2024 WORK JOURNAL
june
may
2024 05 09 Work Journal
I managed to get another chapter of Deception written today. I’m walking a fine line between creating an info dump to catch readers up on the events that took place in Heirs of Avalon and this book. I’m also shifting the focus onto Ava as she is the heroine of this story without completely ignoring the other four whom I’m demoting to supporting characters. That’s another fine line as well. I’m also dividing my focus because of some business and personal issues I’m dealing with. My Shingles blisters have scabbed over nicely, but I have to wait until they fall off completely before I’m no longer contagious. Words of wisdom: go down and get the shot! This stuff is extremely painful: on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s about a 12, and it doesn’t go away.
Daughter of Shadows is finished, and I sent it out to some of my ARC readers. If you are interested in a free copy, please sign up to join my ARC readers group: https://gaildaley.com/Become-an-ARC-reader-on-Gail's-Team.php I can always use more reviews on my books!
2024 05 16 Work Journal
WOW what a morning! I spent it shuffling between an irate hubby and QuickBooks unhelpful customer service department! It seems that QuickBooks which we use for our pool service to issue invoices and stuff started sending multiple copies of the same invoice out to our customers. When I tried to talk to someone about this problem, I was told I wasn’t officially a part of the company because I wasn’t listed on the books. So much fun! husband is understandably irate. For a small company like ours having our vendors quit us because we are clogging up their e-mail by sending multiple copies of the same invoice is a major issue.
Of course, for a huge conglomerate like Intuit (QuickBooks parent company) what happens to our company is of no consequence to them despite the fact we’ve been a customer for 30 years. We are only a small account, and the loss of our business won’t impact them at all, but I still feel the sting of annoyance when we can’t even speak to a customer service rep.
2024 05 26 Work Journal
The last third of City of Deception seems to be clicking right along. That usually means I’m on the right track with it. This is despite personal things interfering. My Shingles is getting better. I still have a couple of scabs from the blisters but since they aren’t weeping the doctor says I’m no longer contagious. That means I’m out of quarantine. Yay!
I added a second juvenile character, a teenage girl who was sharing Francisca’s prison. I decided she’s going to be tougher than Francisca. When her parents try to turn her over to the state, Ava gets mad and makes them name her the girls guardian instead.
2024 05 30 Work Journal
Well, here we are again. Despite distractions from ‘Life (read that Sh*t) happens’ (our business credit card was hacked, and they sucked over $1,200 out of the account before my husband caught it.) Little so-and-sos did it in the middle of the night. If he hadn’t been up at 2 AM an odd hour for him, they might have succeeded in draining the account. The bank is working on it and issued me a new card—but they managed to hack the virtual card issued before we even got the real one! It makes me want to go into the bank and sing “You’ve got a hole in your system, dear BofA to the tune of “You’ve got hole in the bucket, dear Liza”. To keep the pair of us out of jail for disrupting a business, we decided to open an account at another bank instead. Which involves renewing our FBN and unfortunately, we were 10 days late, so we had to start from scratch. Most of this fell on me since it involved spending time in government offices, setting up appointments at the new bank, etc. Time consuming and not especially fun.
However, despite all of that, I did get three chapters of City of Deception done, which leaves me about 69% finished with the rough draft. I ran through the girl’s disappearance, the rescue (where we picked up another teenager in the same fix), the hospital scenes and the new girl’s intro to her new family with Ava as a guardian. I can always tell when I’m on the right track with a book as it just clicks along. The only drawback is I need to make myself go back into the rough draft and expand on stuff. (I do have a tendency to tell, not show when I’m writing at light speed). I learned this the hard way when I wrote the Arcadian Web and one of my ARC readers said it was a novella instead of a real novel. I have since gone back in and added and re-wrote some scenes to expand it, so I’ll need to re-do the PB cover. I decided that when I write these second books, I need to add a phrase about the adventure continuing in the next book, as a reviewer said Cradle of Fire ended too abruptly. The rest of the story takes place in The Clone Initiative, which features Liam as a grown man (he was 13 in Cradle).
April
2024 04 09 Artificial Intelligence—Yes or No?
