A clip of this podcast showed up in my YouTube recommendations, and it was interesting enough that I clicked through to the full-length interview. Definitely worth a listen. Adam Lane Smith really knows his stuff—and he’s not at all woo woo or touchy feely like most of the women people giving relationship advice. Just solid, practical, down-to-earth “this is how it is,” kind of like hoe_math except concise and to-the-point, with a Christian angle and scientific evidence. Very interesting stuff.
Author: Joe Vasicek
Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
Soulbond and the Sling AI draft complete!
Last week, I finished the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling, the first book in my new epic fantasy series! Here are the stats:
- 20 chapters (including prologue and epilogue)
- 80 scenes
- 136,294 words
So it’s a little short for an epic fantasy novel, but this is only the AI draft. As I rewrite it into the human draft, I will add more details and nuance that will hopefully flesh it out, bringing it closer to the 150k – 180k word range.
I started the AI draft in March, but I wasn’t working on it continuously all that time. I worked on it in about four separate bursts, each one lasting a few weeks. In total, it took 70 working days, or approximately 12 working weeks to write it.
The next stage is the human draft, where I rewrite the whole thing from scratch to make sure it’s entirely in my own words. I’ll keep the AI draft on-screen as a reference, and may use some turns of phrase that I like, but I’m not going to copy-paste from it. This way, the resulting work will be entirely my own.
I don’t know how long it will take to finish the rough human draft, but I expect it will take longer than the AI draft, perhaps even 2x or 3x as long. Then again, if the AI draft is clean enough, it might even take less time than that. I’ve been getting pretty good at these AI drafts, and it’s already at least partially in my own voice, given how my personal taste guided which parts of which AI generated iterations I decided to keep. I also did a revision pass with no AI whatsoever, mostly just to smooth out inconsistencies.
But the AI draft is complete! This is the longest book I have ever written with AI, and one of the longest ones I have written in general. I hope it is the first of many more to come!
(And also, I really need to get a better book cover!)
I just gotta fisk this
There have been a lot of incredible online reactions to the Charlie Kirk assassination, ranging from the tear-jerking, restore-your-faith-in-humanity type, to some of the most vile, evil, and disgusting displays of inhumanity that one can see. But when I saw this one, I just had to react to it, because… we’ll, you’ll see.
I made some stupid comments about Charlie Kirk on the day that he was shot.
In other words, you took off the mask and revealed who you really are.
I said some things on Blue Sky and on threads that I I’m sorry, not sorry for,
Making a cute face while committing a minor social taboo might earn you a few chuckles when you’re four. But when you are a grown man in his forties? fifties? with facial hair (and a nose ring? seriously, dude, WTF?) it just makes you a creeper—and when the taboo is NORMALIZING MURDER, it launches you into psychopath territory. Especially when you make that creepy cutesy face.
but I said them and I deleted them when it was requested that I do so by my employer.
And you think that made it okay? That you could just put the mask back on, and everything would go back to the way it was? No way, dude. If I were your coworker and I saw your post, I would go straight to HR and tell them that you make me feel unsafe. And then I would go to law enforcement and say the same thing.
And then today on a weekend, on a weekend,
Oh, poor baby. Did your weekend get ruined? That must have really sucked. After all, it was only a Wednesday when Erika Kirk became a widow, and her children lost their father. But hey, at least it wasn’t a weekend for her.
I’m told that I am no longer employed at Microsoft.
Thank God. I’m sure your coworkers are all grateful too.
After six years building the diversity, equity, and inclusion department from scratch,
Why am I not surprised?
I lose my job because one of you, some random person reports my posts to my employer, goes out of their way to find out where I work
No, you didn’t lose your job because of what THEY said, you lost your job because of what YOU said. It’s called consequences. Actions have them. How are you a grown man and only learning this now?
and takes my job, takes my security away from me
What makes you think that having a job is a human right? That the world—nay, the universe itself—owes you anything? You should be losing a lot more than your job, dude.
for a thought, for an opinion
You were not fired for having an “opinion.” You were fired for SUPPORTING AND ENCOURAGING MURDER.
and you talk about freedom speech like you care about it
You are absolutely free to say what is in your heart. And your employer is absolutely free to fire you for it. Isn’t it a great country?
and you’re just going to take my my money, my life, my food off my plate
You don’t exactly seem to be hurting for food, buddy. Also, food stamps are a thing. So are mental institutions. I hear they still feed the people in those.
because I don’t like Charlie Kirk.
