Dear Subscriber,
In my contribution to a recent collective indie authors’ promotion, The Stockton Insane Asylum Murder, I added five readers and molded them into different patients inside the loony bin in Stockton California. Very cool. I even wrote a blog post about the process. As you can see, I repeated the technique for the sixth mystery in my Portia of the Pacific series, The Dancing Murders, set in my town of San Diego in the Nineteenth Century. I hope you enjoy these additional touches, as it takes quite a lot of time and research to accomplish such things, despite the advent of ChatGPT and other A.I. flesh-and-blood authors are still in charge of your reading entertainment, thank goodness!
We indie authors may not go to all the worldwide bookstore signings like Neal Gaiman, bragging about traveling around the same spots they feature in their novel, but we do put the time and extra effort in to please our readers. I’ve put many of my novels into multimedia formats, for example, which is not an inexpensive endeavor. And, as a former teacher taught college students how to do critical thinking and argument research, I do the same assiduous work in my novels, even in the horror novels. I don’t mean to brag, but I believe readers should be made aware of the facts that separate the future A.I. imposters from the grunt work done by authors who don’t have a big corporation behind them or the false flag and very systematic and “canned” verbiage that comes out of ChatGPT and other computer echo chambers and databases.
The fact is, business people only want to repeat what they believe is “successful,” so their efforts are all about copying this formula, putting it into a computer, and repeating the process, over and over, until the “fans” get tired of it or stop spending money. As a result, the originality soon fades very quickly.
I call this process the “repetitive success cycle of creative business.”
And … perhaps the really sad thing about this process is that it works. Today, people don’t want to spend time learning from what they read. They want to escape and be lulled into a narcotic euphoria that simulates all the same merchandising they’ve been subjected to all their lives. This is why guys like my favorite doctor, Gabor Maté, have #1 bestsellers that preach the fact that we live in “toxic cultures” that create traumas and the Myth of Normal.
Of course, as a recovered addict (read the doctor’s opinion about how “addiction” means much more than just drugs), I lived a Jekyll-Hyde life. Not until I took the wisdom of such research seriously, for my own health and serenity, did I begin to get published and appreciated for my own creativity. I endorse this modern trend toward “authenticity” in anything we do. It’s quite refreshing, and it will open your mind to much wider perspectives than those the mainstream media and society wants you to see. Just my opinion, of course. You must live your own life, in the final analysis.
Have a great weekend, and stay safe.
James Musgrave
San Diego, CA
