Interesting to see that Brandon Sanderson and Apple have signed a deal to bring some of his works to screen. It’s even more interesting to see that Sanderson has secured the right to control the process, from writing scripts, controlling creative approvals, casting, etc. That’s a relief, as Hollywood is incredibly adept at ruining book adaptations.
Sanderson is probably one of the few authors alive on the planet with the power to get that kind of deal. I suppose JK Rowling is also in that tiny demographic, along with… that’s about it.
Mistborn and the rest of the Cosmere books are unique, creative stories. Sanderson, whether you like his writing or not, has a very distinct vision; it’s a very comprehensive vision, given the complexity and integration of his stories within the massive framework of the Cosmere world he’s created. I enjoy his writing quite a lot, though I had some trouble getting through the Stormlight Archives.
The thought of turning that body of work over to the shiny suits in Hollywood-land is disturbing. I’m still shuddering over what Amazon did to Tolkien’s legacy with their Rings of Power series (I began shuddering over a year ago). Though, to be fair, my teenage boys enjoy the series and have watched it at least three times now. They claim it stays faithful to Tolkien, which means we have recurring arguments about this every now and then (I think I always win the arguments, but the boys think they always win–my wife stays out of the fray).
Another fantasy coming to screen is Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven. Angel Studios secured that property and apparently is in pre-production. My middle son loves this series–so, for his sake, please don’t mess it up, Angel Studios.
I’m pretty confident we are well past the dawning of the age of AI. We’re most likely somewhere in the lunch hour or even past noon. Perhaps we’re in the afternoon siesta–that time of day when we’re all taking a nap indoors or in a hammock under the shade, while the AI server farms are busily planting, weeding and harvesting. They don’t take naps.
There’s a plethora (yeah, I consider The Three Amigos to be one of the pinnacles of cinematic history) of books these days on Amazon that seem to be AI-generated. Self-help books, how-to books, all the way through to oddly written fiction books. AI? Perhaps, maybe, possibly, a great deal of them probably. Though, the oddly written fiction books are either the product of (very confused) AI or creative writing graduates who are intent on winning the Booker or something equally “prestigious.”
You gotta be careful these days with “prestigious.” Definitions are definitely changing. Bob Dylan forgot to write that verse. The definitions, they are a-changin’…
I just saw a fairly alarming ad on Youtube for an AI writing program that will apparently take a simple prompt and craft it all the way to a finished book, complete with formatting and illustrations. The ad was focused on non-fiction, but I imagine the program could tackle fiction as well.
We live in a quickly changing world. Some days I wonder if it’s time to go live on a mountain top in Idaho. Off the grid. Dump my cell phone. Buy a library’s worth of physical books. A modern day Stylite monk.
But, that wouldn’t work. I imagine a government inspector would show up soon enough. “Excuse me, do you have a permit for all those books?”
I don’t imagine ever having an AI write my stories, though there are some sensible tools for editing, creating marketing material and things like that. Stories, from a writer’s perspective (and I mean this writer, as in me, myself and I), are almost like an extension of the soul. Or maybe a better way to put it, a shadow cast by the soul. How could you turn that over to an AI and expect it to walk out into the metaphorical sunlight and cast a shadow that genuinely represented you as a soul-ful human being?
What I do intend to use AI for on the actual creative side is for music and video.
Music and AI
I’ve written dozens of songs over the years. I don’t just write the songs, I record them in multi-tracks of voices and instruments. That’s easy enough to do these days with a computer, a decent audio interface and some recording software. It’s easy in terms of inexpensive gear. It’s not easy in terms of writing a good song. And it’s definitely not easy in terms of pulling off a good recording with both professional execution and professional recording quality.
That’s where the AI comes in. There are quite a few options, but I’ve been experimenting with Suno. Suno is both amazing and depressing. Amazing due to quality, depressing due to how it will certainly put some musicians and engineers out of work. Also depressing in that, due to its high quality, it might make kids think twice about putting in the time and effort to develop their own skills.
The ability to create is one of the most unique traits that humans have. It sets us apart from animals and reflects the fact that we are made in the image of God. Anything that discourages creativity should be, in my opinion, suspect, because the reduction of creativity reduces our humanity.
I think…
Video and AI
I used to work in television, many long years ago, so I have a painful appreciation for how much work, time, personnel and money goes into making a show. I have zero interest in getting back into actual show production, but I am intrigued by the option of creating short, one-off productions on my own with AI. Either just for fun or to marry to a song and put that out in the ether (also just for fun).
After some reading and investigating, I’ve decided to try LTX. They have a robust work space in terms of tools and work flow. Flexible controls, fairly specific prompt results, built-in-editing tool (very helpful to have that bundled together). Not a bad price either.
