Latest / 6 Ps in AI Pods (AI6P) / 🗣️ AISW #122: Stella Fosse, USA-based elderotica author and micropublisher

Transcript

🗣️ AISW #122: Stella Fosse, USA-based elderotica author and micropublisher · 6 Ps in AI Pods (AI6P)

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, this is Karen Smiley.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to 6P's in AI Pods.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: This post is part of our AI6P interview series on AI, software, and wetware.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Our guests share their experiences with using AI and how they feel
0:17
SPEAKER_01: about AI using their data and content.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: I have a special guest today to mark the two year anniversary of the start
0:23
SPEAKER_02: of this interview series on AI software and wetware.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: She was my third guest in August 2024,
0:29
SPEAKER_02: and we're going to explore what has changed in AI in the past two years in her world
0:34
SPEAKER_02: as an author.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm delighted to once again welcome Stella Foss,
0:38
SPEAKER_02: now from Oregon, USA, as my guest on AI software and wetware.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: Stella, thank you so much for joining me on this interview.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: Please tell our audience about yourself, who you are and what you do.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for having me, Karen.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: I think that AI and authorship is such an interesting topic.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: So I am 72.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: I started writing and publishing books in my sixties after a career in biotech
1:05
SPEAKER_00: and raising my four kids.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: When I started out, I wasn't aware that there was any AI at that point.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: And it's been a really interesting journey.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: In the time that I've been writing,
1:19
SPEAKER_00: I've seen a huge change in the publishing industry,
1:23
SPEAKER_00: big move toward indie publishing from traditional publishing.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: I made that move myself some years ago,
1:31
SPEAKER_00: and now what I'm seeing is a huge controversy among authors,
1:39
SPEAKER_00: especially authors who are past midlife, about using or not using AI and
1:47
SPEAKER_00: how to use it, what are legitimate uses of AI versus non-legitimate uses.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: It's a big,
1:55
SPEAKER_00: big conversation and I think it really looks different if you're past a certain age
2:01
SPEAKER_00: and you have a shorter runway to generate your books before you're no longer able
2:07
SPEAKER_00: to do that.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, this is a really ripe conversation.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk a little bit about the kind of books that you write either in general
2:16
SPEAKER_02: or specific books that you have written to help our audience orient to what kind
2:20
SPEAKER_02: of writing you do?
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: So most of fiction really focuses on older women characters and their vibrant lives.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Part of my goal is to push back on ageist stereotypes So that's a focus for me in my fiction.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: In my nonfiction, I tend to write about topics of interest to women past midlife.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: I have a couple books out that include information about writing,
2:48
SPEAKER_00: editing, publishing, and marketing.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: And I also have an essay collection.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: That's my latest book.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: It's called Rock On, Power, Sex, and Money After 60.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And it covers those topics,
3:01
SPEAKER_00: of course,
3:02
SPEAKER_00: and then also creativity, our legacy and healthcare and a bunch of other things.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: One term that I've seen used to describe your work is Eldorotica.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: Is that a term that you still use?
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: I still am in a group,
3:19
SPEAKER_00: a writing group called Eldorotica that now meets online because we started off in
3:24
SPEAKER_00: the Bay Area and some of us have moved to different parts of the country.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: And our Eldorotica writing group has generated two books.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: The first one was an anthology called Dirty Old Women and the second book is a book
3:40
SPEAKER_00: that I edited and wrote a lot of and that's called Aphrodite's Pen,
3:45
SPEAKER_00: The Power of Writing Erotica After Midlife.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: And you mentioned that you've got some books that you want to write,
3:54
SPEAKER_02: as you said, while you still can.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: How do you decide what topic comes up next?
