Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 78

Friday Update

Just wanted to let you all know that my mother came home a day early — Thursday night.

She did great. She woke up after the surgery lucid and herself, was started on solid food that evening, was sitting up and then walking the next day, and is quote not to pick up anything over twenty pounds unquote. She’s allowed to go up stairs and everything! It’s pretty amazing.

Thank you for you kind thoughts, and although they may want to do chemo, I gather that may be considered just a precaution in her case, so with luck the whole thing is over and she will now be perfectly fine until she’s 107.

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No Foreign Sky: up for preorder now

All right, thank you everyone, I made fairly minimal changes:

***

Generations ago, a single turun explorer discovered a long-abandoned and dwindling population of humans, a devastated colony nearing extinction on a dangerous, hostile world.

Now entirely blended into turun society, uman people have become full citizens of the far-flung Ka’ Taand, a civilization that depends on the social instincts of both uman and turun. But the Ka’ Taand is now threatened by a vicious enemy from beyond familiar space, an enemy neither species understands.

When small half-fighter tradeship Nkaastu unexpectedly encounters a formation of enemy fighters during a routine trading mission, uman battlecommander Daamon sees no choice but to tackle suicidal odds in the hope of giving the worlds of the Ka’ Taand time to prepare for renewed attack. Neither Daamon nor his turun captain expect to survive long enough to know whether the sacrifice of their ship has been in vain …

… until an unknown and much more powerful ship appears, slashing effortlessly through the enemy fighters and saving Nkaastu. But who are these newcomers? And will they prove the allies the Ka’ Taand needs … or a new and deadlier enemy?

***

We get so little backstory in the actual novel that I feel two sentences of crucial backstory in the back cover description is not over the top. I tried it both ways, but for now I prefer the first sentence cut off from the second paragraph. I may rethink that. I hope I have clarified that Nkaastu is definitely a ship and not a person!

There’s plenty of time to tweak this description, but I think it’s pretty good, so I have put No Foreign Sky up for preorder. It will probably be available, with the revised description, very soon.

Meanwhile … think of how CJC started the Foreigner series: with an extended prologue in which we see the very first contact between a human and an ateva. Remember that? Well, that is missing here. We start with the unexpected encounter with the enemy formation and it’s a good long time before anyone spares a thought for the history that led to the blended human/turun civilization. This, right here in the description, is the place where we learn how that happened.

If you’re familiar with Little Fuzzy, H Beam Piper’s novel that was published in 1962, think of that: a small colony, abandoned, failing, devolving into primitive conditions, heading for extinction. Discovery by a much tougher species with plenty of modern technology. That was the exact situation here, but in reverse: a failing human colony was discovered by the turun.

Eventually, I may write a prequel about that discovery. I have the essential first scenes in my head and it would be fun to write the slow realization that humans are actually really intelligent and the social shift from, basically, bedraggled rescued pets to full citizens. And the way that the integration of humans into turun society changes turun society in important ways.

There is also a lead-in from No Foreign Sky to a sequel. I have only a vague outline of where that sequel would go, but on the other hand, I do have a vague outline. But I will need to recover from revision fatigue before I even think of writing that!

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Chat GPT Detector

Via The Passive Voice, this link to a detector that will tell you whether the text you put in was generated by a real live human or by AI.

Obviously I couldn’t resist trying that out. Was every line of TUYO written by a real human person?

It didn’t seem reasonable to put in the whole thing, obviously, but I dropped in the first six hundred words. What is the result?

Your text is Human written

Good to know! Every single line? No! “ Highlighted text is suspected to be most likely generated by AI* That’s six percent, roughly. What are the suspect lines? Here they are:

