Category: About Me

April ended up turning my life completely upside down. I keep asking myself, “Do I want to talk about it publicly?” and the answer is no. Not really. Maybe in the future, but not right now.

So, I’ve been keeping myself busy with deep cleaning my house. I also have plenty of responsibilities to get through and appointments to keep. Those cupboard doors aren’t going to scrub themselves!

However, I do feel that I have been absent for long enough, especially with how bad I’ve been at blogging for the last … two years. It’s time for me to get back to the things that I enjoy, even if I don’t feel like I have all that much to say yet.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have plenty of AI art to share! As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or maybe pictures are just soothing to look at.

Lyra found herself looking eagerly for Master Malachi every time the chime to the door rang, but as the afternoon dragged on, the Runemaster never appeared. There was the usual flurry of women full of the usual flurry of gossip, and Lyra felt like she spent half the day on the floor carefully ensuring that all the skirt hems were pinned to the correct length, doing her best to focus on her job and dismiss the cloak from her mind.

She was proud of her work. She had made sure that her stitches were strong and subtle, and a wave of joy had cascaded through her when she had spread out the cloak after she had finished. The trim accented the velveteen fabric beautifully, and it looked like a garment fit for a king. However, she had also been quick to dismiss the thought as hubris, since someone of her status had no business serving the royal court, and she couldn’t let herself get too egotistical.

The hours dragged by, and Malachi never appeared to see what she had done – the disappointment was almost unbearable. As Lyra worked on closing up the dressmaker’s shop, an idea came to her and she pulled out a sheet of brown paper, then carefully folded up the cloak with tissue paper and wrapped it up in a parcel, which she tied shut with twine. She would drop it off at the Taylors where Malachi was lodging, she told herself, so she could mark it as delivered and get the weight of it off of her mind.

After locking the door, Lyra set off, trying very hard not to think. She was torn between wanting to imagine Malachi’s reaction when he opened the paper and examined her sewing, and feeling utterly terrified that he would hate it. Ultimately she resolved that she would leave the package with Mrs. Taylor and avoid Malachi altogether.

It wasn’t a far walk, but as she dragged through each step, she was anxious that she would accidentally bump into the rune master, either coming or going from his lodgings, but he was nowhere in sight. She reached the Taylors and knocked on the door.

“Hello, good evening,” Lyra said pleasantly when Mrs. Taylor opened the door, smiling but doing her best to not come across as eager. “I have a delivery for Master Malachi.”

“He’s not in right now,” Mrs Taylor replied, wiping her hands on her apron. Lyra could smell onion on the older woman, and she wondered what it was that she was preparing for dinner. Would Malachi be eating it, or had he made arrangements to dine elsewhere? A little awkwardly, she held out the parcel and chirped with excessive cheer,

“It’s from Mrs. Elwood. Could you give it to him?”

“Yes, I’ll put it in his room for him. Have a good evening.” Mrs. Taylor took the package out of Lyra’s hands, then disappeared inside as Lyra echoed “good evening.” Relieved, she began walking home, though her feet were even heavier than before.

That had gone exactly as she had wanted it to. The cloak was returned to its owner, and Master Malachi was not around to make her feel embarrassed or self conscious … so why did she feel so disappointed?

The big criticism of AI art is that by plugging in an artist name, it can quickly copy their style. However, AI art has tons of benefits — as a writer, for example, I enjoy being able to generate pictures of characters and scenes that I can use to supplement my descriptive writing; this is especially useful for me, because I have aphantasia and can’t conjure up mental images.

Truth is, as Stable Diffusion continues to be refined, it is actually becoming more of a burden to use artist names, since they cause it to throw in random artifacts like signatures that are extremely difficult to get rid of. Plus, the artist community is pretty pissed about it.

So, for the sake of ethical AI use, I quit using artist names.

To cover our bases, my standard negative prompt is:
signature, text, fonts, words, watermark, badly drawn, bad composition, boring, collage, surreal, nonsensical, incoherent, ugly, disfigured, deformed, beginner, amateur, asymmetrical, low contrast,

I customize this as necessary for the specific images that I create.

I also include standard at the end of the positive prompt: professional quality, well drawn, attractive

So, let’s see what we can do with the prompt, “Cherry blossom”. Same seed and other settings.

As you can see, specifying medium alone makes a huge difference in the type of images that are generated — no artist names necessary.

As I’ve said before, AI art appeals to me because I think so strongly in words. I enjoy the process of crafting out prompts and put a lot of thought into writing them, and I hope that one day AI art is viewed as a legitimate form of creative expression — alongside traditional and other digital mediums.

