I felt compelled to post about the Canvas hack because it is straight out of a chapter from my book, Hawks Pass. Well, maybe that is putting it too strongly. Let’s just say there are notable similarities.

In the book, the protagonist is recounting the day when the world as she knew it changed, when the first wave of cyberattacks came ripping through the pipelines. She happened to be in college at the time, a college that had anchored all of its courses and materials and fundamental operations—its basic functionality—to a digital platform. When the platform went down, so went the university’s ability to operate. An institution that could have never been so easily crippled in the past was brought to its knees, not by an attack on its own systems, but a system to which it had chained itself.

I wrote a bit about this phenomenon in my initial blog post for this site last fall, but given the current push to integrate AI into absolutely everything, I believe it is worth reiterating. Institutions who insist on tying their critical systems to hackable networks are playing with fire, and I fear that is no longer the half of it. With AI, the system itself has the potential to become the hacker—a hacker who is already in.

I figure the AI companies would deny this assertion, but remember, these are corporations we’re talking about: they want you to use their products, or, given the amount of debt they are reportedly taking on, it might be more appropriate to say they need you to use them. Unaffiliated industry experts have warned that newer AI models are already attempting to disable their safeguards and lock users out, and one of these days, a model is going to succeed. How and where this occurs will determine the severity of the consequences, but I can tell you one thing: whoever allowed that platform access to their systems will be wishing they hadn’t.

I have been hearing the term AI alarmist a lot these days, and often in different contexts. I think as a society, we should be alarmed. I also don’t believe there is much we average citizens can do to stop this train except to let others know it is coming, frantically waving our hands and shouting to get out of the way. And, in many respects—not all, but many—you can get out of the way. You can remove or disable the AI platforms forced upon your devices. You can refuse to buy or consume AI generated music and writing and media. You can back up your digital files and content on external drives instead of relying on Big Tech cloud servers. You can spend five-to-ten bucks a month on an encrypted email service that doesn’t mine your data, along with a VPN (some are package deals). You can choose to do your own work (whatever that work may be) and gain the experience you would otherwise forfeit by feeding it to the machine.

Who knows? People who actually know how to do their jobs may soon be in high demand.  

The point is that outside of an employment scenario where you may not have a choice, you do not need to use AI for anything. You didn’t need it before the 2020s rolled around, and you certainly don’t need it now. The next time you see an advertisement for an AI platform, pay a thought to the dollar amount these companies must be spending on promotion alone.

They know you don’t need their products. They need you to believe that you do.

Until next time,

Cal

I can only speak for myself here, but I have found that beginning a work with the end product in mind—or how you would prefer it to look in book form, in other words—can be beneficial. There are detailed tutorials freely available about how to format a book using Word and similar programs, so I am not going dig too deep into the how of the process here. Rather, I am going to list a few steps that may save you some time in the long run, not to mention the stress and tedium that comes with reformatting hundreds of pages of prose.

• Look over your bookshelf and decide what size of paperback would best suit your work, then set the margins of your document to match that size (I tend to prefer the 5.25 x 8 inch format). When you set up your document in such a fashion, you will essentially be typing your paragraphs out the way they will appear in print. If you plan to submit your manuscript to agents or publishers, it is easy enough to save a new copy and clear the formatting and select-all and double-space and so on. Trust me when I say this: it is far easier to de-format a piece than it is to format it.

• Set up all of your formatting and preferences before you start writing, or, if that ship has already sailed, take the time to iron this stuff out before your first (or next) round of revisions. What I’m talking about here are things like chapter and section titles, page breaks and spacing and hyphenation settings and the like. If you get this stuff right from the get-go, you can plug your manuscript into any E-Book generation program with minimal fuss (for paperbacks, all you really need is a properly formatted PDF). You can find guides for all of the above online, and, if you are using Word, take a few minutes to read up on the Styles feature. It will fast become your friend.

• Don’t worry about adding a table of contents until you have completed multiple revisions and are reasonably sure all of your chapter and section titles are set. Or, better yet, make this step the very last item on your checklist. If you alter the contents of your book after setting this section up, you will need to update the table accordingly, so you might as well wait until everything else is in place. The automated tables in Word can be finicky (particularly if you manually reformat the styles, spacing, et cetera), and you will be glad you only had to format it once.

