Not without a license, you don't - Tim Hallinan

Sadly, Wendall Thomas has bid farewell to Murder Is Everywhere (at least for the moment). The good news is that we have two new great authors joining the blog from next month. Karen Odden, who writes mysteries set in 1870s London, and Sara Johnson, who writes forensic mysteries set in New Zealand. 

For today, I'm digging into the archives. Murder Is Everywhere has been around quite a while - more than 15 years - and Tim Hallinan was one of our first contributors. He wrote a number of great blogs before the pressure of other things got to him and he had to move on. Tim has a wonderful sense of humor and irony. 

Here's one of my favorites, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Michael.

The Chinese government, you'll be interested to know, has announced a ban on unauthorized reincarnation.

This is obviously a maneuver that anticipates the death of the current Dalai Lama; the old men in charge want to be the sole authorities on who the new incarnation is.

So I can understand the goal, even if I don't sympathize with it. My questions concern the mechanics of enforcement.

We know that the Chinese authorities keep a close eye on people, but I've always assumed that surveillance essentially ended at the moment of death. Once you slipped free of the bounds of your body, I figured you could go nya nya nya at Beijing, or speculate aloud about Chairman Mao and his Girl Guides. Or even visit Taiwan. But apparently not.

So, how does it work?

I mean, for example, who are the cops? Have the Chinese really found a way to station some officious twit in a uniform at the soul's first rest stop, wherever that may be? And what does he do? I mean, how does one detain a soul, anyway? Does he handcuff it? If so, with what? Do souls have hands? Is there a holding pen? What are the walls made of? Is there a lavatory? One, or two?  Does it flush?

Once reincarnation is approved, is a license issued? Printed on what? In what language? Does it need a thumbprint? (See question above, re: hands.) Does it spell out the soul's next destination? If, let's say, it reads HAMSTER, is there an appeals process? What about a black market? The Chinese have reinvented capitalism on this plane, so why not the next?

Why wouldn't there be a black market in reincarnation permits? A spiritual swap meet? You don't want to be a hamster? Would you prefer President of the United States (my guess is that lots of people would like to duck that one) or intestinal parasite? Or maybe there's a sort of blind lottery? If you don't want to be a typhoid carrier, would you be willing to accept, sight unseen, the next incarnation for Bob Barker? Casey Kasem? Simon Cowell? Rush Limbaugh?  The widely unmourned Leona Helmsley?

1967 reincarnation of one of the Smith Brothers

Does China get to determine the reincarnation mix? What China needs most right now are reasonably adaptable grunts -- people who aren't ambitious enough to seize power but are sufficiently nimble to supply whatever the hell will be needed in, say, 20 years. Are most people getting licenses that say ADAPTABLE GRUNT? If there's a war in the future, are there a lot of licenses that read CANNON FODDER? Or, if the one-family-one-child rule stays in effect and parents keep disposing of girls, are there licences that read ABORTED FEMALE? If so, my guess is that the swap meet is booming.

So many questions, so little space.

Here are the two big ones.

First, if a soul is refused a permit to be reincarnated, then what? Does it do time?  What's "time" in this context? Are we talking about eternity? Seems kind of harsh. Do they supply the soul with books? Board games?  The Learning Channel?  A perpetual replay of "Heaven Can Wait"?  Are there vocational classes? (I personally can think of nothing more depressing than a whole bunch of souls training for eternity to be beauticians or dental technicians.) Is there exercise equipment, and if so, what does it exercise? Moral judgment? Ectoplasmic muscle tone? And to what end, since that soul is essentially permanently on file? It's not like it's ever going to be running around as little Joey again.

And second, China is called the world's biggest a-lot-of-things, but it's unquestionably the world's biggest bureaucracy. How do the members of the Soul Patrol file their reports? Is there an office full of mediums somewhere in the Forbidden City? Do the bulletins come in via one of those mysterious eight-balls? If you're put in charge of receiving and filing these reports, do they at least issue you a corner office and a tinfoil hat?