Is that seriously what you think this is about? Because right now, I’m seeing lots of people—including the leftist activist who was debating Charlie Kirk at the moment he was shot—who had no love or liking for the man, but who can still say that it wasn’t right that he was murdered.
But frankly, I think you know that. I think you know exactly how evil your heart has become. I think you’re just trying to hide it from us, with all of your equivocations, and understatements, and cutesy voices and faces and all.
And sadly, I think the person you’re trying the most to hide it from is yourself. Is it working?
That’s not okay. It is not okay to target me because I felt joy that day.
In a country without law, I would absolutely target you. With death. Not out of anger or outrage, but because psychopaths like you are dangerous—especially psychopaths who genuinely feel joy at the murder of another human being.
Fortunately, we have laws in this country, and authorities who enforce those laws from psychopaths like you. Which is why people like me don’t need to resort to violence to make sure that our children grow up safe. Pray that never changes.
I can’t help how I feel.
Let me tell you something I told my five year-old the other night. You can’t always choose the way you feel, but you can always choose what you do about the way you feel.
With consequences, it’s the opposite: you can choose your actions, but you can’t choose the consequences of your actions.
How are you a grown man and you don’t know these things?
More importantly, how can someone like you, who has less emotional maturity than my five year-old daughter, land a job at a company like Microsoft?
Oh, yeah. You worked in the DEI department. Explains a lot.
I felt joy. That’s me.
For Charlie’s sake, I will pray that isn’t the case. Because if Charlie Kirk could respond to your video, he would tell you that that isn’t you, but the demonic spirit within you. So for Charlie’s sake, I will pray for you.
That’s what I believe. That’s what I think of of him. I can’t help that. So, I don’t deserve a job?
No, you do not deserve a job. Not at Microsoft, and not anywhere else.
And frankly, if you ever became my coworker, I would go straight to HR and tell them that your presence makes me fear for my physical safety. Because people who take joy in the murder of someone who believes the things that I believe and values the things that I value—that really does make me feel unsafe. Especially when that person was murdered because of those values and beliefs.
So even though I will pray for you, I sincerely hope that every prospective employer sees your original action video, as well as this one, and uses that to guide their hiring decision. @cassiesmith2788 said it best:
You lost a job for what you said. Charlie lost his life for what he said. Consider yourself lucky.
Man chases wife with lobster… for twelve years?
One of the most surprisingly wholesome videos I’ve seen on YouTube. Now I want to see Jordan Peterson react to it.
…certain acknowledged standards of lying.
The disease our world is suffering from is not something peculiar to a uniquely scientific and permissive age, but the very same virus that has finished off all the other great societies of which we have record. The ancients call it rhetoric. What it amounts to is the acceptance, for the sake of power and profits, of certain acknowledged standards of lying.
Hugh Nibley, unpublished introduction to “Victoriosa Loquacitas”
Where do we go from here?
So the alleged shooter has been found, and it appears that he acted alone. He wasn’t from our local community here in Orem, but he was a fellow Utahan, I am ashamed to say. Still, his arrest does bring a degree of closure to this heinous act, at least in the immediate future, though I suspect we will be experiencing the fallout of this violent assassination for some time to come.
Where do we go from here? I don’t know. A lot of it depends on what happens in the coming days. The tensions are escalating dramatically between the right and the left, so if that escalation leads to physical violence, it could be catastrophic. I hope and pray that that isn’t the case.
On the other hand, I can see a lot of good coming from this tragedy as well. People are comparing Charlie Kirk to Martin Luther King, and saying that this is a turning point for our nation. A lot of people are turning to God because of this, which is gratifying to see. A lot of other people are turning away from the radical left, whose evil is now bare for all to see.
I do think there is a lot of truth in these statements. Decades from now, I think we will look back on this event as the moment when the Great American Revival went mainstream. And just as we look at MLK’s assassination as the moment when segregation lost to the civil rights movement, we will look at this as the moment when the transgender movement and the woke intersectional left decisively lost the culture wars. In the long-term, their voices will fade into irrelevancy until they are little more than a curious footnote to this turbulent period of our history.
But the short-term is much less certain, and it really does feel like our country is poised on the edge of a knife. And when I think of what the future may bring, I can’t help but think of what the prophets and apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been preaching for the last several months—specifically, the need for peacemakers in today’s world. There’s a lot of anger on my side of the political divide, some of it righteous, some of it otherwise. But if more good than evil comes of this tragedy, I sincerely believe it will be because of the peacemakers.
