Category Archives: Internet

But our intentions were good

Posted on by under Audio, Authors, Books, Business, Commerce, Creativity, Culture, e-books, Fiction, Internet, mystery, Novel, Technology, tourism, Writers, Writing

Our writers’ group had a discussion this morning about the use of AI to generate content. Is it a high-tech form of plagiarism? Does the work to which it is applied constitute original art? Digitally generated voices have already rendered obsolete the narrators of audio books. Will AI do the same to writers?

To illustrate the dilemma, one of the authors said he was astonished at the accuracy and sophistication of the answers he’d received after asking Microsoft’s AI assistant to summarize the chapters of his memoir. He’s about to pitch the book to an agent and was looking for a convenient way to describe the work.

Another writer said she’d used AI to generate a summary for the back cover of her memoir and felt pleased with the result.

I’ve used AI for research but never for pitching or publication. So, when the meeting ended, I uploaded the text of my first novel and asked Microsoft’s Copilot to write a summary for an agent. It might have taken 18 seconds to get an answer. It wasn’t what I’d expected.

I’ll let you judge whether it’s appropriate. But first, some background.

Peak Season is the first in a series of crime novels featuring a former police officer turned real estate agent and a retired state trooper who virtually lives on his boat along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is a mystery novel, popular fiction that tackles a number of contemporary issues such as property rights and the environment.

I pitched the manuscript to a number of agents. This was before ChatGPT and other large-language models came into vogue, so my email was entirely human-generated. Here’s what I sent:

Dear [agent’s name redacted]:

She’s the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Responding to a domestic disturbance, CW (Candace) McCoy is forced to shoot a fellow police officer to prevent the death of his wife and child. Internal affairs rules the shooting justified. CW can’t and fears she’s inherited the killer gene from her father. Refusing to carry a gun, she quits the force and escapes to Southwest Florida to sell real estate, care for the grandfather who took her in after the murder of her family, and silence the demons that threaten her new life. But even in paradise during peak tourist season, there’s no outrunning bad blood.

Original book cover

Declared dead by the courts, Bobby Lee Darby appears in CW’s office to demand the family friend clear his name in a scheme to bilk millions from investors. When CW refuses, the fugitive financier kidnaps her grandfather and triggers a chain of burglary, assault, and murder that convinces local police the former cop has gone rogue.

Racing to find Darby and her grandfather, CW must confront her violent past, risky affairs, and love-hate relationship with Florida before those personal demons turn her new-found paradise into hell on earth.

A former journalist with Dow Jones, I am the author of The Spirit of Swiftwater and other books, with an eponymous website (jeffwidmer.com) and an extensive social network.

Since you look for new voices in women’s suspense and represent [authors’ names redacted], I think the CW McCoy series would make for a good fit with your agency.

I’ve included the first three chapters below. Would you like to see the complete 72,000-word manuscript and the first chapter of the second book in the series?

OK. Despite my heroic effort, that letter didn’t work, and I wound up independently publishing the novel in 2014. But what if I were to pitch a rewrite and use AI to generate the query letter? When I fed the text of the entire manuscript into Copilot, I got this:

Dear [Agent Name]:

I am thrilled to introduce Peak Season, a novel that captures the electric tension between fleeting beauty and the transformative impermanence of life. Set in a sun-drenched coastal town where every summer day burns with both promise and poignancy, this story follows [Protagonist Name], a determined soul navigating the dizzying interplay of desire, loss, and rebirth. As the town swells with the vibrant energy of peak tourist season, long-hidden family secrets, unexpected romances, and personal reckonings emerge, forcing our heroine to confront the true cost of chasing a dream—even when that dream burns as bright as the midsummer sun.

AI-generated cover

At its heart, Peak Season is a deeply atmospheric exploration of the human spirit. It invites readers to savor the bittersweet cadence of relentless change: the ephemeral thrill of new beginnings and the heart-wrenching inevitability of endings. Through lyrical prose and raw, immersive storytelling, the novel paints an intimate portrait of individuals who, like the turbulent coastal tides, are in constant flux—seeking meaning in moments both fleeting and profound.

I believe that Peak Season will resonate with readers who appreciate literature that not only entertains but also challenges them to reflect on the impermanence and intensity of life. Its richly woven narrative and authentic emotional depth offer a fresh voice in contemporary literary fiction—a voice destined to captivate audiences in today’s dynamic literary landscape.

Thank you for considering this submission. I would be delighted to send you the full manuscript and discuss how Peak Season can find its place among today’s most compelling literary works.

Warm regards,

The transformative impermanence of life? I’ll accept raw, immersive storytelling. Even a fresh, contemporary voice. But literary fiction? A bridge too far, and an inaccurate reading of the tone of the book, which is more Chandler and Evanovich than Proust or Joyce.

But enough of my views. What do you think? Is AI the shortcut to greater productivity and happiness or a Trojan Horse we’ll live to regret?

Ask your computer or phone. They’ll know.

The social media maven’s apprentice

Posted on by under Authors, Books, Culture, e-books, Facebook, Fiction, Internet, Laurie R. King, Marketing, Mobile, PR, Social media, Writers, Writing

This is an updated version of an interview I did several years ago with Laurie R. King, whose latest in the bestselling Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series, The Murder of Mary Russell, is due in April 2016.

The author of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is buzzing over social media.

With a website, author and character blogs and a presence on Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter, Laurie R. King is a champion of social marketing. She posts in the voice of one of her characters, runs writing contests and invites fans to discuss the books among themselves. Her efforts go beyond promoting the work to promoting engagement with readers. That reveals an understanding of the collaborative nature of social media many corporations might envy.

