Tracing back, themes that repeat

TRUMPET FANFARE!!!
Congratulations to Hank for winning THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD for her fabulous ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS (Macmillan Publishers – Minotaur Books) !!!

HALLIE EPHRON: Most everyone knows I have a definite familial "through line." My parents were Hollywood screenwriters. My sisters write fiction and movies. I reluctantly succumbed in my 40s and started writing fiction, too.

I also do a lot of teaching, and when I talk to writers about using ChatGPT well, I talk about how concerned we all should be about how it will be putting workers (content creators, in particular) out of work.

The other day, my daughte and I sat down to watch one of my parents' movies: THE DESK SET.

It's a romantic comedy featuring Katharine Hepburn as the head of the research department for a big corporation. Spencer Tracy plays a gruff efficiency expert whose job it is to bring in an enormous computer (think: Mac truck) to take over her (and her co-workers') job.

Needless to say, sparks fly. 

I was surprised at how, even then (1957), people understood how computers and AI could end up putting people out of work. 

Then I remembered something about my father's misspent youth. Before he got himself thrown out of Cornell, he starred in a college production of THE ADDING MACHINE, a play written in 1923 by Elmer Rice.

My dad plays MR. ZERO, a lowly bean counter at a big company, who discovers (after 25 years at his job) that he will be replaced by an adding machine. And, by the way, his wife is cheating on him.

He snaps and kills his boss. And goes to jail. And gets executed. (Not a happy ending.

Here's a picture from the Cornell alumni magazine showing my dad playing the part...

I'd never put together this early dramatic role in The Adding Machine with The Desk Set screenplay he and my mother wrote thirty years later.

And now writers is struggling with the very same implications of machines replacing people. 

When I teach, we often cover how (and whether) to use generative artificial intelligence. Will a machine have written the next mystery novel you zip through and put the next generation of writers out of work? I wonder what my parents would have had to say on the topic.

Are there any through lines for you and your family, going back to parents and on to offspring? Maybe some political activism? Passion for food or travel? Music or art?? Morphing from generation to generation but still a constant.

Lucy is Investigating ChatAI

LUCY BURDETTE: You may think I’m wandering a bit today, but I promise you everything is related. First, I’m working like mad to finish Key West food critic mystery #14, no title yet. It begins like this: 

Key West food critic Hayley Snow is working on this week’s articles for Key Zest magazine when an intriguing e-mail hits her inbox, titled Hemingway’s toxic love and an old story. Catherine Davitt tells Hayley that she has returned to the Keys to research a book, but she also wants to investigate the disappearance of an old friend back in the late 1970s. The two young women were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves on Big Pine Key, until Catherine’s friend Veronica disappeared, and the Sheriff’s Office cleaned out the camp.

Meanwhile, I’ve been vaguely aware that all the world has been talking about artificial intelligence, but I have not paid much attention until recently. It seems as though over the past few weeks, it's turned up everywhere! I now know that we as writers (and other people!) have to pay attention because this technology could be life-changing. Already, the Authors Guild is calling on leaders of generative IA companies to compensate writers whose work was used to develop the programs. Here’s a good article on Authors Guild concerns. 

The subject also came up at my writers group meeting two weeks ago. You've met Ang and Chris before. Aside from writing, my friend Angelo is working on the New England Crime Bake conference schedule. They’ve decided do a panel on the subject of AI, since many writers are concerned about where it’s headed and what it will mean for our craft and careers.

Then he showed Chris and me how the website works. We put in a query from my current work in progress, that went something like ‘why would someone murder someone else in a commune in the woods?’

Here’s a screenshot of some the ideas that were generated:

Wow! I was impressed. AI wasn’t going to write the book for me, but I could imagine it might help with brainstorming.

After my pals went home, I decided to ask the chat site another question. As mentioned above, one of the characters in book 14 is writing her own book about what women can learn about toxic love from studying Hemingway’s wives. I assumed she would have written other articles about toxic love to land a book contract, so I asked the ChatAI: If a person is writing articles about toxic love, what might the titles be? This list was generated in less than a minute:

"Breaking Free: Escaping the Clutches of Toxic Love"

"Love Gone Wrong: Unmasking the Signs of Toxic Relationships"

"Healing from Toxic Love: Rebuilding a Stronger You"

"The Hidden Dangers of Toxic Love: Protecting Your Emotional Well-being"

"Toxic Love: Unveiling the Dark Side of Relationships"

"Breaking the Cycle: Overcoming Toxic Love Patterns"

"When Love Becomes Poisonous: Recognizing and Confronting Toxicity"

"Navigating the Labyrinth of Toxic Love: Finding Your Way to Healing"

"Toxic Love: Understanding the Impact on Mental Health"

"Toxic Love Red Flags: How to Spot and Avoid Unhealthy Relationships"

I was stunned! I couldn’t have come up with these titles in a week—and they are spot on! I wasn’t about to use this list and pretend it was mine, but it did spark the next scene:

I tapped Catherine’s full name into the search bar, thinking it might help if I knew more about what she’d been writing over the past ten years, or even longer. As she’d told me on the first day I met her, she had dozens of publications on various shades of toxic love. “Healing the Wounds of Toxic Love,” “How to Say No to an Abusive Relationship,” “Poisonous Love: How to Recognize and Confront Toxicity.” And then this one, “How a Toxic Family can Poison Future Relationships.” This surely had to do with Hemingway, and maybe Veronica, but I wondered if applied to Catherine herself as well? The next link really grabbed my attention: “The Mother Wound: How to Identify and Escape from Toxic Love in Your Family.”

I clicked on that title. Catherine had begun the article with a quote from Hemingway’s third wife, Martha Gellhorn, about how a woman should know better than to marry a man who hates his mother. That was followed by another quote from Gellhorn’s letters: “Deep in Ernest, due to his mother, going back to the indestructible first memories of childhood, was mistrust and fear of women.”

Finally I asked the website to write a book in the style of my series. Which it did—at least listing a summary of the chapters with titles. The writing wasn’t that great and only a total novice wouldn’t have recognized the difference. Phew!

So that’s what I’m writing and thinking about—my writer’s head is spinning! 

Have you had any brushes with AI? Where in the world do you think we’re headed? Are you concerned about this trend? Is it cheating for a writer to use this tool to brainstorm?

In addition, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS is now in bookstores, and A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS will be published on August 8. If that’s not enough, the paperback edition of A DISH TO DIE FOR is out now too. I’m happy to give one away to a commenter today!

Don’t forget, all are welcome to my big double book launch party in Madison CT, at RJ Julia Booksellers on August 9 at 7. With cake! Call ahead to reserve your spot. 203-245-3959