Showing posts with label guitar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guitar. Show all posts

An Unexpected Use for AI

 

Image, courtesy of hotpot.ai/art-generator 

 He's rather nice, isn't he? 

I have to admit, up front, that I'm not a big fan of AI. I never use it for writing (I can do that all by myself.), I don't like the way it harvests the work of genuine creatives, and I keep seeing these appalling AI images drifting past my eyes on social media, most of them ridiculous or inaccurate or both. 

My book covers so far - the ones I source myself - are supplied by my artist husband, Alan Lees, my own collection of very old photographs, or more recently, some spectacularly beautiful photographs by our friend Michal Piasecki  licenced only for this single use. The cover designs are made from these images by Lumphanan Press who also format the books for me.

But here's a thing. Like many writers, when I'm working on a book, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, I do like to surround myself with images of all kinds. They can be photographs, postcards, paintings, landscapes, houses, maps, and characters that reflect whoever or whatever I'm writing about - a whole miscellany of images that will never appear in the book as themselves, but will feed into the inspiration behind it. It's one of the pleasures of creating. My work-space becomes a kind of mega mood board. 

I do the same thing on Pinterest as well, making a board for each project. 

My latest project is going to be a trilogy. I've written two books in the series, and hope to publish them either before Christmas, or soon after: Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges. I'll be tackling the third in 2025. The books are set mostly on the Canary Isles, and they are about the challenges and joys of a cross cultural relationship. 

I'm going back to an old project here that has had several incarnations, including a radio play, a short story, and a novel that was so skewed by my then publisher that it bore only a faint resemblance to the book I had written. 'You wrote a sensitive exploration of a marriage and we turned it into a beach bonk buster' said my editor, regretfully, many years later. She wasn't wrong. What I really wanted to do was get back to my original idea, and see where it took me.

I wrote the first book, published it briefly on Amazon as Orange Blossoms, unpublished it quite quickly, because I wasn't happy with it, and then revised it drastically, while working flat out on the sequel. It has taken a while, but I'm finalising edits of both books. 

My husband used to be a charter yacht skipper, so we spent a couple of winters in the Canaries, aboard a 50 foot catamaran. It was probably where my love of all things Spanish began. I'm looking at some of my old photographs as I type this, as well as maps, and a little heap of reference books. 

So - where does AI come in? Well, in an idle moment, last night, I found a site called hotpot.ai, and even more idly typed into the little box the simple line  'handsome Spanish man sitting under an orange tree.' Within a couple of seconds, the site had generated the picture at the top of this post. I was surprised. I mean, not only is he handsome, but he genuinely looks Spanish. (Where was this 'harvested' from, I wonder?) The oranges are a bit OTT  in the way of so much AI, but for a book called Hera's Orchard in which the oranges themselves take on a kind of magical quality, it's fine by me.

Today, I had another go, because my 'hero' for want of a better word, plays the guitar. But it has to be a Spanish guitar. And so it is. Not sure about the beard, but it's still a pretty good image. 

As I say, I won't be using this in any commercial sense. My husband has already supplied me with three lovely cover images. But many writers like to play about with visual images as additional sources of inspiration ...  which these are. Thanks, hotpot!

Guitarrista - hotpot.ai/art-generator



Orange Blossom Love and other stories ...

Another lovely cover image from Michael Doig
I've been so busy with all kinds of writing over the past few weeks that I've hardly had a spare moment to update this blog. Here in the West of Scotland, we're in that time between seasons when the trees are beautiful - especially the rowans - but the days are shortening all the time. Soon our clocks will be going back an hour and then the nights will seem very long - and very dark.

BUT I've been cheering myself up with working on the first in a series of unashamedly romantic novels, set largely in the beautiful Canary Isles. And really wishing I was sitting on the deck of a catamaran in the sunshine. But if I can't do that, then the next best thing is to write about the islands, and dream about them. And share some of those dreams with readers.


This all began many years ago as a short story called Sardine Burial which - coincidentally enough - has just been republished in eBook form by the excellent Hearst Magazine Company: one of four short stories in a new mini collection of my stories, available on all ebook platforms - but you can find it here on Amazon in the UK and here on Amazon in the US. I love the way Hearst are embracing short stories in this form - mainly because I'm a big fan of the short story myself, not just as a writer, but as a reader.

I experimented with Sardine Burial as a radio play - it was actually produced on BBC R4 years ago - but I really wanted to write it as a novel. Its first incarnation was published and pretty much sank without trace. I'm quite glad, because it wasn't ever the way I really wanted it to be. It's a romantic story, no doubt about it. And why not? But what I really wanted to write was a novel about two people from quite different backgrounds, who fall in love and marry in haste. What happens next? Do they repent at leisure, as the old adage would have us believe? So I went back to the beginning and began all over again. Especially with my hero - lovely Luis - who plays the guitar and sings - and cooks, too. OK, OK, he's a man in a million. But he has his faults. As you'll find out if you read the book.

That's what I've been writing about in Orange Blossom Love.  (Try THIS LINK  instead, if you're in the US!)  This is one of the more sensuous and unashamedly romantic pieces of writing I've ever done. It's a very grown up love story. And I'm afraid it does end on a bit of a cliff-hanger. There was no way round it. You'll see what I mean when you get there! But I'm hoping to be able to get Part 2, Bitter Oranges, out on Kindle in time for Christmas. Or very soon after.

My only worry is that there is an important - and quite different - project which might just possibly get in the way. I'll tell you a bit more about that later because it's very exciting too and it will have to take priority for a while.. But if I manage my time properly, I should be able to do both. And maybe winter in Scotland will be a very good time to visit the gorgeous, sunny Canary Isles, even if it's only in my imagination! On the other hand, Bitter Oranges is set partly in Glasgow. So I might just have to make do with Luis, who brings his own brand of sunshine with him! Always has. Always will.