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Thoughts on life, writing, and what have you.

Ghost Post: September 2025

What I did on my summer vacation:

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AI continues to ruin the world and make more work for me and I’m tired! A while back I mused that if things got worse I’d have to lock everything down and unfortunately, that’s what I’ve had to spend a good chunk of my August doing. Here’s how things are going to work now:

On Patreon, everything that was previously public is now available to free members. You can follow me without paying a cent to see Ether & Ichor episodes, short stories, and news that would’ve previously been public. Members at both levels get bonus Flotsam & Jetsam episodes and early access to all my writing, and Phantom-tier members get a look behind the scenes every month at what I’m working on.

However, as mentioned previously, Patreon takes more of your money than Ko-fi, and Ko-fi’s still the better option for me. But Ko-fi doesn’t have a way for me to share things for free without them being public, so that’s on Patreon if you want it. If you do want to support me, though, all of the exact same content is on Ko-fi and you can become a member there to get access to all of it.

Despite Acast assuring me this would not be the case, it seems moving the podcast to them did indeed bork the Spotify availability of the podcast. Frankly at this point I cannot be bothered to fix it, as I’m moving off Spotify anyway. The podcast is now distributed through Acast so apart from Spotify, we should actually be pretty widely distributed. For what it’s worth, we now show up in the podcast app I use, so that seems like a good sign to me!

However, if you can’t be bothered hunting us down, I’ve put up zip files of all of our episodes in my Ko-fi shop. You can download the entirety of Ether & Ichor free right here. You can also download all of the Flotsam & Jetsam bonus episodes for £4, or for free if you’re a member. All purchases of £1 or more in my Ko-fi shop get you 30-day access to everything that being a Ghoul-tier member would get you, so you can read the back catalogue of stories and essays. Save them to read later if you wish, just don’t feed them into any AI or LLM programmes.

I’m still trying really hard not to use Substack due to their platforming of Nazis and fascists. I know it would be the easiest way to distribute the newsletter without using AI-mining platforms, but I’m digging my little heels in. I’m going to try posting the newsletter on the Dreamwidth community again (which you’ll now have to request to join in order to see posts, since AI scraping bots have been spotted on DW too), and also on my website. This is a lot more work for me than I’d like but I guess this is how we fucking live now.

And listen, if you really want to read my work but truly can’t spare £1? Shoot me an email. I’d make my work publicly available if I could, but I can’t, so I’m afraid you do have to ask. But I’m genuinely happy to send it to you if you ask.

I’m very happily working on Hollywood Gods whenever I have time, which means there’s very little output here while work continues behind the scenes. Phantoms got a look at what I’ve been up to this month.

Also, Sunflower Auction is live, raising money for nonprofit organisations benefiting Ukraine. You can bid on a short story written by me here.

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I already mentioned this to Phantoms, but just so everyone’s on the same page, I’m going to continue with Dishonored off-stream. It’s making me too anxious as a first time play on stream so I will be bad at the game in the privacy of my own living room with only Knick Pnack to judge me.

I don’t really have plans to stream anything else at the minute. Streaming was initially done solely so I could have something to offer supporters in this time when I’m working on a book and very little gets shared here, and while that is indeed the present situation, I’m hoping that you all understand that I’d rather spend my limited free time actually writing the book.

We’ll see if I need a break from Hollywood Gods to work on something shorter – I have a few outlines on the back burner that I intend to flesh out into stories at some point, but we’ll see how it goes.

Ether & Ichor isn’t dead, incidentally! We’re going to put more work into season 5 this month; while a premiere isn’t on the horizon, please know it’s still in the works.

I can certainly promise Phantoms a behind the scenes post, at the very least.

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I suspect Joanna M. Lawrie somehow has more hours in her day than I do and has released yet another book! The Learned Cat is an absolutely precious picture book that I highly recommend getting for the kids in your life.

LJ Sitler is a bit short of rent and bills, and if you can toss anything in the hat, it’d be much appreciated.

Michael Z. Zaki wrote a lovely essay about engaging with life as a narrative.

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On Not Surrendering in Advance (Or At Any Point Thereafter).

Feels perhaps useful to mention that the rest of the world can’t send packages to the US any more – Americans, be careful not to order things from abroad that may not reach you.