Actually, I have to admit that I have a certain amount of enthusiasm for the idea of refused reincarnation. I'd like to see it implemented here in America, but applied to midlife reincarnations. Just imagine: no Suzanne Somers, going from TV sitcom ditz to Godlike authority on inner happiness and great thighs. David Hasselhoff wouldn't be singing in German. Madonna wouldn't be writing children's books. There would be no "X-Factor."  There would be no "Dancing With the Stars" or--shudder-- "Celebrity Rehab."  George W. Bush wouldn't be an elder statesman. Simon Cowell would be a memory, if even that.

Probably not even that.

Tim Hallinan

15 Years of the Ngaios: our first trophy and first winner, belatedly photographed

Craig on some Tuesdays.

Kia ora and gidday everyone, I hope you’ve all been enjoying a fabulous start to Spring (if you're in the Southern Hemisphere where I grew up) or Autumn aka Fall for those of us in the north. 

I've been enjoying some wonderful crime fiction festivals in the UK over summer - Capital Crime in June, the CWA Daggers and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in July, Bute Noir in August, and most recently, Bloody Scotland in Stirling, just last weekend. Other pals headed to Bouchercon in New Orleans. 

As crime/thriller fans, we're blessed with a wonderful array of events, days and weekends that I find are a really energising and invigorating time, getting to catch up with book-loving friends old and new, chair a few panels, and generally soak in book love and hang out with creative people who create something from nothing, to entertain us. 

The 2025 events season is winding down here in the UK, though there are still some gems like Chiltern Kills still to come on the calendar. And next week, back home in Aotearoa, we have the 15th anniversary of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, Aotearoa New Zealand's prestigious local prizes for crime, mystery, thriller, and suspense writing. 

Superb Kiwi crime writer Paul Cleave, who's an international bestseller
and Edgar nominee, along with being our only 3x Ngaios winner

When the Ngaio Marsh Awards was originally launched in 2010, it marked a new era in New Zealand crime, mystery, and thriller writing (later nicknamed #yeahnoir, thanks Steph Soper).

We finally had an award to celebrate our best Kiwi works in the world's most popular storytelling genre. Murmurs around the local literary world were largely positive, and a big September 200 event - including a murder mystery-themed performance by the famous Court Theatre - was scheduled to headline that year's Christchurch Writers Festival in the prime Saturday night slot.

Unfortunately, everything changed when a few days beforehand the first of two major earthquakes struck Christchurch. Fortunately no lives were lost then (unlike the devastating 'quake a few months later), but infrastructure was badly damaged, and the festival was cancelled. Then, in December 200 a good crowd turned out for a one-off special event, fundraising for earthquake recovery, complete with finalists Vanda Symon and Neil Cross, and Christchurch crime writer Paul Cleave. Unfortunately, as s/he was writing under a pseudonym at that time, the inaugural winner was not there to claim their well-earned prize in person: Alix Bosco for their terrific debut thriller CUT & RUN.

For a while we thought we may see our first Ngaios winner onscreen, as it was in development, with Robyn Malcolm set to star as heroine Anna Markunas, a middle-aged legal researcher who gets caught up in a celebrity murder case. But we never had a picture of our very first winner with the first award - a terrific and distinctive handcrafted trophy created by sculptor Gina Ferguson. We did get some great pics of Paul Cleave with his 2011 Ngaio, and Neil Cross (right) with his 2012 one, etc.

Our original Ngaios evening was still a fabulous night, and it was great to have New Zealand crime fiction finally being celebrated in such a way. The Ngaio Marsh Awards have gone from strength to strength in the years since, but as founder of the Ngaios it did irk me for a while that we didn't have a picture of Greg McGee (who 'came out' as Alix Bosco in 2011) with the very first trophy.

Fortunately, a few years later, thanks to talented Kiwi photographer Maja Moritz, we did. 

The lovely photo above was part of a photographic series of 43 New Zealand authors that Moritz did for DPA Picture Alliance in Germany in association with New Zealand being the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. As part of that project, Moritz took some photos of Greg McGee at his house, including this one of him holding up the Ngaio Marsh Award he'd won as 'Alix Bosco' a couple of years before. Later, Maja and I connected, and she kindly let us use the pic of Greg and the Ngaios trophy.

