SEPTEMBER 2023
If you don’t have much time right now, I recommend skipping straight to the video below, although I should point out that it’s not a TikTok, blink-and-you-miss-it sort of thing or a YouTube ‘short’, so you’ll actually need to have around ten minutes if you want to watch it all (and I only appear near the end, so I’m kind of hoping that you will!).
Why a video? Well, not long after I started putting these missives into a blog on the website, I received a comment on the piece I wrote about ducks. Believe it or not, the comment read: ‘Do you have any video of that? I’d want to find out some additional information.’
In my naivety, blinded by my eagerness for feedback, it took me a while to work out that it had been written by a robot. I had almost started working on a video of the ducks chasing each other around theswimming pool! I may do it yet, but not in response to a semi-literate robot (and despite the fact thatone of my reviewers recently told me to ‘cut all the stuff about birds! Nobody’s interested!’).
The video below, which obviously I didn’t make myself, is quite a different proposition. The thumbnail I’ve chosen gives you a clue about the inspiration and content (both of the robes are mine, by the way!), which even includes a nod to The Matrix, always one of my favourites when I’m looking toescape from my own programmed existence. And if you’ve seen Highlander, you’re sure to understand the rest! Anyway, it was a bit of fun for the summer, and nobody was ever expecting to win any awards. Below is a thumbnail, and this is the link.
Returning briefly to the subject of responses to the newsletter/blog before I sign off (if you made it backhere from the video!), my effort in August 2022 was greeted with: ‘The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesn’t disappoint me just as much as this one. After all, I know it was my choice to read through, however I truly thought you would have something useful to talk about. All I hear is a bunch of moaning about something that you could possibly fix if you were not too busy searching for attention.’
Okay, I know it was another robot, but I think it was a fair point. So, I’ve decided to make an effort to bemore positive even if I probably still won’t make the robots laugh …
New FREE book next month! Red and Laguerre picking up the story after Enceladus. No light sabres, but plenty of sparks!