First novel syndrome is usually characterised by over-writing, too much plot and infodumping. It stems from an author trying too hard. The eagerness to demonstrate “I am a writer, look!” I say this as someone’s whose first novel has some of these elements (it’s still brilliant and you should buy it, of course). Now that I’m halfway through my fourth novel I can see all those aspects in hindsight. The main difference was that I stopped trying so hard to be someone else’s version of a good writer and settled more confidently into just writing. This doesn’t mean I stopped trying hard, but I stopped being a try-hard.

Second album syndrome by contrast is when an artist has had a successful first album with a well defined sound, and then struggles with the follow-up (yes, we’re looking at you Stone Roses). This can arise for a variety of reasons: The artist may have had only one really good album in them; they are touring so don’t have time to compose the way they did before; they try to replicate the first album too much; they attempt to go in a different direction. It can be seen as the opposite of the first novel problem, in that the artist starts out comfortable and then tries too hard to do something different, to demonstrate that they are more than a one album wonder.

I reckon this difference arises through a combination of factors. Often music artists are relatively young when they release their first album. They have probably been gigging for a few years, developing the songs before anyone really paid them attention. They’ve developed that sound based on their own instincts. Then they get attention and a new factor to consider enters the room. For writers the opposite is often the case. They may be a bit older, they’ve been working and reworking their novel through writing groups, critical readers, scouting for agents. Then their novel comes out, and it may get some success, but often not. With that out of the way, they can get on with writing more naturally.

Of course, there are plenty of writers who have massive debut novels, and musicians whose second album is better than their first. It’s not a universal law, Chad. But there may be something in the nature of the two art forms and media that shapes it. That’s my excuse anyway.

One of the things I have developed as I’ve gotten older though is the skill at showing curiosity. I also think since I’ve leant into being a fiction-writer more, it has grown. I’m interested in all of the small details of how things work, what is it like to do a particular job or the lingo a person might use.

Curiosity is not always welcome though, and it can quickly slide into intrusiveness. Not everything is your business. In fact, most things aren’t. Context matters. For example “where are you from?” at a conference is an acceptable opening but as Afua Hirsch highlights, someone saying it to you just because you’re not white, it’s about othering someone. So, curiosity is appropriate where the other person gives you an invitation to express it. And then it can be seen as a gift, taking time to find out something about someone.

I was also reflecting on curiosity as it relates to personal tastes, particularly as one ages. I used to be quite snobbish about literature, for example. It had to be proper literary fiction, not genre material. This meant I often read “challenging” or “difficult” books. The same goes for movies. I am more comfortable now with just enjoying stuff, which is great and makes me much less annoying. But I wonder if there is a consequent slide into consuming “comfortable” media only.

One area where I have maintained curiosity I feel, is in music. I know a lot of people for whom music tastes essentially ossified in the 90s. I get it, maintaining interest in any field requires time and effort. When my daughter was young I was too busy with school runs, fitting in work, making dragons from egg cartons and trying to find a suitable outfit for World Book Day to really pay attention to new music. It’s a luxury. It is also one of those things that requires a significant initial momentum when you’ve stopped, but then becomes self-reinforcing as algorithms, and artists come to your attention. There is as much good music released today as there was when I was a teenager, and all those Facebook posts about “weren’t the eighties great?” are wilfully ignoring the success of Tight Fit or Jimmy Savile hosting TOTP.

Which then brought me on to considering the relationship between curiosity (or lack of) and nostalgia. Umberto Eco identifies the cult of tradition and a rejection of modernism as characteristics of fascism. And I think this “everything was better in the [insert decade of choice]” attitude is closely related to right wing politics. I can’t remember where I read a quote along the lines of “fascism is nostalgia for a past that never existed” but it has the ring of truth. To be clear I’m not saying that if you think all good music stopped with Oasis then you’re a fascist, but I would wager that there’s a reasonable (but not total!) Venn diagram intersection between people who think that and who vote Reform.

No real conclusion here I suspect, but as you get older maybe curiosity is like strength training, one of those things you should take time to explicitly develop.

