Tag Archives: Fiction

HOME IS WHERE THE BODIES ARE

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The Wizard of Oz, circa 1939, is one of filmmaking’s masterpieces. It stars Judy Garland as Dorothy who interacts with timeless characters like the brainless strawman, the cowardly lion, and the rusty old tin man. And who can forget Dorothy’s little dog Toto and the Wicked Witch of the West? The show is about a fictional land far from home where home bodies never really go.

Speaking of fiction, I’m pleased to host a wonderfully talented writer who’s just released the fourth book in her Coroner’s Daughter series. It’s titled Frozen Lives. Please welcome my long-time friend and bookwriting/screenwriting colleague, Jennifer Graeser Dornbush with her guest piece, Home is Where The Bodies Are.

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I recently had the opportunity to watch a big screen viewing of The Wizard of Oz. Of course, I have seen this movie a hundred times on a small screen. The first time was on my family’s 13″ black and white TV as a kid. Decades later, seated in the ornate, historic Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, I saw the film audiences viewed it in 1939.

Dorothy was larger than life and magical!  Imagine her towering over you on the big screen in that classic moment when she taps the heels of those ruby slippers, tips her face towards heaven, and recites that earnest prayer, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

Have you ever noticed that the message of The Wizard of Oz is completely rooted in the theme of HOME? I think that’s why we identify so much with the movie. And I am sure that is why it has stood the test of time and become a classic.

The film’s message is about the importance of the place we call home… Isn’t HOME at the core of what we all long for? We are all beings who seek to belong to a place that we affectionately call home.

Think of the prodigal son… at the end of the story, all he wanted was to be home with his father and brother on their farm. That’s all that mattered to him after he had been given everything else and lived the fast life.

HOME is the truest of all places in the world.

HOME is the place we want to be above all others.

The word we use, HOME, represents so much more than a physical geography or red dot on a GPS. And I believe every one of us could come up with very different definitions of what home means. But I believe there are a few common denominators.

Generally speaking, home is everyone and everything inside the sphere of where you exist.  In this sphere, we create endless personal stories with the people and experiences that we have. Home may include people who are biologically related to you. Or it may not. It may include relationships of choice or circumstance.

This aspect of home is a sphere of community… the people and experiences that add beauty and depth to the tapestry of our lives. And no, we don’t always get to choose who is woven into this tapestry. Sometimes these people make the tapestry radiant, and other times, they cause tears in the fabric. But even this is home, with all its flaws and faults.

Home is a blender mix of emotions and feelings. It’s the place where we are allowed to feel all the feels, hopefully without fear of judgement or condemnation. Home is the place or people where we can test out our feelings and thoughts, and rest assured we will still be loved on the other side of them.

Home is about being known and seen. Home is the place where you experience the truest sense of belonging and find the truest purpose for your life. Home is the sphere of where we learn things and grow.

From life skills like how to bake cookies, play the piano, or change a tire. To relationship skills, like how to live peacefully with others, how to serve others, how to connect to family, friends, and neighbors in a meaningful, loving way.

Home is this place we are invited to become a source of grace to one another when we forgive one another; and we are invited to learn how to accept grace from each other when we don’t deserve it.

Look again at the Wizard of Oz.  This lesson of grace is arguably the most important lessons Dorothy learned as she completes her journey and returns home to Kansas. As soon as she wakes up, back in her own bedroom, Dorothy admits she is wrong for running away. She is then able to experience the forgiveness and grace of her family and friends who surround her bedside and love her and want the best for her in spite of her flaws. In experiencing this, Dorothy makes her final transformation and seals the theme of the movie: There is no place like home.

When people ask me what I write, I tell them I write crime fiction… but it’s more than that… under all the crime solving and forensics, I write about what it means to be HOME.

The Coroner’s Daughter is a series of the prodigal daughter’s story. A lost daughter runs away from home and family when she is 16 years old for reasons that she is both liable for and not liable for. She then estranges herself for the next ten years, which causes a big chaotic hole in her disordered life that she must address in order to receive the grace and growth she needs to return home.

