With the exciting URL of https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcoHfNyXxiAbRHBWenBPgLQ the Strange Reads YouTube channel has been launched. After a month and a half of constant work, we have three episodes and a string of others booked in. I’ve hosted the first handful, but I hope that friends/authors will soon join me to introduce their picks for future Strange Reads. Following the launch of the channel, we received our first comment from a bot saying (in Spanish) that they loved the work and wished Celine the God looks upon us favorably.
Muchas gracias, AI
There is so much effort going into creating a social media footprint, to promote a writing career, one soon realises an oversight: NO WRITING IS GETTING DONE! From here that is my next job. The ideas list never stops growing, but time is a bitch when it comes to executing these dreams.
While looking for images to tell the story of each Strange Read episode, I’ve discovered some beautiful and haunting paintings from the past. However, by far the most chilling have been some images from the future. Yes, the future.
I stumbled upon AI-created artwork while reading a post by Nekro. This artist produces new pieces by asking a computer to generate an image and then finishing the composition manually. It couldn’t be available without thousands of dollars of software, I thought to myself. Despite my reservations, I did a casual search. What followed left me stunned.
One YouTube video and a link later, I found myself at the VQGAN+CLIP.ipynb site. Type a description of what you want, and your computer goes to work. Many of the AI art examples are of colourful future-scapes. However, following my instructions, my PC soon belched out images from the far reaches of hell.
At 12:30am, I sat across the room, watching my monitor at a distance. As iterations scrolled up the screen, a sense of dread – like the beginning of a horror movie – consumed me. In a podcast several years ago, we laughed at ourselves for describing how VR headsets were mind-blowing. It feels horrible to talk of new technologies, knowing the future might listen to our foolish words.
Creating AI images feels both fantastic and horrible at the same time. The images are intriguing. They’re immediately useful, and no copyright is involved. However, one worries about the human role in creating any art. Words, music, and video are all possible AI creations. What happens when they’re better than us? Will they eventually appreciate and interpret the art instead of us?
I’ve never been one for paranoia about the machines taking over, but last night, I think I got my first sense of what it all means.
We had a big night planning the episode structure and content for the forthcoming Strange Reads YouTube video series. After a few mind-maps, desperate scribbles, and watching what other people have done, Fiona and I jumped into research. After a quick and engrossing, two hours, a lot of the information we need is on the page.
The first story we will cover is ‘The Statement of Randolph Carter.’ It was the very first Lovecraft tale I ever read and therefore, has a special place in my heart. When people ask which Lovecraft story they should read first, I always recommend this one. Of course, the first video in our ‘Who is…?’ series, will be H.P.Lovecraft.
With good fortune, our goal is to build a community and eventually take story/author requests. For now, we have a list of around ten stories to get us started. I can’t wait to get some footage in the camera – exciting times ahead.
On milestones, this post should represent the first blog entry to be mailed out to users of the site.
Does this composition indicate how nervous I may be when submitting?
Get some content on your website, I thought. Share a little of what you’ve been up to. Give people a reason to visit Strange Reads. Let’s make it spooky around here, get some cobwebs in the corners. All brilliant notions, but none of which will be happening…yet.
In editing an old story, written in 2016 as part of my Plague of Ladybirds short story series, I found myself falling in love with my old literary stomping ground all over again. Greysham, a fictional village in the north of England, is a bloody good place to get weird – or even better: Wyrd. After bringing the story up to 2022 standards – whatever they might be – a few casual readers reflected their enjoyment of the tale. I loved it, too.
Knowing that to publish it on the Strange Reads website would mean making it ineligible for future submissions, I went hunting for spooky story competitions. Of course, I ran into many ‘proper’ writing competitions (*confession to follow), but I’m happily surprised about the change of attitude to horror/supernatural/spooky writing. In six years, the scene has changed a lot.
With every ounce of bravery I could muster (and $US20), I submitted Norman, late of Greysham into a short story competition. Unfortunately, this means it won’t appear on this site until it’s had a dash at being a formerly published work. However, I think the story has merit and readers will enjoy it, so why not!
In conclusion, producing this website is already having an effect. To think about writing from multiple perspectives, produce content and keep to daily tasks is allowing me to think of myself as a writer.
*Yes, my prejudices are on show here. I still feel that the mainstream literary world will look down its nose at my type of fiction in preference for domestic drama stories. However, part of my goal is to raise the profile of horror fiction – with the help of a few similarly minded friends. Want to join me…
Yesterday, I started as the Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Horror Writers’ Group facilitator. The group meets at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Center in Greenmount. That’s Susannah on the left, checking that I don’t make any terrible grammatical errors. It’s exciting to be in a room of writers who have an interest in these genres. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this before.
I’m hoping the group will be excellent for networking, and like other writing groups, serve to keep me identifying as a writer. At the moment, if I take two days off writing I start identifying as ‘bum,’ ‘recluse,’ and ‘the guy who sweeps the millipedes out of the house.’
For the remainder of today, I delved into the short story catalogue and found, ‘Norman, Late of Greysham.’ It’s a short story I wrote in December of 2016. The tale is set in ‘The Plague of Ladybirds’ universe/village and references some of that novel’s events. With the intention of posting it on this site, it needed reworking in order for to function as a stand alone story. The biggest surprise in this exercise? I realised my writing has improved vastly in the last six years.
Hopefully, I can get the edits completed soon and post it on Strange Reads. The site is coming together. Right now, there are big plans and no content.
‘You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan”. Even if the plan is horrifying!’ – Heath Ledger’s Joker
After lunch, I sat down for a quick dabble on the PC. I thought my Strange Reads website could finally get some attention. The time is now after 10 pm. I must have been having fun, right? As you might be gathering, this rambling entry is here to serve as a blog post test. Hopefully, it’s a little more interesting than the default, ‘hello world’ text.
For no reason other than to have a picture, here’s Bela Lugosi.
