D.N. Schmidt's Blog: DNSchmidt.com, page 4

What Young People Look for When Buying Books: Poll Results

What makes young people buy books? If you’re an author researching book marketing, it can seem like young people are all doom scrolling instead of buying books. If you feel that way, here’s some good news: Gen Y and Gen Z are reading! According to a report by the American Library Association (ALA), young people are using libraries at higher […]

How an Anti-AI Definition of Art Will Save The World

To Save Human Artists, We Need to Redefine Art To save human artists from AI, we need a human-only definition of art. Introduction Generative AI is rapidly infiltrating every area of our lives, threatening to take over everything from internet research to the workplace to even human creativity. Search engines have all built AI assistants, Logitech is building ChatGPT right […]

Pretentious Science Fiction Book Title Generator

Book titles come in patterns. Someone will write a popular book, and other writers will try to ride their coattails by copying the pattern of verbs and nouns. After George R.R. Martin wrote A Song of Ice and Fire, authors started calling their fantasy novels “A [Something] of [Something Something]”, as a way of implying that their work was just […]

Happy Forever

A Science Fiction Short Story When Paul came home, Zoe was plugged into the computer. She had her red hair up in a halfhearted bun, revealing the port in the side of her head, and the dime-sized circle of bare skin around it. A long, white cable led from the port to the back of her PC. Most people with […]

Quick Writing Tip: Why I Hate The Amnesia Trope

Readers Probably Don’t Care If Your Protagonist Gets Their Memory Back One of my least-favorite plot devices in fiction is the amnesia trope. Giving a character amnesia rarely makes for a good story, especially when the story begins with the character trying to figure out their past. Almost inevitably, the writer doesn’t give enough information or characterization to make readers […]

Tiny Scares – Horror Flash Fiction

Looking for something creepy to read, but don’t have time for a novel? Here is a collection of horror flash fiction with over a dozen tiny scares. For people who like laughs with their horror, I’ve also included some comedy horror flash fiction below. Enjoy! Horror Flash Fiction An Ordinary Man The human mind ignores stimuli that it considers unimportant. […]

The Squeaky of Doom, a Silly Space Adventure

I wrote this space adventure story as a birthday present for my dog Roscoe. With his permission, I’ve decided to share it with you all. It’s about my real pets, and their slightly less real mission to protect humanity from alien deliverymen and other galactic threats. I hope you enjoy it as much as he did. Part One – Meet […]

On Second Thought, Becoming A Mystical Orb Was A Poor Career Choice

A Humorous Fantasy Story Kunnigr climbed thousands of steps to the top of his tower, nearly tripping on his beard several times. He shoved open the door, conjured up some food for his pet monkey, and sat in the plush chair by the window. Unfortunately, the tower’s massive height made for a terrible view. All he could see were clouds, […]

Dream Small

A Science Fiction Short Story Greg fired the shrink ray. The needles on the gauges darted into the red as he drained energy from his boss’s body. Maddeningly, nothing seemed to happen. Lynn looked the same as before. Even without her leather boots on, she was still tall enough to reach the highest shelves in the lab. Frowning, he took […]

The Drive-Invasion

A science fiction story No one ever thought a nothing town like Hicksville would be visited by aliens. In the movies, aliens only ever invaded New York or Los Angeles. There was nothing interesting to see in Hicksville. There weren’t any famous landmarks to blow up, just a high school and some corn fields. But even so, a few years […]