One of the things I've always believed in is that you must be a continuous learner in life. The minute you stop learning, you stop growing. There is an adage, "The more you learn, you the more you realize you don't know." I have certainly found this true in my life. When I started my career at GE Lighting, I had no idea how difficult it was to mass produce something as 'simple' as Edison's light bulb. (It turns out making a million a day of anything is hard) As I learn about what is involved in becoming an author, I discover many detailed alleys of learning that one must traverse on the journey to publishing a book. In today's world, self-publishing is becoming easier and easier, however, it is estimated that >90% of books published today sell less than a hundred copies. In some cases, that is by design. It might be a personal project for a family. However, to fully explore publishing a book and to gain a broad audience to read it is as much of a task as writing the book in the first place! Here's a very abbreviated list of the alleyways I'm exploring relative to publishing a book.
I hope you are enjoying my Quantum Contingent Spotify Playlist and the photo blogs along the journey to publish The Quantum Contingent. I've recently updated the location page and technology page of the website with some new additions. If there is a particular location or technology you'd like featured in a future blog post, please let me know! Thanks, and have a great week, Greg
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An old colleague from Italy messaged me last week that they were looking to buy my book when it came out, so this week, I thought I'd do a photoblog of a few locations in The Quantum Contingent that are in Italy, one of my favorite vacation spots! (If you ever go to Florence, please have some Gelato for me!) The book has a chapter in Florence, multiple chapters in Tuscany, and references Orvieto... Here are some of my photos of all the above! (The Quantum Contingent specifically mentions the three things shown in the middle row of photos)
Divertitevi! Greg In The Quantum Contingent, many technologies are used by villain and hero alike to either cause chaos or to prevent chaos. One foundational technology in use is Artificial Intelligence, or AI. AI is an often an overused word, like 'cloud' to describe many different technologies. AI simply represents any technology that attempts to mimic the cognitive function of the human brain. Typically, AI is “narrow” AI as in self-driving cars. In Tesla’s autopilot software, neural nets examine images in real time and do path calculations based on both the images and some other sensor data (e.g. ultrasonics for very close objects). The images are captured by 8 different cameras and stitched together into a 360-degree scene that is examined by the neural nets. Calculations are made as to the velocity of objects based on their movement through time. Autopilot AI doesn't try to decide what stock to purchase, or predict the weather, it is very narrowly focused on driving. General Purpose AI has not yet been achieved. General purpose AI is like Data on Star Trek. It can interact like a human in many different scenarios.
Data is the food that feed the AI beast. We have gotten better at collecting data. 1.4 trillion photos were taken in 2020. As we digitize more and more things, computers get better and better at predicting the future. Imagine what a computer could predict if it had access not only to your photos, but to all your credit card data, your geo-location data from your phone, and more. A paper, Predicting personality from patterns of behavior collected with smartphones, talks about how our digital footprints from our smartphones can predict our primary personality traits. Unlimited access to data and strong AI Machine Learning algorithms can go a long way in providing accurate predictions for villains and heroes alike. In science fiction, this translates into things like the 2002 movie, Minority Report, where law enforcement attempted to predict before it happened. So, in The Quantum Contingent, you’ll see some references to AI, but know that there are also many other uses of AI in the book that may go unnoticed. John McCarthy, a professor of mathematics at Dartmouth first coined the term AI. McCarthy had a saying about artificial intelligence: “As soon as it works, no one calls it A.I. anymore." So, when you see a rocket land on a drone ship in the ocean or use a driver assistance program like Auto-pilot, know that AI is at work even if it's not called AI. Given this novel’s technological bent, and my own interest in AI. I did include one sentence that was entirely generated by AI. In one chapter the sentence: “For a century or so, such longevity has been the stuff of folklore and science fiction. The previous longest-lived human was Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at 122 years and 164 days. Physicists have suggested that the limit might be 155 years. A hundred years ago, the average life span in America was around 48” was generated when I