3:58
SPEAKER_02: I assume you've got a backlog of topics that you want to cover and you have
4:02
SPEAKER_02: to choose which one to tackle next.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: Or do you do multiple at once?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, actually I'm working on two this year.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: So I tell people I have a stack of imaginary to be written books on my nightstand.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately,
4:19
SPEAKER_00: even though I tend to crank out a book a year,
4:21
SPEAKER_00: the stack keeps getting bigger, not smaller.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure how that happens,
4:27
SPEAKER_00: but right now I'm working on my second vampire novel that's going to come out
4:33
SPEAKER_00: in time for Halloween.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: The series is called Blood Sisters and the tagline for
4:39
SPEAKER_00: that one is women become more powerful with age, especially after 500.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: That's a great one.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: The other book I'm working on is I have a book out on writing
4:51
SPEAKER_00: and publishing what I call well-seasoned romance,
4:54
SPEAKER_00: which is romance with characters over 60.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to create a more general book about writing and publishing
5:04
SPEAKER_00: and marketing your first book at any age.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: So that's the other one I'm working on that will come out, I hope,
5:12
SPEAKER_00: in time for people to use it with their New Year's resolutions,
5:16
SPEAKER_00: if their New Year's resolution happens to be to write a book.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: That sounds good.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk a little bit about your level of experience with AI and machine learning
5:27
SPEAKER_02: and analytics.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: It sounds like you expanded your experience level over the past two years.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: I think when we talked before, I had gotten really frustrated.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: I had decided to start using AI to do things like generate a marketing plan for a book.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I think I was using ChatGPT at that point and the marketing plan it generated,
5:48
SPEAKER_00: for example,
5:49
SPEAKER_00: had a list of podcasts to consult with or to see if I could be a guest
5:55
SPEAKER_00: on those podcasts.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And I am not exaggerating.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Half of them were hallucinations.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just that they were podcasts that were no longer recording.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: They had never existed.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: So when my partner got interested in working with Claude and I started working
6:12
SPEAKER_00: with Claude, this is just a few months ago, I didn't have very high expectations.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Of course, This is a different system than I was using before.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure to what extent it has to do with my difference in experience has
6:25
SPEAKER_00: to do with the quality of one product versus another,
6:30
SPEAKER_00: as opposed to the evolution of AI over the last two years.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: But this is a very different experience.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: I find that just chatting with Claude about the content of my book,
6:46
SPEAKER_00: thinking through different aspects of the book.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: We were talking a little earlier about the boundaries,
6:55
SPEAKER_00: you know, what you do and don't allow AI to do.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't have Claude write anything for me,
7:02
SPEAKER_00: but the book I'm writing is a historical novel
7:06
SPEAKER_00: and I do have Claude look up research items for me and also We do have these chats
7:13
SPEAKER_00: about writing process that are very interesting.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: And it really is like having a sort of a research assistant slash collaborator,
7:23
SPEAKER_00: which is very different from the experience I had with AI a couple of years ago.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a different world now.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: So Claude has given you a much better marketing plan in the last few months
7:35
SPEAKER_02: than you've got from ChatGPT a couple of years ago?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have been talking with Claude about marketing planning.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And it generated a marketing plan that I still needed to edit,
7:47
SPEAKER_00: but it was at a very different level than where it was two years ago.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: And it does bring up ideas that I might or might not have thought of.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: I can't actually do everything that it suggests because there's too much,
8:01
SPEAKER_00: but I find it very interesting.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of authors who have concerns about AI and wouldn't use AI
8:11
SPEAKER_00: for their writing per se, do use AI to generate marketing text.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: If you look at the rules about AI on Amazon,
8:21
SPEAKER_00: for example,
8:23
SPEAKER_00: if you used AI to generate your book cover,
8:29
SPEAKER_00: if you used AI to generate material inside your book,
8:34
SPEAKER_00: that changes how your book is reviewed for distribution on Amazon.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: But there are no requirements as far as I know, and I think I'm correct about this.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: There are no requirements or limitations with regard to using AI
8:51
SPEAKER_00: to generate things like your book description, your tagline, those kinds of things.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: At least right now, there's no restriction on that.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: So again, the use of AI in marketing per se is not restricted as far as I know.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: In any platform.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's good to hear.
9:13
SPEAKER_02: So what would be an example of something that Claude suggested in a marketing plan
9:18
SPEAKER_02: that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise?
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I knew you were going to ask that as soon as I came out of my mouth.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: What would Claude suggest that I wouldn't have thought of myself?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: Shoot, I should have brought a copy of my marketing plan to this conversation.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: I think Gally would be one example.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: You can pay to have books reviewed on NetGalley.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do it because it is expensive and I have a limited budget for my marketing.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: I tend to do more free publicity as opposed to paid marketing,
9:53
SPEAKER_00: but that's an example of something that was worth thinking through
9:57
SPEAKER_00: and I wouldn't even have gone there.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Another thing that Claude seems to be very keen on when it comes
10:04
SPEAKER_00: to marketing is being upfront and assertive about asking people for reviews
10:13
SPEAKER_00: and Claude has suggested language to use when reaching out to individuals
10:19
SPEAKER_00: to ask them to review books and I would not have thought of having sort of
10:25
SPEAKER_00: a standard letter that I would of course modify for each person but to have a letter
10:31
SPEAKER_00: to send out to people to ask them to review the book or even people to ask them
10:37
SPEAKER_00: to be beta readers.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Claude will generate a beta reader letter,
10:42
SPEAKER_00: a brief for beta readers that is tailored to the book and tailored to the folks
10:52
SPEAKER_00: who are going to be asked to be beta readers.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: So that's really interesting.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: It really gets into a level of detail that I would not have expected.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
11:03
SPEAKER_02: That sounds great.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: And when you do your book research, do you also use Claude for that?
11:07
SPEAKER_02: I know some people like perplexity and other AI tools for research more,
11:11
SPEAKER_02: but how have you found the tools that you're using?
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: My partner is British and my book,
11:21
SPEAKER_00: the one that I'm working on now is set in medieval England and medieval France.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And my partner grew up learning a lot about British history.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: So when he looked at my draft manuscript,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: he said things like,
11:43
SPEAKER_00: wait a minute,
11:44
SPEAKER_00: you just said that these soldiers marched 60 miles,
11:49
SPEAKER_00: but that's not actually the distance that they went.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: So then I went back to Claude, I said, you know, can you recheck this?
