Tara Maya's Tales

Will novelists become obsolete now that computer programs can write? Some people see tools like ChatGPI as competition instead of what it really is: a new form of the Extended Mind.  By extended mind, I mean the way that humans use tools and architecture to "supersize" our minds , to extend our "bodies" through adjacent materials, which we fashion for that purpose. People who were angry about using programs to write see it as a human as delegating the task to someone else, like a boss who tells his secretary to write a love letter to his wife. If instead, people look at a program like ChatGPT as just another tool, they wouldn't be any more offended by someone using than if the letter were composed on a computer using Microsoft Word instead of handwritten with a quill. As a science fiction and fantasy author who is very pro-technology, I was eager to see if ChatGPT could help me with a huge problem: I have way more ideas than I have time to write. I picked up t...

  What's better than chocolate on Valentine's Day? What works wonders whether you're in love... lonely... or suffering a broken heart? A romantic story! Check out the romances on sale for Valentine's Day, Valentine's Sweet Reads and Paranormal & Fantasy Romance Sale .  Also enjoy An Enchanted Valentine's Day: The Griffin & the Fake Bride , a sweet paranormal novella about two shifters who have to fake a wedding to catch a criminal. If you prefer short reads, check out any of the Hero & Heroine Anthologies, but especially this one, which has a charming science fiction romance, "The Valentine Raffle," by Heidi Kneale. Also, be sure and check out Her Endearing Young Charms, a Regency with Magic , another adorable read by the same author. 

  Today I'm publishing a boxset of the three Arcana Glen Novellas that take place in the Spring.  An Enchanted St Patrick’s Day When Misty found a handsome man tied to a chair in a storeroom, beaten and abused, she was shocked. At the risk to her job and her life, she freed him. Together, they escaped her former boss in New Orleans and fled to Arcana Glen. But when Misty’s boss caught up with her, he claims the man she freed is a con and a thief. Not to mention, he thinks he’s a real leprechaun, so he must be crazy—right? Her boss asks her to spy on the handsome thief as part of a sting. All she has to do is pretend to be a lost leprechaun princess. An Enchanted Easter Damien comes from a family of Bighorn Sheep Shifters, but he has a second form—a wolf. And for a guy whose family has been involved in a feud with the local Wolf Shifter clan for generations, that’s a problem. Three years ago, he messed up everything. He made the feud worse, he stole from his own parents—and he...

I can talk to ghosts. I also have a time machine which enables me to travel into the distant future. How far it goes, even I don’t know. I’m also telepathic. I can project carefully shaped thoughts from my own mind into yours.   Am I the chosen one in an epic young adult fantasy novel?   As much as I enjoy reading, and writing such fantasies, the answer is no. The truth is that you have these magical powers as well. Any literate person does. Reading enables us to converse with the ghosts of men and women who died centuries, even millennia, ago. Rating enables us to share our thoughts by bouncing them off a paper or screen, sending them mind to mind. We can even send out thoughts across spacetime, to share with people on the other side of the world or even with generations who will not be born for many centuries, or millennia to come.   Writing is, of course, just one form of media, and new forms of media are being invented all the time. In the future, realistic holograms,...

Are some children born cursed? A scene from Oma Child . Here in the United States, it’s Martin Luther King’s birthday, so I thought I’d ruminate on racism and other forms of collective insanity.   I recently watched an excellent documentary called Oma Child: The River and the Bush . You can find it here:  https://omochildmovie.com      In a certain society in Ethiopia, the belief existed (and for some people still exists) that certain human beings are “Mingi.”    Cursed.   Their mere existence threatens to bring drought and destruction upon their entire family and tribe.   One of the ways that you can tell if a child is Mingi is whether their first tooth starts on One side of the mouth or the Other. (I can’t remember and don’t care which side was which).   Because no family wants to be cursed, parents or grandparents kill Mingi children as soon as their “evil” manifests. Because no village wants to be cursed, if the parents themselves re...

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 ...