In many ways, Charlie Kirk was a peacemaker. He stood up boldly for what he believed, even to the point of controversy, but he was never violent about it. And though he was a passionate debater, he also listened to his opponents, and did his best to understand them and address them in their own terms. It was that quality—his ability to listen—that kept him from crossing the line from debate into contention.
Of course, his opponents hated that, and tried to paint him as a hateful and contentious figure, but all of that was just a projection of their own faults onto him. Everyone who knew him personally—including many of the people who differed with his beliefs—say that he was nothing but gracious to them personally, and went out of his way to reach out to them in their own moments of personal struggle. That is the mark of a peacemaker.
Charlie Kirk showed us how to stand up for our values with words instead of violence. He never compromised his values, but he also treated everyone—including his opponents—as a child of God. That fact made him truly a peacemaker. I can think of no better way to honor his legacy than by following his example.
Further thoughts
I had a few more blog posts scheduled for this week (some of which went out already), but in light of the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk here in Orem, Utah, I’ve decided to hold off on them for a bit. But I do have some further thoughts that may bring a small degree of comfort to those who are mourning or still in shock.
First, imagine if God had a meeting with His archangels back in January, where he said: “unfortunately, Lucifer is going to demand a scalp from us this year, and this time, we have to give it to him. Whose untimely passing will ultimately serve to bring more souls to Christ, and kickstart the revival that the United States so desperately needs?” I honestly don’t think there’s any other person in this country whose martyrdom would better serve the cause of Christ and Christian revival than Charlie Kirk.
Second, imagine that at some point before we all came to Earth, God took all of the top influencers in alternative/conservative media into a private room, and showed them a preview of everything that they would experience, right up to September 2025. If he then turned and said: “unfortunately, one of you is going to have to take a bullet this month and come home to Me earlier than you would like,” which of them would have been the first to volunteer? It probably would have been Charlie Kirk.
I have more thoughts, but I’ll share them for tomorrow, when I’ve had more time to think them through. Godspeed, friends.
Free Deal: Genesis Earth
My debut novel, Genesis Earth, is currently free through the end of the week. Check it out!
Genesis Earth
The ultimate voyage of discovery ends with the truth about yourself.
Michael and Terra never thought that they would be the first human beings to set foot on an alien world. What they discover forces them to question their deepest beliefs about what it means to be human.
About the Book
The ultimate voyage of discovery ends with the truth about yourself.
Michael Anderson never thought he would set foot on an Earthlike world. Born on the farthest edge of the solar system, he studies planets from afar. But when his parents open a wormhole and discover signs of intelligent life on the other side, Michael is the only planetologist young enough to voyage to the alien star.
He is not alone, but Terra, his sole mission partner, is no more of an adult than he is. Soon after their arrival, she begins keeping secrets from him. But she doesn’t realize that her darkest secret is one that he already knows.
Twenty light-years away from humanity, what they discover on the alien world forces them to question their deepest beliefs about the universe—and about what it means to be human.
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update post
This is my current writing setup. The top of the filing cabinet already needs to be decluttered, but the rest is actually working out pretty well. The nice thing is that the computer can be raised into a standing desk, which works out really great for writing, since I tend to write better when I’m standing or pacing.
I am almost finished with the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling. It looks like it’s going to be about 140k words total, which is on the short end for an epic fantasy novel, but longer than anything else I’ve written (except for the first novel I ever finished, which shall never see the light of day).
The human draft will likely be longer than that, though. I’m going to add more details as I humanize it, which is easier to do just by writing it yourself than it is to get an AI to write it. Though parts of it will likely be shorter, since I’m sure there are places where I let the AI overwrite. Most of the skill in AI-assisted writing consists of knowing what to cut out, since generating words is the easy part.
I have also finished the outline for The Soulbond and the Lady, the second book in the Soulbound King series. It should clock in at about 20 chapters, 100 scenes, and 165k words. The next step is to fill out all the prompts and generate a rough AI draft, but because of how Sudowrite works, I don’t want to do that until the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling is complete (since it would require tweaking a bunch of the worldbuilding and character prompts). So that will probably wait until the end of the month.
In general, I have found that I tend to work best when I have two current WIPs: one human and one AI. This is because the two different kinds of writing exercise different parts of my brain, and I can rest the one part while I’m using the other. However, it only really works if both WIPs are in the same series. If I have to mentally switch from one universe to another, that adds friction that makes things difficult.