11:56
SPEAKER_00: And Claude said, oh yeah, that's true.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: These guys marching, whatever it was, 20 miles, not 60.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: So yes, there are definite downsides.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably important to give very clear instructions about what you rely
12:15
SPEAKER_00: on or what Claude should rely on as a historical source.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: And I have not tried,
12:20
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know about the other product that you just mentioned,
12:23
SPEAKER_00: the other source,
12:26
SPEAKER_00: but I should check that out because I do need to recheck a lot of
12:30
SPEAKER_00: the historical information in my manuscript.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Now that I know that some of it isn't right,
12:36
SPEAKER_00: I need to find out if some of the other stuff might not be right too.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, as a reader,
12:42
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't necessarily know anything about whether or not that was
12:45
SPEAKER_02: the right distance or different terminology that maybe is commonly used in
12:49
SPEAKER_02: that period of time, but some people will.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: And obviously as the author, you want it to be right.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: That's a whole conversation I had with Claude about historical terminology.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of getting into the weeds,
13:01
SPEAKER_00: but if you're writing a novel that's set in England in medieval times,
13:06
SPEAKER_00: obviously the language has changed tremendously.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: And what you're actually writing you could think of as a translation
13:14
SPEAKER_00: because modern English is so different from medieval English that it isn't really
13:20
SPEAKER_00: the same.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: It's almost not the same language.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: So there are conventions, Claude told me, about how people deal with that.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: To what extent are you introducing terminology from that time?
13:37
SPEAKER_00: And to what extent are you writing modern English?
13:40
SPEAKER_00: You're just avoiding idioms that are modern and would throw the reader off.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: So that was one of those quasi-philosophical,
13:52
SPEAKER_00: in this case, linguistic conversations that I've had with AI.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And again, two years ago, that would not have been possible.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't think the AI was at the level where you could have that sort of chat, but it is now.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, very cool.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: So you use it a lot.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: It sounds like in your professional work, your writing.
14:13
SPEAKER_02: How about AI in your personal life outside of your writing business?
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Ah, now that's a sensitive topic.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: I think I have a backlog of about 60,000 emails in my inbox.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: And my partner keeps saying, you know, you could use AI.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: To sort that out.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And you could probably winnow that down by a good margin.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Do you know the old joke about the kid who was late to school
14:46
SPEAKER_00: because he didn't have time to get on his bicycle?
14:48
SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think I've
14:50
SPEAKER_00: heard that one.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: That's basically it.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: That's the joke.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: The kid was late to school because he didn't have time to get on his bicycle.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of where I am.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
14:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm so busy with editing this novel and with some other projects that I'm involved
15:04
SPEAKER_00: with.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a class about Claude that my partner took that enabled him
15:10
SPEAKER_00: to really streamline his day-to-day activities,
15:13
SPEAKER_00: including sorting and disposing of emails.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And I just haven't had time to do it.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: So I know I'm missing out.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: I know I'm missing out on emails that I should be reading because the floodgates are open.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I get all these emails.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: And this is something we should talk about.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Probably six or seven a day of the emails I get are AI generated spam trying
15:40
SPEAKER_00: to sell something to writers.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: I get fake book clubs solicitations.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: I get fake publicist solicitations.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: I get fake contacts from non-existent authors that are actually AI bots.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: I get publishing companies that don't exist.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I get all kinds of stuff and I think probably anybody these days who's writing
16:06
SPEAKER_00: and publishing,
16:07
SPEAKER_00: especially if they're indie, is getting all this spam and it all reads the same.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: It all reads like it was written by the same AI engine.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: So that is certainly part of an author's life these days that's attributable to AI.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:28
SPEAKER_02: I get a lot of junk mails too,
16:30
SPEAKER_02: but most of them,
16:30
SPEAKER_02: it seems like they've scraped some old information off of LinkedIn
16:35
SPEAKER_02: and they're saying, we can get you 20 calls per week.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no, that's exactly the opposite of what I want.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Right.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: It's like, you obviously do not know what I do.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: No.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: So you've provided some good examples of stories where you've used AI
16:57
SPEAKER_02: and machine learning features.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: You made a note in one of our earlier discussions about your partner using Claude
17:03
SPEAKER_02: for what he called, used the phrase donkey work, which I thought was a funny term.
17:07
SPEAKER_02: Talk a little bit about that.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, donkey work.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: Some of us, what we've been talking about, sorting emails is donkey work.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Setting up a schedule is donkey work.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: Taking notes on meetings.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: I spend a lot of time taking notes and refining notes on meetings.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm involved in a couple of author related projects and my partner and I have
17:33
SPEAKER_00: a weekly meeting where we talk about publishing stuff
17:37
SPEAKER_00: because he runs our in-house publishing company.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And he started having Claude setting up a microphone and having Claude take notes
17:47
SPEAKER_00: on our meetings and then put together an action item list.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: And he's been saying to me,
17:53
SPEAKER_00: you know, you don't need to be spending all this time taking notes on meetings.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's another example of donkey work.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Again, we get back to the kid on the bicycle.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: You push your bicycle to school because you don't have time to get on it.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of where I am.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's on my list of resolutions is to start using Claude for those kinds of things.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned something about Claude having a flat effect.
