Sam Redlark

The sun is setting on the unintentionally Dadaist / avant-garde phase that has been a hallmark of creative A.I. for several years. We are graduating into an unsettling era of machine learning, where software is eminently capable of generating meaningful art and literature that doesn't trip over it's own digital feet. Still, at the lower end there are publicly available options such as Craiyon / DALL.E that will draw often surreal images from written prompts. These composites are based on an analysis of millions of images on the Internet along with their associated captions. Evidently the key to defeating Skynet is for everyone to start adding the tag 'Uzi 9mm' to online photographs of kittens. Recently, I have been using Craiyon to generate artwork for my blog, and I will also be making use of it in my next London, building by building video. I like the imperfect and otherworldly images that it generates. Another point of interest is how easily it is able to render some...

Towards the end of 2020, I wrote a novella by accident. Which is a cutesy way of saying that, either on a whim, or as a dedicated act of procrastination to avoid doing something else, I dragged the mothballed fragments of an unfinished piece of fiction out from the archives, and worked on it until it was well over 30,000 words and no longer viable as a short story. During the decade or so since its conception, the story had acquired a number of notations that had been tagged piecemeal onto the end. Among these was the outline for a new opening paragraph that went on to become chapter one. A sketch of a scene that was intended to amount to nothing more than a couple of paragraphs, swelled to immense proportions and became chapter three, which remains my favourite part of the book. There was a point where I had to make a decision: Do I cram the story back into the vaults, or do I continue adding to it, in the knowledge that it is too large for any literary journal to even consider, and w...

Readers of my novella, The Missionary Dune ( which is available through Amazon as a paperback or eBook ) may have noted, in the 'other books by the same author section, a sprawling, 7000-page, WWII epic, titled The Buttoner , that I wrote under under the female pseudonym, Agnes Pimm. The book is a relic of a shameful era of our literary history, when it was unthinkable that a man might be permitted to toss his bowler hat into the female-dominated sub-genre of cross stitch fiction. Consequently, I was left with no option other than to don a sensible cotton blouse and a heavy tweed skirt, prior to making inroads into this forbidden territory. Sadly, my ruse was exposed by the treacherous Dorothy Welsby, who affected both friendship and support for my plight, prior to very publicly stabbing me in the back. An edict issued by the Global Council of Literary Standards resulted in the book being de-published a mere two weeks after it was released. An accompanying motion to have me de-aut...

The paperback proof copies of my novella, that I will shortly be publishing as a paperback using Amazon's print on demand service, have arrived. These are my thoughts regarding the quality of what they sent me, and my experience of using the service. 

Dear British Library, Attached to this email is a file containing my eBook, 'The Missionary Dune' which was published for the Amazon Kindle on the 30th June, 2021. I hope that this will satisfy my legal obligation to deposit a copy of the book with your organisation. It is only right and proper that future generations be given the same opportunity to ignore its existence as those who are currently living. Prior to writing this email, I had been advised by a member of your Digital Processing Team that a zipped copy of my book could be downloaded from my KDP dashboard. This proved not to be the case. I have since discovered that, because the book was produced using Kindle Create, it cannot be downloaded and previewed offline. I duly contacted Amazon requesting guidance. They sent me the link to the file that you now have in your possession. You will find the relevant part of the email that Amazon sent me trowelled onto the bottom of this communication. It is my un...

  If everything goes according to plan and there are no hiccups, then my novella, The Missionary Dune, will be available as an eBook on the Amazon Kindle store, on Wednesday, 30 th June.  I regard it as a success in the sense that it is representative of the kind of story that I want to write. It has been constructed from ideas and concepts that are designed to appear as though they may have some grounding in reality, even though they don't and it's all made up. It is a work of almost pure fiction and imagination, containing only trace elements of research. It goes its own way and doesn't pander to any current literary trends. A few weeks ago, I designed a cover for the book. I am not even remotely competent as an artist, nor could I afford to engage one; in any case the point of this project is that I do everything myself. To accommodate my low level of artistic talent, the image had to be a photograph; one taken on my ancient digital camera, which was built by the Maya...

  I am preparing a novella for self-publication through Kindle Direct Publishing. It is called The Missionary Dune and, if all goes well, it will be available on June 30 th , 2021. Regardless of whether anybody wants to read the book, I have very much enjoyed the process of getting it ready, and have plans for it to be the first of many. There is something very satisfying about seeing a project through from beginning to end, and being involved in every step. The way has not been without its share of obstacles. Below are some of the challenges that I have faced so far. Two-step authentication This is really only a problem for people like myself, who don't own a mobile phone, or any kind of tablet device. Publishing on Amazon requires sharing very confidential information – things like tax identification numbers that could be used to commit identity theft. Consequently, logging in requires both a traditional password and a one-time password (OTP). The latter is either texted to ...

Late last year, while we were under lockdown, to my mild surprise I wrote a 39000-word novella. The fact that it was not my intention to produce anything near that length perhaps explains why I didn't get cold feet halfway through and abandon the project. There was no self-imposed weight of expectation pressing down on me; only the desire to build upon the foundations of an unfinished short story, penned over a decade ago. 'A couple of days work,' I thought. Having looked over the original draft, a few things were immediately apparent: The protagonist needed an overhaul. It was not enough for him to be an alienated individual. He needed to be a true outsider – an immigrant to the United Kingdom. Furthermore, he needed to originate from the same place as the antagonist - an inveterate nationalist named Yusuf Al-Makari who regards all non-Egyptians with disdain. The narrative also needed restructuring. This resulted in me dragging paragraphs between a pair of side-by-side Ope...