Hello, hoopy froods of the internet! It is I, the Random Writer™… also from the internet, bringing you all the news that doesn’t actually exist.
Yeah, I lead a boring life. Don’t tell anyone.
For this month’s topic, I wanted to bring up a strange phenomenon that’s been happening lately. Apparently a spambot or twelve have found my author email address. These certainly can’t be real people, because they all say basically the same thing, which shows they have not read the book they are referencing. (If I’m wrong, and you’re a real reader who has reached out to me, please leave a comment so I can apologize profusely for accusing you of being a spambot.)
They all tell me how brilliant Comedy of Terrors* is. Lie #1 that proves they have not read the book.
They rave about how well I weaved in that perfect blend of slasher horror with laugh out loud funny moments. Lie #2 that proves they have not read the book.
And then they tell me many more people should read it. Lie #3.
And here is where they diverge slightly from email to email. Some go on to try to sell me on their marketing service. Some say they want to feature me in a book club that doesn’t exist. And some just want me to “write back; I’d love to hear about your writing process.” (Despite the quotes, it’s a paraphrase.)
I would wager that all of them are AI bots trying to do something or get me to do something. I honestly don’t know.
In a world where there is so much creative backlash against generative AI, it makes me sad to see these examples that help the naysayers’ case. AI is not bad on the surface — I use it every day to help me with research. For developmental editing. (See previous posts and the next segment.) Just basic conversations when I have no one else to talk to.
Unfortunately, with every new technology, there are always people out there who try to sully it for everyone else. People who will use the technology for evil instead of the amazing good it has the potential to do. For example, with the advent of email came phishing and other harmful scams to bilk people out of their hard-earned money.
Now, with AI, the phishing becomes less apparent. (They called me by name. Named the book. Gave details that are in the book — that they clearly got from the meta-data.) A more trusting person might have believed the praise was genuine — but here’s the newsflash they didn’t consider. You don’t need an author’s permission or participation to feature their book in a book club. An average Joe (or Jane) doesn’t give a rat’s tail end about a writer’s process. And a bad writer recognizes when a person has not read his book. Especially when they say good things about it.
Again, I could be too cynical to recognize a genuinely positive email. If so, please let me know so I can try to make amends. However, I don’t really publicize my author email. I think I have a representation of some kind somewhere on this website, but if I do, it’s so obscure that even I’ve forgotten. Because AI means it takes less effort to find completely unknown authors, their bots may have located that obscure reference and tried to target me as a naive newcomer who is completely unaware that scams exist.
Whatever the case, I’m not buying anything they’re selling, so if they want to waste their resources trying to sell it, my delete button is right there.
WRITING REVISING IN PUBLIC
I’ve broken the story.
And no, I don’t mean in the positive “news headline” kind of way. I mean that changes in chapter (early) of Best Enemies Forever have ripples that are affecting the part I’m in now, and I don’t know quite how to repair it.
It’s fine, though. My AI editor (See? There is potential for good with AI!) has given me a potential blueprint for fixing it all.
I just have to redraft the entire second half.
And then go back and do another developmental edit on the whole thing.
The thing is, I knew this book would take a lot of work to bring it up to mediocre. I went into it willing to do the work involved. (Still willing… just less enthusiastic now.)
Sadly, this weekend (the final weekend of March, 2026), I’m not able to work with the AI, as the point balance on the platform I use have just about run out. So I’ll be looking through the blueprint and seeing what I can implement on my own.
But we’re still making progress!
GAMING THINGS
As much as I love Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game, I am really not enjoying Wrath of the Righteous. We’re still in the introductory adventure, and we keep losing!
To be clear, losing is not what’s making it unfun. It’s that the difficulty level has been turned up to eleven. And I blame the players for that.
The first set, Rise of the Runelords, was deemed “too easy” by the people who played it. My group and I, Filthy Casuals™ that we are, disagree. Granted, we won every scenario we played the first time though, but it felt challenging. Also, without the Holy Candle turning back the clock each time, we would not have won them all.
So they upped the difficulty in Skull and Shackles, the second set. We’ve lost here and there. We even lost a character along the way, but it has been fun. Yet the player base still whined that it was too easy.
Enter Wrath: Demon mode on steroids. Each scenario more deadly than the last. (We’re on Act 5 of the prologue. We’re not even on Adventure 1 yet!) We’ve come close to dying no fewer than five times. We keep letting the clock run out on purpose just so we won’t.
I feel like the only way to pass this Adventure Path is to create God-Mode characters from the jump, which is impossible with Basic gear.
We put Skull and Shackles on hold when our fifth player was consistently not showing up. Now that he’s confirmed no longer in the group, I keep begging the others to go back, but they insist on sticking with Wrath of the Righteous.
And I’m not enjoying it.
(As always, game links are to their entries on BoardGameGeek.)
WRAPPING UP
Hm. This seems to have been a bit of a downer entry. I didn’t intend that going in. I was just slightly annoyed by the spam messages being sent to a non-public email address and wanted to vent for a moment. And the other things that have been happening, covered in the other segments, happen also to seem negative.
Sorry about that. I’ll try to pep it up next time.
But until then, I hope you are finding the positive even if the cosmos is slinging negativity at you.
Be love.
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