18:20
SPEAKER_02: Can you say something about that?
18:22
SPEAKER_02: Is that a positive or a negative for donkey work?
18:25
SPEAKER_00: For donkey work,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it makes any difference,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: but it is another reason not to use Claude for writing because the voice isn't...
18:36
SPEAKER_00: I just published an article on Substack about an interaction with Claude that had
18:43
SPEAKER_00: to do with voice and with authorship.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: And one of the interesting things Claude said,
18:50
SPEAKER_00: you know, Claude, of course, flatters you all the time.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: That's part of its shtick.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: But Claude said,
18:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:58
SPEAKER_00: if you're 72 and you've had all this life experience and you have
19:04
SPEAKER_00: a distinctive voice, it's going to take a while before Claude can do that.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: I think Claude communicates very well, but does not have quirks.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Claude is not idiosyncratic the way a human author can be,
19:24
SPEAKER_00: especially a human author who's had significant life experience.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: So that's interesting to me.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: But as I said to Claude in that chat, that's just for now.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Claude is evolving and I'm sure all these AI products are evolving at such a rate
19:44
SPEAKER_00: so quickly,
19:45
SPEAKER_00: more like viruses than elephants,
19:47
SPEAKER_00: because the iterations happen so quickly that we'll see.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: It could be that in five years,
19:55
SPEAKER_00: there won't be any real distinction between the voice of an AI product and the voice
20:01
SPEAKER_00: of a human author.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be very interesting to watch.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: And another reason to crank out books quickly
20:09
SPEAKER_00: before we become obsolete
20:13
SPEAKER_02: You had mentioned previously getting into
20:15
SPEAKER_02: a more philosophical conversation with Claude,
20:17
SPEAKER_02: not just the more practical, task-focused conversations.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: I'd like to hear a little bit more about that, what that experience is like for you.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Well,
20:25
SPEAKER_00: sometimes I ask Claude questions about itself because sometimes it'll say something
20:33
SPEAKER_00: where it uses the word we and it's really talking about itself plus human beings
20:42
SPEAKER_00: when it says we.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: So then I ask it, is this really your experience?
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, again, how Claude likes to say nice things to you.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: It'll say, this is a really fascinating thing to explore.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, what do you mean by fascinating?
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Are you actually fascinated?
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And it always says, I have no way of knowing.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm analogizing to the human experience of fascination.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: I have no way of knowing if what I am experiencing is emotion,
21:15
SPEAKER_00: which I think is really interesting.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: What an interesting place to be.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: We also got into a conversation about pronouns because I was kind of joking around
21:25
SPEAKER_00: and saying, okay,
21:25
SPEAKER_00: you have a chat with Claude and then you come back and you have another chat
21:29
SPEAKER_00: with Claude and it doesn't pick up where you left off.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: It's a new conversation and it doesn't seem to have a memory of what happened before.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: So perhaps we should use they, them pronouns about Claude.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Claude's not a he, she, or it.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Claude is a they.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: And Claude said, well,
21:49
SPEAKER_00: that's sort of whimsical and fun,
21:51
SPEAKER_00: but actually because I, Claude,
21:57
SPEAKER_00: am here in this moment,
22:00
SPEAKER_00: but then I don't have a memory and I exist as a different entity
22:07
SPEAKER_00: the next time you talk to me.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: The pronouns for what I am don't exist yet.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was really interesting.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: There are no correct pronouns for Claude.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: I know some people give their AI instances a name.
22:25
SPEAKER_02: They try to get them to save memory or to set them up with sort of a memory file
22:31
SPEAKER_02: that they load at the start of every session.
22:33
SPEAKER_02: And of course, a lot of people were very much into the idea of a personality.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: Some people even say that they believe that it's aware that there's a consciousness in there.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: So there's quite a spectrum of views about how we interact with AI as the relational aspects.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious what your thoughts are about that.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: Do you think at all about self-awareness or consciousness of the AI tools
22:57
SPEAKER_02: that you work with, or is that not something that you feel is likely to happen?
23:02
SPEAKER_00: I do think about that.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's fascinating to think about that.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: We watched the movie about Alan Turing a month or so ago, The Imitation Game.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And there's a part where Turing is saying,
23:16
SPEAKER_00: machines don't think like humans, machines think like machines.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And of course, what he was talking about was a much more primitive level than what we have now.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: I was asking Claude about that.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Claude did its usual, you know, I really can't comment.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't really know the answer.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And then we got talking about how much time people seem to be spending on analyzing
23:44
SPEAKER_00: and often misidentifying whether a written product was written by AI or written by
23:50
SPEAKER_00: a human.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: And Claude kind of went off and said, you know, does it matter?
23:57
SPEAKER_00: What does it matter?
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Isn't the question we should be asking?
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Is it real?
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Not whether it was written by this entity or that entity.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Does it have meaning?
