main characters. It is set some months after The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder and although the book is what it says on the tin, the mystery itself is quite different. I’m trying to produce a draft good enough to share with a few beta readers.
Book 2 doesn’t reveal the outcome of Book 1.
The characters were always considered as series characters, but that doesn’t mean books will follow each other in time. I have ideas going back to their first meeting and forward some years into the future. I’ve already two short stories written in their earlier time together.
So, it’s a series, but with no guarantee how many I write and exactly what they are. And I have several other things I want to write and get out.
A notable departure
We knew mum would leave us this year. She lived with cancer with her usual determination and was ready to go when she went.
It’s made this a particularly thoughtful end of the year, not least as my dad and my other half’s dad both died at Christmas – thirty years apart. I hope you find what you need these next weeks, in friends, family, found family and communities.
Mum wanted a world free of the scourge of war, a society which lifted people up rather than pitting them against each other and she had a lifelong concern for nature and the planet. She kept an inquisitive mind, a sense of humour, and she lived a life of friendship, purpose and community. She and Dad raised three sons who have each other’s backs.
The world needs big hearts and that sense of humour more than ever. As one poster pointed out, during Hurricane Katrina, noone there said ‘I must save every single person’. But many many people tried to do something, and that mattered.