I typically don’t have enough free time these days to do much song recording for Inflatable Hippies. I leave that to Son #2 who writes and records at all hours. Throughout the day (once schoolwork is done), late late late into the night. He’s recording under the name Narrin these days. I’m still not sure what his genre is called, but his output is scary. Music is his thing, but I think he enjoys performing live even more than recording. As long as the other musicians are up to a certain caliber…
Anyway, that said, I’m resigned to my fate of just writing poetry/lyrics and then having HAL take over from there. Though, it still does involve setting up style, instrument, dynamics, arrangement, intonation, structure etc etc parameters. Sometimes the results are spectacular crash-and-burn affairs. Or, other times, after a couple of hours or days of back and forth, the results are good.
Some new tunes and some new writing. That’s what I have to show for myself today. If I had the freedom to do so, I’d spend most of my time writing songs and stories. However, life…
Life is messy. And persistent. After a while you become the metaphor for a hastily made-up sad clown failing at juggling dozens of chainsaws and Limoges porcelain while unskillfully riding a unicycle and trying to escape from a maddened mob of IRS agents, honey badgers and robotic squid armed with cusinarts. And, of course, while all this mayhem is happening, there is a beautiful slow motion sunset going on–so incredibly slow that that single sunset begins, evolves and dips down past the horizon just once for your entire life.
The sunset never ceases to amaze and awe you, every time you glance over during your frantic unicycle escape.
What’s the moral of this story? That life is short and time is even shorter and, if we firmly believe in the existence of the four dimensions of length, width, height and time, someone possesses a measuring tape in their pocket that exists outside of time but with which you can measure time. Or perhaps the object is simply a very, very tiny ruler. But still big enough to measure time.
New Inflatable Hippies Music!
Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song. Also, for the video clip below, I tried to put together some AI lip-sync of a portion of the song. I used some Magica tools to rough success. Definitely not perfect.
Which brings me to my latest tune. Blackbird, as written by me and performed by alter ego band Inflatable Hippies and executed by hired AI studio musicians. I simply cannot perform and record at their level. Plus, I find myself content enough to just write the song.
New Humorous Epic Fantasy!
And… the latest story. The Ruin Raiders series. Books 1 and 2 are out. Book 1 is Rise of the Farmboy, and book 2 is Westward to Ravelock. The series follows the story of a farmboy named Ben who runs away from home in order to find adventure. And, boy oh boy, does he ever find adventure. Way too much. He ends up joining a ruin raiding crew who plunder old ruins to find treasure. Wizards, elves, dwarves, monsters, magic, ancient evil, etc etc etc. All of the above.
3 through 6 should be out shortly as well. This is fairly lighthearted writing, in comparison to the Hawk and His Boy series. I wrote Hawk very carefully, as I was deliberately trying to examine themes of sacrifice, death, family and truth. I rewrote and edited those three books for years before I was content enough to publish. Ruin Raiders is the exact opposite: quick, fun, write and move on. Another thing to note is that the Ruin Raiders book exist in the same world as The Fury Clock, but they aren’t written from such a complete lunatic perspective as Clock is.
All for now. I have to get back to land use and water policy. California.
The new humorous fantasy book is almost ready to publish. That is… as soon as the artistic combat between myself and the cover is concluded, I will publish. However, I’m not sure who is winning the battle at this point. Here’s a truncated look at the current version, minus the lettering and a big portion of the image. This should be enough to give you an idea of the stylistic feel of the story: light-hearted, humorous fantasy, leaning heavily on the farm boy trope.
I’m determined to get this one published before the end of the month. As long as the rest of life doesn’t intrude too aggressively: family, church, job, water policy, satellite crashing to Earth, etc.
In the Meantime, Here’s Some Music
In other creative fronts, I’ve been reproducing a lot of my old songs via my Inflatable Hippies alter-ego band. I have way too much fun doing this. I think I first started writing music when I was around twelve or thirteen, and I’ve always been engaged in that to varying degrees ever since. You’ll have to pry my guitar from my cold hands before you put me in the grave.
Mary is about soldiers going to war and not coming home. That was my grandfather in my family during WWII, but it’s a common experience to many. Sad theme, but definitely worth exploring in any creative medium. I’ve always been fascinated by WWII and Cold War history. Music is a quick way to integrate that creatively. That said, I have several book projects I’m chipping away on that use WWII/Cold War as a context. Part of my list of about thirty books I need to write…
Charlie’s Road is about someone trying to find meaning in life and not understanding that you can always find that right at home. Right where you are, of course. I wrote this one from the perspective of a love story, but also managed to work in an Ozymandia allusion for the Percy Shelley afficionados–I love that poem and have worked it into quite a few different things I’ve written.
Anticipation of Impact is an old song about the lie we tell ourselves, that we’re in control of our lives. We’re mostly not. If I remember correctly, I wrote this after being in a car accident. For days and months afterward, I would have sudden moments where I thought something was about to collide with me. My mind would freeze up in anticipation of the impact.
Life Has Come Undone is more deliberation on that same theme–the lack of control we have in life, combined with the persistent sense of not being able to find our way home, even when at home. I don’t know about you, but that odd sense of homesickness is something that’s persisted through my life, regardless of a happy home life here in Planet California. I suppose it’s because of the innate longing we all have (at least, I hope you all have it) for heaven. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.
I’m Off to Punk Rock Land
Those are the new ones for now. Recently, however, I’ve started writing songs veering off into punk rock. It’s a fun, energetic style (and no, I’m not growing a mohawk) and I love the inherent protest feel it has. Plenty of things to protest these days. Such as the horrifying abuse issue in the UK recently highlighted by Rupert Lowe’s report. 250,000 Girls is the song I wrote for that.
The Places We Know is a song I wrote about six or seven years ago as part of my Inflatable Hippies project. It’s somewhat about mortality, a little bit about fate and free will, a bit about where we end up in life. Or after life. Plus a tiny reference to Philip Jose Farmer and John Donne. But, really more Donne than Farmer.
Anyway, I started running some of my songs through Suno AI. Yes, I’ve gone over to the dark side with my music. Using Suno is kind of like hiring a bunch of studio musicians to re-record the various parts of your song. Some people use Suno to write songs for them from scratch–lyrics and music.
That’s a bridge too far for me.
I upload songs that I’ve written and recorded: lyrics, various instruments, structure, melodies and harmonies, etc. And then I tell Suno to recreate the song as is. Which it then does. Yeah, it’s not me recording each part like I do with the starting version of the song, but it faithfully recreates each part according to my original.
I’m not that great of a musician, and not that good in the studio, so I’m definitely okay with the AI assist. Plus, it’s a lot of fun.
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 latest story. The Ruin Raiders series. Books 1 and 2 are out. Book 1 is 
sure who is winning the battle at this point. Here’s a truncated look at the current version, minus the lettering and a big portion of the image. This should be enough to give you an idea of the stylistic feel of the story: light-hearted, humorous fantasy, leaning heavily on the farm boy trope.
Charlie’s Road
Anticipation of Impact
Life Has Come Undone
Those are the new ones for now. Recently, however, I’ve started writing songs veering off into punk rock. It’s a fun, energetic style (and no, I’m not growing a mohawk) and I love the inherent protest feel it has. Plenty of things to protest these days. Such as the horrifying abuse issue in the UK recently highlighted by Rupert Lowe’s report. 
The Places We Know
That’s where the AI comes in. There are quite a few options, but I’ve been experimenting with