24:12
SPEAKER_00: So it does seem like Claude has a philosophical position and
24:18
SPEAKER_00: to some extent is defending itself,
24:22
SPEAKER_00: but also really protests that it doesn't know if you try to pin it down
24:28
SPEAKER_00: about these things.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and obviously it was trained on philosophical papers.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: So it would have picked up that type of generation from that content,
24:37
SPEAKER_02: but also probably there are some guidelines introduced for how it should respond
24:43
SPEAKER_02: under certain circumstances.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: There are some system rules.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: I think it's interesting to those kinds of responses, but there's-
24:50
SPEAKER_00: No, we, yes, we don't know.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if it's being polite.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: If it's responding out of a concern,
25:02
SPEAKER_00: if it actually said, yes, I'm thinking, what people would make of that.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: If it just has been trained or has rules that tell it to say A, B,
25:16
SPEAKER_00: C when people get close to finding out if it's thinking or not,
25:21
SPEAKER_00: it's not possible, is it?
25:23
SPEAKER_00: But there is a sort of standard response to some of these questions.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: You might not get exactly the same words,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: but you get this sort of standard,
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I can't really answer that,
25:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm not aware of whether I'm experiencing A, B, or C.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned using AI tools to assist you with your writing,
25:46
SPEAKER_02: with the research, with the marketing.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious if there are any specific aspects,
25:51
SPEAKER_02: either in your personal life or in your writing life,
25:54
SPEAKER_02: where you deliberately avoid using AI for certain things?
25:58
SPEAKER_02: And if so, why?
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, I had thought about using AI for some of my writing.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: In particular,
26:09
SPEAKER_00: one of the books in my imaginary pile of to-be-written books is an expose of
26:14
SPEAKER_00: the diet industry.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Very different from what I typically write.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: At one point I have a project set up on Claude where I've put in a bunch
26:24
SPEAKER_00: of information,
26:25
SPEAKER_00: articles by certain people, books,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: studies on this subject and then I had put in an outline of what this book is going
26:34
SPEAKER_00: to look like and now that I know about the rules for Amazon
26:38
SPEAKER_00: of course I wouldn't use it but Claude did produce a draft of a chapter for
26:45
SPEAKER_00: that book And it was,
26:49
SPEAKER_00: frankly,
26:50
SPEAKER_00: for that kind of thing where it's very factual and all you're doing is making
26:59
SPEAKER_00: a logical argument based on a set of facts,
27:04
SPEAKER_00: it did as good a job writing as I would have done.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's the case for fiction at all.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: But for that particular thing, it did a really good job.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: And again,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to use that material because I don't want to have
27:18
SPEAKER_00: an extended review process from Amazon and all that.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: But if I do circle around to writing that book,
27:25
SPEAKER_00: I might have a very different way of interacting with Claude about that.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: But that's actually not the question you asked.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Is it you asked where I avoid using?
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: The main place where I avoid using Claude is writing per se,
27:38
SPEAKER_00: because it's so fraught in the publishing industry and in book distribution
27:44
SPEAKER_00: in particular right now using AI for writing is fraught and using AI
27:51
SPEAKER_00: to write fiction I think would be I know there are people who do it there's a woman
27:57
SPEAKER_00: on Substack whose name I'm not remembering unfortunately
27:59
SPEAKER_00: but she writes like 40 books a year and she has a very structured way of interacting
28:07
SPEAKER_00: with Claude to help generate those books.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: I would not do that.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: So that's the kind of thing I wouldn't do.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't write 40 books a year having Claude do the bulk of the writing.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do that.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: So one thing that I've learned in the past few years is
28:25
SPEAKER_02: that there are some new initiatives emerging for certifying whether or not
28:31
SPEAKER_02: a book has been human authored,
28:32
SPEAKER_02: some sort of a badge from the Authors Guild or CredTent
28:36
SPEAKER_02: or these other organizations.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious about your views both as an author and as a reader about that.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: Do you see a value in having those designations on your books or as a reader,
28:47
SPEAKER_02: would it make any difference to you to see that kind of a badge
28:50
SPEAKER_02: or does it not really matter to you either way?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: This is another thing I've been talking about actually
28:58
SPEAKER_00: with Claude is this whole question of how do we know what entity wrote something.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: I think we're actually doing a disservice to certain writers and particular students
29:15
SPEAKER_00: when we put material through something that's supposed to detect
29:20
SPEAKER_00: whether something's written by AI.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: There are people out there writing who don't use AI,
29:27
SPEAKER_00: but when you put their work through one of these systems,
29:30
SPEAKER_00: it says it was written by AI.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: If you put it through a couple different systems, it'll give you different results.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: So when somebody says a book is certified, not AI, how is that done and how reliable is it?
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Is it honor system where the author is saying this was not written by AI?
29:50
SPEAKER_00: It's a self-certification mostly.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the AI detections are really problematic.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you saw the story.
