Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.
Since so many of the current Romantasy crop of novels involves variations or inspirations from the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, here’s another mashup… in AI this time. The originals are here and here.
Authentic-sounding (NOT actually authentic, I want to make clear if you’re writing fact-based historical fiction) Greek names for men are just as easy to generate as those for women. And to accompany them, here’s a painting of the most manly man in Greek myth of all — Heracles! He’s pictured in his struggle against a …
I had to include these outtakes from my Wizard of Love series. They’re hilarious!
Since it’s Valentine’s day, I thought I’d do a list of spells and magical items related to love, or its lack. Caution, a few of these are NSFW! The fellow above is from Starry AI’s “pinup” art filter. The prompt was a variation of “bearded wizard with arms raised, a cloud of valentine candy hearts, …
Since we’re nearing Valentine’s Day, let’s talk about… Romantasy. As implied by the name it’s a mashup of Romance + Fantasy, a subgenre exemplified, perhaps platonically, by Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series, whose eponymously named first book came out in 2015. Marketed as YA, the fantasy novel was about a …
I covered Greek female names before on this site, in this post about female centaurs. For that I drew on actual, lesser-known names from the myths of Ancient Greece. But since I had researched so much for that, how difficult would be to generate some in a completely random way? So, you need a Greek …
Though the color purple been democratized these days –- almost every mass-produced clothing item and stuffed toy is available in some shade of it –- it was once very rare and restricted to royalty. This was because its dye depended on a rare, arcane ingredient: the slimy secretions of the murex sea snail. For centuries, …
Creating Chinese New Year coloring book images in Midjourney. Author Jenny Trout’s’ lengthy recap of Sarah J. Maas’s Faerie fantasy A Court of Thorns and Roses. If you’ve wondered what all the fuss was about, but don’t want to read the book itself, read this instead. Shipping container houses. Face/Off, an original Syfy show about …
On my own, I’ve done a pretty good job of generating imaginary cocktails, including those related to Christmas and Narnia. Since ChatGPT has advanced to the everyman level, why not see what it can do? I used OpenAI’s version, which is free with registration, and the basic prompt was “Give me a list of imaginary …
I haven’t had much success with reading challenges these past years. In 2023, I finished 5 out of 12. In 2022, it was eight out of twelve, with a little cheating: three-quarters. So THIS year, I’m only going to pick six. That’s make it a little easier to chew. 19. Like a novel, only real: …