Friday, September 1, 2023

Using Artificial Intelligence to Write Books

 


Should writers utilize artificial intelligence tools to write books?

I’ve been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and creative writing, so as a fiction writer, I decided to check out one of the more popular AI applications called ChatGPT that some of my writer friends recommended.

I’ve never used artificial intelligence while writing any of my 65 books, so I was skeptical about this new technology, thinking that a computer could never write a story as well as a human could, but I decided to go into the research with an open mind.

I was surprised by what I discovered. More on that in a bit.

First off, I want to explain how I used ChatGPT to generate fiction:

I brought up Chrome and in the search line I typed “chat.openai.com” and up came a page for ChatGPT. It prompted me to create a free account, so I answered a few basic questions and got logged in.

On the bottom of the webpage, there is a “send a message box” where you can pose all sorts of scenarios for stories and get some interesting responses. For my search, I typed in the message box, “Write me a story about” and then added the basic plot of one of my books, “Torn Between Two Lovers: A Civil War Romance”, which is about a wounded Yankee soldier and the Southern Belle who rescues him. My book is already published on Amazon, but I wanted to see what the chatbot would come up with. It came up with a two-page version of my 253-page novel.

After reading the AI generated version, I was surprised and impressed—not to mention a bit humbled because although AI’s version was only two pages, it was very well-written in some ways better than what I’d come up with.

I thought of more requests I could type in the “send a message box” and wrote, “Write me a title for a book that’s about a wounded Yankee soldier and the Southern Belle who rescues him.” After seeing the AI suggested title "Love's Redemption: A Union Soldier's Heart in Southern Arms", I had to admit that I liked my title better.

“This is fun,” I thought, so I wrote some more requests in the “send a message” box. I told it to write an outline for my book and then once again I wrote a short version of my book’s plot. ChatGPT came up with a nice outline that looked a bit like a script showing “Act 1”, “Act 2,” etc. and ending with an “Epilogue.”

ChatGPT can come up with themes for your story if you provide some basic information. All you have to do is type in the send a message box, “Write me some themes for…” and then describe your book’s plot.

I wrote a bittersweet love story and got the idea to change it into a romantic comedy with the chatbot’s help. So, in the send a message box I typed “Write me a story” and then described my idea for a new plot line. I was pleased by the results. The bot came up with several paragraphs of the new version from the beginning of the story all the way to the ending. It was a whole new take on my story, and it made me reconsider what I had written in my bittersweet love story. Maybe someday I’ll rewrite my sad story and change it into a Happily Ever After Romance.

I fiddled around some more and thought about the next request I could write in the send a message box; so, I asked myself, “What if I was writing a new story and hadn’t finished fleshing out the main character’s traits.” So, I typed in the send a message box, “Write me a description of” and then added a short description of my characters. It came up with a few paragraphs of very detailed character traits that I could focus on as I wrote my novel.

All in all, I was very impressed with the dialogue it generated for my stories; basically, the dialogue was well-written and sounded natural although I’ve heard some people complain that the dialogue it comes up with sounds stilted.

I thought some more about different scenarios for stories I might like to write and wondered would the chatbot would come up with, so in the send a message box I wrote, “Write me a story about a love triangle,” and it came up with two pages of a reasonably good story entitled “Entangled Hearts”.

If you have Bing on your computer or phone, it has an AI feature that writers can utilize while writing stories. On the top of Bing’s home page, there is a box that says “Search the Web”. On the right side of the box, you can click on the “Open Bing Chat” box. Then, click on “Choose a conversation”. After that, click on the box for “Style” and choose “More Creative.” There, you can pose prompts such as “Write me a story about…” All you need to do ahead of time is come up with a basic plot line. With Bing Chat, you don’t have to create an account since you’re already using Bing as a search engine anyway. It’s scary how simple it is.

Some of the metaphors in the AI-generated stories sounded trite and some were so bad that they made me giggle. I felt smug, thinking, “Aha! I’d never put it that way in any of my stories.”

Will AI-generated books replace those written by humans in the future? I don’t think so. Fiction writers can think of using Chat GPT and Bing’s chat features as starting points, never the final products. As every student learns in Creative Writing and English Literature classes, quality writers draw from several sources—either their own feelings and experiences, books they’ve read, people they’ve known, places they’ve lived, or dialogue they’ve heard. That kind of creativity can never be replaced by a computer.


Sunday, April 30, 2023

A Civil War Romance

 "Torn Between Two Lovers: A Civil War Romance"

Excerpt:



A young Southern belle who has lost everything in the Civil War is so distraught that she tries to drown herself in the Mississippi River until she sees a wounded Yankee soldier floating on a coil of rope that was on the steamboat The Sultana before it exploded. She falls in love with him and when he goes into a coma, she takes him to a hospital in Memphis, where she ends up falling in love with his doctor. Much to her surprise, her Yankee soldier comes out of the coma and she finds herself torn between two lovers.  

Available on Amazon.com as an ebook and a paperback.

Buy the ebook on Amazon for $2.99.

Buy the paperback version on Amazon for only $4.54.
 

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

A New Cozy Mystery That Takes Place on The Queen Mary

 

Murder Aboard the Queen Mary 

My husband and I wrote this cozy mystery and we just published it over the weekend. Join our book launch party, step aboard the Queen Mary, and find out whodunnit in this ghostly and romantic cozy mystery.

Book Description:

Why did a teenage girl get murdered aboard the Queen Mary during the Art Deco Weekend? That’s what 67-year-old amateur sleuth, Kathleen, tries to find out, along with the help of an attractive homicide detective who’s in charge of the case. Step aboard the legendary Queen Mary and find out whodunnit in this ghostly and romantic cozy mystery.