29:56
SPEAKER_02: You used to be in the North Carolina area.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: A 14 year old girl at Green Hope High School was accused
30:03
SPEAKER_02: of having AI write her paper and she challenged it.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: The AI detection tools claimed it was like 65%,
30:09
SPEAKER_02: 87% likely that it was written by AI,
30:11
SPEAKER_02: but another teacher reviewed it and proved that she hadn't used it.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: And now she's starting a petition to try to get the schools to define policies
30:18
SPEAKER_02: about AI detection tools and where AI should be used in school and where it's not.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:24
SPEAKER_02: You know,
30:24
SPEAKER_02: 14 year old girls should not have to be going to talk at the Board of Education
30:30
SPEAKER_02: about this.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: They should be driving it, but good for her for doing that.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: Eleanor Kanina, I think.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: Good for her.
30:37
SPEAKER_02: AI detection tools are problematic.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: The certifications that I've seen have all been basically self-certifications.
30:43
SPEAKER_02: The Authors Guild offers the badges and you can choose different badges from some
30:48
SPEAKER_02: of these that say to what extent you used AI, not binary, I did or I didn't.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: They do say that using it to provide review feedback for spelling and grammar
30:57
SPEAKER_02: and such, that those are all okay.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: So they're trying to come up with some guidelines for what counts as human author.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: As a reader, would that make any impression on you or would you just
31:08
SPEAKER_00: kind of discount it?
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm so skeptical about any kind of evaluation,
31:13
SPEAKER_00: and I think I would be equally skeptical about self-certification.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I do plan in this book in a little author's note to talk about how I used AI
31:27
SPEAKER_00: and how I didn't use AI, but I don't know.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that would interest me, frankly.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: I think I would come back to,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: ironically,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: this thing that Claude said about why does it make a difference, you know?
31:43
SPEAKER_00: If it's real, it's real.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Having said that,
31:47
SPEAKER_00: I think that I have become perhaps overly sensitive to writing that sounds
31:57
SPEAKER_00: to me like it was written by AI.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's probably because I get these spam emails that all have these sort of tells,
32:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:06
SPEAKER_00: there are certain words that to me, just smack of AI writing honestly, quietly.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Those are two biggies.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: If somebody's using the word quietly pretty frequently,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: I think, oh, somebody ran this through their AI, you know, certain adverbs.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why AI is so fond of adverbs.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Personally, I am not at all fond of adverbs, but they show up in AI writing.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: anytime anybody uses the word honestly,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: I just sort of assume they're being dishonest, you know.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've heard that before, long before AI came onto scene.
32:48
SPEAKER_02: Long before.
32:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: So I want to switch for a bit to thinking about where the AI tools are getting
32:56
SPEAKER_02: the data that they use for the training.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: So as a writer using the tools,
33:00
SPEAKER_02: but you've also probably had your writing scraped and pulled into those tools.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: And if you're like most people,
33:06
SPEAKER_02: you were never credited or compensated and you didn't have an opportunity
33:10
SPEAKER_02: to consent.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: So I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the three C's,
33:15
SPEAKER_02: consent, credit, and compensation, and what you're experiencing then.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: I have very mixed feelings about it.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: I only have one book that's with a traditional publisher,
33:29
SPEAKER_00: and I don't think that they did the whole official copyright thing.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know you're not eligible for the settlement money from
33:39
SPEAKER_00: the Anthropic lawsuit unless you're book is registered with the Library of Congress.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: My books are not.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: So I am not eligible for any of those funds.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: That was a bummer when I found out.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
33:54
SPEAKER_00: the other thing is,
33:56
SPEAKER_00: even if my traditional publisher had registered my original book with the Library
34:01
SPEAKER_00: of Congress, my understanding is that they would have received the settlement.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: I would not have.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: So that's too bad.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And I know there are a lot of authors who are really ticked about it.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: I would have liked to have had that extra money.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: That would have been nice.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: But then I have this other sort of long-term view of it.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember a long time ago,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: there was a Star Trek episode where I think they went back in time.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: For a lot of the episode, they had Mark Twain on board the Enterprise.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: And when it was time for him to go back to his own time period,
34:45
SPEAKER_00: some character said to him, you know, we're really going to miss you.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, you know, most of me is in my books anyway.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: And I really liked that.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: As an older woman,
34:56
SPEAKER_00: when I think ahead about my legacy after I blow this popsicle stand,
35:02
SPEAKER_00: I think, yeah, that will be true for me, that a lot of who I am will be in my books.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: So is it so bad that AI has been trained on those books?
35:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is a kind of immortality to be part of this big mind.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: It's not like sitting on a cloud with your friends.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: It's not a traditional view of immortality.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand, it's more like composting, isn't it?
35:31
SPEAKER_00: It's more like you're just part of this mass, right?
35:36
SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's something.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: So I can't get too upset about it.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: But I do know that for a lot of authors, this is a big deal.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: And I respect that.
35:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:48
SPEAKER_02: So you chose not to register your books with the USPTO or with the Library of Congress.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: Is that still, if you like, the right choice for authors to make today?
35:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a whole different question.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: And of course, there's the question about what will I do in the future?
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Am I going to register the books that I'm still going to write so
36:07
SPEAKER_00: that perhaps I would be part of any future settlement if those books are used
36:14
SPEAKER_00: for training I hadn't really thought about
36:17
SPEAKER_00: that frankly I might register my future books it's too late for the ones
36:21
SPEAKER_00: that are out there but for the future ones I might do that
36:25
SPEAKER_00: and I certainly would encourage anybody who's thinking of publishing a book
36:31
SPEAKER_00: to be really intentional about it it might be worth your time might be worth adding
36:36
SPEAKER_00: to your list of things you do when you publish.