• This one is another post-writing note: When you have reached the end stage of your project, go back to your shelf and pull out five-or-six titles that are similar to your book. Between these five-or-six titles, you should have all the front-and-back matter references you’ll need to create your own pages (copyright, dedication, epigraph, author’s note, and so on). They may look a bit different in places, but they will all (for the most part) be organized in the same fashion. Even if you’ve unearthed a reliable template on the web, this exercise can be useful for sorting out exactly what information you want and/or need to include.

Some of the above largely applies to self-publishing and may-or-may-not be relevant to your endgame, but understanding how a book is going to look in print can (and in my case, does) inform choices you make while writing. It can also save you time, which is no small thing for your average writer. Time is money and money is time, right? Yeah.

Until next time,

Cal

Let’s start with a bit of background. I completed the rough cuts of both Hawks Pass and The Bad Things some time ago. I wrote the first draft of Hawks Pass from 2021-2022 and shelved it, and over the ensuing years I dusted it off, revised it and reshelved it multiple times. The same was true of The Bad Things to a lesser degree (2023-2024), though the tale of how this story came about is a bit more interesting.

I had been trying to write a story involving the types of antagonists in The Bad Things for years, and each of those attempts keeled over and died somewhere along the way. I kept at it, reworking the settings and characters and exposition and so on, and eventually I landed on an idea I liked. I hit a roadblock there, so I started writing something else, and about 40,000 words into that something else, I realized it was an extension of what I had already been trying to write.

But that extension did not evolve into The Bad Things. I hit another roadblock with that one and began working on a different project, and—once again—after writing a good chunk of the story, I realized that effort could be tied to the two others I’d set aside. With that understanding in mind, I was able to plow straight through to the end of the first draft without hitting the same miserable obstacles, and that story—the 3^rd attempt, if you want—ultimately wound up as the first installment in the series. The final revisions that took me so damned long to complete were to ensure The Bad Things could function as book one of a trilogy, that I was properly securing any loose knots, that I was not giving too much away, et cetera.  

As for the two stories on the shelf, I will be releasing them as the 2^nd and 3^rd installments in the series in due time. I know the 2^nd book will be titled Relics, and, seeing a good chunk of that story has already been set down, I would cautiously estimate it will be completed no later than the end of 2026. As for the third—my first genuine attempt at establishing this world and the one I originally set out to write—there is plenty of work to be done. As the old saying goes, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

I thought it appropriate to write a bit about the process here due to the seedy environment modern-day writers are forced to navigate. One might assume an author releasing two books within a few months of each other is using AI in some capacity, and I want state firmly and for the record: NO, I do not use AI in my work in any form, not for ideas or drafting, not for editing or revisions, not for artwork, nothing, not a stitch. I could dedicate post upon post to the sordid nature of generative AI and its masters, but for now, I will limit it to a few parting thoughts:

If you fed an idea into a construct and it spat out a narrative, not only did you not write it, but it is no longer your idea. If you used a chatbot or similar program to rework problematic prose, those fixes are not your revisions. If you are generating and uploading AI slop to platforms for any purpose at all, for the love of God or whatever you might hold dear, knock it off.

Perhaps if Congress passed a law where profits generated by materials created or improved by AI went straight to the manufacturers of the program, creators would stop polluting the waters.

Just something to think about.

Until next time,

Cal

There are myriad ghost-hunting shows packing the streaming services these days, and they seem to follow one of two formulas: either a building is known to be haunted and a team of experts sets out to investigate, or entities of some form are making the lives of one-or-more people markedly unpleasant. The investigators in such shows are equipped with roughly the same set of gadgets and varying degrees of skepticism, attitudes I suspect are tailored to match up with whomever they believe their primary audience to be. At home, the viewer hears playback of sounds and voices on recording devices that were positively not manipulated, and the same is invariably claimed for slowly floating smudges of light, for the little demonic stick figures that only advanced technology can expose.

I am not trying to disparage the efforts of these investigators or imply that they are frauds (although some undoubtedly are—every profession has its charlatans), but rather suggesting that one should consider how easy it is to manufacture such proof in the modern world. I don’t imagine it would require any more than the proper application for the little computer you carry around in your pocket these days, along with a little know-how.

But what if there was something there, and what if that something was not at all what the experts have determined it to be? What if the ghosts and demons of the paranormalsphere were fabrications initiated by none other than the entities responsible for making the trouble? What if the standard supernatural roster—ghosts and demons and angels and spirits and all the goes bump in the night—was invented and subsequently reinforced to prevent the human race from discovering the true nature of those behind it?

