Category: Ridley Park

Temporal Babel: A Novelette

Posted in Art, Artificial Intelligence, Book, ChatGPT, Cover Art, Dall-E, Generative AI, Ridley Park, Short Story, Software, Temporal Babel, WritingTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

I just completed a second draft of a novelette I’ve been working on. I had ChatGPT (Dall-E) render a quick sample cover.

A young woman stumbles across an unconscious man on a remote highway outside Anika, New Mexico. He’s naked, tattooed, breathing — and utterly incomprehensible. Medical professionals, police, and a determined psychiatrist try to parse his language, but his words follow rules that don’t exist and reference a world no one knows. As they struggle to decode him, they’re forced to reckon with the limits of their own assumptions, both linguistic and moral.

Temporal Babel explores the failure of language, the fragility of identity, and the quiet panic that sets in when comprehension fails.

The story takes place in New Mexico, and I wanted a minimalist visual style to match the prose. I believe that a beige desert set against a blue sky is perfect. The deserted highway with a single cactus speaks volumes. The footprints in the desert are also evocative. I love the simplicity of the palette.

Though it revered the front and back cover art, it generally followed my instructions. Artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant progress in a year. All of the words are spelt correctly. I could Photoshop this into shape with little effort.

I only plan to release this as an ePUB because I am compiling a triptych. Currently, the body copy stands at 105 pages, so with title pages and the rest, it should reach 112 pages, which is perfect for seven 16-page signatures.

—don’t let him wander.

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, critique, Generative AI, Ridley Park, Sci-Fi, Short Story, Software, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

My biggest problem with generative AI is its lack of subtlety and misunderstanding of satire and irony. I am writing a short story, and a character is calling an emergency number. I shared the first scene with Grok, and it suggests that I turn the absurdity up to 11 and replace this segment with the one above:

“Okay, ma’am. Can you stay with him? I’ll dispatch an ambulance to your location.”

It is funny in its way, but I’m only pretty sure that an operator would not be injecting humour into a situation where a woman is reporting an unconscious person. Absurd doesn’t need to be Monty Python funny.

Am I being too critical?

Audio: NotebookLM Podcast discusses this issue.

More to the point, I find that many humans miss subtlety. Many people need every storyline highlighted and retraced with a bold Sharpie. Every detail needs to be explained because they can’t connect the dots. This is reflected in the cinema, television, and books of the past half-century or more, so is it fair to criticise AI for being dull when it’s at least on par with more than half the human population.

Are we asking AI to be held to a higher standard?

AutoCrit Innards

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, AutoCrit, Ridley Park, Short Story, Software, Status Update, WritingTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

Writing is hard. Short stories are worse. I started Mind Without a Mirror a few days ago as a short story project. After a dozen major revisions, I got to a place to run it through AutoCrit. I’ve been using AutoCrit for a couple months, and it’s been useful as an editor before I connect with a human editor or Beta reader.

Today, I think it split its guts. I clicked on the Character tab. This is where it assesses your character traits, strengths, weaknesses, and some other aspects. As you may notice for the first character, Ada, it returns a terse response. This is usual. The second character Echo went off the chain.

Major characters including Ada and Echo provide contrasting perspectives aiding in highlighting different facets of conflict surrounding Sol’s disappearance:

1. Ada – Her impulsiveness offers tangible counterpoints but sometimes lacks depth behind motivations driving rash decisions; deeper backstory integration can enrich relational dynamics while avoiding plot holes associated with seemingly arbitrary choices leading toward unnecessary risk-taking scenarios without sufficient narrative justification.

2. Echo – As a voice urging caution yet pushing boundaries intellectually rather than physically contrasts effectively against both Ada’s impulsiveness and initially hesitant nature exhibited by Nova; further scenes emphasizing logical deductions alongside emotional intelligence contributions can elevate effectiveness within group dynamics exploring unknowns collectively ensuring smoother narrative cohesion devoid apparent gaps particularly during critical junctures necessitating unanimous decision-making processes amongst protagonists’ circle thereby mitigating potential dissonance arising from conflicting individual agendas undermining collective objectives pursuit efficiency notably during climax build-up phases preceding resolution stages inherently reliant upon concerted efforts fruition realizing overarching goals set forth early onset storyline unfolding sequence events trajectory mapping course eventualities encountered en route denouement culmination point reached conclusionary chapter segments encapsulating thematic essence distilled core message intended conveyed audience reception interpretation thereof facilitated 

I shared a screenshot so you can see the random word dump. Perhaps it’s speaking in tongues. Toward the bottom of the laundry list, I see a lot of professional titles below some superlatives.