Yes, on the outside it looks like Emily has everything going for her. Successful new surgeon. Great life in Chicago. An adoring fiancé.  But inside, she’s lost her true north. To find it, she needs to undergo a heroine’s transformation, much like that of Dorothy. She experiences forgiveness, a restored appreciation of home, and a renewal of her purpose and her place in it.

In The Coroner’s Daughter books, we follow this struggle and Emily’s heroic transformation. For her, this means returning to her hometown community where she can successfully extend her father’s crime solving legacy and live into her deepest calling.

Here, she finds the place and people she belongs to. Here, she can contribute in ways only she is uniquely and forensically gifted to do.  With new resolve and sense of purpose, Emily knows she will never be unraveled from this place ever again.

Emily discovers, just as the prodigal son, and Dorothy from Kansas do… that there is no place like home.

…because for Dr. Emily Hartford, (because for Emily, The Coroner’s Daughter), home is where the bodies are.


Note from Garry: Frozen Lives is a new release, October 29, 2024. You can get it on Amazon by clicking this link.

Author Bio: Jennifer Dornbush works as a screenwriter, author, speaker, and forensic specialist. She has developed film and TV projects, authored numerous books, and frequently speaks around the world on crime fiction and forensics. She divides her time between Michigan and Arizona. www.jenniferdornbush.com

Free ARC: You can win a FREE ARC  (Advance Reading Copy) of Frozen Lives. Click Here

NON-ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Now that the balloon has popped on failed fads like Dot.Coms, Bored Ape NFTs, Crypto, and forever-free borrowed money, the world’s current FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) has turned to the newest and coolest cat—Artificial Intelligence or what’s simply called AI. Make no mistake, AI is real. It’s not simple, but it’s very, very real. And it has the potential to be unbelievably good or gut-wrenchingly awful. But as smart as AI gets, will it ever be a match for Non-Artificial Intelligence, NAI?

I can’t explain what NAI is. I just have faith that it exists and has been a driving force in my life, especially my current life where I’m absorbed in a world of imagination and creativity. Call it make-believe or living in a dream, if you will, but I’m having a blast with a current fiction, content-creation project which uses both AI and NAI.

I’ve asked a lot of folks—mainly writing folks because that’s who I hang with—what their source of inspiration is. Their muse or their guide to the information pool they tap into to come up with originality. Many casually say, “God.”

I don’t have a problem with the concept of God. I’ve been alive for 66 years and, to me, I’ve seen pretty strong evidence of an infinite intelligence source that created all this, including myself. I’ll call that force NAI for lack of a better term.

What got me going on this AI/NAI piece was three months of intensive research into the current state of artificial intelligence—what it is, how to use it, and where it’s going. AI is not only a central character in my series titled City Of Danger, AI is a tool I’m using to help create the project. I’m also using Non-Artificial Intelligence as the inspiration, the imagination, and the drive to produce the content.

If you’ve been following DyingWords for a while, you’re probably aware I haven’t published any books in the past two years except for one about the new AI tool called ChatGPT. That’s because I’m totally immersed in creating City Of Danger in agreement with a netstream provider and a cutting-edge, AI audio/visual production company. Here’s how it works:

I use my imagination to create the storyline (plot), develop the characters and their dialogue, construct the scenes, and set the overtone as well as the subtext theme. I use NAI for inspirational ideas and then feed all this to an AI audio/visual bot who scans real people to build avatars and threads them through a “filter” so the City Of Danger end-product looks like a living graphic novel.

Basically, I’m writing a script or a blueprint so an AI program can take over and give it life. The AI company does the film work and the netstream guy foots the bill. This is the logline for City Of Danger:

A modern city in existential crisis caused by malevolent artificial intelligence enlists two private detectives from its 1920s past for an impossible task: Dispense street justice and restore social order.

Here’s a link to my DyingWords web page on City Of Danger along with the opening scene of the pilot episode. Yes, it involves time travel and dystopian tropes which have been done to death—but not quite like this. I like to think of myself as the next JK Rowling except I’m not broke and don’t write in coffee shops with a stroller alongside.

