The problem is multi-fold. Not only are these AI books causing people to plough through mediocre rubbish before it's clear it's AI, but the reviews may be fake too. It may soon be the case that the entire internet will feel like a soul-destroying, hall-of-mirrors hallucination.

Or to quote Gary Larson, the third personality type says "is the cup half full, or half empty, or both? I don't know, I don't know..." and the fourth personality type says, "Hey, I ordered a cheeseburger!!"

That's true, but you have to get past the literary agents and publishers to be published, commercially, and benefit from the publisher's promotions, high profile etc etc, and they are very keen on trends. One way to solve this is to be original within a genre that is trendy. #writingcommunity

Writing as a parent?... I think you need to wear some kind of superhero costume! :-) #writingcommunity

This is critically important in any drama. One of the criticisms levelled at the latest generation of action heroes is that too many of them are perfect; they have no internal flaws to resolve and overcome in the story; the so-called 'Mary Sue' problem.

I don't think many people realise the intensity of childhood feelings. The fact that a child is having them doesn't make them less important; they're more intense, I think, that adult feelings, and they can last a lifetime.

...ideas. Other herbs aren't so useful, which is why many fairies talk a lot of tarragon, and sometimes, complete basil."

Yes, it's never mentioned - and Grant & Naylor explained that they came up with Red Dwarf after writing ideas on a napkin - but the similarities are overwhelming: a comedy about a couple of losers on a spaceship carrying out dangerous tasks and encountering weird aliens and sentient robots.

Lovely work. The problem I always have is to produce a set of illustrations of different characters that retain the same style. I can get so bogged down and frustrated that I can view the success of my first illustration as a curse! :-/

It's a lovely film. The beach ball alien is great! Fun fact #1: The actor who played Pinback wrote the original script for "Alien". #2: It's pretty obvious that Grant & Naylor based the wonderful "Red Dwarf" TV series on "Dark Star" but, understandably, they'll never publicly admit it.

Yep, I have chewed over this issue myself. In the end, I concluded that as long as most of them are roughly the same length, (which helps with rhythm) and even the longer ones aren't more than twice as long as the short ones, I was fine. Most importantly, none of my readers have ever complained.

Tao Te Ching #76: “When living, people are supple and yielding; when dead, they're hard and stiff. When living, animals and plants are soft and pliant; when dead, they're withered and brittle. Thus, being inflexible and unyielding is part of dying; being flexible and yielding is part of living.”

It was the quality of many of the Star Trek stories that captivated me; the ideas were brilliant. Also, the personalities of the characters were endearing, and for the time, very progressive. In terms of thought-provoking ideas, very little has come close to the imagination of that period.