Anywho, once I come up with results good enough for public consumption, I’ll put them up here. And, in the meantime, I have a book to finish. Almost there.
Update: After experimenting with both LTX and Neural Frames, it’s pretty clear that current AI video models only work if you’re able to put excessive time into them and spend large amounts of credits on your projects. Even at a mid-tier subscription plan, you’ll burn through your monthly allotment of credits in a few hours of tinkering. Not worth it at this point. Both of those outfits are at the top of the heap, apparently, but they both leave a lot to desire. For example, if you want to create a video of someone simply driving down the street in a car, you very well might have to hold the AI’s hand in order to convince it that, yes, the driver needs to be seated behind the steering wheel and not just in the passenger seat.
Thus ends my AI video experimenting of early 2026. Perhaps I’ll investigate again in 2027. Depends on the innovation rate, exponential or otherwise.
…and the fields are stripped bare of all they wear.
“October” October–U2 1981.
I’m not much of a fan of the more recent U2 albums, but I do like their first five albums, from Boy through The Joshua Tree. After that, not so much. Rattle and Hum was their sixth album, and it felt like to me that they lost their raw, earnest soul from that point on. It’s hard to say exactly what happened. Perhaps a mixture of the more poisonous effects of extreme success combined with a change of perspective about God?
Pure conjecture on my part, of course. None of us have the ability to peer into someone else’s soul and definitely diagnose what’s happening within. True, you can make some pretty safe assumptions based on an individual’s fruit. “By their fruit you shall know them,” and all that sort of thing. On the extreme end of behavior, if someone is rushing about beheading people in the name of their religion, you can probably make a fairly dependable diagnosis of the state of their soul and where they’re ultimately heading if they don’t make an abrupt u-turn.
However, most people don’t behave in ways that, from the vantage point of others, precisely and irrefutably correlate to the state of their soul.
Frankly, I’m relieved that I’m not the Judge.
I’m just an aspiring writer with very little time to write. And getting older. It feels like I’m in the October of my earthly existence. If one believes in eternity–and I do–then the earthly stretch of years is quite short, and there’s really not much of a difference between January and October, let alone December. But, while we’re here on Earth, the months feel heavy and valuable with potential. Time feels important, as if there are many things that still can be done and should be done.
Speaking of that, a few writing updates.
I’m almost done with my six-year-long book project. Actually, I might’ve started it seven years ago. I can’t exactly remember. It’s basically done and I’m avoiding publishing it by spending some of that precious time fiddling with characters and details and trying to settle on a map that shows just enough but not too much.
This one is another epic fantasy. Not as serious and as deliberate as The Hawk and His Boy trilogy, but definitely not as madcap as The Fury Clock, though there is a slight bit of cross-over with The Fury Clock in terms of some similar geographical locations, a few very quick references to several characters, and some threads of shared history.
Average Hollywood Executive
I also recently finished a job for an NBC/Universal project. A film script co-written with a small team for a pre-existing Universal property. We were paid for the project (always nice) but the powers that be ultimately decided to kill the project. I’ve been told that this is quite common in Hollywood. Studios will happily throw money around commissioning scripts and then just as happily kill those same scripts when finished.
I suppose there are many reasons for that, ranging from script quality to mental health issues on the part of studio executives, etc, but let me quite humbly say that script quality was not the issue with our particular project. No. I think the reason why they killed it was more off in the realm of the Bermuda Triangle, belief in a flat Earth, too much soy in one’s diet, and/or having had one’s brain harvested by space aliens.
Happily, I’ve been pulled back into another script project, so that’s good. What’s not good is that this means I have less time for my own projects, compounded by the fact that I’m still working a full-time job (feel free to ask me about California water policy and regulations and I will bore you to recyclable tears that must be first cleaned to drinking water quality standards before being injected into an aquifer that has any nexus with potable water supply).
I find myself returning to the question of free will versus predestination, or, if you must be theatrical about it, is the script of our life written by us or Someone else? That begs the subsequent question: if our script is written for us, do we have to perform it as written?
The fires down in Pacific Palisades and other parts of the Los Angeles area certainly weren’t imagined by anyone, other than the gloomy forecasters working for Cal Fire or various insurance companies or whichever crystal ball company out there that spends a little money on R&D or product testing. I mean, who would’ve written a script like that if you’re writing your own script?
I was recently discussing the fires with a co-worker who used to belong to a local volunteer fire company. He said that, when you enter a house fire, it is so unbelievably hot that all of your mind and body bands together and shouts “Run!” But, he went on to say, if you’re part of a team, the psychology of the team effect overpowers that voice and you soldier on.
