Month: June 2025

AI & Me

Photo by Lorenzo Herrera on Unsplash

At the time of typing, 8th June 2025, I haven’t knowingly used AI. It isn’t necessarily a matter of principle or because I think people would disapprove. It’s more that I’m not exactly sure how to access it, and I’m far too nervous around technology to try it.

You may have noticed that I said that I’ve never knowingly used AI. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what AI is. I use Google and I’m not sure how much AI is involved in their search engines. I know that they have a ‘AI answer’ at the top of their results which I usually ignore. I have spell checker turned on and I’ve used the ‘edit’ function in Microsoft Word, and now I wonder how much AI is in that. To be fair, I spend a lot of the time arguing with the edit function and refusing to put various commas in and take other commas out just because the editor said so. I will wear those misplaced commas with pride, because they make sense to me and the edit function doesn’t understand dialogue. But is that using AI?

Photo by ELLA DON on Unsplash

I’ve made a couple of covers and some social media stuff in Canva. I’ve not taken advantage of their AI service, as I’m already intimidated by anything art and adding a machine that knows more about art and design than me only adds to the fear. But what about the art stuff that I’ve used? I don’t know if some of the backgrounds have been AI generated, or some of the clip art. I can’t draw anything for myself. I have the artistic abilities of an elderly microwave. I rely on the pretty things on Canva and hope that I’m getting it right regardless of whether AI is involved.

I’ve commissioned book covers from GetCovers (who are awesome), and I’m pretty sure that they don’t use AI, and they have brilliant customer service. If I want to, I could rely on the Amazon ‘book cover design service’ where you can pick and choose from all sorts of options, and I don’t know how much AI is involved in that, either.

I can sometimes get an idea if AI has been involved in writing a book. I’ve come across them when I’ve been dipping into research and it’s always been well laid out, well formatted and somehow felt stale, like flat soda. It’s frustrating, as you have to double check everything, and digging out details can be tough, but I suppose that they can be a start to real research as you’ll at least get some starting points.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

 This is where I start to get concerned about AI. As you know, I’m a fiend for research and there are AI aids to research all over the place. It’s the top spot when I google, for example, whether ice cream was available in York in 1890 (answer – probably). The trouble with an AI search, however, is that it shows the most popular answer. It doesn’t always show the correct answer. And if people keep clicking on the top, popular answer then that answer becomes even more popular and even more repeated. If that answer is wrong, then a wrong answer is endlessly repeated and you can end up down all sorts of conspiracy rabbit holes. Those searches are good for no-one.

As a test, I asked a writer friend (not saying who) to ask ChatGPT what inspired their writing. It was wrong. The AI answer was out by about half a continent and several centuries. It was so wrong that we had to take time to stop laughing. It also worried me. Trying to find out the truth about the type of barley grown in 16th century barley for a work of fiction is one thing but relying on AI to check about anything to do with health or wealth is dangerous ground. From my extremely uneducated experience, AI in research may be a place to start, but it’s a ride and it’s hard to get off and find genuine, fact based information where you can stop.

Finally, we get to why I wrote this. I read a post on Reddit and it made me laugh. It was followed by comment after comment stating that it was written by AI. It may have been, I don’t know. The post, however, was written in the sort of style that I’ve used. I don’t want people to think that I’m using AI. Mainly because I think that if you credit me with AI use then you give me too much credit for understanding tech. This is just me.

Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash

And as this isn’t AI, there isn’t a neat sentence at the end that wraps everything up. I may use AI in the future. I’ve heard that writers will sometimes get AI to draft out their ideas and then tidy up the prose. I could argue that this is like the step between writing with a pen in a notebook and using a word processor. I am old enough to remember the time before the magic of the backspace button and I adore the possibilities of ‘find and replace’ when I realise that I’ve got a name wrong, or copy and paste when I need to change a section instead of having to re-write the whole lot laboriously in longhand. Maybe AI is the next step in helping authors. I don’t know if it would work for all and I doubt that it would replace the spark that lights all enjoyable reads, but it may help produce more good books. I will watch from a safe distance.

To sum up – at the time of typing, I don’t use AI, mainly because I don’t know how and I’m not sure that it would help. If I use AI in the future, I’ll own up to it and be clear. And here’s an article which I wrote without help, apart from the whole ‘spellcheck and edit functions’ thing, but perhaps may be suspected of being generated by a non-human, if you’re looking for it. Do Werewolves Eat Dog Biscuits?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please comment, especially if you can reassure me that AI is easy to use and I can’t get into trouble while using it.

Book Review: Of Yellow Shirts and Little Green Men by

Available at Amazon

One of the big reasons that I write reviews is to push me to read books that are out of my comfort zone. It’s easy for me to get stuck on re-reading Essie Summers, Terry Pratchett and Georgette Heyer or dipping into romance novels and re-reading a swathe of those as well. Of Yellow Shirts and Little Green Men is not a romance novel. It’s a wonderfully, off-beat, original story that is full of English eccentricity and wit.

This is a fantastic story that is labelled as a comedy on Amazon, but it’s much more than that. The main character, Tom, is a recently unemployed academic, drifting through life, indecisive and aimless. In the best traditions of Tom Holt and Douglas Adams, the hapless Tom is buffeted through ever more bewildering adventures as he navigates encounters with aliens, ghosts, fellow alien spotters, and the fortunes of Norwich City Football Club.

This is a good novel to settle down with and have a good read. The language is easy to read, very much in the British style, and draws you into the story. The characters are likeable, complex and interesting. They are deftly written and have depth and strength, developing and reacting throughout the story. Their actions and reactions are believable and genuine, especially in the context of the story.

The story is… complicated. I don’t want to discuss too much as I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but the story starts when Tom is approached by an alien and told that there are many extraterrestrial creatures who regard Earth as something of a soap opera. Not only that, but various factions have been known to surreptitiously interfere in order to promote better stories. Tom is recruited to thwart those interferences, finds himself as part of a group who all have separate alien contacts in various guises and stumbles through the increasingly complex situations.

As interludes, glimpses are shown of ordinary characters caught up in the alien’s shenanigans, and the interaction and consequences rippling out. In this, Of Yellow Shirts and Little Green Men reminds me of the Illuminati Trinity by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea with layers of clandestine organisations and confusion between their accidental and unknowing interactions, all well observed and showing insight into the strange ways ordinary human beings can act under pressure.

Finally, this story is something of a love letter to the city of Norwich. I’ve never visited Norwich, but now I feel that I have a sense of the place. The streets, the buildings and the shops are all described in loving detail. The history and people are shown as part of the story. When Tom meets his alien contact in St Peter Mancroft Church, the building is so lovingly described with just the right details, that I can almost feel the texture of the cool stone in the crypt. As Gene Rowe builds in the details of the city into the story, they’re always there to support the narrative rather than intrude as added on description that does nothing but add words to the page. I feel that the city of Norwich is as much of a character in this story as Tom, Ed or Amanda.

I am very happy to recommend this story.