Thank you Maja. As we approach our 15th anniversary event in Christchurch next Thursday night, 25 September, we still really appreciate you sharing your talent, and work, with us in our early years. So who will be taking pics with Ngaios trophies in 2025? You can find out next Thursday at "The Ngaio Marsh Awards and The Murderous Mystery" at Turanga Christchurch City Libraries from 6pm. 

And for any readers in the Canterbury area, here's some further and details for last-minute tickets: https://wordchristchurch.co.nz/programme/the-ngaio-marsh-awards-and-the-murderous-mystery/

Here are the prime suspects (2025 finalists) who are in the running, across three categories. 

BEST NON-FICTION

• THE TRIALS OF NURSE KERR by Scott Bainbridge (Bateman Books)
• THE SURVIVORS by Steve Braunias (HarperCollins)
• THE CREWE MURDERS by Kirsty Johnstone & James Hollings (Massey Uni Press)
• THE LAST SECRET AGENT by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
• GANGSTER’S PARADISE by Jared Savage (HarperCollins)
• FAR NORTH by David White & Angus Gillies (Upstart Press)

BEST FIRST NOVEL

• DARK SKY by Marie Connolly (Quentin Wilson Publishing)
• LIE DOWN WITH DOGS by Syd Knight (Rusty Hills)
• A FLY UNDER THE RADAR by William McCartney 
• THE DEFIANCE OF FRANCES DICKINSON by Wendy Parkins (Affirm Press)
• THE CALL by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• KISS OF DEATH by Stephen Tester (Heritage Press)

BEST NOVEL

• RETURN TO BLOOD by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
• A DIVINE FURY by DV Bishop (Macmillan)
• WOMAN, MISSING by Sherryl Clark (HarperCollins)
• HOME TRUTHS by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)
• 17 YEARS LATER by JP Pomare (Hachette)
• THE CALL by Gavin Strawhan (Allen & Unwin)
• PREY by Vanda Symon (Orenda Books)

So, whodunnit and whowunnit? We'll find out very soon who's joining Greg McGee and several other superb Kiwi crime, mystery, and thriller writers on our Ngaio Marsh Awards roll of honour. 

Have you read any of the 2025 Ngaio Marsh Awards finalists? If so, which are your faves?

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'll be ending my fortnightly posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi

(With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive, ie everybody has something to offer, and by working together we can all flourish.)

Racism and Me

Annamaria on Monday

OY!  After hours of trying, I give up on the latest editions of Word, Phots, and Blogger.  Word will not let me copy and paste (among other things).   Photos insists on "helping" me by showing me only the pictures it "thinks" I want , instead of all the ones that fit the category I've searched. Blogger...  Well, it has never been cooperative, but now it seems hostile.

As the sun started to set, I gave up trying to write something new.  The post below, I hope, will demonstrateI that I do not hate other people.  In fact, I try so hard to be fair with everyone that, if I want to curse a person who is doing me wrong, I pray they will realize a dream come true, one that will take them far away from me.  Like the lady who sat in front of me at the opera for a few years.  She came wearing $35's worth of a $70-bottle a Channel #5.  The balsam of Peru that is frequently in perfume gives me a headache.  I prayed that she would retire and go off to her dream house in Santa Fe.  She was gone the next year. One guy who did me wrong moved to Napa California when his father-in-law died and left his wife a winery. Bye-bye!

What I do hate, though, is the proto-people that we call artificial intelligence. Right now those sons of bitches are taking over and inventing what they call "up-grades."  Oh, I know, we have been facing those monsters of technology for a couple of decades.  But with AI, software engineering is on steroids, producing what I now call "up(yours)-grades.  They are making changes ALL THE TIME, so that many apps change every couple of days.  Some give you the false impression that you can refuse the changes. if you do, you get punished.  The whole system stops working completely.

So, today, I will give you again the story of how I grew up to be tolerant.  The word "people" refers only to actual human beings.  Them and only them.  It does not include the bots that they invent.

When it comes to humans, here is how I learned to treat them with tolerance. 

I have to tell you all this, personal as it is.

When I was seven years old, Rogers and Hammerstein wrote a song for South Pacific called, “You Have to be Taught.”  If you want to listen to it right now, you can find it here, introduced and played by the geniuses who wrote it.  The lyrics make an important case: that race prejudice is not natural to us.  It is learned behavior.