There is a lot of controversy these days about using artificial intelligence in your work. I’m not just talking about driving a car or reading your contact list. I’m talking about in the creative arts. There are many artists and writers who claim that artificial intelligence draws from a free association of words and visual items off the Internet. Undoubtably this is true and a lot of cases. These artist and writers contend that anyone who uses artificial intelligence to assist in their work is stealing.
This controversy over Artificial Intelligence is quite similar to the controversy that arose when photographers starting demanding a place in fine art shows, and it got worse when creatives discovered they could alter an existing photo creating digital art.
What they’re talking about is something called intellectual property rights. What is that? Basically it’s your creative ideas. And there is no doubt that they belong exclusively to you. However, it has been proven over and over again that more than one person can come up with the same general idea concurrently, so which one of them is stealing from the other? If we want to prevent our intellectual property rights from being stolen, instead of simply barring anybody who uses artificial intelligence, we should learn how to use it, and teach creative people how to use it so that they can use it effectively without stealing someone else intellect property rights. If we write that into law correctly, artificial intelligence can be a useful tool.
While it is true, today’s Artificial Intelligence cannot create on its own without assistance from an artist or a writer, it’s going to happen sooner or later. Deal with it. No, I do not believe that Artificial Intelligence will replace human writing or human skill with a pen, pencil, or paint. One of my Facebook friends once said that she wanted an Artificial Intelligence that would do her dishes and her laundry so that she could write, not so that it could write or paint for her. That sounded good to me. Let’s face it People, Artificial Intelligence is not going to go away any more than digital art did. It’s here. I suggest everyone learn how to use it so they can decide for themselves how it would be helpful to them without theft.
Can this be done? I think so. We’ve all discovered over the past 20 years just how useful computers can be, and I personally see nothing wrong with using an Artificial Intelligence to spark your own creativity any more than watching a TV program or reading a book. Or, in the case of writers, to go in and edit a written manuscript. There is no doubt a well written manuscript, edited properly, improves it. Now, does it create it? No, absolutely not. I personally have used the Artificial Intelligence on Kindlepreneur to improve my blurbs. All this really does, is take what I’ve already written and revise it. It shortens sentences, tells you where you’re unclear in describing your book, and it’s certainly some help in correcting grammar and spelling. And the Lord knows, we can all use help with that. I don’t care how good you think you are at spelling or grammar, all of us allow colloquialisms to creep into our writing, especially when we emphasize something.
OK, I’ve been talking about the written word. Now let’s talk about the Visual Arts. If you think the controversy over using Artificial Intelligence for writing is nasty, wait till you try to talk about it in context of the Visual Arts! when people first started mentioning using Artificial Intelligence to assist in making book covers, I tried to ask a few questions. You would have thought that I was advocating selling their firstborn child when all I really wanted was some information! It’s true Visual And Graphic Arts are a fuzzier area than the written word. The construction of an imaginary world is difficult; visually many artists experience (and non-artists too) difficulty translating what they see in their head onto paper. And yes, there are Artificial Intelligences out there who do draw from other people’s images on the Internet, especially if the writer has not been clear about what they’re asking for. If you are looking for an original image to visually explain your new world, DON’T use an image from someone else’s creation to describe it!
Now, one of my favorite photo resources Shutterstock, also has an Artificial Intelligence that will help you create your imaginary 
animals and scenery from the text you write. It was free, so I decided well. Why not try it. If nobody will answer my questions. I’ll figure it out myself. It was an interesting experience. The first thing I learned was that the little darlings (Artificial Intelligences)are stupid. If you want an original creation, then you have to refrain from using anything it can grab onto. For instance, the first time I used it I tried creating a creature I made up called a Powderpuff gargoyle. It’s very small. Unfortunately, I when likened it in size to a teacup poodle. Everything I got as a result looked like a poodle dog using that description. So the first thing I learned was do not compare the image in your mind to anything that actually exists. I did much better when I substituted the words a small mammal.
