Tara Maya's Tales

Yesterday, I met a snow gnome. This was odd, since we have no snow in California. I was really cold, though. (Not sure if the gnome was to blame...) The snow gnome, or nisse , asked me, "Are you living your best life?" Immediately, I started thinking about a palatial estate with a gorgeous, cozy grand room, a fire crackling in the immense fireplace... "No," said the gnome, "Not THE best life. Not the best life you can imagine..." "Fair enough," I said, "Since I have a very vivid imagination!" "We know," said the gnome, "since you're talking to gnomes. But I meant: Are you living the best life you can live right now? " As I wandered home through the snowy street lined with white marble facades and glowing, festive evergreens... or actually, through a suburban California neighborhood lined with palm trees (but really cold, guys, I'm serious!) I pondered this. Am I living "the dream?" No... There'...

In a previous post , I brought up the concern that AI generated art could start putting artists out of business. And I don't deny that new tech can discombobulate us. Shortly after I wrote that post, I read about an artist whose distinctive abstract style of art was stolen by one of the art-generation programs that easily produced imitations (although not as good, I have to say) as hers.  Stealing her style was pretty crummy. If she had created the program herself, though... hmmm. She could have fed it the original art to train it and then sold other people the right to make art in her own style. It's not the AI itself that's the problem, it's that our legal and commercial systems have to catch up in a way to reward the artist. That's tough, yes. Not insurmountable, but tough. But meanwhile, there's another issue that artists almost always overlook on this topic.  Has anyone really considered just HOW MUCH DANG ART we are going to need for the future? Let's ...

AI generated art. An English teacher, Natalie Kay, wrote about the rising difficulty to “ The College Essay is Dead ” posed by ChatGPT and like programs. (Natalie Kay   Dec 9, 2022, https://medium.com/predict/ai-is-here-and-its-harming-future-generations-and-the-present-ones-cf40985b9bbf) This time last year, I was in the middle of my one-year stint as a high school English teacher. There were many reasons I left the job (the teacher shortage exists for a reason, it turns out), but undoubtedly one of the most significant ongoing issues I had was plagiarism. I tried it myself using ChatGPT, the AI program he discusses in the article. I used a prompt that I had given to my own students when I asked them to write essays on Romeo and Juliet. The quality and level of detail was similar to that of my students. Even if I had been suspicious of plagiarism, I never would have found a way to prove that a student didn’t write the essay. It passed in every way I know to look for...

Bethany November 30, Wednesday night 21 Days to the Winter Solstice Kyrah, where are you? Please call out to me! I want to help you! Bethany Dilly Giscard was flying around, a sure sign that she was dreaming, ‘cause she didn’t have wings in real life. Moreover, Bethany was aware that she was dreaming, which was pretty cool—and usually a sign that it wasn’t her own dream—she was Dreamwalking. In the last year since Bethany had become a Guardian, she’d learned that her power was not limited to simply being a big, walking Null. As a Guardian to the Sphere of Dreams, she could visit that Blessed Realm in order to enter the dreams of anyone. Since entering another person’s dreams constituted a severe breach of privacy, Bethany didn’t do it often. Tonight, however, she was searching for her friend. Her best friend, Kyrah, had been captured by the Dark Triad, the three powerful sorcerers who were driving the Elven War. Bethany had been trying to connect to Kyrah in the Sphere for Dream...

  The Mirror is a Portal into Winterdom . My "final" draft of The Tree & the Egg came back with some scathing critiques from my Content Editor.  Ouch.  This is the last book in the Major Arcana series, which is meant to wrap up the whole series in a neat bow and yet still leave the door open for future series set in the Tarot Magic universe of Arcana Glen. The original draft was almost 50,000 words on the dot. The first round of revisions saw another 30,000 words added. That makes this the longest book in the series. It's not usual for the last book in a series to be the longest. It's the Final Battle, all the loose ends must be tied up, and every major character needs a moment to shine. I have twenty-two major characters, who each have at least one Point of View scene in the book. I also have several villains and gray characters (who may be either villains or anti-heroes) who aren't PoV characters but still deserve their due. In addition to that, I also want ...

An Enchanted Thanksgiving on sale today for only $0.99 I started writing The Unfinished Song more than a decade ago.  It has twelve books, with a story arc planned from the start, yet the latest book out is Book 9 - Maze.  I haven't finished the series yet. "Stuff" happened that delayed me. And sometimes the next book itself delayed me.  The moral of the story? Maybe I should have set a deadline!  That's what I decided to do with my next series. And next. I vowed that I would publish two complete series this year: The Major Arcana Elf Tarot series and the Holiday Elf Tarot series, both a series of sweet, Paranormal Romances set in Arcana Glen, Colorado. The timeline in the books themselves determined by deadline, because the stores (which are independent but intertwined) occur over a year. They have to come out in the month they feature. So far, I've met my deadlines, although in few cases, I was scrambling, and had to sheepishly (inside joke-some books have Shee...

  Excerpt from  Judgment & the World : Once again, he closed the distance between them. Trudie backed up another step, and he took another step forward, until finally she hit the bureau against the wall. She couldn’t back up any further and he kept closing in on her, as if stalking her. He didn’t touch her again, but he put his hands on either side of the bureau, trapping her between his arms. He leaned down and murmured into her ear, only an inch from her face, “When are you going to tell the Guardians the truth?” He was terrifying her and yet at the same time the heat of his breath against her neck made her tingle with desire. She was so messed up. It didn’t matter what he did, she still wanted him. “What’s your game this time?” he demanded in a husky whisper. “Are you going to pull my heart out again, Angel?” she demanded, looking up into his face. “You hate me so much. Why didn’t you kill me when you had a chance? You could’ve crushed my heart instead of returning me t...