I don’t know. AI is strange. I wasn’t planning to post anything today, but I just had to share.

White Rooms and Inventory Lists

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I’m a writer, but not without challenges. Some writers have Writer’s Block™ and others don’t seem to understand grammar or structure. Me? I’m easily bored of details – simply don’t care. Here’s the rub.

When I read/hear writing advice, it recommends not to leave your reader in a white room – and certainly not in many white rooms, rooms with no detail to anchor the reader, just free-floating characters. The cure to white rooms is not an inventory list.

She entered the room with him. There was a table, two chairs, a lamp, and a pelican.

This does little to obviate the empty room.

True Confession: I don’t care what’s in the room – save for Chekhov’s Gun. I don’t know who’s familiar with Gary Larson’s comic with the dog, Ginger.

When I read description, it quickly turns into blah, blah, blah, blah, and my brain fast-forwards. One of the most egregious examples is the literary classic, Dorian Gray. At some point, Oscar Wilde paints the image of Dorian’s parlour – to a fault. I mean, I’m pretty sure he gets down to the details of fabric choices and thread counts. I may have gone on for three pages or three paragraphs or three sentences. In any case. I lost track when my eyes glazed over.

The stated purpose of description is to immerse your reader into your built world. I get it. What I want is for the description to be key to the plot or the character – or at least be metaphorical. Don’t get me wrong, some description is good and necessary:

She wears black because she’s sullen or edgy.

He has a scar on his face under his left heterochromatic eye because of that fateful accident.

Chekhov’s gun on the wall will be used to kill the marauding jungle bear.

Sorry. Otherwise, I just don’t care. Of course, it might be important in another way. Using a topical example, Snow White is named as such because of her pale white skin, like an Emo vampire chick. This is why Disney’s reboot with Rachel Zegler makes no sense – of course, they try to argue that the White is because of her purity. They never do explain her connexion to Walter White.

And perhaps it conveys an atmosphere, a mood, or a terrain, But how much does it take to do so? It’s raining, she’s pouting, steep mountains and foul faeries. What else do I need to know?

To be fair, I know this is just me. Other people do want to get immersed and lost in the world. Perhaps I’m coming from my place as a musician. I want the readers to interpret the book and make it fit themselves. If I create Snow White, the reader who’s not a pale white female can grasp and even enjoy the story, but she can’t as easily be Snow White. I feel that this might have led Michael Jackson down the wrong path in his day.

A character may be imposing, but does he need to be specifically 6’5″ and have blond hair like Jack Reacher? Does she have to be a size zero? Just saying…

So what’s your take on this? Is it important that the splendid floral pattern and lilacs and lavender adorn the plush Regency sofa made of 600-count silk Egyptian thread? Let me know in the comments.

Hemp Sapiens: Awakening Advert Spot 1

Posted in Awakening, Book, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Ridley Park, Status UpdateTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ridley-park6/episodes/Hemo-Sapiens-Awakening-Spot-e2ec01o
Podcast: Audio version of this content

Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is a compelling near-future science fiction novel that explores issues of identity, belonging, and the struggle for personal sovereignty. When a community living off the grid is discovered by the authorities of a dominant society, their entire way of life is threatened. Forced to assimilate into a culture not their own, they must make an impossible choice – abandon their traditions or fight to preserve their cultural identity at any cost.

This thought-provoking book sets the stage for an epic series that investigates the origin of these mysterious people. Their future hangs in the balance as the reader joins them on a journey of self-discovery. Will they succumb to conformity or rise up to claim their autonomy?

I’m the author, Ridley Park, and I invite you to immerse yourself in this imaginative new world and come along for an unforgettable adventure. Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is available now in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats. Audiobook versions will be released in February 2024. Get your copy today!