[Photo by Joakim Honkasalo on Unsplash]

Things I enjoyed this month: The massive facepalm of the republicans thinking they had a gotcha moment over Jack Smith; watching The Office; Fat Bear week; going to see Welsh singer/harpist Georgia Ruth (pictured); the new seasons of Slow Horses and Ted Lasso; and speaking of Slow Horses, the very Slough House vibe to the whole Fairfield RAF debacle.

The ice hockey season has started again, and with it my annual attempt at blogging about the Cardiff Devils. The pre-season friendlies started in August but I didn’t go to my first game until September. I refuse to attend ice hockey in 28C temperatures. It’s just wrong. Maybe the same applies to writing, speaking of which…

Writing

My second novel, The H-Index, came out at the start of the month. I’ve had some lovely feedback from people in the highere ed world who have read it. Thank you, that means a lot.

I also started in earnest on my fourth book. I had struggled getting the character voice for this, but one thing that helped was joining the Cardiff Writers Circle. It’s a very supportive group and I’ve already made some amendments based on feedback. It was a bit daunting to read stuff that was still very much in development, but the comments were very positive.

Reading

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was very impressed with Cory Doctorow’s The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. It’s not too long, and although it is very scathing, it’s also not too depressing.

Maren and I have joined a local book club, which focuses on Welsh authors. So last month we read The Unbroken Beauty of Rosalind Bone, a beautifully written tale of misunderstanding and missed chances in the Welsh valleys. This month it was Home Sick, by Rhiannon Grist, a folk horror set in remote Scotland.

Kate Morgan’s Murder: The Biography was an enthralling journey through the legal cases that have shaped the law around homicide.

Vinyl

I picked up a couple of older albums this month, including alt-country singer Jess Williamson’s Time Ain’t Accidental and Welsh alt-pop artist The Anchoress’s The Art of Losing. Both are highly recommended.

The best new release of the month, if not the year, is This Is Lorelei’s The Singer In My Band. Incredibly catchy, witty, joyful even indie rock. Every track is a winner.

While I’m still doing copy-editing on the third novel, but I’ve been getting the fourth one underway. While I have a basic idea for the outline of the novel, getting the voice of the main protagonist right has been firmly in the grind category. I’ve reworked different versions of it, changed the tense, gender and perspective. I was in a rut thinking that maybe this one wasn’t going to transform from vague idea to actual novel.

But over the summer I kept going, reworking it. It finally got to a decent stage, although I’d spent so long on it, I wasn’t sure anymore. Having shared it with Maren and a local writer’s group, I’ve come to appreciate it’s one of my most successful chapters.

The point, I guess, is that you have to be willing to embrace both of these modes. Even in a book that arises from flow, there’s a lot of grind – reworking chapters, copy-editing, finessing elements, and so on. While I was considering this, I appreciated that although I feel it most obviously with a creative pursuit such as writing, you can see versions of it throughout life. Much of work can be viewed as a mix of grind and flow. If you’re lucky then it’s not all grind, and there is a good portion of creative flow. But even then, you have to accept the role of grind. It may seem that flow is preferable, and I certainly enjoy being “in the zone” but we shouldn’t dismiss grind as not being creative. It’s just a different form of creativity, with smaller gains, more effort required, but it may well be that the results are more robust.

(Image – https://www.flickr.com/photos/50357632@N00/4317917727/)

I’m probably just slow, but it wasn’t until I read Cory Doctorow’s insightful and persuasive Reverse Centaur, that I got it (seriously, everyone should read this book). Doctorow makes the point that first of all, LLMs are simply not capable of the type of intelligence portrayed in these scenarios. The fundamental model just won’t do that. But more importantly, he stresses that these stories are not aimed at us, they are aimed at investors.