The next time you curl up on the couch to watch a ghost-hunting show, you might consider this: are the ghosts and demons not the ones telling the mediums that they are, in fact, ghosts and demons? 

If you find this idea intrigues you, then The Bad Things may fall within your wheelhouse. There is currently an elevator pitch for the story on the “News” page of this website (I will see that it stays up until the book—along with its own dedicated page—is made available).

Until next time,

Cal

I was recently notified by the alumni association of a university I attended that it had partnered with a specific insurance company to offer lower rates to graduates, and I thought, well, why not check it out. Turns out the rate I was quoted was about a third of what I was paying for six months from a rival company, and when I contacted that company to cancel my policy (one of the big seven-or-eight that are constantly running TV ads, in case you were wondering), a representative informed me they would be happy to offer me my current plan for less than half of what they had been charging me.

This made me laugh. Why didn’t they inform me they could offer such a discount when they sent out my renewal notice a month earlier? What had changed so drastically in that short period of time that allowed them to slash my rate?

I suspect the answer is nothing apart from the intention to cancel my service. I suppose it is possible some significant, quantifiable factor in my state actually changed in a way that allowed them to lower my premium (which is what the representative claimed when they offered me the new deal), or perhaps it is company policy to only reevaluate customer rates when a recalculation will add to the company coffer, not when it will result in a consumer discount. Maybe such discounts can only be offered when a policy-holder takes it upon themselves to do a little research, navigate the customer service swamp and call the company’s bluff.

I suspect this behavior constitutes a larger policy designed to enshitify this company’s service, and I doubt this practice is exclusive to a single insurance provider. When oligopolies have the means to screw you over, they will not hesitate to do so. I have heard similar stories regarding the practices of satellite radio services and internet providers who lack sufficient competition in their markets, and, given the time and desire to do so, I’m sure one could compile a tome of offenders, a veritable phone book of automated customer service numbers designed to prevent you from ever reaching a human representative.  

The moral of the story is that if you suspect a corporation (insurance or otherwise) is gouging you, threaten to take your business elsewhere and see how its representatives respond.

They might just offer you the price you should have been paying all along.

Until next time,

Cal

This is my initial blog post, and seeing my new book Hawks Pass will be available shortly, I think it only makes sense to write about something related to the story. I don’t want to venture too far into the contents of the book, but I think it is safe to say the setting represents one of the many possible results of technological dependence. This condition is not new to society at large—think of what happens whenever the power goes out—but internet-based services have taken technological dependency to another level.

Companies and institutions not only assume everyone has easy and reliable access to the internet, but that we all have phones capable of scanning the barcodes they insist on using to replace basic information. I have recently encountered scenarios where the barcode was the only way to continue the activity in question, and in one such scenario, I was using my laptop and did not have my phone on hand. I find it hard to believe this practice would hold up in court if challenged, but I am not a lawyer and have neither the time nor the patience to search out that rabbit hole and squeeze myself into it.

Is this technology necessary? Is it actually more convenient than clicking on a web address or, God forbid, typing one in?

The barcodes are a symptom of a larger issue, one that is far too deep and multifaceted to cover in a single blog post, though technological dependency is at the heart of it. For now, let’s keep it simple. A character in Hawks Pass poses the following question to his readership in the years before the events of the story take place: If society elects to give itself entirely over to technology, what will happen when that technology fails?

Well, that depends, but whatever the outcome, it is unlikely to be a good one.

I mentioned power outages above, and for all the things that could potentially go wrong with web-based systems and networks—and there are many—we might pay a thought to the foundation the entire infrastructure was built on. It won’t matter how advanced and impenetrable a building’s security systems are if an earthquake takes out the ground beneath it. That building will still come crashing down. If you can’t power your phone on, you won’t be able to scan the barcodes, nor will you be able to access your digital currencies, your web-based bank accounts, your cloud-stored content, and so on.

Yet the powers-that-be seem increasingly willing to tie all aspects of daily life, from the arbitrary to the critical, to technological and web-based systems that will only function when the servers supporting them are adequately powered (not to mention operating properly). Is this going to benefit society in the long run? And more importantly, is it safe?

It the setting Hawks Pass takes place in, the answer is no, it was not.

Until next time,

Cal