Thanks to India

Posted in Art, Awakening, Book, Cover Art, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Ridley Park, Status Update, WritingTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’d like to thank the person in India who earned me $0.02 by reading 17 Kindle pages of Hemo Sapiens: Awakening. Reading on Kindle Unlimited is free—time aside. Read the whole book, and I’ve earned $0.50. In time, we’ll be as rich as astronauts.

Hemo Sapiens: Awakening Trailer

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Awakening, Book, Generative AI, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Ridley Park, Sci-Fi, Video, Writing, YouTubeTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The trailer advert for Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is now available on YouTube as a 60-second short.

I think I’ll stick to writing. The cover-making wasn’t half bad, but video production with Generative AI is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I considered Artlist.io, but I didn’t want to spend the cash. Maybe next time.

Let me know what you think. You can find a copy of the book from a link on my announcement page. If you get a copy, leave a review. It helps to appease the algorithm gods.

Announcement: Published at Last

Posted in Awakening, Book, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Ridley Park, Sci-Fi, Status Update, WritingTagged , , , , 3 Comments

Here thee, hear thee. It’s about time. Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is finally published and available for purchase reading.

It’s been quite the journey. It started in August 2023 as a diversion from another project, but it ended up taking precedence.

Per the blurb on Amazon, the book is about this:

Genetically engineered and cloned in secret, the “Hemo Sapiens” have lived isolated on a farm in Manchester for decades—until their extraordinary nature is revealed.

Suddenly these “Bloodsucking Intelligent Humans” find themselves persecuted as dangerous outsiders. As hysteria escalates and mobs attack, the fiercely loyal and mostly innocent family fights for acceptance while struggling to find answers about their shadowy origins and uncertain destiny.

A genetics professor’s rash scientific revelation sets off an explosive chain reaction entangling ethics, prejudice and politics. At stake is nothing less than the family’s human rights—and what it truly means to belong.

Can these reluctant pioneers overcome fear to integrate into a society both fascinated and repulsed by their very existence? This thought-provoking saga confronts what diversity, progress and being human entail in an increasingly hostile, high-tech surveillance state that is meant to protect but may also oppress.

Amazon Marketing Blurb

The book currently available in many global regions as hard cover, paperback, or Kindle. I am currently working on the audiobook version, which should be available by March 2004.

For the sake of simplicity, below are links to the various marketplaces: Australia, Brasil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States. Not all formats are available in all regions. As of today, this is the availability.

Hard Cover

(ISBN: 979-8872481942, Case Laminate 6″ x 9″, gloss)

US UK DE FR ES IT NL PL SE

Paperback

(ISBN: 979-8870961422, 6″ x 9″, matte)

US UK DE FR ES IT NL PL SE JP CA AU

Kindle

US UK DE FR ES IT NL JP BR CA MX AU IN

In addition to the audiobook, I am also working on releasing a standard hard cover with a dust jacket and a smaller mass market form factor paperback.

All of this distracts me from writing the prequel, Hemo Sapiens: Origins, which I hope to release before 2025.

Proof Positive

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Mates, the proofing process was Hell. I even count the number of times I reviewed my book, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening. Then I sent it out to a couple of Beta readers, one of whom went over and above and did some proofreading, which I appreciated. I made some amends, and I ordered a proof.

The proof arrived relatively quickly—even without expedited shipping, which would have been more than twice the price of the book.

