Taking Pride in my Work

So, now that Flights of the Peregrine: Book Three: Murder Mansionis in the world, people have been telling me I should be proud. Most of these are people I already know and am related to by blood.

And I’ve been doing that thing where I shrug, say it’s not a big deal, and just generally demur. Because it’s not a book that allows for easy descriptions. “Well, you see, the Peregrine is a pastiche of 1930s and 1940s pulp heroes, and Dr. York is a mad scientist with a cyborg body who hasn’t been seen since an appearance in a Lazarus Gray adventure— Lazarus Gray is a friend of the Peregrine’s, that’s not important right now—”

But. Today there has been A.I. discourse on the socials. It has been suggested that people like me, who loathe A.I. beyond all reason, are gatekeeping writers who believe putting a prompt into the Book-O-Tron software and self-publishing the result is just fine, actually.

I can’t stand this shit. I did a search for “A.I. writing hate” and one of the first links was said “Write your next romance, thriller, fantasy, or sci-fi novel in minutes with [Plagiarism Machine Crapola Dot Ai.]” In minutes? In minutes? How are you supposed to take any pride in that?

So you know what? I am proud of FOTP:B3:MM. Very proud. I busted my ass on that thing. It’s a batshit pulp adventure that sometimes feels like Duck Amuck if you replaced Daffy Duck with a gun-wielding mystery man. There are zombies and alien worlds and Lovecraftian horrors, and lots of people get turned into skeletons the hard way.

And every word of it is mine. (With the exception of a few lines of Barry’s in a flashback scene.) I wrote an outline, I wrote drafts, I put my fat ass in the chair and worked. And I’m proud of the work I did.

So go buy it already.