Here is a giant list of different mediums that can be used in Stable Diffusion. There are a lot more possibilities that weren’t included, so experiment!

Phew, the long nightmare of 2023 is finally over! Bring on the nightmare of 2024!

Joking aside, I have made it my goal to get back into regular blogging this year, since even just one post a week is better than nothing. Blogging is something that I like to do to organize my thoughts, and it sure is helpful to have some organization.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I’m putting a temporary pause on writing The Scions. After all of the events of 2023, that sail no longer has wind behind it, metaphorically speaking. My heart isn’t in it anymore. So I’ll finish it later, when the timing is better.

I’ve begun a new writing project that heavily uses AI as part of the process. Not only am I using Stable Diffusion to generate character portraits and concept art, I’m also using language model AI to help with the writing itself. I feel obligated to point out that AI is not to the point of being able to spit out a coherent novel, so while the process is different, it’s still very time consuming.

Essentially, my visual imagination is very weak, which makes describing visual things very difficult for me. AI has been enormously helpful in bolstering this weakness for me, so that I can focus more on writing how everything feels instead. To put it as a simile, it’s like switching from using a needle and thread to using a sewing machine.

I’m looking forward to sharing this new project with you.

Happy 2024!

My 16-year-old cat died exactly one month ago today. I adopted him back before I had even met my husband, and had gone through every stage of my adult life with him by my side — the idea of continuing on without my lapbuddy is a little daunting.

I’m still at the stage of keeping his food bowl sitting in its place, so that I can pretend in the back of my mind that he’s still catting about.

I’m the sort that withdraws to deal with the tough stuff, and 2023 has been full of a number of struggles. I’ve done barely any writing for this second half, and it saddens me to know that a second year is coming to a close where I didn’t meet my goal of finishing a novel. But life is life, and these rough patches are inevitable. Maybe when things settle down, I’ll be able to write a couple of novels in six months to make up for lost time.

I am still lurking around. Sort of.

I’ve written before about how Introversion is not synonymous with social anxiety or awkwardness. I’m posting about the video below to add to the discussion of the topic:

To summarize, a lot of people think that they are introverts because they are drained by social interaction, but that is an inaccurate assessment. In our modern technology driven society, most people are drained by socialization because they don’t socialize in face-to-face frequently enough for that part of their brain to operate at full capacity.

Part of the video that I found to be particularly fascinating is how extroverts are drained more by “toxic” environments than introverts, because extroverts are more socially aware and sensitive than introverts are.

Socializing has become an interesting and complicated aspect of our society. You’d think that with the whole, “Humans are social creatures” thing, we’d have a deeper understanding of it, but I guess it is what it is. Most people sit near the middle of the extrovert-introvert spectrum, and the farther out you go, the less people you find.

I’m someone who scored 90% introversion the last time I took and MBTI test. During my childhood, I romanticized the idea of living alone as a hermit or a recluse, and frequently read books like “My Side of the Mountain” or “Hatchet.” However, my IRL venture into off-grid living as a new adult convinced me that I liked modern conveniences too much to commit myself to the lifestyle. Because, you know, sometimes you need to run to the store for Tylenol at 3am, and it’s a pain in the butt to drive an hour to get into town.

I’m lazy like that.

I also don’t consider myself to be socially awkward. In fact, I’m often the one smoothing over other people’s awkward comments so that they won’t fall into anxiety. I took drama and debate classes in high school, and even won a trophy for poetry recitation. I’ve been complimented on my public speaking skills, and told that I don’t appear anxious at all. What people don’t realize is that it’s because I’m only vaguely aware of the audience, so it doesn’t bother me to perform in front of them (does anyone actually listen anyway?). Also, as a writer, I spend a lot of time “practicing” conversations in my head, so it’s not a big stretch for me to apply it to real life.

Though I do find most people very difficult to work with, largely because they now follow the “social media” format of socialization, where they structure their verbal conversations in the “status update followed by a comment” format. They don’t know how to flow from one topic to another.

There have also been plenty of times when I’ve been out in public with my husband, and he’ll later ask, “Did you see the person with the lime green feather boa?” and I’ll reply, “…No.” I don’t notice people the same way that my husband does. I usually only notice someone if they somehow invade my “bubble.”

And those are the reasons why I consider myself to be a true introvert, instead of a socially anxious extrovert.

Anyway, there isn’t any real purpose to this post. I got back a couple of days ago from a big road trip, and am now dealing with a cold that I caught during said road trip. I figured, “Why not write a blog post?” because who doesn’t enjoy some rambling every now and then? Besides, we both know how badly I’ve been neglecting my blog this year. Maybe it’s time for me to start updating more regularly.

What do you think?