Lessons Learnt

  • Get a proof copy of your book
    Don’t skip this step. It’s inexpensive and is key to assessing formatting issues. It is also an opportunity for last-minute proofreading. I discovered probably 4-dozen nits that slipped through the cracks.
    • Layout
      In one case, I had an indefinite article (a) orphaned at the end of a line. I entered a soft return to get it to start on the next line to enhance readability.
    • Cover Art
      Silly me. I designed and composited the cover, and I didn’t hide the bounding rectangles I used to reference how my cover, back, and spine present. My proof copy has these rectangles in place. It’s not a huge issue, but it is an aesthetic flaw that I corrected.
    • Major Misses
      This is not as likely to happen to most authors, but this books began its life as four or five short stories that were in the same universe on a shared timeline, so I decided to add connective tissue and create a novel. The problem is that the short stories were set in Bristol, London, and Manchester, but I needed to set the novel in a single location, and I chose Manchester. A beta reader noticed that I even though the story was in Manchester, I left a scene having a character reflecting on the Thames, which is a feature of London. I changed it. Unfortunately, there where two instances. I was lazy, and I changed the instance they pointed out to a generic ‘river’, but I left another instance as ‘the Thames’. Oopsie.
    • References
      Another issue I caught is again fairly unique. I wrote out a male character and offloaded his scenes to a female character. I decided that I didn’t have enough material and differentiation for the two characters. It sounded good at the start, but he didn’t make the final cut. The problem is that I missed a few ‘his’ to ‘her’ pronoun swaps. Oops.
    • Punctuation
      Man, I missed a lot of question marks and a few commas. Nothing major, but it matters.
    • Spelling
      OK. Not too many here, but I had swapped a wonder for a wander that I missed the first hundred times through.
    • Spacing
      Again, minor formatting issue. The biggest offender was rogue spaces between en-dashes and trailing commas: – , instead of –,. It’s a little thing.
    • Tenses and POV
      This book was written in third-person, present, limited, deep point of view. Or that was the goal. All too often, I would slip into past tense. In some cases, it might have been OK, but I edited a lot back into present tense.

      I also switched several times out of limited into omniscient. To be honest, I left some of this alone.

      I was also guilty of some incidental head-hopping. Sue me. It happens.
    • Create Your Audiobook First
      OMG. I thought I was done, but I found so many small issues when I was forced to micro-focus for the audio version. It helped so much. I have been told to read your book out loud—advice I follow—, but I still uncovered a treasure trove of mistakes in the audio version. Moreover, some things that didn’t sound awkward earlier, now did, so I had the opportunity to change it up.
    • Last Minute Amends
      As it happens—in line with the audio version advice—, feel free to make more substantial content amends. My favourite one. When I heard this line during an audio review—I was literally listening in bed—, I got up and changed it immediately.
      • Before: When they arrive at the compound all is quiet except for the crickets that pause to listen.
      • After: When they arrive at the compound all is quiet except for the occasional cricket.
    • Obviously, crickets pausing to listen are also quiet, so…
  • Give yourself time enough time to do a thorough review
    I set a 1 March release date, so I left myself plenty of runway to take off.
  • Be patient
    Even though I gave myself plenty of time for review and amends, I rushed the process and approved a book that wasn’t ready for approval and had to do late revisions.

I”ve probably not mentioned some, but I had the opportunity to fix each of these mistakes, so I’ll bookmark this page and my next book will be that much easier to publish.

Who’s Ridley Park?

Posted in Art, Book, Everlasting Cocksucker, hemo sapiens, Hemo Sapiens, Ridley Park, Status Update, WritingTagged , , , , , 2 Comments

I love origin stories. In fact, my next writing project is an origin story.

But that’s a tale for another day. This post is to reveal the reason for the pseudonym, Ridley Park. This story starts in Delaware, where I lived from 2018 until 2023. I often travelled up 95 North to get to the aeroport or Philadelphia. On this drive, a road sign often caught my eye: Ridley Park.

I cached the name to memory, thinking it might make for an interesting character name. Each trip, this was further imprinted and reinforced.

In April 2022, I was writing another novel. The topic is beyond controversial. In fact, I haven’t yet found anyone who’s not abhorred by the concept, so I know I have to publish it when I finish it. Because of the subject matter, I felt a pen name was in order, and I decided to use Ridley Park. To be fair, the unfinished book is set in Philly, so the name felt particularly apt.

I’ll guess that most of us have heard of the film director, Ridley Scott. The connexion is beyond obvious. It maintains the same cadence.

I’ve never visited Ridley Park. All I know is that it’s a suburb south of Philly, and I’ve borrowed the name. In the end, as it turns out, the question was never ‘Who is Ridley Park?’ Rather, it’s ‘Where is Ridley Park?’ all along.