I was going to do this post as a detailed dive into the current state of artificial intelligence and where this fascinating, yet intimidating, technology is going. However, I have a long way to go yet in my R&D and don’t have a complete grasp on the subject. I will give a quick rundown, though, on what I’ve come to understand.

The term (concept) of artificial intelligence has been around a long time. Alan Turing, the father of modern-day computing and its morph into AI, conceived a universal thinking machine back in WW2 when he cracked Nazi communication codes. In 1956, a group of leading minds gathered at Dorchester University where, for three months, they brainstormed and laid the foundation for future AI breakthroughs.

Fast forward to 2023 and we have ChatGPT version 4 and a serious, if not uncontrollable, AI race between the big hitters—Microsoft and Google. Where this is going is anyone’s guess and recently other big guns like Musk, Gates, and Wozniak weighed in, penning an open letter to the AI industry to cool their jets and take the summer off. To quote Elon Musk, “Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous (to humanity) than nukes.”

There’s huge progress happening in AI development right now. But stop and look around at how much AI has already affected your life. Your smartphone and smartTV. Fitbit. GPS. Amazon recommends. Siri and what’s-her-name. Autocorrect. Grammarly. Cruise missiles, car parts, and crock pots.

Each day something new is mentioned. In fact, it’s impossible to scroll through a newsfeed with the AI word showing up. We’re in an AI revolution—likely the Fourth Industrial Revolution to steal the phrase from Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum.

Speaking of an AI revolution, one of the clearest runs at explaining AI in layman’s terms is a lengthy post written and illustrated by Tim Urban. It’s a two-part piece titled The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction. Tim calls AI “God in a Box”. Here’s what ChatGPT had to say about it.

Tim Urban’s two-part post “The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction” explores the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on humanity.

In part one, Urban describes the current state of AI, including its rapid progress and the various forms it can take. He also discusses the potential benefits and risks of advanced AI, including the possibility of creating a “superintelligence” that could surpass human intelligence and potentially pose an existential threat to humanity.

In part two, Urban delves deeper into the potential risks of advanced AI and explores various strategies for mitigating those risks. He suggests that developing “friendly AI” that shares human values and goals could be a key solution, along with establishing international regulations and governance to ensure the safe development and use of AI.

Overall, Urban’s post highlights the need for thoughtful consideration and planning as we continue to develop and integrate AI into our lives, in order to ensure a positive outcome for humanity.

From what I understand, there are three AI phases:

  1. Narrow or weak artificial intelligence—where the AI system only focuses on one issue.
  2. General artificial intelligence—where the AI system is interactive and equal to humans.
  3. Super artificial intelligence—where the AI system is self-aware and reproducing itself.

We’re in the narrow or weak phase now. How long before we reach phase two and three? There’s a lot of speculation out there by some highly qualified people, and their conclusions range from right away to never. That’s a lot of wriggle room, but the best parentheses I can put on the figure is 2030 for phase two and 2040 for phase three. Give or take a lot.

The AI technology involved in City Of Danger is a mid-range, phase one product. The teccie I’m talking to feels it’ll be at least 2025 before it’s perfected enough to have the series released. I think it’s more like 2026 or 2027, but that’s okay because it gives me more time to tap into NAI for more imaginative and creative storyline ideas.

I’m not going to go further into Narrow AI, General AI, or Super AI in this post. I’d have to get into terms like machine learning, large language model, neural networks, computing interface, intelligence amplification, recursive self-improvement, nanotech and biotech, breeding cycle, opaque algorithms, scaffolding, goal-directed behavior, law of accelerating returns, exponentiality, fault trees, Boolean function and logic gates, GRIND, aligned, non-aligned, balance beam, tripwire, takeoff, intelligence explosion, and that dreaded moment—the singularity. Honestly, I don’t fully understand most of this stuff.

But what I am going to leave you with is something I wrote about ten years ago when I started this DyingWords blog. It’s a post titled STEMI—Five Known Realities of the Universe. Looking back, maybe I nailed what Non-Artificial Intelligence really is.