That’s an interesting metaphor for life. Life isn’t usually as crazy and intense as a whatever-degree fire blowing up in your face. However, the net effect of life can sneak up on you and, before you know it, your body and mind are advising you to run. A strong marriage combined with a healthy relationship with God are your team in that scenario; that’s usually enough to overpower the advice to run.
Hang in there. Keep reading the script, because it’ll end well, particularly if you’ve got your eyes on God. Despite how dark or fiery it might be at the moment.
Speaking of scripts, I’m knee-deep in my secret script project. We’ve been working on this since around March/April of 2024. I’m not allowed to say what it is and who it’s for, but it should hopefully see the green-light of production day sometime in 2025. Hopefully. And then I’ll be free to talk about it. Fantastic project, but it is soaking up most of my limited free time that could be going to other writing projects (notably, a very light-hearted epic fantasy that I’ve been fiddling with for the last five years–almost done, but still needs some work; a humorous series of children’s stories set in modern America [inspired by Daniel Pinkwater’s writing]; a novella set in Tormay, post-Hawk and featuring one of the minor characters from that trilogy-this one’s probably about halfway finished).
What I am free to talk about, though, is Son #2’s music. His latest songs (written and recorded with JB Proof as his nom de guerre) are called Ever After and Leaving. They’re available mostly wherever music is available these days, but you can listen to them for free on Youtube. Pretty darn cool for a 15-year-old! He has about twenty songs out so far, and I’m fascinated by how his songwriting is evolving in terms of arrangement and structure.
Rambling is something we all do, in long ways or short ways, and rumbling is either what’s going on in your stomach or your mind or past the horizon as we hear rumors of war, earthquake, famine and the four horsepeople of the apocalypse.
I’ll use my particular rambling and rumbling to catch up on things, though that should be “things” with a capital T.
First off, in no particular order of important, some of the homeless here in California (and there are a LOT of homeless, as, among other things, they tend to move here from other states due to weather, benefits, the degree of law enforcement or lack thereof, etc) are starting to build tiny houses in various spots with greater and greater degree of utilities: power, water and sewer. This tends to happen in the public right of way, such as this story about a homeless community along the 110 Freeway in southern California. Light, water, a fridge, a tiny home on public land.
This sort of thing is starting to make me think of the pioneers homesteading in the American West, back in the 1700s and 1800s. History is repeating itself, but with a tinge of Mad Max.
Speaking of movies… I’ve been hired to —— for an ——– for a ——–. More news coming out on that later. I’m not allowed to say much about it, so I need to confirm (and then reconfirm) the restrictions of the non-disclosure agreement. NDAs make a little paranoid, so I’d rather be ultra-safe than just safe.
Needless to say, this new job is on top of my pre-existing job working in land use, policy and land management here in central coast California, so that means finding hours and half hours early in the morning, in the evening, during lunchtimes and on the weekends. Not a problem, because I enjoy creative writing, particularly when it’s not post-modern nihilist nonsense.
I recently learned that Greenland has only three stoplights. This is sobering news. I think we all take stoplights for granted. Stop and reflect on the sheer plethora of stoplights that exist in your life. You are blessed with stoplights. Don’t take them for granted. Remember the poor people of Greenland who must only make do with three stoplights between all of them and the seals, musk oxen, polar bears etc who also make their home there.
Sad.
In other news, the homeschool year is about to come to an end in several weeks. The children’s minds are brimming with Latin, logic, literature and many, many other things that start with L but that I can’t recall off the top of my head (really, that phrase should use a different preposition). They can’t wait for non-school days so they can busily jettison all that knowledge to the best of their abilities and industriously use their synapses in other pursuits. Worthy pursuits, I’m sure, that don’t involve video games.
Speaking of throwing words around (and that’s exactly what we’re doing here), I just finished reading Dean Koontz’ newest book, The Bad Weather Friend, and I have to say–he really throws his words around in a delightful manner, even when he’s writing about somewhat disturbing topics. May Dean Koontz live long and prosper, and may he write many more books. One of the interesting things I find about him is that he writes from an absolutist moral order of the universe, that Man does not define meaning, but that Truth (with a capital T) exists outside of Man and it (and the founder of that truth) is what defines Man. This approach creates the perfect philosophical framework for writing proper suspense and horror. After all, of what worth is a horror story if the author (and the reader) don’t believe in the absolute concepts of good and evil? If you don’t believe in that, you can’t have a genuine horror story. All you can have is a dreary piece of nihilist gore with nothing at stake.
That’s where the AI comes in. There are quite a few options, but I’ve been experimenting with 