Learning to use an Artificial Intelligence is very similar to what I experienced When I was
in high school; My creative writing teacher had us describe a car without using the words car or motor vehicle. We couldn’t use the word tire to describe it what fit on its wheels. Instead we had to say a round, air-filled rubber-like substance instead of wheel. So if you want an alien looking plant, don’t call it anything that resembles an earthly plant. Instead it is a green growing thing; you could say fungus, but you might get a mushroom. if you use something like broccoli it’s, It’s gonna look like broccoli. Needless to say, the first time I tried to use this thing on Shutterstock, in trying to correct the image so I wouldn’t get a poodle, I gave it fits. It froze up, in effect, I overpowered it. If you want, say an alien looking woman, don’t call her a woman; say a female bipedal with whatever color skin you’re gonna be using. whatever her hair is going to look like, if you say hair, it’s gonna look like human hair.
No, I don’t think Artificial Intelligence is any danger to us artist or writers. The fault lies in our ability to use it and how we use it. if you give a very general description and you say your alien looks like a Klingon you’re going to get a Klingon. If you say an elf, well, there’s a lot of different descriptions out there to draw from and what you actually get back will depend on what that individual Artificial Intelligence has available for sources. The fault lies in ourselves and our training, not in the tool.
March
2024 03 22
Well, I got another chapter written on daughter today. I think I’m thinking of revising what I had planned for the next chapter. Not sure I want to really get into the kidnapping Cayenne and that kind of stuff. I had to shift the focus to Laughing Mountain so we could take care of the agents for the for the Silent Insurgent this was a little difficult but I do need some action for back on Shangri-La. At the moment I don’t have a clue what I’m gonna do though. I did have the squabble between the Malcolm and Grace, which kind of moves that relationship along. That’s going to be a real slow burn anyway. If I do anything else with it it’ll be in the 3rd book and I’m not sure what I’m gonna be doing for that one. Oh well.
2024 03 14
Downloading the payroll stuff was surprisingly easy. Now all I have to do is send it off to the web site. Since I have some extra time to work on Daughter of Shadows. I'm getting down to the end. I've got four more chapters lined up but all of those are the ones did that make or break the ending. Once that is done, the editing starts and that can be a bear. I set the release date for May 31st. I could have made it earlier, but I wanted to give myself plenty of time to do any rewrites that need to be done. I sold 2 books at The Clovis Art Guild meeting last night. I just took them with me because I knew that two of the ladies who buy my books would be there. Cradle of Fire still had the old cover, so I gave the gal who bought it a break on the price. The Arcadian Web I sold for $15; Amazon has it as $15.99 but I didn't want to deal with pennies thank you very much.
2024 03 13
I did get another two chapters of Daughter done this weekend. I still need a humdinger ending though, and I don’t want it to come off like a superhero fight. I want to tie the conflict between the Silent Insurgence and the World Preservation League into another book for the Bedingfeld family on Arcadia, maybe St. Antoni and Halcyon, so whatever plot line I come up with can’t close off those plot lines…
Sorry this blog isn’t really about my books—sometimes life interferes with writing. Sorry about this, but you’ll need to excuse the rant—I’m feeling very frustrated. I just spent the last two days trying to help my son get his health insurance straightened out, and I’m still not done! He qualified for Covered California this year, but unfortunately, they show him as enrolled in Medi-Cal and he has to get removed from there to be signed up with Covered California. Aside from the issue of Social Services outside lines not working (they finally admitted that when we went down there in person), they don’t give out their website (we had to get that from them in person too!), and to top things off, they won’t take his 2023 W-2 as proof he’s not self-employed! They want 52 paycheck stubs! So guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow! Then I was told it might take two weeks to process the paperwork! AARGH!
FEBRUARY
2024 02 10 WHY GIVE SCARLET HER OWN IDENTITY?
