Hi ,

It’s happening again. The woe-bots want my job.

🤖

Before I became a time-travel thriller author, I was a medical transcriptionist, which is a healthcare professional who listens to doctor-dictated reports and types them for permanent legal record.

I did that job for eight wonderful years before voice-recognition technology came along and put me out of a job.* That’s okay though. Without the forced hiatus, I wouldn’t have had the time to write and publish two books in my TimeBlink series—with number three in the works.

But now that ChatGPT and other AI writing tools like Jasper AI and Writesonic have arrived on the scene, some members of the writing community are going into full DEFCON 1. They’re insisting these robots are about to push human writers out of the picture altogether and are rallying the troops for war.

But I’m not worried about AI.

I think if we writers use these aids properly and ethically alongside the AI tools we’re already using—tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid—they’ll become as indispensable as spellcheck someday.

Myself, I won’t be using AI to create ANY part of my novels, though it does have tremendous potential for the marketing end of things. To test this, I asked ChatGPT to “create a post about my novel, TimeBlink, downplaying the sci-fi angle.”

Here’s one result that’s not horrible:
"If you're tired of time travel stories that are all about science and technology, then you need to read TimeBlink! This novel will show you that time travel can be emotional, intense, and full of unexpected twists. #TimeBlink #NotJustSciFi"

Mind you, it does read more like an ad than a social media post, but at least it gives me a jumping-off point. Inspiration. From there, I would tweak it to be more in line with my brand and voice.

Besides, due to the derivative nature of AI, I’d like to steer clear of any potential copyright issues…the words had to come from a real human at some point, right?

What do you think? Is artificial intelligence good or bad for the writing community? Drop me a note!

P.S. if you want to know why I’m not overly worried about robots taking over my job, you must check out this novel written completely by AI. Even the book’s description is a disaster!

*Not quite true; I would have had a job, but the duties would have been vastly different from the job I signed up for, and I wasn’t prepared to pivot. You can read my full blog post about all this on March 15; watch for the link in next month’s newsletter.

Well okay, maybe only here in Edmonton where he works in the radio business, and even at that, he’s not a recognizable figure. But he is the National Content Director for some pretty high-ranking Canadian radio stations, so there’s that!

Before I dig this hole any deeper, I wanted to highlight Al’s recent fifteen minutes of fame (I just realized his name looks like the acronym for artificial intelligence).

Anyway, last Thursday, Pearl Jam tweeted a couple of pics Al took back in 1991 when they opened for Alice In Chains in Victoria B.C.

Back then, the band was known as Mookie Blaylock, named after a basketball player for the New Jersey Nets. When the Nets demanded they not use his name anymore, the band changed the name to Pearl Jam, and a few months later, they released their debut album Ten worldwide.

Fun fact: Ten was a tribute to Mookie who wore that number throughout his playing career.

Yep, it was an exciting day at the Mumford house!

During last month’s trip to Mexico, my siblings recounted a story about their brush with fame I'd forgotten about.

In 2019, my sister and brother (pictured on either side of me below) were floating around in their one-person dinghies off southern Vancouver Island when a strapping ginger-haired gentleman navigated his paddleboard into the area.

He said hello, and, not recognizing him, my sister said, “I’ve always wanted to try paddleboarding. Want to trade?”

He laughed and said no, then my brother offered him a beer. Again, the fellow declined.

As he was departing, my sister realized they’d just had a very private, super casual encounter with a member of the royal family.

You guessed it. It was Harry…back when he was still a prince and not just a lowly duke. He and Meghan had been vacationing in my hometown of Victoria, BC, amid rumors that they were staking it out as a place to live. Ultimately, of course, they ended up purchasing a nine-bedroom mansion in Montecito, California, for a measly $14 million.

I got a great laugh out of that story on our trip.

And finally, I’m here to admit to a dumb mistake.

Shortly after I sent out my last newsletter, astute reader Lyza sent me the following note: 

“You are cracking me up making fun of your Spanish while using cojones spelled sorta phonetically.”

Lyza was sure I’d get lots of mail about it, but fortunately, she was the only one.

And now for my humble explanation about what happened…

I always use MS Word to draft my newsletter and then copy and paste it into my email delivery template, which does weird things to the formatting if you try to edit it live.

Anyway, this time I’d been in such a hurry (and excited for my Mexico trip the next day) that I completely missed replacing “kahunas,” which I’d used as a placeholder until I could look up the spelling of the actual word I was after: "cojones."

It didn’t help that kahunas was spelled correctly and thus not flagged in Word. So, out my newsletter went, glaring error and all. At least now I'll always remember how to spell the Spanish word for ahem, testicles.

Huge gracias to Lyza for keeping me on my toes! 🥰

Thanks for spending time with me today, . I appreciate your interest in my work.

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