Once you see it through that lens it becomes obvious what the purpose of this recurring narrative is. These companies need to keep growing, as soon as growth stops, their stock price crashes. The AI bubble is slowing as people realise it isn’t that brilliant. The weight of all those case studies of companies that sacked their human employees and replaced them with AI, are now rehiring the humans is gathering. So, a story about how completely amazing your technology is going to be, to the extent that it could wipe out humanity, is actually a good news story in the upside down world of tech investment. It does two things. First, it diverts attention away from limitations and stresses the almost mythical power of the tech. It’s definitely worth investing in God like power, right? Second, it detracts from the actual harm and damage being done at more prosaic levels to people’s working conditions, our political sphere, the social contract, and environment.

Having guidelines to stop super AI killing us all is a bit like me teaching my dog the Highway Code for when he starts to drive. It won’t happen and it’s useless. Having legislation in place to hold AI companies accountable for harm to wages, the environment and the information ecosystem is like me teaching my dog not to poop in the house. It’s useful and essential for harmonious living, but not very glamorous.

So all of this posturing by AI companies begins to look like the “Hold me back” bloke who’s always getting his mates to restrain him in a fight, and then saying just as well they did, because he would have done real damage. everyone knows that a) he had no intention of fighting and b) would have been ineffective if he did. It’s all show.

The fun was in the process. We set up a google doc to throw in some ideas, and then think about a song that might accompany each. We pre-recorded the show so Reclaim could just play it on the day.

The topics we came up with:

• Radio show – Clint has a cool global music show over at Electro Magnetic Radio
• Novel writing – I may have mentioned that I’ve published a couple of novels since retirement.
• Sports – In a strange cultural swap, Clint is a big football fan, and I’m a big ice hockey fan. It’s probably because both of these are niche sports in each other’s countries, compared with the dominant ones.
• Exercise – Clint runs and cycles and after the Vancouver half I’ve been working with a personal trainer at a gym to try and build some strength as I head into my sixties
• Vinyl – we both collect vinyl, and have Instagram accounts
• Travel – an old favourite of retirees I guess. I miss having conferences as the reason for my travel, so now have to plan other trips.

Note that none of those options are playing golf.

After a long time, work can become synonymous with identity. What I think we’re both trying to do with these activities is to provide some immunity to that sense you have of some people who retire and find themselves adrift.

We had a staycation this month – in the correct sense of that term in that we stayed at home, not just holidayed in the UK. We went to the Big Pit museum, where you can have a tour of a mine. It could be subtitled “capitalism is terrible”, because you gain a very real appreciation that the only consideration was the maximum extraction of resource for the minimum cost. You don’t need to build tunnels tall enough for people to stand, or allow pit ponies to go up to see light, or provide clean working conditions if you can get away with it. All during the tour I kept thinking that all of this extraction at the cost of human safety and comfort has a lot of echoes with AI. Glad we learned that lesson then.

On a more cheery note, it’s been like the old days with doing three online chats. Firstly, Clint Lalonde and I did a show for DS106 Radio Summer Camp, (I’ll blog this later), then I did a chat with my barber who shares clips on men’s mental health, and lastly I had my third appearance on the fabulous Gettin’ Air show with Terry Greene, talking about my new life as indie horror author.

Writing

My new book, The H-Index, is out on September 1st, so I’ve been engaging in some self-promotion. As an indie author you have to do this, but I don’t like it and I’m not very good at it. I mentioned in the previous post the various tools and platforms that can help. One fun thing I did do (well, I enjoyed it anyway) was to post a picture a day over on Instagram of a copy of the book with a relevant record (that I also own). Some of these are directly related, as in they are mentioned in the book, and others have a thematic relevance. Giving characters a musical taste is a convenient shorthand to their personality, but it can be overdone. Anyway, here are the ten records and my reasoning behind them:

• The Cure: Acoustic Hits. In the opening scene, the main character, Hazel, is driving to the writing retreat in West Wales where the action takes place. She is listening to this album in her car and thinking about the relaunch of her career that the writing retreat will afford.
  Of course, things don’t quite go as planned…
• Women in Revolt: Various. A collection of female punk bands. In the book, Becky is an early career researcher in folklore and feminism. She has a playlist titled “Righteously Angry Women”. I think the Slits would definitely be on that playlist. Becky is probably my favourite character in the book – smart, working class and sassy.
• Kate Bush: Hounds of Love. The novel is based around academics on a writing retreat where a confluence of events leads to the resurrection of an ancient bog demon, the Hen Wrach.
  So, Waking the Witch on this album is the ideal track. It also has a dislocated, other-worldly sound that reflects the manner in which the academics find themselves cut off from their normal environment.
• Radiohead: OK Computer. The academics in the book are all attempting to finish publications which will get them prestige. The H-index is a metric for measuring academic impact (and does double duty for the witch assessing the victims in the book).
  Fitter, Happier by Radiohead captures that metric, data goal based approach to life that drives so much of modern life.
• Florence and the Machine: Lungs. The main character, Hazel, a marine biologist is hoping to relaunch her research career at the writing retreat in the book. Dogs Day Are Over, a song of reinvention seems apt and she also has a cool dog, Sadie. Also, the woman leading the writing retreat, Lisa, is a keen runner, and I feel that this is the sort of track she might have on her running playlist.
• Boards of Canada: Music Has the Right to Children. In the book one of the academics is Nasir, a young AI researcher. He listens to Vaporwave music. I don’t actually own records of that genre but Boards of Canada have been labelled proto-vaporwave. Plus the cover has a spooky quality.
• Fleetwood Mac: Fleetwood Mac. The Hen Wrach witch in the book is based on a figure in Welsh folklore. The song, Rhiannon , by Fleetwood Mac is about Rhiannon from the Welsh myth of Mabinogion. She is a powerful, intelligent and wise Queen in the tales, described as “one of the great female personalities in World literature”.
  There aren’t that many modern songs about the Mabinogion, and one of the characters in the book is an expert in female representation in folklore so would definitely know of Rhiannon.
• PJ Harvey: To Bring You My Love. The track Down by the Water is a dark, brooding song full of menace. The old local fisherman, Gryff, tells a tale of mermaids stealing a child for revenge, which this song could soundtrack. Water plays a big part in the novel – the academics are cut off because of a flooded road, the witch arises from a bog and the sea offers a possible salvation.
• Oasis: Definitely, Maybe.The host of the writing retreat are a married couple, Teddy and Catriona. Teddy describes himself as a simple man, he loves rugby, a full breakfast and his wife. The song Live Forever is playing at a pivotal moment as he attempts to ford the flooded road that has cut them off.
• This Mortal Coil: It’ll End in Tears. Song to the Siren encapsulates a lot of the book, but I hadn’t appreciated that until I came to think of these posts. The witch emits an unnerving cry that the people hear before they know what is happening to them. It has a particular affect on Catriona, the host of the writing retreat. Also, the song is spooky, ethereal and like a summons from another world.

Books

For all the opinions (so many opinions!) about Nolan’s The Odyssey, it’s impact on the profile of Greek mythology has been undeniable. When we went to Hay during our staycation, just about every bookshop led their displays with various versions of Homer plus related works. The movie also led me to read Homer Haunted, a deeply knowledgeable journey through the various translations and interpretations of Homer’s classics. It teaches you a lot about poetry, the nature of translation and how each age takes what it needs from these works.

On a very different track, I’ve been on a music book riff this month. Peter Ormerod’s David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God, examines the influence of spirituality on Bowie’s work. Ormerod is very good at dissecting Bowie’s music, but overall the book had the strange effect of making me admire Bowie less. His much vaunted chameleon tendencies are intriguing when it comes to musical styles, but seem rather trite as he dips in and out of Christianity, paganism, buddhism, gnostism, the occult and fascism. The music it led to may be fascinating, but I don’t think pop stars are where to go to for insights into religion.

On the other hand, readers of this blog may be aware of my long-time appreciation of the band, Prefab Sprout. I feel that their admirers, such as Stuart Maconie, Richard Osman, Tim Burgess, are like members of a benign cult. We can’t understand why everyone doesn’t appreciate the genius of Paddy McAloon. We’re like the ancient mariner, stopping one in three and asking “have you come to the way of the great McAloon?”. So I was delighted that there is finally a good book about the group, Nige Tassell’s Truly Gifted Kids. Tassell is a fully paid up member of the Paddy Appreciation Society and the book is constructed around short essays that recount and explore different aspects of the group. Feel the love.