Over the course of my life, I have seen many, many instances of young children naturally playing and laughing together, despite any outward differences between them.  Kids want other kids to play with.  They don’t care what color the other kids are as long as they know how to have fun.

 Rogers and Hammerstein were absolutely right.  BUT.  Sometimes it is the child’s environment, not his or her family that teaches the kid to hate.  Pre-civil-rights-movement case in point:  It’s the early 50’s, not only pre-civil rights, but also still the age of “spare the rod and spoil the child.”  Soap went into the mouths of children who talked back.  My father, however, was as gentle of soul as he was strong of body.  To mete out punishment was not something he did readily, so the event I am about to describe was doubly dramatic because of his heated response.

One evening at the family dinner table, my older brother—maybe he was nine—used a word he learned from the kids in the neighborhood: “nigger.”  My father rose out of his chair and said, “Stand up, young man.  I am going to show you what happens to anyone who uses that word in this house.”  He took my brother into the bathroom and washed out his mouth with soap.  In my house the kids were not only NOT taught to hate.  They were quite actively taught NOT to hate.   “Whatever other people might do, WE do not do that,” was my father’s message.

Much later, I learned how my dad learned his attitudes:  He had been a child in Matewan, WV when his coal-miner father, along with other Italian immigrants, was brought in to break a strike.  The other group of “imported” workers were blacks.  In the end the Italians and the Blacks banded together and joined the strike.  If you want to learn about this historic event by watching a great movie, see “Matewan.”  There is a fabulous scene where all the strikers (West Virginian, black, and Italian) are living together in a West Virginia “holler,” making music together.  My father wept when he saw that.  “It was your grandfather paying the mandolin,” he told me. 

After the Italians went back to their coal mining jobs in Western Pennsylvania, the Ku Klux Klan went after them.   You know, don’t you, that the KKK’s hate extends to immigrants and Catholics and Jews.

If you think what comes next sounds self-congratulatory, please understand that I was carefully taught NOT to hate and fear.  My parents and my father’s parents deserve the credit for my decent behavior—not me.      

When I was in high school, there was one “colored” student in whole school.  He was one year younger than me and my classmates.  It was small Catholic school—only 37 in my whole class.   At school dances, that boy usually sat on the sidelines.  But one day, he asked me to dance.   I gladly accepted.  After the song ended, a couple of boys from my class warned me that what I had just done was very wrong.  One of them called me a name I cannot bring myself to type.  The second word in the phrase is “lover.”  My classmate had learned to hate.  He warned me that if I danced with that colored boy again, no one else would ever dance with me.  “Well, yeah,” I answered, “if you were a better dancer, I just might want to dance with you.”  (When my mother washed my mouth with soap, it was because I was a smart aleck!)

In my college, the students were all required to take twelve credits in philosophy.  It was in my first course that I learned Aristotle and Thomas Acquinas’s definitions of “essence” and “accidents.”  “Essence” is what makes the thing what it is.  “Accidents” are qualities that describe how it is.  A chair has the essence of being a chair.  That it is a rocking chair, wooden, and painted blacks are its “accidents.”  A person’s “essence” is that he is a human being.  Skin color, height, etc. are “accidents.”  “So,” the nun who taught the course said, “if you are going to decide to hate a person because of his skin color, you might as well decide to hate him for his eye color or his shoe size.”

I embrace that idea with all my heart.  I was brought up to believe it.

Within the past couple of weeks, Stan posted a guest piece from Ali Karim asking people to stand up against hate.   A few days ago, in discussing the miserable recent behavior of some Americans, Stan told me that he now sees more progress against racism in South Africa than he does in the US.  That observation froze my soul.

I take Ali’s pleas very much to heart.  Given what’s been going on in the world lately, and what has happened in the last ten days in the USA, we ALL have a lot of standing up to do.

“What the world need now is love, sweet love.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”  Jejune lyrics of a simplistic song?  I don’t think so.

Me, I am still a lover.  So lucky to have been brought up to be one.  And I ask you stand up and be one too.

