Lear and Foathing in Waterville

How my Muse is seeing the world right now

“Jesus on a pogo stick,” she moaned when I entered the bedroom New Years day. “Please turn off the spotlight and either take those drums away from the monkeys, or shoot the lot.” She abruptly leaned over the edge of the bed and barfed before croaking, “come back in a few months, or never.”

That’s when I realized my muse was in deep trouble. It could have been worse, while she did take most of my creativity with her, I was allowed to keep my sense of humor, and ability to get out of bed each morning. But how does a writer cope when their muse/creativity is incapacitated?

In my case, I am fortunate in that I have other pursuits to fill those hours created by retirement, and I’m not talking about shuffleboard. Let’s begin with a small rant. The world seems to be wetting its collective undies over AI…Half in anticipation, half in dread. I’m pretty much in the latter camp, particularly since almost every software application wants me to rely upon AI as if my brain suddenly turned into badly made Jell-o. Case in point, When I go to list another item ov eBay, it immediately offers to use AI to write a description of the item I’m selling. I’m sure as hell not that far gone, and hope I never get there.

There is one thing I’d like technology/AI to develop for me. I want a chip implant that can record and edit my dreams. I’d kick Fellini to the curb the first night. Imagine being able to rewatch your dreams while fully awake and then edit the best ones into short films. I’d have the mother of all Youtube channels and be rolling in dough. Best of all, there are no actors to pay, or set designers for that matter.

I do have one glaring example of where AI is shooting itself in the foot. Amazon is so reliant on AI bots that selling on the platform as a small business person has become so frustrating and unproductive that I’m gradually removing my books, music CDs, and movies from it. It’s so bad that I can’t even find some of my own listings ion there any more.

I decided to pony up the $21.00 monthly fee and expand on eBay to have my own store and sales have already jumped big time. Perhaps the biggest plus in doing so is having the ability to list an item nobody else has on there. Take a couple photos, add publication details, create a decent description, and add a price. I’m writing this on January second and will ship eight orders to start the new year. I can’t complain about that. It should keep me busy until my muse recovers. I can’t wait to run my latest story idea by her, It features Mary Magdalene, a trapeze, forbidden lust, and a group of slightly inebriated Hobbits playing accordions.

On a slightly more serious note, it’s been a while since I did a book review here, but I picked up a dandy British mystery at Bullmoose the other day. Deadly Animals is Marie Tierney’s first published novel and it’s a dandy.

Ava Bonney is fourteen and lives with her mother and younger sister Veronica in a rundown flat. Money’s tight and Mom is a somewhat narcissistic whiner, leaving the sisters to take care of each other. Ava is not only very bright, but inquisitive, and has developed an unusual interest in the macabre, notably a fascination with the speed and manner with which animals decompose. She’s completely unfazed by death, to a point where she sneaks out late at night to collect road kill which she places in a hidden boneyard. Her fascination has made her quite the expert in how death happens, what affects decay, and pretty much all there is to know about anatomy and physiology.

She’s gone so far as to read everything she can get her hands on about homicide and in particular, serial killers. When she slips out one night to check on a dead fox she’s been studying for a while, she smells another decaying entity nearby. It turns out to be Mickey Grant, a boy her age who is most assuredly dead. What strikes Ava as odd are the wounds that look like bite marks. She knows the boy was a bully, but that he was also kind to stray animals.

It’s this discovery that sets her on a very unusual and at times scary journey. After disguising her voice to sound like an older and more posh woman, she calls in the location of the body. By the time the very toe-curling climax has been reached, three more boys have been abducted, two of them found deceased with bite marks like the first victim, and Ava has become an integral part of the investigation, thanks to Detective Seth Delahaye figuring out just how smart and observant she is.

While readers know who the killer is well before the end, the why and how that propelled that person are revealed in a very adept manner. While there’s gore aplenty in the story, it (at least to me) never rises to a gratuitous level. I suspect many readers of this blog will find it extremely satisfying.

How I want my Muse to see things.