provided the prompt “Immortality raises many ethical problems for humanity” to the transformer program at https://app.inferkit.com/demo This program uses a modern neural network to complete the provided prompt using InferKit. If you’d like to read more on AI, I’ve written several blogs on the topic. You can find them here: https://www.cio.com/author/Greg-Simpson/ If you’d like to just enjoy a spy novel that has some fun references to technology then skip the technical blogs and just read The Quantum Contingent. Talk to you soon, Greg It’s summertime and for many that means fun outside with friends and family. If you know me, you know I love to dance, and that means I like listening to good music. When writing my book, I used several pop culture references along the way, and that made me think of some of my favorite songs. Last week, I said I had one more surprise up my sleeve, and here it is: The Quantum Contingent has a playlist. The handcrafted Spotify playlist has one song for each chapter. Each song connects to the chapter of the book in a unique way. Some connect in obvious ways, others in more subtle ways and others in more elaborate, detailed ways. In at least ten of the chapters, the title of the song appears in the chapter. Of course, it’s pretty easy to get a one-word song title in a chapter (like Birthday, by Katy Perry or Africa by Toto). Also, based on the number of Taylor Swift songs I included in the playlist, you'll be able to infer I'm a fan. So, I encourage you to head on over to Spotify and listen to The Quantum Contingent playlist. Don’t be afraid to break out a few of your favorite dance moves. The songs on the playlist are in the order of the chapters in the book, but I won’t share the chapter titles yet, just the playlist. I suspect after you read the book, you might have some questions about some of the songs and how they relate... that will have to wait until after the book is out! In the meantime, I just thought I'd share the playlist so you could use it when you are out enjoying yourself this summer! The blue links above take you to spotify. If you just want to see the list of songs, you can see it here: www.simpsong00.com/playlist (of course the entire list is subject to change!) Happy listening, Greg I've crossed a key milestone in writing my book, the rough draft manuscript. I'll call it the "alpha" release. I've sent the alpha release to an impartial developmental editor. I've had some wonderful developmental editing from my daughter and wife, but this will be from an impartial third party. After I incorporate her feedback, I'll be at the "beta" stage. (I get the feedback on 7/31) If you'd like to be a "beta" reader, you'd need to be willing to not only read the book, but provide constructive feedback on the book. What did you like, what didn't you like? Was there something you didn't understand? Was a section that was boring? Was there a section that was great? I plan to send beta copies out to volunteers in September. If you are interested, use the form to provide your email and preferred format. I will also ask beta readers to submit a review on Amazon when the time comes! Now I need to learn about amazon keyword advertising and recruit my creative son to do a book cover design for me. After that, I'll get those final beta reader tweaks in place, do a final proof edit and submit for publishing. Learning how to do a good launch will probably be the most difficult part of the process. Print, e-book, local book stores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble... there are several nuances to work through to make this a good launch. I do have one more surprise up my sleeve. Come back next week to learn about one unique aspect of my book. In the meantime, I'll leave you with an excerpt from my book and the pictures that inspired it. You'll recognize one picture from the cover of my website. Until next time, Greg Looking upriver, he could see the famous Lucerne-Chapel bridge in the distance. He hastened down the intricate wrought-iron railing to the fifth table and waited for his contact. The river water reflected the bright noon sunlight. He dropped a pebble in the water and could see it drift slowly all the way to the bottom of the clean, mountain fed river. The church across the river had green patina on its copper covered steeples. It reminded him of the many greenbacks he hoped to earn for his loyalty to the ‘Contingent’. This week's blog is a photo blog of two locations in The Quantum Contingent. Both are in Africa. The first is Ngorongoro Crater, in Tanzania and the second is The Rock Churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia. The cover photo from "The Journey Blog" is of Ngorongoro Crater on the jeep ride into the canyon at sunrise. The "About the Author" page features a photo of me in front of The Church of St. George. St. George stands a distance from the other churches and is hewn in the shape of a cross from a single block of red stone. These are two very unique and beautiful places. Great places for a spy novel like The Quantum Contingent.