***

Beside the coals of the dying fire, within the trampled borders of our abandoned camp, surrounded by the great forest of the winter country, I waited for a terrible death. I had been waiting since midday. Before long, dusk would fold itself across the land. The Lau must surely come soon. I faced south, so that my death would not ride up behind me on his tall horse and see my back and think that I was afraid to face him. Also, I did not want to look north because I did not want to see that trodden snow and remember my brother leaving me behind. That might have been a different kind of cowardice. But I could only face one direction. So I faced south. The fire burned low. My brother had built it up with his own hands before he led our defeated warriors away. Now it was only embers, and the cold pressed against my back. I wished I could build the fire up again. Mostly that was what I thought about. That was as close to thinking about nothing as I could come. It was better than thinking about the Lau. I hoped they came before the fire burned out, or I might freeze to death before they found me. Even an Ugaro will die of the cold eventually, without fire or shelter. I tried not to hope that I would die before they found me. Then I heard them, the hoofbeats of their horses, and there was no more time for hope. I held very still, though stillness would not protect me now. Nothing would protect me. I was not here to be protected. They came riding between the great spruces and firs, tall dark men on tall dark horses, with the Sun device of their banner snapping overhead in the wind. Ten, twenty. Twice twenty. And even this was only the vanguard. I stood up to meet them, raising my hands to show that I was bound to a stake driven into the frozen earth—to show that I was tuyo, left here for them. They looked at me, but they rode past, down the trail my brother and our warriors had left. They rode through the remnants of our camp, around the fire and around me, and a little distance more. At first I thought they meant to leave me to die alone in this place while they went on to pursue a broader vengeance against my people. That would have been a death even more terrible than the one a tuyo should face. But then they came back and circled around me, not many paces away, looking down at me. My relief was so great that for the time it pushed away fear. I knew immediately which must be their warleader. My people prefer silver, which is the metal that belongs to the Moon. The Lau decorate their warleaders with gold, as befits the people of the Sun. This man had gold thread worked into the collar of his coat and the backs of his gloves and the tops of his boots. He did not carry a sword or any weapon, only a polished black stick as long as a man’s arm, with gold wire spiraling around its length. I had seen illustrations, so after a moment of puzzlement I recognized this as a scepter. This man was not only a warleader, but a scepter-holder, carrying the authority of the summer king. I had not known any such had come to the borderlands. At least my death would come at the hands of a worthy enemy. The scepter-holder’s horse was the color the Lau call fire bay and we call blood bay, which is common for their animals and very rare for ours. It was a fine animal. The Lau breed beautiful horses, but they belong to the summer country. They are too long-legged and too thin-skinned for the cold of Ugaro lands. Like their horses, the Lau are long-legged and thin-skinned, and they like the cold no better. They are a graceful people, with elegant features and smooth brown skin. Lau men often grow beards, rare for Ugaro men, but they shave them short, just to outline the jaw and mouth. The warleader had a beard like that. He had cut his hair short to match. No Ugaro man would do such a thing; for us, cropped hair is a mark of shame. We tie our hair back or leave it loose, but we do not cut it. For a moment, while the warleader gazed down at me, the silence was almost complete. A horse picked up one foot and set it down again, and the wind blew across the snow, and leather creaked as a man shifted his weight in the saddle. Other than that, there was no sound. At last the warleader dismounted. He was far taller than I; even taller than most of his own people. He looked cruel to me, with a hard set to his mouth. I knelt and bowed my head to show the proper respect the one defeated owes to the victor. He looked at me and then at one of his people who had come up beside him. He said to that man, “We must have pressed them even harder than we knew, if they’ve left a tuyo for us. I suppose this must be the son of an important Ugaro lord, but he seems merely a boy.”

***

That’s interesting! Isn’t that interesting? What about those lines leaps out at the AI Detector? It’s a puzzle. “No more time for hope,” I suppose. “Other than that, there was no sound.” The other highlighted sentences are connected to those lines. Maybe that’s why the AI Detector is suspicious of those sentences.

Let me try a couple of paragraphs of an exceedingly boring report I’m working on today:

Your text is human written.

This is VERY human-written — only 2% suspected of being AI generated. The style is, you will see, very different. I’m a little surprised it seems human-written. I think of this as Bureaucratic Bullshit Style, which I would have thought would seem pretty generic and potentially AI generated. I guess not. I guess maybe it’s all about detecting phrases that other people have used? You can see the one highlighted sentence is extremely generic and has no doubt been used verbatim in roughly a hundred thousand papers and reports this century alone. Here are the paragraphs:

***

The EXCEL Program has now accumulated data regarding tutoring over 43 semesters. The data below include all active EXCEL participants who requested tutoring at least once during a semester for a class. These data exclude tutoring directed toward improving Accuplacer or other test scores. When a single participant requested tutoring for multiple classes, these classes are counted separately. Grades of C, B, and A constitute “success” in attempted classes. Other grades, including W or I, are considered to constitute lack of success in attempted classes.