Purchase at Amazon for $2.99

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Time Travel Adventure

 

Here's a time travel story that my husband and I wrote:



Travelers in Time: A Search for the Missing

Description:

Two sisters find themselves back in the 1860s during the building of the transcontinental railroad in search of their missing parents who are on a time travel quest of their own. Equipped with only their wits and a vague idea where they must go, this story puts a fresh spin on time travel and the strong unmistakable pull of family ties. Come along and find out if they can succeed in finding their lost parents or become lost themselves.

One of the characters in our time travel story is a married history teacher who has bipolar disorder. When she agrees to go back in time with her sister and friends, she presumes that her husband will be traveling back with them.

Much to her dismay, she finds herself without him, stranded on the railroad tracks during the 1860s. Unfortunately, her psych medicine did not travel back in time with her and she has to find a way to cope throughout all the time travel adventures that she will be experiencing.

Ultimately, she manages to cope quite well and even has some fun along the way.

Luckily, her husband travels back in time and finds her and together they attempt to find their way back home.

Purchase at Amazon for 99 cents. Also available in paperback at Amazon.

eBook link:

https://amzn.to/3B1r36X

Paperback link:

https://amzn.to/3cy1wZD

Also available at Barnes and Noble, Apple, Smashwords, Google Play, and Kobo.

Purchase links:

Barnes and Noble:  https://bit.ly/3RvKzh1

Apple: https://apple.co/3B5b8V1

Google Play: https://bit.ly/3TxJPtK

Smashwords: https://bit.ly/3Q7FiLI

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3cGyeYP





Friday, March 31, 2023

Would you rather “listen” to a book?

 


Would you rather “listen” to a book?

 

When we tell our friends and family that we write and have published paperbacks and eBooks, some have answered, “I’d rather listen to an audiobook.”

Well…we’ve heard you and have recently published several of our stories as auto-narrated audiobooks. Auto-narrated? “What’s that?” you ask. Well, in our case it means using Google’s text-to-speech technology which creates amazingly realistic voices. And it’s free for writers to use.

Amazon requires writers to hire a professional narrator for a book.  It costs a bundle of money. For indie writers such as us, we simply can’t afford to shell out thousands of dollars for narrators. So now, we are creating audiobooks for our titles on Google Play.

Google allows writers to choose from several different narrators: Male or Female Americans, British Male or Female, or Indian Male or Female. We were surprised by how natural these voices sounded. We were also able to change the speed and pitch of the voices.

You can use one narrator for the entire book or choose a specific narrator for each character. It’s as simple as that.

We are also able to edit the pronunciation of words. For example: words like “Live and Live” have two different meanings. We could choose which pronunciation was the appropriate one.

As readers, would you like to know how to find and listen to our audiobooks? Here’s a quick how-to:

- On the device you'll want to listen to the audio book (iPhone, Android, etc), go to play.google.com/store/books. 

- Find the book you'd like to buy and pay for it

- Go to the Google Play App on your device and sign in with the same account you used to buy the book. (You can install the Google Play App from the App Store)

- Your book should be there waiting for you!

 Our audiobooks are all priced under $3.00 which is cheaper than most audiobooks.

Here are all our audiobooks currently available in the Google Play Store:

Hell on Wheels: My Adventures

Travelers in Time Aboard the California Zephyr

Travelers in Time: A Search for the Missing

Destination Europe: The Summer the Word Changed

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Train Stories--All Aboard

 


We love riding on trains and have written 5 stories that take place on them.


Two are time travel stories that take place in the 19th century:


Travelers in Time Aboard the California Zephyr

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3IxMLSt


Travelers in Time: A Search for the Missing

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/41tULwi


One is a cozy mystery:


Murder aboard the Coast Starlight

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3Iug9Jf


One is a love story:


Love Gets a Second Chance

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3EDCXVI


One takes place in the 19th century and is about an 18-year-old girl's adventures when she lived in railroad camps during the building of the transcontinental railroad.


Hell on Wheels: My Adventures 

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3KHCEgy


We hope you'll be an armchair traveler and take a look at any of these books. Thanks.    


Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Happy Mardi Gras!


Happy Mardi Gras.


Can't go to New Orleans and be a part of the festivities? Why not be an armchair traveler and read "Deadly Promises: A New Orleans Mystery" instead.

Description:

A young woman is gunned down during a detective's wedding; then several young women are found dead in a shipping container. Could these two cases be related? Two homicide detectives are searching for answers, along with the help of the detective's sister, an erotic romance writer, familiar with the chief suspects through her online connections. Take a walk on the wild side with this riveting New Orleans mystery.



 

Purchase eBook at Amazon 


Purchase Paperback at Amazon:


Friday, January 20, 2023

A Fun American Western

 Hell on Wheels: My Adventures 




Told in a humorous fashion by a feisty 18-year-old heroine, this western is about her time spent with the men who built the transcontinental railroad and the prostitutes who traveled with them in rowdy makeshift towns nicknamed Hell on Wheels. 

I have tried to stick to history as much as possible in this story in which I follow the course of the railroad's construction starting from the Platte River Valley all the way to California. It is my hope that history buffs, railroad aficionados, and those who enjoy reading stories told by strong female main characters will take a look at my tale.

eBook for $2.99 at Amazon:

Paperback for $5.99 at Amazon:

Also available at Apple, Burnes and Noble, Smashwords, Google Play, and Kobo.