But hey, since the world is terrible in increasingly pervasive ways, maybe you’d like to look at some kittens! Meet Mama Sunshine and the Bad Weather Beans (be warned the text mentions animal death).

Wendy Xu wrote a great essay on exploring, processing, and expressing human emotions through fantasy, and how AI “art” is antithetical to that.

When I find myself in times of despair about the State of the Arts, Guillermo del Toro comes to me.

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Currently Reading: The Joy of Being Selfish by Michelle Elman

Do we need to talk about why my therapist recommended me this book? We do not. And that’s me setting a boundary! Hope I get a gold star in therapy this week.

Currently Watching: Legend of Yunxi

It’s losing-my-mind-over-C-drama o’clock again! I can’t be normal about a marriage of convenience turning into real love and also the guy she fell in love with while her husband was pretending he didn’t care about her. What a relief that Yunxi has two hands and Qishao and Feiye won’t have to fight about it. :)

Currently Playing: ………………………...Animal Crossing

[“Here I Go Again” playing from a tape deck at the other end of the island]

I watched two other friends recently pick ACNH back up and start rebuilding and I couldn’t resist the urge to do it myself. Dyscalculia has once again shot me in the foot and all the dimensions of what I was planning to do have not come out right but we soldier on.

Currently Listening: KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack

I’m sorry that everyone who’s seen me in the past two months has had to deal with me doing Soda Pop shoulders as an idle animation.

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We have some solar-powered ivy lights in the yard; of course, we live in England, so anything solar-powered is short-lived at best. But Knick Pnack has taken to sitting in the office window every night and watching the lights while they last. They don’t move or flash or anything. He’s just up-close stargazing.

Wishing you all the peace of a little house cat gazing at his own personal stars this month. Drop us a line on Discord or Revolt, and take care of yourselves and the people around you.

29/08/24: I'm Pulling My Books From Draft2Digital

Short version: I am pulling my books from Draft2Digital’s distribution. Ebooks are still available through my Ko-fi shop and paperbacks are available through the end of August. I want to have print copies available again sometime in the future, but I don’t know how long that will be.

Long version:

Apparently generative AI companies have been approaching my book distributor, Draft2Digital, seeking to acquire books distributed through them on which to train their AI. Some authors (not me; I was alerted to this by December on Pillowfort) received an email with a survey link asking how we feel about receiving 1/10 of a cent per word for our work in exchange for training an algorithm to write stories we’ll then have to compete with in the publishing market. For context, bare minimum industry standard is 5 cents a word. We’re being asked to take a fraction of what our work is worth in order to put ourselves out of jobs in the future.

Y’all? I’m miserable about this. I’m angry, I’m exhausted, I’m devastated. It feels like this is happening at every turn and now my fucking book distributor is salivating at selling my work out from under me for pennies so that AI can write stories instead of me.

Right now it’s just a survey. But the fact that they’re even considering it tells me they aren’t trustworthy with my work. I suspect no matter how much pushback they get in the survey, they’re going to do it if they want to do it. I’m not giving them the opportunity to do this to my books.

When I was unemployed and writing was my only income, I resisted wider distribution for so long. Nearly every channel I could find required me to go through Amazon, and I wanted to stick to my guns on not letting Jeff Bezos make one red cent off me as long as I could. But I needed money, and people wanted to buy my books in Real Bookshops (and also Amazon), so I caved. And it was nice! I was grumpy about Amazon making money off me but people bought my books and I could buy groceries. If you bought books from me back then, you cannot know how grateful I was and am, and how much that helped me.

I mention this because there isn’t a mass exodus from D2D brewing. You’re not gonna see every author you know who distributes through them pulling their books. I want to be clear that I’m not making a moral judgment on everyone else. I depended on that book money and so do tons of other authors. We’re all weighing the factors in our lives and figuring out what we can bear to do. Some people are going to take that shitty deal because no money doesn’t pay the bills, and some money, even if it’s insultingly little, does. It isn’t our fault that we’re being put in the position of trading our futures for short-term cash; it is these AI companies and everyone who funds them, it is CEOs who hoard wealth and refuse to adequately compensate the people on whose labour they profit, it is capitalism, full stop. It is the system that’s been created to stop us from doing anything that isn’t making money for the man at the top.

