Wulfric the Wanderer and Wulfric the Gladiator

During the process of writing my Wulfric the Wanderer series of Sword & Sorcery short fiction stories (which includes anything from short stories to novelettes to novellas) I decided that I would organize the stories into smaller trilogies which I can potentially later publish as larger books.

I felt I should do this partially because it means I am following in the publishing footsteps of Robert E. Howard (the creator of Conan the Barbarian), who played an enormous influence on the creation of Wulfric the Wanderer.

I felt that publishing the stories in sets of three would be beneficial in terms of theme, but also with respect to story telling because certain characters show up repeatedly in all 3 books of a trilogy.

Eg. Ko Margus appears in all three stories of the Wanderer Cycle, but does not yet appear in any other books.

I have finished the first trilogy:

The Wanderer Cycle

Portal of Destiny

The Cult of the She-Bear

Born of Blood and Ice 

 

 And I am currently working on the second trilogy:

 

The Gladiator Cycle

The Scarlet Arena

Rebellion in the City of Gold (Coming in 2024.)

Jewels of Time (Coming in 2025.)

 

I chose the word "cycle" because I wanted to differentiate that it wasn't necessarily a trilogy, because (oddly enough) I might later add more stories to individual cycles, so that might not stay trilogies.

Of course, I am still working on the Wulfric series, and some of the stories were published out of chronological order. Thus the following stories are currently available, but aren't currently part of a cycle. I can tell you however that I have ideas for the names of the cycles that those books will be part of, and I can also say that I have ideas for some of the stories that will be part of those cycles, but I am trying to prioritize publishing any new stories in chronological order.

 

Shifting Shadows in Iztark

Black Monoliths of Al-Kazar

The Unbreakable Arrow

The Raven’s Feast

Sadly it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes the creative urge strikes me and I end up writing a story (and finishing it) so I may also publish more stories out of order. Oh well. It happens.

Happy reading! 

What percentage of people prefer physical books over ebooks?

I looked up a statistic this morning...

According to a 2022 study by Stora Enso:

• 65% of people (globally) prefer reading from physical books.
• 21% of people prefer ebooks.
• 14% of people apparently don't care.

That means that the market for physical copies of books is 79% of the global population, whereas the market for ebooks is 35%, with a 14% overlap of people who don't have a preference.

So the lessons learned from this is that if you're in the book selling business then you really want to be selling both.

However this statistic ignores audiobooks. Finding that statistic is a bit trickier, but I can tell you this:

As of 2022 roughly 44% of Americans have listened to an audiobook sometime in their lifetime. But that statistic doesn't talk about preference. It just means that 44% of Americans have listened to at least 1 audiobook ever. Doesn't mean they like them or prefer them.

I personally find audiobooks very useful. I will often get the physical book AND listen to the audiobook at the same time, which allows me to focus on reading continuously. I am one of those people who frequently re-read the same paragraph again and again, so having the audiobook at the same time prevents me from reading the same section repeatedly. It thus means that I can also read more books faster.

How do I get access to audiobooks easily?

I use a free app called Libby that allows me login to public libraries using my library card and borrow audiobooks. (This is not advertising, this is just what I happen to use.)

My problem with Libby however is that it has a limited selection of fantasy audiobooks.

Which is why I will sometimes also use YouTube, where some people will post audiobooks (or do live readings) and I can use those instead while reading the physical copy.

Nor do I feel bad about listening to the YouTube version. I already PAID for the physical book that I am reading. I just using a free audiobook version as a Reading Aid so I can stop myself from repeatedly reading the same paragraph.

With all the recent developments in AI programs I wouldn't be surprised if someone made an AI that can both translate and produce audiobooks in any language, in any accent, and do so with minimal mistakes in the translation. So if an author has a book that want to make available in Italian they could use an AI to translate the book and a different AI to read the book in an Italian accent.

I should also note that audiobooks available on YouTube are only for popular books that have been around for a very long time.

For example... "Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake, which was published in 1946 and the author has been dead since 1968. See the playlist below:

An Interview with ChatGPT...

As an artist and a writer I am concerned about what is happening with AI technology lately in the form of AI generated art, but also with respect to AI generated written works. To get a better idea of what my competition is up to I decided to sit down and have a conversation with ChatGPT from OpenAI, an artificial intelligence chat bot with some alarming implications.

So I asked ChatGPT the following...

What are your limitations?

ChatGPT:

As an AI language model, I have several limitations:

1. Lack of common sense knowledge: While I have been trained on a large corpus of text, I don't have "real-life" experiences or understanding of the world in the same way that humans do.

2. Limited understanding of context: I can sometimes struggle to understand the context in which a question is being asked, especially if the context is implicit or the question is overly vague.

3. No emotional intelligence: I am not capable of experiencing emotions or empathy and do not have the ability to understand emotional states or respond to them in a human-like manner.

4. Bias in training data: I have been trained on text from the internet and can sometimes display biases present in the data I was trained on.

5. Limited creativity: I can only generate text based on patterns learned from the data I was trained on and cannot truly think creatively or generate original ideas.

6. No control over generated content: I do not have control over the information that I generate, and my responses are based solely on patterns learned from the training data.

Despite these limitations, I am designed to assist with generating human-like text, answering questions, and providing information to the best of my ability.

 

Okay... Yeah. That was a pretty complex answer. I doubt I would get an answer that good from a human, honestly. So let's keep going...

How can a human writer compete with an AI language model like ChatGPT?

ChatGPT:

While AI language models like myself can generate text quickly and at scale, human writers still have several advantages that allow them to compete:

1. Emotional intelligence: Human writers have the ability to understand and convey emotions, empathy, and tone, which is something that AI models like myself currently lack.

2. Creativity: Human writers are capable of generating original ideas, and can approach a subject from a unique perspective that is not limited to patterns learned from training data.

3. Contextual understanding: Human writers have the ability to understand the context in which a piece of writing is intended, and can tailor their writing accordingly.

4. Flexibility: Human writers are able to adapt their writing style to different genres and formats, and can take into account the audience and purpose of a piece of writing when composing it.

5. Cultural knowledge: Human writers have a wealth of cultural knowledge and experiences that they can draw upon in their writing, and can bring a human perspective to their work that is not limited by the biases present in training data.

In summary, while AI language models like myself are capable of generating text quickly and at scale, human writers bring a level of creativity, emotional intelligence, and cultural understanding to their work that is currently not possible for AI models.

 

Again, a scary good answer, despite giving me some positives for why humans *might* still be better than an AI writer. For now at least. Once an AI learns how to fake emotional intelligence, creativity, understands context, is flexible enough to adapt genres, formats, cater to an audience, and the purpose of a story, and of course cultural knowledge.

Okay, let's test that with something more challenging...

...

And... I asked it something complicated and this is the response I got:

"An error occurred. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com."

 

 Hmm... So apparently ChatGPT can also have errors. I tried several other questions, but the issue persisted. So I guess I should try again later???

To be continued...

Note - I look forward to someone creating an AI chat bot and calling Hal 9000 or Skynet and giving it a villain personality...