Publisher's Note
Publisher’s Note: Unexpected Discoveries
A series of strange events happened last week. For the first time in my daughter’s life, she had an actual snow day. And honest to goodness snow day where you go out and play in the snow for hours. It was an amazing thing to behold.
We live on the Oregon Coast, so we don’t get snow much. When we do, it’s flurries, or, if it sticks, it’s like an inch, tops.
But this was a legit snowstorm. Almost six inches of snow. Enough to sled on. And miraculously, our neighbors had some sleds (from a vacation to snow country).
And it was enough to build a full-size snowman instead of the lego-size version.
So, while it was unexpected, sometimes the unexpected leads to wonderful new things.
Publisher’s Note: The Future is Now
In case you don’t keep up with the news, we reached a tipping point with artificial intelligence recently. AI technology is spreading and accelerating at a pace I’ve not seen with technology since the advent of the internet. AI art creation, AI chat bots, AI-enhanced search engines… Heck, even my language learning app Duolingo just added an AI-enhanced tutorial model.
It feels a bit like we’ve just found ourselves 100 years in the future overnight. Or like we’re in a science fiction novel. Or both.
Which is ironic, because that’s exactly what happened to the crew of the Renegat in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s latest novel, The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades, which is the feature of our latest Kickstarter.
Publisher’s Note: Genius at Play
Patrick Mahomes is a genius. Of this, I’m convinced. Watching him play is like watching a great artist. What he creates is breathtaking.
I grew up watching football, and it’s my second-favorite sport to watch (after baseball), but I’ve never been a die-hard sports fan. I always watch the Super Bowl, and since my husband is a huge fan, I watch it more now than I have at other times in my life.
And since John is a lifelong Chiefs fan, I watch Mahomes a lot. And he fascinates me.
I can see him working out puzzles in real time on the field. I’ve seen great players over the years, but watching him is different. He has a beautiful mind, and I love seeing it in action.
He reminds me somewhat of great writers who write into the dark (like our own Dean Wesley Smith).
Publisher’s Note: The Magic of Machines
We live in weird times. Technology is evolving so fast that it sometimes feels like magic.
I recently had a conversation with an author who wanted my take on the evolution of AI, particularly as it comes to the creation of prose (such as ChatGPT).
That’s a complicated topic. I’m not just a book publisher; I’m also a professor. I think AI text generation has it’s uses. I think it could be sure useful for helping people write cover letters, reference letters, business correspondence, that kind of thing. Especially for people who struggle with those.
But I recently took a test the New York Times posed to education experts to see if they could tell the difference between a human’s response and ChatGPT.
Publisher’s Note: The Importance of Being Educated
Last week, as I sat through the longest two and a half hours I’ve ever spent in a theater, I was reminded why it’s so important for us to expose our kids to the arts.
My daughter was in her first high school play (her school is a 7-12, so they let the middle-school kids participate, too). It’s the first play they’ve done in years because of the pandemic. In fact, I’m not sure they did dramatic plays before the pandemic, either.
So, this was new territory for them. And the first play the well-intentioned but poorly reasoned directors chose for these 12- to 18-year-olds to perform? The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Publisher’s Note: Middle School: What a Magic Age…
I remember seventh grade vividly. And not just because that was the year of the Challenger space shuttle disaster (because it was carrying a teacher for the first time, we all watched in school). Or because it was also the year for a more local school disaster when the third-floor ceiling collapsed in our science room, trapping our teacher under rubble and seriously injuring her (thankfully, classes were changing at the time, so all of the students managed to get out, albeit barely).
Those were the obvious traumas. But there were so many other traumas that, while not life-or-death, sure felt like it at the time: bullying, frenemies, puberty.
Seventh grade is hard. I knew it would be hard on my daughter. But I didn’t expect it to be so hard on me, too.
Publisher’s Note: A Wonderful New Venue for Our In-Person Workshops!
I’m back in the office this week after a fantastic week in Las Vegas for the Fantasy Caper Craft Workshop. It was so good to spend some time connecting with our writers again.
We had to stop offering these workshops during the height of the pandemic, and then the venue we had used for years became undesirable for a host of reasons.
That’s all changed now!
Publisher’s Note: What a Fantastic Way to Kick Off the New Year!
I’ll never forget my first adult fantasy novel. Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon. I was more of a Little Women and Jane Eyre reader up to that point, and The Eyes of the Dragon was a totally different kind of fiction for me (and for King, at the time, but that’s another story you should look up).
I was a freshman in high school when the book came out in mass market paperback. I didn’t connect at the time (or for years afterward) that it was by Stephen King. It’s a good thing, too, because if I’d known it was written by that Stephen King, I wouldn’t have read it. His horror was (and still is) too much for me.
But that first foray into fantasy fiction paved the way for my enjoyment of so many other fantasy works.
Including the many incredible short stories of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.
Publisher’s Note: Looking Ahead to the New Year!
Well, it’s officially 2023! Back in 2020, we weren’t sure we’d get here, but here we are. It seems like we’ve found our new normal. It’s weird, but, well, I’m trying to look, as Monty Python says, “on the bright side of life.”
As such, I’m looking ahead to the coming year with lots of exciting changes afoot.
But first, a little insider background on the publishing industry.
Publisher’s Note: The 2022 Year in Review
Although we at WMG are off today for the observed Christmas Day holiday in the US, the excitement of Christmas is now over. The presents are unwrapped, the advent calendars are done, and we’re officially in that in-between space between the festivities of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
This week has its own special feeling. It’s still technically the holidays, the tree and the lights are still up, but the stress of the holidays is gone. It’s also the perfect time to reflect on the year that’s about to end and plan for the new year.