A couple of readers asked some questions about my newest release Cloned Ambition. Specifically, they wanted to know why Miss Dandridge bothered to create an identity for Scarlet when she intended to have her own brain transplanted into Scarlet’s body. Well, it’s an interesting question. I didn’t really go into it much in the book, first because it’s background and I didn’t want to clog up the plot movement with an info dump. However, since you asked. Clones didn’t have much protection, but cloning a human so you could have your brain replanted into that body, was illegal (actually one of the few things it was illegal to do to clones). To avoid having her human rights taken away, certain precautions had to be taken. The idea was that Dandridge was going to get a life Do-over as a new aspiring actress using Scarlet’s identity. Not having clone markers on her DNA meant Dandridge’s will couldn’t be tied up in court when she supposedly died and left her estate to Scarlet. For those of you who haven’t yet read the book, the clone creation companies were always required to stamp their logo on any genetic material used to create clones of any type, I.e. plants, food animal, etc. Supposedly, this was a fail-safe to prevent Terrorists from creating another Typhoid Mary.
2024 02 09 Neglect
Before I switched over to writing full time I was an acrylic artist. Well I can't really say was because I do still paint occasionally. I have been neglecting that website. I went in and looked at it this morning and came to the conclusion I need to do some updating there as well. When I paint I like to skip around in subject matter as a result I've got paintings that look like renaissance scenes, westerns both modern and old fashioned, and something that I call imaginative realism (with imaginative realism if you want to paint a fantasy scene you do it it's just as though the people in it or the animals in it are posing for you for instance I did one of a Unicorn with the baby in the forest I used real horses which I added the horn and the golden hooves and a mane and a lot of other things that mark Unicorn. The stuff on each web page is very old the design is very old. I looked at new templates for things, but I wasn't happy with the made for you templates furnished by my host. Switching holes wouldn't make a difference because quite truthfully I have yet to see a DUI (do it yourself) website place that has stuff on it for writers who want to show off their books. Not that they don't have a lot of different type of templates, but none for authors or writers. If I want to update both of these sites I'm going to have to do it myself and go in and scrap the things that I don't like and see if I can adapt some of the stuff already there, I do like. Again, it's my control freak genes showing I'm sure. Maybe if I win the lottery I could afford to pay a professional website designer to design what I want for both these sites; but since the chances of winning the lottery are worse the chances of getting struck by lightning, probably it isn't going to happen.
Visit my site https://www.gaildaleysfineart.com
2024 02 08 WHY DO I SELF PUBLISH?
Why did I choose the self-publishing route as a writer? Plain and simple answer I'm a control freak. I have a good friend who has gone the route of having a traditional publisher publish books for her. She seemed quite happy with it. However I notice her results using a traditional publisher and mine as an indie publisher don't appear to have much difference. They do quite a bit for her they designed your covers which were beautiful by the way. And they made a few announcements uh better books and they posted them on Amazon. As far as the covers go I monkey with my covers all the time. Occasionally it's because they've become outdated, and a couple of times it was because someone else used the same source photo that I used to make their cover, but truthfully I like being able to go in and monkey with my own covers. I likebeing able to decide how to promote my books, and yes, it does mean I do all the work of the promotion, but at least this way I have no one to blame but myself and my ignorance. I recently found an AI tool on Kindlepreneur, to improve my blurb writing. It offers you three different styles none of which are copycats of the other. I don't recommend using it as is the way they give it to you, instead I mix and match all three until I'm happy with the result. You can't do that with a traditional publisher. In fact you probably won't have a choice when they say we're going to give you a new cover. You see with a traditional publisher you don't own your book anymore they do. This is not just a rumor the friend I told you about earlier had started a three-book series and then her publisher went out of business. Before she could go in and find a new publisher she had to get a lawyer so she could get the rights to her first book back. Doesn't that sound like fun!
Visit My Site https://gaildaley.com
02 05 2024 WHY DO I CHANGE THE COVERS ON MY BOOKS?
In the case of the Space Colony Journals, I changed not only the covers but also the book titles and series title. They simply weren't selling well. So I had them evaluated, and to my surprise and dismay, I was told that I was sending two different messages causing genre conflicts. The titles sounded like romance titles. But the books were clearly in the sci-fi genre. Changing genre and titles is a big deal, as it involves unpublishing the books, assigning new ISBN numbers for each book. I DON’T RECOMMEND IT.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stop Amazon from keeping the older titles on the list. I was told that the books under the older titles and series we're now owned by buyer and the buyer could list them as used books for sale whether they had my permission or not. AARGH!