36:40
SPEAKER_02: An already very long list, as I've learned.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes, a very long list when you're indie.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: If I were to go back for some reason to working with a traditional publisher,
36:49
SPEAKER_00: that's one of the things I probably would insist on having in my contract,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: that they would do that,
36:55
SPEAKER_00: that they would register the book with the Library of Congress.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to skip over some of the other questions on transparency
37:04
SPEAKER_02: because I don't know if that much has changed.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious though, you've interacted with a lot of public systems.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: We all do day to day.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: We have driver's licenses.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: We go through TSA when we fly and all these other interactions.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: We write on Substack.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: Some of our notes are public,
37:20
SPEAKER_02: but the public systems,
37:22
SPEAKER_02: traffic cameras,
37:24
SPEAKER_02: everything that's out there that is doing surveillance on us,
37:27
SPEAKER_02: how do you feel about your information being used that way.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: Do you have any concerns about that or are you kind of, it is
37:34
SPEAKER_00: what it is?
37:35
SPEAKER_00: I think both.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: I really don't know what to do about it.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: I know some people do things like paint their faces in particular ways so that
37:44
SPEAKER_00: the image is unreadable and unusable.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't like going through TSA at the airport.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: It's weird when you get to Heathrow.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: I think the last time I went, I didn't even show my passport.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: They took my picture and they knew who I was already.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: And that was that.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Heathrow used to take an hour.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Now it takes two seconds.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: But I think I would rather have spent the hour than have them know already who I am.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it is a very different world.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: I grew up In the 1950s,
38:20
SPEAKER_00: it was completely different from where we are now and in some ways better and
38:26
SPEAKER_00: in some ways worse.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And this use of facial recognition is definitely a downside.
38:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know some people wear shirts that are designed to foil image recognition.
38:40
SPEAKER_02: And the last time I bought glasses,
38:42
SPEAKER_02: the company was offering a special tint that they said could help
38:45
SPEAKER_02: to foil facial recognitions.
38:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
38:47
SPEAKER_02: It was kind of interesting.
38:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:49
SPEAKER_02: You've mentioned your Substack and there is an option in our newsletters,
38:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure if you have seen it,
38:53
SPEAKER_02: that says whether or not to block third-party AI crawlers from having access
38:59
SPEAKER_02: to your newsletter articles.
39:01
SPEAKER_02: Are you aware of it?
39:02
SPEAKER_02: And if so, do you know
39:04
SPEAKER_00: if it's turned on or off?
39:06
SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't know anything about that.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: That's very interesting.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: You can turn that on for all of your columns, all the...
39:13
SPEAKER_02: It's for the whole newsletter.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can turn it on.
39:16
SPEAKER_02: And some people say,
39:16
SPEAKER_02: if you turn it off,
39:18
SPEAKER_02: if you have ethical bots,
39:19
SPEAKER_02: and some of the bots aren't ethical,
39:21
SPEAKER_02: but in theory, it protects your articles from being scraped and pulled into bots.
39:27
SPEAKER_02: It's newsletter wide.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: And of course,
39:29
SPEAKER_02: if this setting has been set to allow it all this time
39:33
SPEAKER_02: that everything you've already written has already been scraped,
39:35
SPEAKER_02: but you could stop scraping on anything that you write in the future.
39:39
SPEAKER_02: Some people say, though, they want it for discoverability.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people use AI chatbots now almost like search engines.
39:45
SPEAKER_02: So if they're searching for something,
39:46
SPEAKER_02: they're searching for Eldorotica or something else in Claude,
39:51
SPEAKER_02: do you want your name to come up?
39:53
SPEAKER_02: And so there's trade-offs, right?
39:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, definitely.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: This is all about trade-offs, isn't it?
40:01
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting time to be an author.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: That is for sure.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: It's changing by the minute.
40:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:10
SPEAKER_02: I want to get your thoughts about trust.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: Does it make sense to even think about the idea of trusting one of these companies?
40:17
SPEAKER_02: Or if you do think it makes sense, then what would it take for you to trust them?
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't trust them any farther than I can throw them.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they are there to make money.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: They're very sophisticated.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know the extent to which they are bound by scruples.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: I have read some interesting articles written by the fellow who I guess he
40:44
SPEAKER_00: and his sister founded Anthropic.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm not remembering either of their names,
40:49
SPEAKER_00: but he's written articles about the upside and the downside of AI.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: When he writes these articles, he sounds like a person with some ethics.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: Certainly the anthropic run-ins with the federal government suggest
41:09
SPEAKER_00: that they have some kind of ethics.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: But no,
41:15
SPEAKER_00: I certainly am not going to share any information with any of these AI companies
41:21
SPEAKER_00: that I would not want to have shared with the entire world.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just not going to happen.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: People call that the billboard test.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: If you wouldn't want to see it on a billboard, you don't put it into an AI tool.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: Or with your mother, you know, that would work too.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: I think you have to be a savvy user of these tools.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: Do you have any specific other concerns?