Vinyl

British trio, mary in the junkyard (yes, it’s lower case), released their debut album Role Model Hermit. Related to my book promo above, in our radio show Clint pointed out that this would have been an ideal title to associate with my previous book, The Recluse Rules. The album has echoes of Big Thief, Beach House and Wednesday, and the feeling of three people house-sharing and staying up all night arguing about their favourite Ben Wheatley film.

Album of the month though is definitely the new Phoebe Bridgers album, Lost Weekend. It’s only her third solo album, but she’s such a serial collaborator, with BoyGenius, Better Oblivion Community Center and working with a wide range of artists from SZA to Paul McCartney, that it seems part of a bigger discography. The indie singer-songwriter crafts a proper album, the sort that you want to listen to in its entirety, rather than a collection of independent songs. The Dinked edition vinyl I got is also a joy, with glow in the dark cover, beautifully illustrated lyric booklet and a UV torch that illuminates the credits for the “hidden” track on side D. Respect the format.

Amazon ads – mixed results. Probably broke even on what I spent and what I got back on my last book. Will try again with more refinement for this one.

BookBub – you can set up campaigns in here, discounted and promoted. It didn’t really produce any noticeable upturn last time, but I think I may have a better idea of how to use it this time around.

BookSirens – you can give away free ARCs (Advance Reader Copy), so people can read it for free on the condition they leave a review. I got a few reviews this way last time, so will see if it works again. If you want to have a read and review for the H-Index, please do!

Books of Horror Freeview – an offshoot of the excellent Facebook Books of Horror group, where you can offer an ARC in exchange for a reviews. I had a few takers this time.

Draft2Digital – this is really a distribution platform. From here I have placed the book with a variety of ebook shopfronts.

IngramSpark – like Draft2Digital, a useful platform for distributing the physical copy into bookstores and library databases. No idea if it will work yet.

Kindle Unlimited – a lot of authors have success with this, because if you are a Kindle Unlimited member it lowers the barrier to the “I’ll give it a go”. It requires a 90 day exclusivity period though, so you can’t put it in those other platforms for that time. I did this with The Recluse Rules, but I haven’t for the H-Index. My plan is to do it for the next book, as there will be three then in the Cursed Coast series, which is often a draw for KU readers.

I can’t say any of these have propelled me to the New York Times bestseller list (given the blurb on book covers, I sometimes feel I must be the only author who isn’t a NYT bestseller), but I think that is as much down to my learning how to play those algorithms as their effectiveness. I’ve deliberately not used a few, where discussion groups have suggested they are not worth the investment.

I’m also going to do some promo over on my personal and vinyl Instagram accounts (10 days with a relevant album).

And then there is this blog of course! So here is where you can order the H-Index if you so desire (it’s only £0.99 so what have you got to lose?):

Apple, Smashwords, etc

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Sneha Krishnan writing for Al Jazeera, correctly highlights the underlying motivation behind the campaign against Arday, saying “There was no ambiguity from the beginning that this so-called revelation of “plagiarism” was a cudgel: it was a way to make a point that equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives are supposedly academically dishonest.” She goes on to call out the media outlets who wilfully neglected their due diligence process, stating “for any media outlet that claims seriousness to fail to investigate the intensity of the pile-on that Arday experienced, and its origins within a eugenicist’s fantasy of ridding universities of Black professors and antiracist scholarship, is profoundly irresponsible.”

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza asks “Who killed Jason Arday?” and concludes that he “was killed by white liberal proponents of performative inclusion who propelled him, shrouding him with the aura of heroic exceptionalism”. That is Cambridge (and by extension, most of white liberal higher ed) likes to perform inclusion, but only to the extent that it reflects well on themselves. The “I have a lot of black friends and really like hip hop” defence. It’s not only not enough, but actually places people like Arday in the line of fire.

