I'm a person, not an AI and I've got the mistakes to prove it.

Once upon a time I had to show proof of age to buy a drink in a pub. Back then, a driving licence didn't work because it only proved a person was over 17. (I'm talking about when a driving licence was a piece of pink paper that didn't show date of birth. You know, deep time.) Or I could just go to the pub with a friend. I had a special friend, Paul, who was tall,  5' 11", spoke with a deep voice, and looked mature. Kind of. A friend who didn't mind buying all the drinks.

Years later I still have proof of age problems, only now it's to get me into places that do special rates for pensioners. 

When I go abroad, on holiday, I have to prove my nationality so they'll allow me to leave the country. So I have a passport. Which is even more important if I want to come back home a few weeks later. 

So, proving who I am is nothing new, but in the 21st century, I have a new problem of identity. How do I prove I'm human? At least, how do I prove that the books and stories I write are written by me, and not by an AI? Yes, when I'm uploading a manuscript I tick the declaration box that states, "I did not use AI to write this book," but come on, an AI could do that. And ticking a box is going to be a damn site easier for an AI than, say, calling a friend and begging him to come out to the pub on a Saturday night to buy drinks for me, when he'd rather stay home and watch TV.

So here's the point. I've written a book. Or ten, to be exact. Meanwhile, AI has written a book, or several million to be less exact. I need some kind of proof of life — some evidence that my book was written by me.

Right. Here's my attempt at proving that I am a living, breathing, starving writer. I'll do it with a series of photographs. Yeah, and AI could do this, too, but their notebooks wouldn't be as scruffy, and their spelling would be better. (I pay an editor a lot of money to fix my spelling and grammar and plot holes, but sometimes these things can be useful evidence of a flawed but human brain)

This is a tiny sample I've selected, from three separate notebooks, and from a sprawling, floor-sized mind map.

I should have photographed my litter bin on a weekly basis—lot of stuff went in there— but who takes photos of their bin?

What else? Oh, I know. How about a photo of my office chair, where I've worn the back out? (The straight line is because I tried to patch it with stick-on tape, then wore out the stick-on tape and it fell off) The arm rest looks good because I only just reupholstered it. 

Note the box of tissues, for when the whole job gets too much. That's another thing with AIs, they don't break down in tears of despair.   

And the cover design. No AIs here, either. Here's my wife holding the cover painting just after she'd finished it. It's still attached to the board on which she stretches her paper.

Sarah's a successful botanical artist, so usually she paints flowers. Instead I asked for a cartoon picture of two people in spacesuits chasing a suitcase with legs. She got the idea. She knows how my warped brain works. And she's read the book.

So here's the final cover after I've added some text. I tell you, getting that word, SphereWide, to bend was hard. I admit, I asked AI how to do it. AI wasn't very helpful. AI made some suggestions. I replied with some rude words. AI didn't seem bothered.

Anyway, this isn't a promotional post to sell the book. I just wanted to prove that humans can still do the fun stuff: writing, painting etc. I'm not against robots and AI, but I'll be more open to their advances when they can cook my dinner, wash the dishes and do the housework. For now that's still down to me and Sarah. (My turn to cook tonight. Tuna pasta bake I think. I'd rather be writing. Damn you, AI)

If, despite all this human moaning, you'd like to get your hands on a copy of the human-written SphereWide:Adventures of a Deep Space Travel Agent. You know what to do. Just click the link.

The inside Story of a Failed Book Title (Part II)

A few months ago I posted about the abject failure of The Oneiromancer of Mars. Misleading title, misleading image on the book cover, wrong genre message. But hey, if you're going get something wrong then you may as well go all out and get it 100% wrong. It's taken me a while but at last I've coaxed myself into rolling up my sleeves and fixing it.

Why's it taken so long? Well, first of all I liked the title. The core idea for the book started with the title. "I've had a great idea for Martian Dreams book 2," I said to my wife while we were out walking. "What do you think about The Oneiromancer of Mars?"

"What's an Oneiromancer?" she asked.

That should have been warning flag number one. But instead, I set about explaining all about oneiromancy, that well-known science fictional trope. 

Another thing that has made this process of change so difficult to accept was that I loved the original book cover. Loved it. I'd explained the concept to my cover artist. I had spelled out my vision, and he delivered exactly what I wanted. Why on Earth would I ever want to change it?

But I had to. That lovely cover had to go, and more importantly, the book's title had to go, and here's the thing. Changing a book's title is not straightforward. There could have been tears. I had to unpublish the Oneiromancer – a brutal process that means losing all the reviews I'd gained, and to be fair they were good reviews. Average 4.8 stars. So the handful of people who dared to read the book actually liked it.

Starting from scratch has other risks, too. What if one of those handful of loyal, cross-genre fans thought I'd written a new book? They might go out and buy it again? Would they be annoyed to find they'd bought a book they'd already read? I would be. So there has to be a content warning right at the start of the book description. Not a great selling point.

But I've taken the plunge. Girl in a Spacesuit is a title that tells the reader exactly what they can expect - a story about a girl in space. It's also consistent with the title of the first book in the series, Old Man in a Spacesuit. And just in case that isn't enough, the new cover is a picture of, yes, a girl in a spacesuit.

I republished two weeks ago. It's still early days. I won't be buying a luxury yacht just yet, or even a toy yacht to sail on New Brighton boating lake, but still, so far so good.

Girl in a Spacesuit is out in the wild, on Amazon and most other platforms via Books to Read.