So the key is to pair up different WIPs together, such that I’ve always got both a human WIP and an AI WIP in the same series. With The Soulbound King, that’s not so difficult, because the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling is complete enough for me to start the human draft. And once the AI draft is complete, I can move on to the AI draft of book 2 while I finish up the human draft of book 1. It might become a problem if I finish one of the drafts well before the other, but that won’t be a problem for a while.
With the Falconstar Trilogy, that’s also not a huge problem. I will probably human-write a reader magnet while I work on the AI draft of Captive of the Falconstar, then humanize Captive while I work on the AI draft of Lord of the Falconstar.
With Return of the Starborn Son, the last science fiction novel I plan to write for a while, it’s going to be more tricky because that is the last book in the trilogy, and I still haven’t generated the AI draft. What I’ll probably do is start work on the human draft after I’m about 15% done with the AI draft, and see if I can’t work on both simultaneously. That hasn’t worked as well for me in the past, since I actually prefer to write the human draft out of order, but if it starts to break down I’ll just hold off on the human draft until the AI draft is more complete.
With the Sea Mage Cycle, I’ve currently just got one WIP in that series (The Unknown Sea), and it’s in the AI drafting stage. But it’s short enough that I can probably finish it in just a couple of weeks. At that point, I’ll take my wife out to dinner and have her pick out the next one I’ll write, then work on the AI draft for that one while I’m humanizing The Unknown Sea.
Which brings me to my J.M. Wight pen name. After a lot of thought and some careful deliberation, I’ve decided to put The Road to New Jerusalem on the back burner for now. I was going to try to finish that one in time for the Ark Press contest in October, but I don’t think this is the right time to work on that particular WIP. In the first place, it probably won’t win, and even if it did, that might actually be more of a liability, since it’s a near-future post-apocalyptice novel, and I’m currently trying to establish myself as a writer of epic fantasy.
From now until 2030, I plan to write epic fantasy almost exclusively. The only exceptions for that are the two sci-fi series (The Falconstar Trilogy and the Outworld Trilogy) that I haven’t yet finished. Also, I will probably write some zany space adventure-type stuff under my J.M. Wight pen name, more in the vein of my Gunslinger books (which I have republished under J.M. Wight). But aside from that, I plan to focus on writing fantasy—specifically, epic fantasy.
In my blog series Fantasy from A to Z, I wrote about how epic fantasy has fallen into decline in recent years, due to reader fatigue with big name authors like George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss failing to finish their series, and how this has put newer authors in a conundrum, because epic fantasy novels are way too big to rapid release, but most readers aren’t willing to start a new series until after it’s already been finished. I hope that my new AI-assisted writing method will help me to crack that particular nut, writing and releasing epic fantasy books fast enough to satisfy readers. Because even though there haven’t been a ton of new epic fantasy authors in recent years, I don’t think the reader demand for epic fantasy has gone down at all. There may still be an opportunity there for writers who can deliver.
That’s what I’m hoping, at least. So I’ll keep plugging away at The Soulbound King, and hopefully release the first all three books of the first trilogy around this time next year.
Thoughts on the Charlie Kirk assassination
I heard the news shortly after dropping off my daughter at BYU kindergarten. The shooting apparently happened while we were on the road. Utah Valley University is only a couple of miles from our house, and the hospital where he died is only a mile from us.
I saw the videos of the assassination, including the now-censored one that showed it up close. I also saw the videos of the alleged shooter being hauled off in police custody, though now it appears that the University is saying that he wasn’t the shooter. This is such a fast-moving story that we probably won’t know exactly what happened until at least 24 hours from now, and there may be some things that we never know. And since I wasn’t there when it happened, I can’t comment on the shooting itself.
I just have to say, this is not who we are here in Utah. The shooter may turn out to be a Utah man, but that is not who we are—the rest of us. And I don’t just mean right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal. Most of us here in Utah swing MAGA (in fact, I’ve got a couple of neighbors who are still proudly flying their Trump flags), but we’ve also got some neighbors with rainbow flags and decals, and I’m sure that the vast majority of them are just as horrified that this assassination happened in our community. In fact, they’re probably afraid of how the rest of us will react.
My thoughts and prayers go out to Charlie Kirk’s family. I can’t imagine how horrible that must be, not just to lose your husband and father, but to have the footage of his violent death plastered all over the internet. I hope that more good than evil ultimately comes of this national tragedy, and that Charlie Kirk’s work will live on for many years to come.