A Peek At My Week! #154

News About Writing & Publishing: This Is The Current State Of Things

Still not quite over that very nasty flu as yet! It just doesn’t want to let go! Yes, I’m back at work, but y’all know that saying “fake it, till you make it”? Right – well I’m just doing my best to stay upright and avoiding pneumonia as best I can right now. I don’t like being forced to sit and do nothing most of the time, least of all by feeling ill and fatigued – I’m an obsessive personality type who always has to be busy doing something! (You can ask my wife Kay about that!) Trust me, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired… Dealing with it as best I can!

• General News: There are a couple of items under this heading this time: 1) Andrew Webber, a good friend and neighbor of mine died suddenly last week. We’d been neighbors since 1985, and friends since the late 1990s, so it was quite a shock when I learned that he’d died quietly in his home last Monday. 2) Also, as you may recall, I recently encountered an app called Udio, which allows users to create high quality music tracks complete with generated vocals, completely for free! I made use of the opportunity to generate some sweet songs/music tracks based on poetry I wrote many years ago – here they are on my YouTube channel for your enjoyment!
  For those of you who obsessively hate everything to do with AI generated anything, here’s a bit of news you might like to know: Udio doesn’t allow users to imitate other artists or allow prompts on the line of “song in the style of X” – X being the name of any band/artist/singer you can think of. Now there is some level of skill involved, as the user enters prompts – for example there are different ways to enter lyrics that will alter the way the music and vocals are generated, and each time you advance the song by 30 second segments, you are presented with two outcomes and need to choose which one you will continue with, or start over. There’s also a wide variety of musical genres, vocal styles and instruments to choose from! So there you are, totally “guilt-free” free generated music! So shut up, listen, and enjoy it already!
• The Big News: It’s still coming! I apologize for not having terribly much “news” to share with you lately, but unfortunately that’s just how things are right now, and will probably remain so for a while. The people I’m waiting on feedback for aren’t allowed to tell me anything until at least until the end of June, when “it” – whatever “it” is, has progressed beyond the last round, and I’ll be able to share my big news with you! As soon as I know, you’ll know!  I will leave this up for as long as appropriate.
• What Readers Say: I know I can’t please everybody (so I’m not trying to!). That said, it pleases me when I see that I’ve managed to please at least some people! If there’s nothing new below, just pop along here to have a look at all the reader’s comments I’ve collected so far.

Bibliography – A listing of all my books so far:

You can find them at and my shop page on . You can also follow me on my channel.