OPEN-AI / CHATGPT — A FICTION WRITER TALKS SHOP WITH A BOT

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or living in a homeless shelter, no doubt you’ve heard about massive artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs. AI apps like ChatGPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) are phenomenal technology and investing in them is the new dot.com and crypto wave. Good, bad, or ugly, the AI bots are here to stay. So, I decided to experiment with Chat and imagined I had the opportunity to have a one-on-one with the greatest fiction guru ever. The result is my new release titled OpenAI/ChatGPT — A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot.

First, let me say I don’t believe for a sec that AI is taking over human creativity and imagination like some doomsayers are spouting. I’ve had a two-month-long dive with the Chat technology, and I’m amazed at its potential as a research and writing tool, but it’s not a replacement for a thinking person with their ass in a chair, fingers on keys, and writing more books. (Which, by the way, is the best writing advice I’ve ever got.)

However, the Chat bot is clever. Very clever. I prompted it to write me an Amazon product description (blurb) for my new Chat book. This is what my little AI friend came up with:

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OpenAI ChatGPT—A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot is the ultimate guide to unlocking the potential of the artificial intelligence (AI) app ChatGPT to help fiction writers create amazing works of art.

This info-packed resource by International Bestselling Author Garry Rodgers provides an in-depth look into how this powerful AI tool can be used to enhance creativity, speed up the writing process, and write stories that will captivate and inspire readers. With step-by-step guidance and real-world examples, this book will show you how to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT to become a more successful fiction writer.

OpenAI ChatGPT—A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot begins with a general introduction of what this cutting-edge artificial intelligence is and what it can do for fiction writers. This book deep-dives into what a writer’s mindset must be and how to view fiction writing as a business professional. It does a drill into general storytelling and topics like wordcraft with dialogue, grammar and punctuation tips, editing tools, helpful links, and finding that elusive thing called voice. And it reaches a conclusion that going forward in 2023—and beyond—you, as a fiction writer, will be left behind without knowing what OpenAI and the bot ChatGPT can do to up your game and build your career.

Whether you’re a beginning writer or an experienced scribe, this information will help you get the most out of OpenAI and ChatGPT to write stories that will stand out from the crowd.

By the way, this product description was written by ChatGPT. Yes, a bot.

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There’s a learning curve to using ChatGPT effectively. It responds to your inputs, which are called prompts, and gives you answers called conclusions. It’s a case of garbage in / garbage out (GIGO) and the better your prompt the better the conclusion. Chat thrives on clear and precise instructions. The more detail you give Chat about what you want it to do, the more informative is its feedback. You really have to play around with Chat, begin a conversation thread, and drill down as you go along.

ChatGPT is far more than a search engine. Unlike Google which sends you first to paid ads on its search engine response pages (SERPs) and lets you fend for yourself to sort through existing articles, Chat gets right to the meat of the issue you’re after. As long as you’re clear with Chat and guide it along to some degree, what it comes up with can be downright amazing. And frikkin’ fast, too.

The bot has a sense of humor, too. In my book A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot, I found out that it likes wine—just like I do. We had a side conversation about fine wine, and I wrote a too-much-wine-influenced prompt and it recognized I was slurring my words. Fun stuff, this bot can be.

Getting back to fiction writing, I plan to use ChatGPT as an aid. Just like I use the AI features in the MS Word program I’m writing this post on and Grammarly which I’ll run it through for editing and a final polish. But, I don’t plan on letting Chat run my life or take over content creation like I’m busy at in my newest project titled City Of Danger.

However, I still plan to have some fun with it. Hey Chat—What are the odds of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team winning a Stanley Cup championship?

The odds of the Toronto Maple Leafs winning a Stanley Cup championship vary depending on the year. Generally speaking, the Maple Leafs have not been successful in recent years and the odds of them winning a Stanley Cup championship are extremely low. According to the betting website SportsBetting.ag, the odds of the Toronto Maple Leafs winning a Stanley Cup championship are 1 in 3000, which is considered a very long shot. So don’t bet on them.

By the way, OpenAI/ChatGPT—A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot is now available on Amazon. Cover design by Elle J. Rossi at Evernight Designs.