“Mostly what I use the social networking sites for is to tie together my readers—I set up a site, or suggest an approach, and then more or less stand back while they play with it,” she said in an email exchange. But first, some background on the Californian who has become famous for portraying the life of perhaps the world’s most-famous detective, and the woman who has become, some would say, an equal or better.

LaurieRKingCreating a voice
Ms. King has written 22 novels, including several stand-alone novels and three series, one featuring San Francisco police detective Kate Martinelli and a second with Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. Her first book, A Grave Talent (1993), received the 1994 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and a 1995 John Creasey Memorial Award. She followed with the 1996 Nero Award for A Monstrous Regiment of Women and the 2002 Macavity Award for Best Novel for Folly.

Her books about Russell and Holmes have been applauded as “the most successful recreation of the famous inhabitant of 221B Baker Street ever attempted” (Houston Chronicle), “with the power to charm even the most grizzled Baker Street irregular” (New York Daily News). The first in the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, appeared in 1994.

She measures the number of copies in print in the millions.

Creating a buzz
A few years ago, to highlight the 20 books she’s written, and the publication of her then-newest novel in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, Ms. King embarked on what she calls “Twenty weeks of buzz.” In addition to the traditional methods of promotion—book tours, radio and TV appearances—Ms. King took to the Internet with a passion usually reserved for her characters.

Her presence on the Internet is considerable. She created a website and a blog about her activities called Mutterings. She also created another blog, this one in Mary Russell’s voice, back when MySpace was the rage. Mary, in character, posts regularly on Twitter (@mary_russell)—a technique used effectively by Helen Klein Ross (@AdBroad) to promote the TV show Mad Men. Ms. King writes as a guest blogger on other sites and runs a Yahoo! Group. She has a page on Facebook. She even posts reader videos on YouTube.

King beekeeper coverTo share her tastes in literature, Ms. King created an account on Goodreads, where millions of members recommend, compare and discuss books.

She also bolstered reader engagement with the creation of twin writing contests. To celebrate the publication of The God of the Hive, she authorized the 2010 Mary Russell Fan Fiction Writing Contest. Contestants were asked to write about a character in one of the Russell novels as a teenager. A second contest, to celebrate National Library Week, invited readers to create their version of the ideal library, complete with drawings.

She even runs contests for artwork about Russell, Holmes, and their world where fans can submit and judge the works.

Her opinion on social-media efforts and their results are insightful for readers and writers alike. Edited highlights of the interview with Ms. King, who goes by LRK online, follow.

Creating a community
I have to say, it’s funny to be considered a “champion of social marketing” since I never feel I know much about what I’m doing! Mostly what I use the social networking sites for is to tie together my readers—I set up a site, or suggest an approach, and then more or less stand back while they play with it. I’m kept in the loop of course, and I’ll drop in regularly, but making use of enthusiastic volunteers means that I don’t have to do all of the day-to-day work, while at the same time letting a group of key readers—”fans” if you will—have the fun of working with a writer they enjoy and making her job just a little bit easier.

Murder of Mary Russell coverI think a number of writers do this in some form or another—Dana Stabenow’s “Danamaniacs” are a powerhouse of networking, for example—and so long as it is kept fairly clear which is the author speaking and which is one of the administrators, I find people are happy.

Mostly I write and post my blog “Mutterings” and stop in once a day on both the personal and fan Facebook pages. I visit regularly on the Virtual Book Club [now the Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club on Goodreads],  reading the discussion and dropping in on some of the other threads, but I don’t tend to post a lot there unless I have something in particular to contribute—the VBC is a place for the readers to freely discuss and get to know each other, and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m in charge of what they say. A great side-effect of the VBC is that whenever LRK readers meet at an event or a conference, they often already know each other remarkably well, even if they have never met in person.

As for Twitter and Goodreads, I work with volunteers on answering letters sent to me (or to Russell) through the sites, helping promote things like the recent Twitter Party. (I helped set this up beforehand but, being in a far distant time zone, I had very little to do with it at the time.)

All in all, I probably average an hour a day on this stuff, more when I’m working up to a book launch.

As for results, who can tell?

Brave new (digital) world

Posted on by under Books, Business, Commerce, Creativity, Culture, e-books, Fiction, Innovation, Internet, Nonfiction, Novel, Social media, Writers, Writing

Everything old is new again . . . thanks to a little help from my friends.

My new website launched today. In the words of Crosby, Stills and Nash, it was a long time coming.

Checking the Internet Archive, affectionately known as the Wayback Machine, my first website went live in 2002, back in the day of dialup service. It was designed by Tom Thornton, a true artist and a gentleman if ever there was one.

The next iteration, the version we just replaced, went online in 2009 with an update a few years ago by a blessing of a designer, Robyn Dombrowski of Creative Heads in Sarasota, Florida. For her fortitude, she gets the patience-in-the-face-of-ignorance award.

After six years, we discovered the custom features of the site didn’t play well with WordPress anymore. The site didn’t look like the home of an author, either, since we’d designed it to sell marketing communications services to corporate clients.

The new site emphasizes my shift in focus from nonfiction to fiction, specifically to a series of crime novels I’m developing around two characters, former detective CW McCoy and a defrocked journalist known as Brinker. The website incorporates new ways to share stories about them and the publishing industry through social media links and an e-newsletter called Behind the Book. And wonder of wonders, the new contraption is responsive, which means the site should adapt to any browser or device that taps into it.

It was a long time coming but we’ve finally caught up with the digital age. Here’s to good friends and guidance . . . and another decade on the Web.

Jeff Widmer