The primary interest here regards the difference in success rates before Spring 20202 compared to success rates following that semester. Therefore, data has been summarized for the 37 semesters prior to Spring 2020 and the 5 semesters following Spring 2020. To allow a more granular perception of these data, the 37 semesters from Fall 01 to Fall 2019 have also been broken into sets of ten to seven semesters; Spring 2020 is then presented in isolation; and the five semesters following 2020 are then presented as a set. These data are summarized in Table 1.

Data regarding each separate semester are also presented in Tables 2-7, with semesters grouped into blocks to allow easier visualization of trends or the lack thereof.

For purposes of discussion, the “low tutoring” group here includes students who attended just one to three tutoring sessions during the entire semester. Categories are then nested, so that the category “4+” contains all students who attended four or more tutoring sessions, including all the students in the “7+” and “10+” categories. The “10+” category constitutes the “high tutoring” condition. The categories “4+” and “7+” are termed “medium-tutoring.” The greatest number of students attend few tutoring sessions, so sample sizes are low for the high-tutoring group during many semesters. Data regarding number of students requesting tutoring services are presented in Table 8.

***

As promised, exceedingly boring.

Also unfinished, so I’m going to go work on that now.

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Results of Black Dog sale

Okay, so, for Black Dog, I scheduled series promos like this:

Day 1 — Robin Reads Top Promo — 690 free downloads. Essentially no sell-through for the series.

Day 2 — Freebooksy series promo — 630 downloads and a significant increase of sell-through for the series, so I guess we can conclude that the series promo does make a difference after all. That’s good to know. It might not be cost-effective, but apparently it does at least have some effect.

Day 3 — EReaderIQ series promo — 380 downloads and a continuing boost to series sell-through. EReaderIQ is much cheaper than Freebooksy and I think this result was quite good. For promotion on a budget, I think this service is probably a very good choice.

Day 4 — JustKindleBooks series promo. Not dreadful, but not great; 200 downloads. I doubt I’ll be using this promo service again, at least not right away.

Day 5 — Fussy Librarian — 300 downloads, the second weakest performer, but close to the EReader IQ series promotion. Price was comparable. I think both were good enough to use again.

As you can see, I didn’t stack promo services this time, which means it’s easier to see the impact of specific promotion services. To my complete astonishment, for the first time ever, the total number of Black Dog downloads was in shouting distance of Tuyo downloads, and that happened without stacking up promotion services. As far as I can tell, that’s because of Robin Reads. I’m not sure I’ve used that service for Black Dog before and that may have been why it had a particularly good result. Overall, well over 2000 downloads for each.

More sell-through for the Tuyo series … so far … but we’ll see how that looks in another week or so.

Further results: Releasing Tano on March 1st of course made a big difference to KU pages read. But, subtracting Tano, I can see that the Tuyo-series sale resulted in a KU boost beginning on March 9th, or two days after the sale ended. This is about typical for a KU boost. There was a big spike two days later, on March 11th, which is too early for the Black Dog series sale to have any effect. That is also typical. What I think I ought to see is a decisive rise in KU pages read for several months, with some ebb and flow, but a series of increasingly high spikes. I haven’t passed 20,000 pages read per day yet, but I’m getting close and I think the next spike will do it.

Overall, I think the overall result of the Tuyo sale was good, far (far) better than the sale last Aug/Sept, and I’m waiting to see what will happen due to the Black Dog sale, but I hope to see the same reassuringly good result there as well.

TANO has way more than paid for its cover now, and I should add, its cover was pricy both because this cover artist has raised their prices and because I paid an extra fee to jump the queue and have the cover started in February rather than May. That’s how booked up they are, and no doubt that’s why they’ve raised their prices — they’re in demand and stacking up orders.

