Michael Pogach

My current favorite first world absurdity is receiving a text message asking me to reply "yes" to confirm a medical appointment. I text "yes" 2.7 seconds later, and then promptly receive a text that states:
"You've reached us outside our normal business hours"

Ten years ago on this day my first novel was published.
Since then, 4 others have been made real. And the Viking book coming out next year will be number 6.
(yeah yeah, 6 7; whatever)

Pssst...any of you got a million friends you can convince to buy my books?

Fun fact:
HR training videos that stop playing when you change tabs are the real reason the Roman Empire collapsed

I've been waiting a long time for one of these with my name on it.
LFG!
Thank you @books4kimberly.bsky.social
Cant wait to get to work with @diversionbooks.bsky.social and @evanphail.bsky.social

Watching Sandman season 2. My 10 yo daughter comes into the room and sees Robespierre and says:
"That's looks like George Washington but with a significant glow down."

Well shit, that surprised the crap outta me.
Maybe it'll shock the hell outta you too, dear readers.
##amwriting

YouTube video by AliceInChainsVEVO Alice In Chains - Bleed The Freak (Official HD Video)

Typo of the moment:
Instead of blow up something, how about "blup something"

Today's Playlist highlight: Alice in Chains
youtu.be/-xQQzi0IdLY?...

YouTube video by PrimusVEVO Primus - Jerry Was A Race Car Driver (Official Music Video)

Two chapters written today. Over 53k total word count in the 4 months I've been working on this book. Fastest pace I've ever had. Some Primus crashed my playlist as I was finishing up Chapter 24.
youtu.be/LBQ2305fLeA?...

And then you open a doc from a year ago for a 10k word set of sample chapters of a book you never thought you'd write.

And it's good.
Like, GOOD!

Maybe I'm only 40-50% imposter after all.

Just passed 40k word count on WIP.
Big time revelation fallout going on.
Chapter 20 is next.
This morning's Playlist includes some Dio

Wanna know why I keep making Angry-Mike face whenever someone brings up incorporating AI into education?
Cuz it steals shit from artists and it fucks the environment. And this too.

We tilled. We dug. We planted.
We wanted a rain garden.
We got ducks.

My new favorite papal fun fact...
From Wiki regarding the previous Pope named Leo in the 19th century:
Pope Leo XIII "was a drinker of the cocaine-infused wine tonic Vin Mariani, a precursor drink to Coca-Cola."

ChatGPT Is Everywhere — Why Aren't We Talking About Its Environmental Costs? One estimate found that a single ChatGPT search uses 10 times the energy of a normal Google search.

yes, ChatGPT is in schools; there are K-12 school districts and DOEs entering into AI contracts, too. so rather than panicking over the death of academia as a foregone conclusion—particularly when LLMs are frequently wrong—why don't we talk about the climate costs of AI?

my latest @teenvogue.com

a man with curly hair and a beard is smiling and asking jefe what is a plethora ? ALT: a man with curly hair and a beard is smiling and asking jefe what is a plethora ?

Every teacher right now trying to decide if they should give the grade to the student or to the chatbot

If as President you answer “I don’t know” when asked if you’ll follow the Constitution, you have violated your oath of office and should be removed.

Out of the dark forest mist, it rises — THE STAIRCASE IN THE WOODS is now on bookstore shelves! I hope you’ll check it out, spread the word, leave a review somewhere, let it whisper to you, do its dark bidding, give yourself over to it entirely, your bones become balusters, you know, normal stuff

My first apartment in 1994 was $350/month. Adjusting for inflation, that apartment should now rent for $744/month.

It actually rents for $1500. Greed and inflation are hurting the kids, not their Starbucks lattes.

Ask not what your country will do to you.
Ask what you would have done for Anne Frank

Well, it's that time of the semester where some students stop attending class, except now I have to wonder if it's because they've been disappeared by this erratic Orwellian nightmare of an administration for the heinous crimes of simply existing or speaking their truths.

500 words a day is a decent novel length in under 6 months.

250 words a day is a decent novel length in a year.

That's a page or less.

Write what you can.

#LianaEdits #AmWriting #SkyWriters

The thing about so-called generative artificial intelligence is, the intelligence isn't artificial. It's real. It's OURS. The techbros stole our intelligence (our data, our thoughts, our stories, our art) and used the software to regurgitate it and spackle it together into digital particleboard.

Man, Musk either got his ass whooped way too much as a kid, or not nearly enough.
I'm betting it's the latter.

Another great writing workshop today at The Parlour Tabletop and Tome in Quakertown. Had some returning participants. Had a former student show up. Major fun.

Stay tuned for details on the next two:
Character building on April 13.
And First Page workshop on May 18.

Today's typo:
My Fuction Writing course

Upon this response, JK burst into a million shards and a great wind scattered her unhappy soul beneath the arc of a newly formed rainbow.

[“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.”]

Ursula le Guin, on the accusation that fantasy is an escape from reality