I hope you enjoy the photos and the novel! I sent my "alpha copy" to my developmental editor this week. I'll get that feedback back on July 31st. Now I need to learn about book marketing and advertising! Drop me a comment below if you have any questions! Greg I happen to share a birthday with one of the most prolific technologists of our times. Elon Musk and I were both born on June 28th. Elon got his start selling a startup called Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in 1999. From there his online bank X.com merged with another company to form PayPal. PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002 and it was with this windfall that Elon went on to start SpaceX, the rocket company that lands rockets on autonomous drone ships in the ocean. In 2004, he joined Tesla and created the energy and electric vehicle manufacturer that has taken the market by storm. His list of technology ventures goes on and on... OpenAI, Starlink, Neuralink, The Boring Company. He also helped create Solar City which was later acquired by Tesla. As you can imagine, these technologies fit well in a spy novel. I've worked in self-driving cars, rocket ships, hyperloops, solar power, the LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite network Starlink and more. I've worked hard to make the novel accurate, including descriptions of these and many other technologies, but in an attainable way. Please note that the novel is not at all like my blog. I will go into some of the technologies I use in the novel in detail in this blog, but the novel is meant to be more like a Mission Impossible movie. There is technology in the MI movies, but it's not meant to take away from the fun and excitement of the film. These amazing thing about these technologies is they are all very real technologies. The SpaceX Starship is taller than the Saturn V that launched the Apollo astronauts to the moon. It has successfully launched itself about 6 miles into the sky and then after free falling back toward earth, fired its thrusters to right itself and land an upright landing, ready to refuel and launch again. Reusability of rockets is significant because it dramatically lowers the cost of space travel. In the past, every rocket was a one-time use vehicle. On August 18th, 2020, SpaceX set a record by using the first stage of a falcon rocket for the sixth time. SpaceX is enabling another Elon company, Starlink. Starlink is now operational in parts of the world, beaming down high-speed internet access to remote parts of the world using satellites that SpaceX launched into a "low earth orbit". Since they are much closer to the ground, you can achieve high quality, high speed internet with Starlink's satellite network. This is unlike earlier satellite networks that were slow because the satellites were so far up in the sky! SpaceX's dragon capsule has an "autopilot" for docking. The first manned crew mission on Dragon docked autonomously to the International Space station. Of course, it's not just landing pads in the ocean and space capsules orbiting the earth that are working on autopilot. Tesla's neural network for self-driving cars is getting smarter and smarter, with a goal of someday allowing full-self driving cars on any road, Today, Tesla's autopilot system remains a driver assistance program and is not fully autonomous. However, as a Tesla owner, I can attest that the autopilot capabilities are amazingly good and significantly reduce driver fatigue on long drives. Tesla's ability to seamlessly update the software on their cars to add vehicle enhancements and improvements to autopilot is one of the clear advantages they have over the traditional legacy automakers. Here's an image of how Tesla's autopilot 'sees' the world. Tesla's approach is to use pure vision, enabling a car to see with 8 cameras and a series of ultrasonic sensors for close in maneuvering. The images are processed by a highly trained neural network operating on specialized computer on-board the vehicle. Tesla can also pull scenes down from their fleet of vehicles to train the neural network. Before it is used by production cars, new versions of the neural network run in "shadow mode" along side the current production neural network to test them in the real world situations. This enables Tesla's autopilot to continue to improve at a rapid pace.