Writing in Inside Higher Ed, Shaun Harper points out that Arday’s treatment can be seen as part of a longer practice of “racialized punishment inequities” that begins in school. He cites research showing that “Black girls and boys in K–12 schools… are routinely suspended and expelled at exponentially higher rates than their white peers for the same misbehaviors”. What Arday’s case demonstrates is that there is no misdemeanour too trivial when it comes to ruining the life of a Black intellectual.

What I do have some experience to comment upon, if I may, are the allegations of Arday being a fantasist. Considering the intensity of the analysis he experienced, the claims here seem pretty thin. I wonder what that level of scrutiny would reveal about any of us. But what I do know is that in my field, educational technology, I could list several prominent “thought leaders” who have built an entire career out of being bullshitters. Exaggerating impact, claiming significant change, predicting revolution – not only are these actions not pilloried, they are in fact, rewarded with prestigious keynote invites. White Ed Tech Bullshit is labelled “visionary”.

Witnessing a lynch mob lessens all of us, even if we don’t participate in it or actively fight against it. The very existence of such an ugly act shreds a bit of our humanity. But I’m guilty here also, I didn’t blog about this while it was happening, and just moaning about it to people isn’t enough. We all need to be calling it out as it happens, to show that it is not “in the public interest”. Now the tragic outcome of this episode seems inevitable, and we need to ensure that inevitable is unacceptable.

Given that AI providers are in fierce competition with each other to have better models than their rivals, finding ways of avoiding model collapse is imperative for them. Harvesting content pre-2020 is one way, but that will run out. The insidious interpretation of the book destruction approach is that it is an attempt to deliberately remove content from the public domain that your competitors might use.

This is now an active business model. Maren has a podcast and has been approached by a company to have exclusive access to her raw recordings (she declined, obviously). They want to train conversational models on real humans speaking, not just the published version. But they don’t want competitors to have that content. Once you start seeing _all_ human interaction as potentially exclusive content for harvesting then it lends itself to some “interesting” business models (and by interesting, I mean awful). Let us consider a near future (it is probably already happening), where the requirement for content that is not infected by AI is increasingly precious. It then makes capitalist sense for people to wear smart glasses or other devices, and walk around surreptitiously recording conversations, to be sold to AI vendors. One can picture them like traders of old, arriving with their cartload of goods and it being sold by weight, in this case gigabytes of data.

Or let’s consider another area – that of creative writing. The self-publishing community is substantial (I’m a proud member). There are a lot of online tools that provide platforms for writing, with formatting, analytics, and advice. I use Reedsy when my novel is complete, for instance. This is original content being created on a platform that can be harvested, and all the changes, modifications, and tweaks themselves are useful data for AI models (I’m not suggesting any of the platforms are doing that currently). We might also see providers offer incentives to allow exclusivity on their platform so that only their models are trained on that content. Amazon requires a 90 day exclusivity for Kindle Unlimited promotion currently. This is probably more about market dominance at the moment rather than AI training, but it could easily lend itself to the latter.

But this pales into insignificance next to the great content production engine that is Higher Education. All those assignments, forums, artefacts. And all the variations of them, along with revisions and edits, and all those detailed conversations in online forums. This is rich and largely endless, human generated content for AI models to train on. With nearly all HEIs using TurnItIn or similar, they are already handing over that data. At the moment I don’t think those companies are selling it on, but one could imagine a business model where they might (and perhaps offer the HEI a discount in return).

I’m sure someone has already written it, but I can foresee a future with people in large warehouses, sitting and generating content for the big machine to suck up, a sort of Matrix-like feeding, but with bad poetry and essays as the food rather than electrochemical energy.

One of the ironies of this is that AI is acknowledging itself as an infection, or invasive species. It doesn’t want content that’s been affected by AI. Maybe AI companies will start helping students to avoid using AI in assignments so it can be sure to harvest their content afterwards. It also recognises that human generated content really is worthwhile, despite all the promises of the great AI reckoning. Odd that.

PS – I thought I had been all clever with the title as a play on the band Pop Will Eat Itself (I nearly got beaten up at one of their gigs in the 80s, but that’s a different story). It turns out that it’s a commonly used phrase on social media. Oh well.