I’m incredibly lucky in many ways, not least of which is that I start a permanent position next week which will allow me not to depend on book income as much. It still certainly helps (especially because I haven’t been paid since July and have had a broken bed and a broken laptop to replace ha ha ha) but I can afford to keep my books safe from exploitative entities.

I hate this. I really do. I wish I could just keep them available. But I really believe in doing the good I’m able to do. One person keeping their books out of the AI training buffet isn’t going to make a huge difference, but it’s four fewer books in the matrix. And if everyone who can afford to pull their books does, that’s even more of a difference. And if they don’t, at least I did what I could.

I had actually been looking vaguely at switching to a different print distributor, so at least that was already on my radar. They charge upfront, and as mentioned previously, I’ve had some financial hits between paychecks, so it’s not going to be an immediate switch. I’m also going to have to talk to them about AI now apparently!! I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. For now, I’m leaving the print books listed through the end of August, which I know isn’t much time. If you want a print copy but can’t afford it right now, let me know and I’ll be happy to get you a copy if you can cover shipping from the UK.

Ebooks are still available through my Ko-fi shop.

As a final note, in case you hadn’t picked up on this, it’s an incredibly demoralising time to be a professional author. If you’re looking for ways to help, genuinely the best advice I can give is to support your favourite authors in the ways they say help them the most. For some people it might be Patreon, for some it might be liking and commenting on YouTube videos. For me, it’s Ko-fi. And if you like someone’s work, it’s always worth saying something. Tell a friend you think might like it, or let the author know what it meant to you.

And don’t fucking use AI.

10/06/24: Authors for Palestine: Free Books for a Good Cause

a watermelon-coloured gradient background with an image of a watermelon and an olive branch. text reads: authors for palestine, a giveaway of books, bonus scenes, swag packs & more. event live: june 10-20. all proceeds will go to a few palestinian families in need picked via operation olive branch. make a donation of $5, $10, $15 or more to one of the families on the site. fill in the event form and attach the screenshot. more info: https://afp.ju.mp

I've joined over 50 other authors supporting Palestinian families in need through a fundraising giveaway! Here's how it works:

1. Donate to one of the families we've chosen through Operation Olive Branch

2. Fill in the form on our website and attach a screenshot of your donation

3. Receive free books and discount codes as thanks for your help

AND

Be entered in our giveaway to potentially receive even more free books and extras!

All participants will receive a free copy of my queer gothic ghost story romance, The Hunt and the Haunting, plus a code for 50% off everything in my Ko-fi shop. There are also two ebook copies of my novella retelling the myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, Crown of Ivy, up for grabs in the giveaway.

Check out our website for all the details!

25/05/24: Generic Foundational Blog Post Title

Preserving my post about quitting Instagram here:

I grow weary of the internet being run by tech bros who never took an ethics class. Not that it's in the least surprising, but IG is the latest platform to be mined for 'AI' datasets, and so this is where I draw the line. Link for further reading here.

For those who don't understand why artists are upset about AI - which, tangentially, is not artificial intelligence, as it doesn't think for itself but runs an algorithm on aggregated data to find the mode - these bots are fed art and writing taken from artists without either consent or remuneration, then used to approximate our creative work. From a purely ethical standpoint, these bots are trained on stolen art and used to recreate that art without paying the people who made it. From a standpoint valuing human creativity, this is both unforgivably inane and gallingly dismissive. People create art to say things to each other about the world we experience and the things we value. Who cares what the algorithm values? Art is an inherently human endeavour, and the people who create it deserve the resources to live our lives in this capitalist hellscape. Attempts to create a world where art is manufactured by robots and humans are stuck with the menial labour are so backwards it blows my mind.

I'm not a visual artist but my writing has been scraped for AI use without my consent, without my receiving credit or compensation, and without my ability to remove it from that sphere. I don't want to be part of a machine meant to replace writing jobs! I want to GET those writing jobs! But those jobs are being eradicated so that robots can have them instead, and that's supremely uncool.

Please stand with your artist friends. Don't use AI generators and don't feed the bots.

This stylesheet cobbled together by EGGRAMEN in 2022.

My work may not be used in whole or part for AI or LLM training or generation of any kind.