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Clarksworld Reports: A Concerning Trend

A post from Clarksworld: A Concerning Trend

Since the early days of the pandemic, I’ve observed an increase in the number of spammy submissions to Clarkesworld. What I mean by that is that there’s an honest interest in being published, but not in having to do the actual work. Up until recently, these were almost entirely cases of  plagiarism, first by replacing the author’s name and then later by use of programs designed to “make it your own.” The latter often results in rather ham-fisted results like this one I received in 2021:

Sitting on its three years’ experience, the fittest Shell was originally the size of more android subliminal observations than any other single subject in the Grandma. Obey three hundred retorts can’t even a couple was issued for wages to the apparently that dropped the storage station.

These are the same sentences from the original story, “Human Error” by Raymond F. Jones, published in If (April 1956):

During its three years’ existence, the first Wheel was probably the subject of more amateur astronomical observations than any other single object in the heavens. Over three hundred reports came in when a call was issued for witnesses to the accident that destroyed the space station.

These cases were often easy to spot and infrequent enough that they were only a minor nuisance. Sometimes it would pick up for a month or two, but overall growth was very slow and number of cases stayed low. Anyone caught plagiarizing was banned from future submissions. Some even had the nerve to complain about it. “But I really need the money.”

Towards the end of 2022, there was another spike in plagiarism and then “AI” chatbots started gaining some attention, putting a new tool in their arsenal and encouraging more to give this “side hustle” a try. It quickly got out of hand:

Wow, check out that graph! WOW.

I am really baffled by this. I honestly don’t see the point in having a story published under your name, but one that you generated rather than wrote. I mean, other than the money. But the money in short stories can’t be driving that kind of logarithmic curve. This is like wanting bragging rights for having written a story, except without having written a story. And that just seems really weird to me.

I mean, do you expect this to occur with people who are writing fan fiction for the pure fun of it? Surely not. Because they’re writing it because they want to write it, yes? So there must be some motivation to try to get fake stories published that has absolutely nothing to do with writing stories. I’m trying to wrap my mind around this, but I just don’t see it.

According to the linked post, money really does seem to be a primary motivator:

I’ve reached out to several editors and the situation I’m experiencing is by no means unique. It does appear to be hitting higher-profile “always open” markets much harder than those with limited submission windows or lower pay rates. This isn’t terribly surprising since the websites and channels that promote “write for money” schemes tend to focus more attention on “always open” markets with higher per-word rates. … It’s clear that business as usual won’t be sustainable and I worry that this path will lead to an increased number of barriers for new and international authors. Short fiction needs these people.

Sounds pretty tough, especially right now as short-fiction venues scramble to come up with short-term solutions.

I’m suddenly betting that agents are getting swamped with AI-generated “novels.” Of course probably the majority can be rejected about as briskly as any other not-great submission. But suppose the handful of great novels in the slush pile are now submerged in a haystack ten times the size of any prior haystack? Or a hundred times the size?

Anyway, that graph just really caught me.

If you want to read Human Error by Raymond Jones, it’s available from Project Gutenberg here. That’s a really good intro paragraph, so I’m curious.

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Back Cover Copy: Upcoming SF Releases

Okay, so, I don’t particularly want to step on the heels of all the sales going on this month, so I have put off mentioning the various SF books that will be coming out this year. But they are moving along.

I’ve finished basic revision (AGAIN) for NO FOREIGN SKY and I’m ordering a proofing copy today. I expect I will make lots of notes in the paper copy because I always do. Usually the first time I go through a paper copy, I make notes of some sort on almost every page. Not just typos. I change my mind about a comma here or a phrase there, or I notice a hopefully minor continuity error, or whatever.

The second time I go through a fresh paper copy, hopefully I will make a lot fewer comments and catch a lot fewer typos.

Then yet another paper copy for my mother to read. If she wants to read it. It’ll be the very first SF novel she has ever read in her life, probably.

However, NO FOREIGN SKY will go up for preorder shortly. It will need back cover description, which I have tentatively written. Please look this over and help me tweak it:

***

Generations ago, a single turun explorer discovered a long-abandoned and dwindling population of humans, a devastated colony nearing extinction on a dangerous, hostile world.

Now entirely blended into turun society, uman people retain only traces of their original language and customs. Instead, they have become full citizens of the far-flung Ka’ Taand, a civilization that depends on both uman and turun sociality … a civilization that is now threatened by vicious enemies from beyond familiar space, enemies neither species understands.