Twenty-four Years Ago Thursday the World Changed for Everyone...Perhaps

 

Jeff—Saturday

If you say "Nine Eleven" to an American, inevitably the mind leaps to thoughts of witnessing in real time the World Trade Center Twin Towers crashing to earth in New York City at the hands of foreign terrorists intent on undermining the American Way of Life,  There are other dates that summon up similar once unimaginable horrors, such as "December 7"–albeit not witnessed by the nation in real time those eighty-four years ago in 1941–and "January 6th" though not orchestrated in 2021 by foreign terrorists.  But none is burned as deeply into the psyche of the vast majority of our voting age generations as Al Qaeda's murderous coordinated attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11, 2001.

 

Thursday marked the 24th Anniversary of that day.  Fourteen years ago, a New York City-based newspaper, The National Herald, asked that I be part of its 9/11 10^th year commemorative issue and write about where I was that Tuesday morning.  What I didn't mention in that article was the comaraderie among Americans that sprung up out of that horrendous event.  Divisions haunting the nation since its Vietnam era vanished that morning. Or so it seemed. 

But as we've learned, they had not disappeared, and are back today with a vengeance. I hope and pray it will not require another catastrophe for Americans to regain their common bond and purpose. 

 

I've republished this article before, and when I last did I thought there was no need to run it again. But a loyal MIE blog follower wrote to me after that posting saying, "You must continue to post this every year."

 

I'm not sure I'll do that, but being in Europe this year, and the subject of "what's happening in America" coming up everywhere I seem to look, I felt that this year I should run it again. 

 

So, here is what I wrote 24 years ago as a first person observer of an event I shall never forget and most definitely shaped my life. 

I like it over here by the United Nations.  Beekman Place is different from other New York City streets; it’s more like a quiet, residential private road in an elegant European city.  My walk to my office is down First Avenue overlooking the East River and alongside the gardens and flags of the UN.  It gives me a few daily moments of serenity and escape from the often out of control state of my life as a lawyer here.

I need this walk today.  The sky is so blue and clear, except for the few smoke-like clouds on the downtown horizon.  I’m up by the UN General Assembly Building when I call my friend Panos to find out how his date went last night.  He’s frantic and says he can’t talk.  He’s waiting for his mother to call him from Greece.  I ask if everything is OK.  He says she’ll be worried when she hears that his office was struck by a plane.  I must have misunderstood him.  He works in the World Trade Center.  He says his office building is burning and he has to get off the phone.

Those are not clouds on the horizon, it’s smoke.

I tell him to get out of the building.  He says it’s not necessary.  He’s okay.  His date kept him out late and he’s still at home.  He’ll go to work in the afternoon, after the fire is out.  He hangs up.

How could a plane have hit the World Trade Center on a day as clear as this one?  Something must have happened to the pilot.  I hear sirens everywhere and move a little faster toward my office.  By the time I get upstairs everyone is looking out the windows on the south side of our building.  It has an unobstructed view of the Towers.  Now they’re both burning.  I’m told a second plane hit the second Tower.  We all know what that means—even before learning about the Pentagon.  Someone tells me a plane hit Pittsburgh, my hometown.  I can’t believe what I’m hearing.  I call my daughter, she lives in Greenwich Village.  She’s frightened.  We all are.  I tell her to keep calm. My son is in Cincinnati, I’m sure he’s safe but I can’t reach him.

We’re all glued to the big screen TV in my law firm’s main conference room.  The first tower begins to fall and we turn en masse from the television to look out our windows as it crumbles to the ground before our eyes.  It’s surreal, it can’t be happening.  But it happens again.  Not a word is said while we watch the second tower fall.   We are at war.  But with whom?

My mind can’t fix on what all this means.  I focus on a rumor that there’s an imminent biological anthrax attack and race to the pharmacy for enough antibiotic for my daughter.  That’s something I can do.  Again, I think, my son is in Cincinnati.  He’s safe there.

When I moved to NYC in 1969 my first job was blocks away from the Trade Center site.  The Towers were in the midst of construction and I saw them every morning across the Brooklyn Bridge as I’d head to work.  In August 1974 I watched Philippe Petit do his high wire walk between them, and three years later glimpsed at mountain climber George Willig scale one in the wind.  Even after moving my office uptown they were always in view from my window.  They spanned my career as a lawyer in NYC.  I can’t believe they’re gone.

