1,473 words
8 minutes read time

(Yes, I did choose the title for the alliteration. I’m not doing anything this month except trying to sleep in this heat.)

Happy Monday! And hello to the last month of summer. Not that it’s truly the last month of warm weather. I remember taking the kids to many a Fall Festival in September and always overdressing because in my mind, a Fall Festival was associated with hot apple cider, leaves crunching, and woodsmoke in the air. What we got was sweating while picking out pumpkins and everyone being crabby by the time we got home. But, every year I did it, and every year was the same result. Until the kids got old enough to say they didn’t want to go, and I started buying my pumpkins at Walmart. Nothing stays the same.

There’s not a lot going on with me since the last time we spoke. I’ve been dipping my toes into the Trial Reels waters on Instagram, and it’s been fun. A couple of my reels have taken off, and I’ve gotten quite a few new followers on my Facebook author page–something I hadn’t counted on. I’ve always treated my author page as something I had to keep going because I’ve had that page for close to ten years and God only knows where that link has been. I can’t stand broken links, so I never took the page down and only post proof-of-life posts in case someone lands there. I want them to see I was at least still writing and publishing. So those new followers had somewhat of an updated page to scroll through when they followed me, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy posting on there now. That’s not to say I don’t want to talk to my readers, but social interaction as a whole is kind of hmmm, and you can see that by how often I post, or don’t, on my personal Facebook page and Threads. Still, I’m having a good time making reels and not worrying about the BS TikTok was known for. Their 200 views dungeon scarred me, but it taught me to keep expectations low. If that’s anything positive to say.

I’ve stalled with writing Cold Mercy and I’m not any further than where I was last week. It’s not that I don’t know what’s going on, it’s just that, I think the past two weeks wore me out and it’s been so hot that I haven’t been sleeping well. I hope the busy weeks are behind me, though my daughter’s post-op for her wisdom teeth surgery was rescheduled and I have to deal with that this week. But as long as nothing happens to my car, we all keep our health, and we all have jobs so we can pay our bills, I’m happy to keep chipping away at my book around my day job and playing with Pim.

Here she is lying on my bookshelf for the cat tax:

Online is more of the same, and if you haven’t heard, two new AI accusations popped up in the book community. The first is The Atlantic doing a piece and accusing Daggermouth author H. M. Wolfe of using AI to write it. If you haven’t read the article, you can do it here (and thank you to Kathleen Matthews Schmidt for the gift link): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/daggermouth-novel-bestseller-ai/688067/?gift=w7ky0MD12Y05SCUcPahfUFIgmW1iKSF0jMFVzUzKiIE

The other is author Jerry Falade, who lost out on a 2.5 million dollar book deal for the book Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body and its sequel. If you haven’t heard about this newest AI accusation, you can read it here: https://deadline.com/2026/07/ai-questions-debut-novel-book-film-buzz-1237013254/

There’s a lot we can say about things like this, but on the other hand, nothing at all. This is going to keep happening, that’s pretty clear. Someone who doesn’t like the way a metaphor is written is going to automatically jump to the AI conclusion. Someone who doesn’t like the way a book’s prose is written is going to jump to the AI conclusion. Someone who doesn’t like an author’s vocabulary is going to jump to the AI conclusion. Five years ago, if you didn’t like a book, you set it aside and started reading something else. Nowadays, if someone doesn’t like it, it’s almost natural to say, “Well, they probably used AI to write it.”

What was interesting to me was this quote by Sandy Hodgman, Jerry Falade’s UK agent who pulled back its submission of the novel to international publishers:

It’s curious how she included the “editorial process” when she vetted the manuscript with the author because given all the “purists” online and what they classify as AI, assistive AI like ProWriting Aid and Grammarly is still okay to use. If that’s changing, then where do we draw the line? No spellcheck and grammar check in Word? It’s infuriating when companies like Microsoft (CoPilot) shove AI down your throat to the point where it’s almost impossible to turn off those features, then later, you’re penalized for using them. (I’m looking at you Canva and Instagram respectively.)

But even if you go old school and write your book by hand and type it up with no AI whatsoever, the burden is still on the author to prove it. I’m Gen X and love me a good notebook and a brand new pen. In fact, even after writing and publishing for ten years, that’s still how I start all my books–writing in longhand. I create a character bible and write out their plots and character arcs. Sometimes if I’m stuck and can’t get into a scene, I’ll muse longhand until I can get into their heads again, so I do have bits and pieces tucked away. But I don’t know if that would be enough to fight AI allegations if any where to come my way. Writing is hard, and I’ve said more than once that I would just stop writing rather than turn to AI to write books for me. Publishing isn’t a moneymaker and there’s no guarantee that you’ll make a dime after you publish a book. After a decade of writing and publishing, I don’t see any benefit to using AI because at the end of the day, when your dashboard is zero, you better love the process because that’s all you have.

We’re treading into a new era of book publishing, and it will be interesting to see what the trad industry does in the future. Maybe they’ll stop paying advances all together because it sure seems odd to win a 2.5 million dollar bidding war only to yank it back when someone in a meeting says, “This sounds like AI.” Once that seed is planted, by anyone, for any book, you can never take it back. Which means maybe people need to stop assuming an author used AI when they don’t like something, and decide they don’t like it long before an offer is made. To read a down-to-earth take by Kathleen Schmidt, you can here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-209258189

That’s about all I have for this week. I have to admit, creating reels and posting them has pushed me out of my groove and I haven’t gotten as much writing done as I’d like. It’s not difficult to create reel, but I can say that now because I know how. Like anything, figuring out how to make parts in Canva and make parts in the Instagram app then putting them together was a small learning curve. Once I knew that Instagram wants you to make as much as possible in the app, things clicked for me. There are things that are impossible to make, like the B-roll and snippet because even if you make your snippet the “real” way by taking a screenshot of your book on your Kindle, that screenshot still has to be uploaded from your photos. But I don’t make the whole thing in Canva, like typing out the hook and putting the snippet graphic on top of the video, and I think that helps a lot with Instagram willing to push your video out. I never quite got a hang of doing the editing in TikTok which (besides them tagging my videos as AI) might have held me back. So to be able to create a reel and not have it take all day helps the motivation to keep posting and possibly make reels a small only part of my marketing plan.

As for other Mondays on the blog, I’ll just wing it. I have one more editor Q & A to post, then I’ll be on my own again. We’ll see what happens.

I hope you all have a good week! Enjoy the dog days of summer. I know I have been!

Until next time!