I was actually quite happy with the original cover on Quantum Light. Unfortunately the way I make my covers I use a couple of sites which make the source photos available to multiple authors and artists, I recently discovered someone had used the exact same photo for their book which as it happens was also science fiction. In order to avoid confusion I redid my cover.
The Magi Trilogy: I decided the covers for this series wasn't hitting the mark with its target audience which is Fantasy/Science Fiction, so I redesigned them to appeal more to the fantasy fans, even though they are a mixture of both genres. I wasn’t super happy with 2023 covers either, so in 2024 I changed them again!.
2024 02 01 WHY CHANGE BLOG HOSTS?
I decided today that I was going to have to change blog hosts. I had previously been using WordPress to host my blog. Unfortunately when I tried to sign into them this week they refused to recognize any of the email addresses I have used on that site, and that’s one of the reasons why I really think I'm going to go with Tumblr instead. According to the WordPress Facebook Page, you have to have a paid site in order for them to help you. Very annoying. The Old the site is still up and active with the Last Post that I made on December 25th, 2023, but I can't get into it anymore and they tell me that they can only do a recovery providing several conditions are met the first one being that I had to have set up that stupid two factor authentication which is a pain. The second condition was that I had to have paid for something on their site. It was supposed to be a free site, and when I first started using it, it was a free site! Right now I can't even get into it to close it down. Now Tumblr is a little harder to use. My account on Tumblr was still open; I actually have three blogs on it. The only one I really want to use is the Gail Daley Writer one. Tumblr doesn't have much of a customer service thing either, but they are a little easier to use. I just have to figure out how to get rid of those other two blogs so it will make my Gail Daley Writer one always on top. Somehow or another, I’ve managed to create two separate Writer’s blogs—don’t ask me how! Either one works, although they do look the same, they apparently have separate URLs. Please be patient while I try to figure out how to merge them.
https://www.tumblr.com/gaildaleywriter
https://tmblr.co/ZyG7Sef8p0xMqm00
JANUARY
01/10 FACEBOOK STANDARDS
I just love Facebook. Apparently they’ve decided my content didn’t meet their standards. So they removed it. It would be really helpful if I actually knew what I did. As far as I know, I haven’t insulted anyone, I haven’t said anything racially controversial—in fact I avoid those things like the plague. All I’ve done is told everyone about my new book—Cloned Ambition. It’s a science fiction about a woman clone who was destined to have her mind replaced by an older version of herself. The book I’m working on now is another science fiction about a girl who has her memories wiped and has to rediscover who she is.
2024 01 09 OVERCOMING WRITER’S BLOCK
I’ve been struggling with my concept of the colony on Shangri-La. Those of you who read Babylon Shattered have probably realized that this is the least favorite of my Outlawed Colonies. Although I love the characters, I find it's fuzzy minded altruism totally illogical. In keeping with the cozy theme in Babylon Shattered I skated over some of the darker aspects of what might happen if talents could use psychic manipulation on others with little or no consequences. I was able to do that because Clementine is not an empath. Power is corruptible and even those who start out with a 100% good intentions could be tempted to just give things a little push. I found myself wondering what kind of a weapon an empath would be; Coupling that with an unwillingness to believe people can be just as bad as they can, an empath in a society without proper checks and balances could be very dangerous. Creating one in even in a society where there are consequences in order to manufacture a biological weapon, could get nasty in a hurry.
That is why on Earth, we've got the two competing groups one of which wants to take out the present government, and the other the other which wants to protect it, which is why Tracy was sent to Shangri-La. On Shangri-La you have pretty much the same situation but unlike most people on earth they have the means to carry it out.
01/04/2024 WHOOPS—HERE GOES ANOTHER ONE!
Well, today was a fun day. I started off the morning by slipping, falling, going splat in the bathtub, needing to be extracted from said tub by first responders. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day in the emergency room at Clovis community, waiting for them to do a CAT scan on my head because i smacked my head on the tile on the way down. The first responders were Such lovely, competent young ladies. Within 15 minutes of their arrival, they had extracted me from my tub, and I was on a gurney on the way to Clovis ER.
