Mark William Chase's Blog

The first real teaser trailer for Neuromancer is out! This was my favorite book as a teen, I don’t even know how many times I read it. Neuromancer defined the cyberpunk genre.

The casting is spot on. Case (Callum Turner), Molly (Briana Middleton), Armitage (Mark Strong)… They’re perfect.

My one and only gripe: Case calls himself a “console man.” No. Case is a console cowboy. Come on!

The popular and very awesome LitRPG sci-fi/fantasy book series, Dungeon Crawler Carl, is now being developed by Seth MacFarlane!

The show is currently being developed by Seth MacFarlane and his production company, Fuzzy Door. Matt Dinniman himself is set as co-executive producer on the series, though it’s not clear exactly how much creative control he will be given. I’m hoping he’s given some degree of creative control. Dungeon Crawler Carl is his baby, after all, and he should be the one to make any major creative decisions.

This comes on the heels of the announcement of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn movie adaptation and Stormlight series, so these are truly exciting times for sci-fi/fantasy on streaming!

I have made my stand on AI art (or AI in any creative endeavor) abundantly clear in my Never AI pledge. But Brandon Sanderson says it much more eloquently in his Dragonsteel Nexus keynote speech.

I’m not going to tell you everything he says, as I want you watch his speech. If you are still on the fence about AI generated art, writing, or music, or if you are trying to convince yourself that “it’s not so bad,” or if you find yourself asking “what harm could it do?” then please watch this video.

If you prefer to read it instead, you can find the full transcript here.

Wow! This is awesome news. Both Mistborn and Stormlight Archives are coming to streaming! Mistborn will be adapted into a series of movies, while Stormlight Archive will be a full streaming show. Alas, it’s on Apple TV, which I don’t have and don’t want. However, I am greatly relieved that it’s not on Netflix or Amazon Prime since they seem to cancel everything after just two seasons.

Brandon Sanderson has long voiced concerned over having his works adapted by streaming services, since many fantasy projects get canceled outright. Here’s looking at you, Amazon Prime, for canceling the Wheel of Time. But apparently, Apple convinced him, and they are planning to give him significant control as a writer, producer, and have grant him final approval. That’s extremely generous and extremely rare.

I can see Mistborn (era 1) working as three movies, one for each book. And their decision to make Stormlight Archives a streaming show is a good way to go since each book could easily be 3 or 4 movies. I wonder how many seasons it will take? Twenty? Thirty? Forty seasons maybe?

Anyway, you can read all about it here, here, or here!

I have just released my Never AI pledge.

I should not have to do this, but with the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence, the threat posed to all creative-types has never been greater. Writers, poets, illustrators, voice actors, composers, musicians, and artists of all kinds now face a truly existential crisis.

As creatives, we must stand together against the polluted tide of AI-generated slop that is flooding every nook and cranny of our world. We must also reassure our readers, viewers, and fans that we will never use AI in any of our works, in whole or in part. Ever.

Please take a moment to read my Never AI pledge. If you are a fellow writer or another creative type, I encourage you to take this pledge as well.

Thank you,

Mark William Chase

Following their massively insulting AI writing scandal, in which they said they would permit AI writing, then doubled down saying it was “classism” to discriminating against AI writing, Nation Novel Writing Month lost a huge number of subscribers and is now shutting down. And that’s on top of a prior scandal involving allegations of child grooming.

I deleted my account with them last year, and so did thousands of others.

So good bye and good riddance.

You can read more about the story here.

I have deleted my NaNoWriMo account and will never participate in their official event ever again, even if they reverse course on this issue.

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is held in November) has officially stated that they do not condemn the usage of Generative AI. This is a slap in the face to all writers everywhere.

The second paragraph and last paragraph are what’s critical. I’ve removed some content in the middle where they were defined “ableism” and “classism” for some weird reason, so if you want to read the whole article, you can do so on their zendesk site.

What this means is that the organization behind this once-loved novel writing event is perfectly fine with you generating 50,000 words of AI garbage to win their contest. NaNoWriMo was supposed to support and encourage the creative writing community. Instead, they have just thrown it all away.

Moreover, we should not forget last years other fiasco, with allegations of child grooming activity on their forums. If true, then that is even more egregious than this AI kerfuffle, and is reason enough to kick NaNoWriMo to the gutter where it belongs.

As writers, we must make our feelings clear on this matter. Don’t just boycott NaNoWriMo this year. Delete your account. It is time for us to walk away.

Back in 2022, massively prolific fantasy author Brandon Sanderson went out on a limb to stand by independent authors regarding some of Audible’s rather unfair practices. To gain some clout in this, he refused to release his Secret Projects books to Audible, instead selling them on small audiobook platforms.

Well, Sanderson just announced that Audible has finally listened! At least, a little bit. But as he himself says in his blog post announcement, “every little bit helps”.

You can read his big announcement about it here.

Audible had promised to increase rates (a little bit) and to give better reporting and transparency about how the audible credits are applied. And they will start paying monthly instead of quarterly. That’s good.

However, the big problem with Audible’s payments to authors remains unaddressed.

An audiobook might be priced at $29, and 40% of that is $11.60. That sounds great right? Authors must be making a fortune!

But no one buys audiobooks for that price. Instead, they by audiobooks using Audible credits, which are worth anywhere from $5 to $10, and 40% of $5 is $2. Yes, that all an authors get for an audiobook sale. The rest goes to Audible. And remember, authors must hire voice actors to narrate their book, costing thousands of dollars. So on top of the fact that we not only write the book, but must also pay $4000 to $6000 or more to make the audiobook, we also only get $2 per sale, and sometimes less.

But Audible still refuses to address that problem, which is of course the real problem.

Even so, Brandon Sanderson continues to fight the good fight and help the little guy. He has the most clout in the industry, and if anyone can bring the much-needed change, he certainly can!

The first full trailer for Zack Snyder’s two-part movie “Rebel Moon” has just come out, and it already has me excited! The three-and-a-half minute trailer is packed full of action, and introduces us to an all new sci-fi universe.

Zack Snyder originally pitched the basic idea for Rebel Moon to Disney as a possible Star Wars movie, but the Mouse declined. And so, Zack Snyder took the idea and create his own sci-fi epic to bring it to the big screen… Or in this case, actually, the streaming screen.

Part 1 comes out on December 22, 2023 (although the writer’s strike might affect that), and Part 2 is set for April 2024.

I know I haven’t posted any recently updates regarding my books, but rest assured–I am hard at work on the next epic series taking place in the World of Mythania! These are longer epic fantasy books, and I want to get most of the books in the series finished before publishing.

So it will take a bit of time, unfortunately. I’m not the fastest writer around. On the plus side, you won’t need to wait long between book releases once the new series is ready!

Stay tuned for more details.

– Mark William Chase