When the small half-fighter Nkaastu unexpectedly encounters those enemies during a routine trading mission, Daamon, uman battlecommander sees no choice but to tackle suicidal odds in the hope of giving the worlds of the Ka’ Taand time to prepare for renewed attack. Neither Daamon nor his turun captain expect to survive long enough to know whether the sacrifice of their ship has been in vain …

… until an unknown and much more powerful ship appears, slashing effortlessly through the enemy fighters and saving Nkaastu. But who are these newcomers? And will they prove the allies the Ka’ Taand needs … or a new and deadlier enemy?

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Whew, glad that’s over

Yesterday was the first day in AGES I didn’t even look at my laptop.

But today should be a lot less stressful. The surgery went well. Took about two and a half hours, but the surgeon seemed pleased. It was laparoscopic, so hopefully recovery will be not as bad as it might have been. Mom was perfectly lucid and completely herself by six in the evening, huge relief there.

Now, just crossing our fingers about post surgical complications, or rather the complete lack thereof. If all goes well, she can come home on Friday. If all goes REALLY well, maybe we won’t even need a home health person to stay with her.

I’m going to get a proofing copy of TASMAKAT for her. There’s a nice quiet job that should keep her busy for a while. And while I have a tiny bit more revision to do for it, really, that should be trivial, so starting the enormous proofing job will be genuinely helpful.

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Monday Update: Crossing Fingers

A lot is going on in my personal life during the back half of March.

Ordinary posts will continue, because I’ve scheduled a lot of posts ahead and I’ll be checking in periodically. There will continue to be things I need to do here and elsewhere no matter what else may be happening.

But:

My mother is having fairly significant surgery today, probably at roughly the time this post is set to go live. The surgery is expected to take about two hours. Prognosis will be unknown until after the surgery, but potentially the outcome could be very positive. On the other hand, my mother is 87 and various complications are not unlikely.

and

Morgan is due to have puppies on the 20th and Leda is due to have puppies on the 31st, and until living, healthy puppies are out in the world and thriving, terrible things can go wrong. In fact, various horrible things can happen until the puppies are three weeks old. But the most stressful period is the leadup to the due date and the due date itself and the first day or so afterward.

So, good thoughts would be appreciated, and if I seem a bit unresponsive, you’ll know why.

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Black Dog Series Sale

Just letting you know that the Black Dog series will be on sale March 10 through March 14.

As with the recent Tuyo series sale, the first book is free and the rest reduced in price, sometimes by quite a bit.

If you’ve thought of picking up this series, this is a good time to grab it!

If you already have this series and enjoy it, good time to mention it to a friend.

I have to say, I’m dying to finish up ALL THE REVISIONS and start Silver Circle.

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Manta rays

I got this tidbit from Zoology's Greatest Mystery">Zoology’s Greatest Mystery, which I mentioned in an earlier post.

This isn’t relevant to anything particularly. Like the fish with the black stomachs so that the bioluminescence of their prey won’t glow through their abdominal wall and give away their position to predators, it’s just neat.

Apparently if you were to take one of those log graphs where you plot body mass vs brain mass of various animals, manta rays swoop up above all other fish [see what I did there?] and land on the graph right among the mammals. Who knew that? I didn’t know that.

Also, this is just as it should be from an artistic point of view, as manta rays are so utterly spectacular. Did you know their wingspan can get up to about 30 feet? That’s about two giraffes.

Photo by, let me see, Andre Kaim on Unsplash:

They also show curiosity and social bonds — I did not know they were particularly social — and appear to understand the concept of mirrors. The famous mirror test is iffy, but still.

Here’s an article about social behavior. You know, they wouldn’t put “friendship” in quotes if these were mammals. That’s a bit annoying.

Oh, this article here is neat!

The researchers studied the structure of more than 500 of these groups over five years, in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat Marine Park, one of the most biodiverse marine habitats on Earth. They found two distinct but connected communities of rays living together. These social communities were quite differently structured, one being made up of mostly mature female rays, and the other a mix of males, females and juveniles. … The study, published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, used social network analysis to show that manta ray communities contain a web of many weak acquaintances, with some stronger, longer-lasting relationships. Though they do not live in tight-knit social groups, the team noticed that female mantas tend to make long-term bonds with other females, while males did not have many strong connections. 

Very cool.

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