Hello!

It’s been a while since I’ve written you all. I’ve been head down in an edit pass for Resist, a novel that is the sequel to Surrender, the book that I published earlier this year. Resist continues the adventures of the heroic Kat Keeper as she battles against MIND, the evil corporation that is stealing everyone’s thoughts. My book designer is working on some cover concepts and I look forward to sharing some of his ideas with you soon.

Be a Reader

If you’d like to influence the course of the book and help me out (a lot!), you can be an early reader of Resist. I’ll send you your own manuscript, printed or via PDF. As you give it a read, you can share your thoughts on the characters, the plot, the pacing, and the themes. My favorite question to ask readers is, “If you stopped reading the book, where did you stop?” (Because I have to fix that part.)

If you become an early reader of Resist, I’ll thank you in the printed acknowledgements when the book is published, and you’ll get a paperback copy. If you’d like to try being a beta reader, just hit reply to this email to let me know.

Dave’s Head

I did an interview for the Dave’s Head Podcast during which I talk about the writing process, where my ideas come from, and the state of science fiction and fantasy writing today. Dave is a fascinating guy. Since the podcast is called Dave’s Head, you can imagine that he downloads pretty much what he’s thinking about, including his thoughts on football and relationships. He starts his introduction of me at 29:33 in the show.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

FAKE

How do you know what’s real? It’s becoming a problem. Tom Hanks recently announced that someone created a fake video of him to advertise some kind of dental plan. Gayle King, a co-host of CBS Mornings, warned her Instagram followers that videos using artificial intelligence likenesses of her were appearing in fake advertisements.

Robin Williams’s daughter finds it “personally disturbing” that people are using AI models to recreate actors who “cannot consent, like Dad.”

Amazon was recently inundated with fake books created by AI, many of which spin new titles from an author’s existing catalogue without the author’s permission.

Banks are encouraging clients to record their voice so that they can identify themselves to the bank without using a password. But banks have been fooled by simulated voices that sound like real clients. Scammers have successfully made withdrawals and trades.

Spotify is going to use software to clone some of its popular podcasters’ voices so they can speak their episodes in Spanish, German, and French.

Is that You, Honey?

When you hear someone or see them online, or on your phone, or on your TV, you’ll soon have to pause for a moment and wonder if that’s really them. A tech writer I know has offered a secret “safe word” to his family that he can say so they know that it’s really him on that Zoom call. (This will sound strange, but an easy fix may be to turn your head in the Zoom call to show your ear, because AI is, so far, as terrible at depicting human ears as it is at depicting hands.)

All this to announce a new column (thought stream?) that will appear in this newsletter. It is called FAKE (apologies to the old Orson Wells movie) and it is about the growing industry of faking people, faces, voices, and images for scam and profit. I’ll be starting it off with lists of evildoers, but soon it will develop into a deep look at what a deepfake means to our already fragile identity as humans. I hope when you’ll read it you learn what to look out for, when to take precautions, what to celebrate, and when to be very afraid. It is strange territory.

See you next time,

Lee