 

The City is in shock.  Lines of thousands of refugees from downtown are trekking up Third Avenue toward home or simply to somewhere other than where they were.  No one is talking.  The smell is everywhere, acrid and bitter.  There seems to be grey dust on the shoes of every cop and will be for days.

I stop at a restaurant halfway between my office and home.  It’s Greek and run by a friend.   It’s the only place I can think of to go.  There is no one at home and I can’t get downtown to my daughter.  She’s fine.  Panos comes in.   I try making a joke about his date from last night.  I say he should marry her, she saved his life.  It’s not that funny.

A half dozen or so young men and women of about the age I was when I started working in NYC are sitting quietly at a table along the front windows.  A cell phone rings—one of the few that must be working—and one of the women answers.  She’s a dark haired girl.  She listens, shuts her phone and starts sobbing.  She says something to the others; they hug each other and cry.

Damnit.

It’s after midnight by the time I head home.  My cell phone rings on the way.  It’s a friend from Capri in Italy.  He’s been trying to reach me all day to see if I’m okay.  I hang up and continue home.  I’m tearing.  Friendship like his is what life’s all about.  Family and friends are what matter.

A week later I drive to my farm, get in my pickup and head to Pittsburgh to visit my brother and sister-in-law.  I decide not to go back to NYC but drive south, toward the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  I’ve never been there before, but it just seems the place to be.  I have to drive by Washington, DC to get there.  It’s only when I see the first sign for DC that I realize I’ve made an unconscious pilgrimage past the three sites of the 9/11 massacre—NYC, Western PA, DC.

 

Duck, NC is chilly in the off-season and the ocean is wild.  I lock myself in a hotel room overlooking the sea and complete my first novel.  I’m driven to make something good come out of all of this bad.  A week later I drive back to NYC.  I’m on the Jersey Turnpike heading north and close to the City, but I can’t tell where it begins.  Its southern landmark is gone.  This world is insane.

A few years later I give up my life in NYC and move to the Aegean island of Mykonos to pursue my dream of writing mysteries exploring the heart and soul of Greece.   There is no reason to wait any longer.  Is there?

NEVER FORGET.

 

Jeff

Jeff's Upcoming Events

Fair use and unfair use

You may have noticed that there’s a lot going on with AI these days. It ranges from being a called the biggest thing since the industrial revolution to being called a disaster that will destroy jobs and potentially even humanity itself. As writers, we have an obvious concern. AI can write books. Not only can it, but it does. Who knows how many books on Kindle and other platforms are written by AI. We like to think that we would be able to immediately spot that AI has written the book, but I’ve seen some examples that suggest that wouldn’t be so easy at all. Are they good books? Well, nothing I’ve read so far suggests that. But then I’ve read a lot of books by unknown, as well as not so unknown, authors, which I wouldn’t call good either. I wouldn’t want my life to depend on that call.

The argument goes that it’s life experience, empathy, and human understanding that’s required to create characters readers care about. Then there is plot and style, but perhaps AI can mimic or learn those. And here’s the problem. Are we sure it can’t mimic or learn about life experience, empathy and human understanding?

Recently, Anthropic announced the release of a new Claude – their flagship AI system. To their credit, they also release details of their tests and the results. One was very striking. During the testing phase, they started letting the system read emails about how they would actually be turning it off in the near future and replacing it with another version. The system wasn’t asked to do anything in response. It was just part of its learning material. After a while some emails leaked that the human tester was in fact cheating on his wife. Claude got that too. And then, after some time, Claude responded to the tester that it would leak the emails about his infidelity unless plans to close it down were cancelled. This has shades of Hal from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I’ve always been interested in what consciousness actually is. It seems we have it. Do other creatures? Yes? Which ones? How do you tell? What about Claude?

A friend had this response to the blackmail story. Essentially, he said that Claude had learnt what sort of reaction was expected in those circumstances by reading vast quantities of data – including plenty of fiction. It was just reacting as it had learnt was expected from that data. Exactly as we would expect a character in a book to do in that situation. So no consciousness then. But wait. That emotional response I was worried about - in a way, it’s learnt to mimic that.