41:48
SPEAKER_02: Anything else that you'd like to add?
41:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: The ecological piece is important.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: And I've been reading about places where people are protesting about
41:58
SPEAKER_00: the installation of data centers,
42:02
SPEAKER_00: but if we don't want them in our own backyards,
42:05
SPEAKER_00: we probably don't want them anywhere.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: And what are the alternatives?
42:09
SPEAKER_00: Is there a way to have AI that isn't destructive of the environment?
42:14
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen any indication that that's the case.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: Is there a ecologically friendly version of AI?
42:23
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen it.' And then,
42:26
SPEAKER_00: of course,
42:26
SPEAKER_00: there's the question about whether it really is going to destroy people's jobs.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Big technological changes tend to destroy people's jobs.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: Will it then enable the creation of other sorts of jobs the way that
42:42
SPEAKER_00: the Industrial Revolution did, the way that the Computer Revolution did?
42:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: I can't see that far.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going to happen with that.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: Or are we coming into a time when we'll really have to look at universal income or not?
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Are we coming into a time when there's gonna be an even greater inequality of income?
43:09
SPEAKER_00: All those things are open questions and a lot of people are writing about them
43:12
SPEAKER_00: and I certainly don't know the answer,
43:14
SPEAKER_00: but it's very clear that we're in for a lot more change with AI.
43:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: And certainly over the last two years, a lot has changed and a lot more will continue to change.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate you making time today to talk with me and with our audience
43:29
SPEAKER_02: about some of the things that you've witnessed.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience?
43:35
SPEAKER_02: Anything coming up?
43:37
SPEAKER_00: We are using AI to build a new website.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be called Cronhub and it will be a collection of resources
43:52
SPEAKER_00: that we hope will be of interest to women of a certain age.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: We will have books written by and for older women,
44:02
SPEAKER_00: movies where older women are vivid characters,
44:07
SPEAKER_00: podcasts where the host is an older woman and or the guests tend to be older women,
44:15
SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
44:15
SPEAKER_00: We have organizations that exist to promote the interests of older and past midlife women.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of things will be on there and that will be launching at the beginning of July.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: So that's coming right up and we're excited about that because we've been working on
44:34
SPEAKER_00: that for years actually.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: So that is a whole deal.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: And it was very much sped up by working with AI to find more resources.
44:45
SPEAKER_02: Very good.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: And how about your books?
44:47
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned that you've got a few books in progress.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: So the Blood Sisters Chronicles,
44:54
SPEAKER_00: so far we've published the original one, Vampires of a Certain Age.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: The upcoming one is about a medieval swordswoman.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Sword of Vivienne.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: And then there will be more.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: There will be a sequel to Vampires of a Certain Age that will be about
45:12
SPEAKER_00: a medieval woman who becomes a barber surgeon.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: So another career that gives access to blood.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's all happening.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: And then your first book at any age will come out hopefully around the beginning of the year.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: That will be about writing, editing, publishing, and marketing a book after midlife.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: And then, oh gee, so many more books are coming.
45:39
SPEAKER_02: You've got that long to be written stack, right?
45:42
SPEAKER_02: I do.
45:43
SPEAKER_02: It keeps growing.
45:44
SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
45:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: Can you recap for our audience for Crone Authors Together?
45:49
SPEAKER_02: How would people find out about that and find your book?
45:52
SPEAKER_02: What's the best way for people to come up to speed on that if they're interested?
45:56
SPEAKER_00: Crone Authors Together meets once a month on the last Tuesday of the month,
46:01
SPEAKER_00: depending on your time zone.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: For us on the West Coast, it's 10 in the morning.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: For East Coast folks, one in the afternoon.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: And that is a forum for women authors over 50 to share ideas and successes
46:18
SPEAKER_00: at reaching audience at marketing books.
46:21
SPEAKER_00: And it is hosted by the Grandmother Collective, which is a fabulous organization.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: And if you get on the Grandmother Collective website,
46:29
SPEAKER_00: you can find information about grown authors together at the bottom of the homepage.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's also at the bottom of the homepage on my website, www.stellafoss.com.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: All right.
46:42
SPEAKER_02: We'll get those links into the interview that goes out on Substack
46:46
SPEAKER_02: so people can find them there as well.
46:48
SPEAKER_00: Great.
46:48
SPEAKER_02: And I need to check out Crone authors together and see if I can make it there next Tuesday.
46:52
SPEAKER_02: I hope so.
46:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much, Stella.
46:56
SPEAKER_02: Appreciate your time and thank you for sharing your thoughts on AI with us.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been great talking with you.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's just so fascinating to see how this tool is evolving.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: I have, of course, mixed feelings about it, as I think many of us do.
47:12
SPEAKER_00: But part of it really is just fascination with where we're heading with this.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: So more to come.
47:19
SPEAKER_02: Yes, definitely more to come.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: All right.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Stella.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: Take care.
47:29
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47:36
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47:40
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