Anyway, it is sufficient to say, if you like reading about some of the different technologies Elon Musk has engaged in, then you'll want to read The Quantum Contingent. I promise to highlight many of the technologies throughout the thriller, but if you want to talk details, you'll probably need to do that here on the blog. The novel is a thriller, not a tech manual! Thanks for listening, let me know if there are any topics you'd like me to highlight in the blog. Greg Drones seem to be a spy's best friend. They are portable, stealthy and getting more powerful every day. They are already in use in many fields including agriculture, real estate, military and law enforcement applications, and delivery. (I do look forward to my first drone delivery) Drones don't have to be small either. The US Air Force is working on Skyborg. (yes, really) Skyborg is an ambitious autonomous program for UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). So, you can only imagine the scenarios that come to the mind of a spy novelist when you think of fleets of autonomous UAV's traveling on autonomous "ghost ships." One of the interesting things about The Quantum Contingent is that it's not set that far in the future. The technological leap to accomplish what is discussed in The Quantum Contingent is closer than you might think. That's why there is a technology tab at the top of this website. I plan to continue to update that tab with additional links that address some of the technologies in the novel. If you think about where we were 15 years ago, with no real smartphones, no ubiquitous GPS, no Netflix, no Facial recognition tech... you can see that we've come a long way. In some cases there were negative consequences of the technology advancement. I did a TedX talk on AI and the importance of having "seatbelts" on new technology. We need to think ahead to the possible negative outcomes and prepare for them BEFORE the first big accident. Sometimes humanity isn't that good at planning ahead. Ironically, novelists are quite good at spelling out dystopian technological futures. (as my daughter has often reminded me) Perhaps we need to get the technologists and the novelists together when we talk about how to manage the advancement of technology! I'm very pro-technology, but I'm also very pro-humanity, so let's make sure we advance our civilization in a good way. On a more light hearted note, I've included a shot from my personal drone for your enjoyment! Talk to you soon. Next time we'll talk all about Elon Musk technologies! There are quite a few, and most find their way into the novel. Greg A friend commented that she like the data based approach I was taking with my novel after seeing my blog article that showed the distribution of pacing of the novel. I pulled the graphic from a tool called ProWritingAid. It turns out that it has a treasure trove of reports that can analyze your writing. I just completed my rough draft manuscript, and started running some of these reports. One report I really like is the "sensory" report. It tracks how many different senses you are using in the descriptions of your novel. For example, chapter ten shows these stats: Sight 66% (27 words), Sound 12% (5 words), Touch 10% (4 words), Taste 7% (3 words). It's good to engage all of your readers senses when writing a novel. It brings them deeper into the story. This report provides a good way for me to check to see if I am using all of the senses in my chapters. Chapter 10 has 2001 words, and the entire manuscript weighs in at 71,272 words spread across 48 chapters. The numbers game goes on from there. For example, the graph below shows the percentage of dialog, tagged dialog, and so on in my novel compared to an average for general fiction, and compared to Michael Crichton. You can analyze how long your sentences are... 41% of the sentences in The Quantum Contingent are between 10 and 19 words, compared to 37% for general fiction.... see how much alliteration you use... I have 2 five word alliterations, 6 four word alliterations, and 106 three word alliterations... the options go on and on.
Of course, numbers aren't the key to an enthralling story. An enthralling story is a creative work. I am an avid technologist but so far technology cannot compete with humans in the creative written arts. There are some AI programs that generate simplistic articles on stocks, or generate some basic ad copy, but we don't have one yet that can generate an enjoyable novel that competes with human generated works. I did manage to incorporate one AI generated sentence into my novel. I provided the prompt “Immortality raises many ethical problems for humanity” to the transformer program at https://app.inferkit.com/demo . This program uses a modern neural network to complete the provided prompt using InferKit. I used part of the output from the program in Chapter 36. You'll have to see if you can find it when you read the book. Fortunately, we don't need to rely on computers to write our books. Many great authors have provided us with endless entertainment with their stories, and many authors find joy in the process of writing itself. We aren't ready to write by numbers just yet... we'll just have to do it the old fashioned way... with our imagination. Until next time! Greg Today's blog is another look at one of the locations in the book, The Quantum Contingent. This famous location is quite distinctive, so I don't think there will be any trouble guessing the location. Chapter 10 of The Quantum Contingent is set at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. I already highlighted one picture from Oxford in my second blog post. Today, I wanted to share a few more pictures of places that I describe in the book. Specifically, the Radcliffe Camera, the Bridge of Sighs, St. Helen's Passage and the Turf Tavern. Hopefully the words in my book will bring these pictures in the story to life for you. Enjoy the photos!
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The BlogGreg's blog will cover some of the things he learned as well as some of the tech and locations he used in his new novel, The Quantum Contingent. Archives
November 2023
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