If there is a point to all this, it may be that learning fiction may well be important for Large Language Models to behave (and write) more like humans. (That statement may be true of kids also.) As authors, we regard reading our books as “fair use”. (Obviously, that’s the whole point.) We allow people to quote them and would be flattered to have our styles imitated. We do, however, expect that the reader will buy or borrow the book in a legitimate way. Making unauthorized copies and distributing them is off limits and contravenes the copyright laws in most places. Now, if the book is fed to a AI system, that could be regarded also as fair use. The book was purchased and “read” and the only effect was that the system digested more information. No harm done. However, authors never expected that to happen. They were writing books for humans.

The way current laws in most places are structured, courts have, and may in future still, accept this as “fair use”. So one needs to change the laws. But it’s too late for existing authors. AI systems can’t unlearn things.

However, Anthropic (that’s Claude’s “parents”) went one step further. It stole the books to start with. They were downloaded from an illegal website that held the books in breach of copyright. And there were a lot of books (500,000, including all the Michael Stanley ones). Three authors sued and they were joined by the Authors’ Guild.

This might appear to be an open and shut case, but the fair use principle is the backstory here. Anthropic admitted using the website. If it just paid for the books, that probably wouldn’t even cover the legal costs. Last week the two parties agreed to a deal. Essentially, Anthropic would pay $3,000 for each book it used provided the book had registered copyright. That comes to $1.5 billion dollars! Clearly AI companies have deep pockets.

However, if you are an author whose books were stolen and your copyright was registered, don’t spend the money yet. There are snags. In the first place, if you have a publisher that has rights to the book, then the money goes to them. Just what they will do with it is an open question. For example, if they deem that they sold $3,000 worth of ebooks, you could get only 25%. Then, when the deal was presented to the judge, he more or less rejected it. He felt it was poorly structured and too open ended. He’s sent the parties away to work on it, but said his inclination was to let it go to trial. That will take some time. A long time. A very long time. Then, the legal fees haven’t been decided yet. Expect 25% to head off in that direction.

The judge in the case has already ruled that had Anthropic acquired the copyrighted books legally, “the law allowed the company to train A.I. technologies using the books because this transformed them into something new.” So some authors may or may not get some money, but the real issue of what constitutes fair use of books in the AI world will still be an open question.

 

 

After the Feast, A Healthy Reckoning

 Sujata Massey

I am coming off a very indulgent  five days in New Orleans where I celebrated Bouchercon with a few Murder is Everywhere writers past, present and future: namely by Cara Black, Jeff Siger and Karen Odden (the future!). If I missed seeing and recalling one of you friends, I am sorry! I thought I'd repost this oldie-but-goodie that explains how important cooking and writing are to me, together. It's timely because I haven't written that much this summer, but I spent quite a few extra hours baking pies. Oh, those pies were good, and my waistbands are a bit more snug. And I'm not even getting into the meals I had in New Orleans at Antoines, Copper Vine, Osterio Lupo and Sylvain. I'm slowly shifting back to the kind of meals described below and glad that I have a CSA carton full of local farm vegetables every week to provide inspiration. If only a box full of sentences and scenes would arrive to help me out! 

black coffee, blackberry jam, and a dark story

M.F.K. Fisher, the great American food writer, once stated:"A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove."

In the 1930s and '40s, when Mary Frances began her concurrent explorations of cooking and writing, most writers did not cook, probably because these writers were primarily men. And the earliest published women writers who were lucky enough to have the space and time to do this work--Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf and the like--were typically upper class and had household staff to feed them.

I love to write, and my escape from the stress of writing is cooking. if you follow my blogposts, you've seen me wax rhapsodic about mushrooms, about Parsi eggs dishes, and all kinds of food.

In my quest to spend more time on writing, I am striving to be more balanced in the kitchen--and to also explore whether certain food powers my brain to focus better. I've read several cookbooks with recipes promising better neurological health, but my goal is not to work with cookbooks as often as I've been doing.

This year I asked myself: what is the healthiest way to fill both the stomach and the imagination? How can a person too easily diverted by cooking avoid such temptation when she's alone at home?

Pumpernickel is a powerful base for a breakfast sandwich

Plenty of writers have decided it makes sense to write outside of the house--and to eat there as well. In this era, they are mostly at Starbucks. I prefer to think of Dorothy Parker striding into the restaurant inside the Algonquin Hotel for breakfast and lunch with her friends. Not that she used a pen at the table! It was all about joking, drinking, and probably not getting much done in the afternoon.

Okay, let's return to the present. Have you ever tried going to a real restaurant with your laptop? While it's nice to have eggs and toast brought to me at the table, once I'm finished with my plate and continue to write, I feel like a barnacle on the side of the establishment. And how does the writer handle bathroom breaks in the restaurant? Do I leave the laptop containing my big project on the table, or carry it to the potty the way I'd bring my purse?

There's nothing wrong with dining at home on food prepared elsewhere. However, to undertake this needs a good deal of planning, and the food choices that look the most beautiful are often destructive. A sugar-dusted doughnut is tempting with morning coffee, but it will make me shaky and unable to concentrate within a few hours. Gourmet sandwiches from stores often stand six inches high and are made from such thick bread that they also put my insulin into overdrive. And don't get me started on full-sized entrees from proper restaurants. If you'd like to see me snoring through the afternoon, just serve me a delicious, heavy lunch.

This year, I am streamlining my dining at home. My goal is not to spend longer than 30 minutes cooking anything during my workday. Here's the M.O.

For breakfast I toast good brown bread from a local bakery, and I top it with a quality cheese or jam, and several times a week the toast topping is an egg scrambled with vegetables. I take vitamins and calcium on the side, and I try to drink a couple of glasses of water. I am seriously dehydrated, all the time.

Ahh, the antioxidants in cherries!

After that, I try to write at least two hours. Fresh or cooked fruit is the second energy shot that I take around 10 in the morning. After that, I break for some activity at the gym.

Lunch is always eagerly anticipated. Like breakfast, I eat it by myself, so I don't have to worry if anyone else likes what's going on the plate. A fridge full of leftovers means various cups of soup, beans, small cooked vegetables, kimchee, and rice. Sometimes there's even a half-serving of chicken or fish or a couple of meatballs. So, how is my meal different from tapas? I can imagine Dorothy Parker poking fun at my lunches, especially since they are washed down with a glass of water and a couple of Vitamin D gummy raspberry chews for dessert.

A simple homemade carrot soup

Chicken curry, rice and a melange of potatoes, yams and green beans

I work again. Around 4 p.m. I'm often craving salt. The standard snack to fill the void used to be crackers and cheese, but now that I am trying to reduce dairy, I dip raw vegetables or plantain chips in hummus or munch some almonds or cashews. If I have a sweet craving, I might slather peanut butter on a toasted waffle (I keep a few homemade ones in the freezer) or Nutella on a digestive biscuit.

A homemade waffle with almond butter, banana, and chia topping

The writing day is done by five and cooking is once again allowed! I I relish the chance to sway between the fridge and stove and bend to lift up pots and pans. I usually cook meat or fish with vegetables and some form of rice. Usually it's Asian or Mediterranean food--easy dishes flavored with spices and herbs--true friends with benefits.  I often use the InstantPot to pressure cook dried beans or to concoct a dal that can be eaten at a few different meals during the week. My husband likes this kind of food. My children do not.

You might have noticed something missing in my diet. It is coffee, the infamous element in a lot of writers' rituals.

I drink about one and a half-cups of locally roasted coffee made in a French press at breakfast. I might have another cup in the mid-afternoon if I'm dead-tired and have to go out and drive the carpool or drive to a faraway book signing. But chain-drinking coffee does not make me feel grounded and focused on work--it gives me the jitters. Some therapeutic drinks that work for me throughout the day are water, black tea, green tea, mint tea, and before bed, the venerable chamomile.

Writing a book is slow work, and in my experience, it can be detrimental to the body. There have been years when I would sneak downstairs from my study to snack as a way to escape the half-written page. I'm no saint--if I know there's chocolate in the cupboard, I may have an afternoon binge. But overall, I take a great deal of pleasure in eating this way.

Am I feeding my mind?

I don't know about that--but I do feel sated.