Nick Kolakowski's Blog - Posts Tagged "book-release"
Release Day!
"A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps" is finally (finally!) seeing the proverbial light of day!
We're out in every medium; here are some easy links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.:
Paperback: https://goo.gl/SYmhSl
Amazon Kindle: https://goo.gl/XUgk92
B&N Nook: https://goo.gl/PAZiO9
Apple iTunes: https://goo.gl/kBSclb
And if you *do* pick up a copy, I'd greatly appreciate it if you left a review either here on Goodreads or Amazon; it'll help spread the word.
Happy reading!
N.
We're out in every medium; here are some easy links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.:
Paperback: https://goo.gl/SYmhSl
Amazon Kindle: https://goo.gl/XUgk92
B&N Nook: https://goo.gl/PAZiO9
Apple iTunes: https://goo.gl/kBSclb
And if you *do* pick up a copy, I'd greatly appreciate it if you left a review either here on Goodreads or Amazon; it'll help spread the word.
Happy reading!
N.
"Boise Longpig Hunting Club" is Out!
Hey everybody!
"Boise Longpig Hunting Club" is out in the wild! We got some early reviews that you should definitely check out:
Irresponsible Reader calls it fast, energetic, and fun. "It’s a violent, nasty hunt full of crazy characters, drug dealers, Aryan assassins, corrupt police — and people who are even worse than them."
Over at BOLO Books, there's also a nice tidbit:
And a solid review at Crime Fiction Lover. I like this bit in particular:
If that perks your interest, the Down & Out Books website has links to all the various store portals: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.
Boise Longpig Hunting Club
"Boise Longpig Hunting Club" is out in the wild! We got some early reviews that you should definitely check out:
Irresponsible Reader calls it fast, energetic, and fun. "It’s a violent, nasty hunt full of crazy characters, drug dealers, Aryan assassins, corrupt police — and people who are even worse than them."
Over at BOLO Books, there's also a nice tidbit:
"No one is going to accuse Nick Kolakowski of taking the easy way out. Idaho Noir might seem like a misnomer, but Kolakowski makes it work in unimaginable ways. This modern updating of “The Most Dangerous Game” might, on paper, seem completely implausible, but Kolakowski commits to the concept fully and by the end, readers will be shaken to the core. Since this is a Down & Out book, it probably goes without saying that the level of violence is profound, but I never thought it gratuitous or incongruous. This is not a book for everyone, but for those that enjoy this type of thing – and you know who you are – this might be the existential thriller of the season."
And a solid review at Crime Fiction Lover. I like this bit in particular:
"There are several good set pieces, including a shoot-out in an abandoned family hotel, and a couple of encounters with angry rattlesnakes. Kolakowski makes some attempts to draw some thematic parallels with his protagonists’ situation and the exploitation of the working classes by today’s business elites, but it is no more than window dressing for his pulp-infused thriller. He is sensible enough to make sure it doesn’t slow down proceedings."
If that perks your interest, the Down & Out Books website has links to all the various store portals: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.
Boise Longpig Hunting Club
'Payback Is Forever': Man vs. (Writing) Machine
When the pandemic started, I spent a lot of time playing around with a software platform called GPT-3, which generates text based on whatever you input into it; newspapers such as The Guardian have experimented with using GPT-3 to produce articles, for example. I uploaded ten years’ worth of my writing into the system, curious if it could imitate my style.
The answer to that question turned out to be “yes.” However, the output was also surreal, dreamlike; as it turned out, GPT-3 could mimic my writing style and word choice, but it had no idea how reality, physics, or human beings actually worked. The result was sentences like this:
“To the kid he was the fat man, sometimes acting like a moron in the heat of battle, blasting what appeared to be nails and a pumpkin at civilians, helping the dead back into the truck.”
Interesting, yes… but I don’t think any writer needs to fear for their job quite yet.
While I was playing around with GPT-3, I was also in the midst of writing a novella that was an homage to Richard Stark’s Parker novels. It was set in the 1960s and involved a master thief named Miller fighting to survive in the wake of a botched amusement park robbery. If you’re a crime-fiction fan, you’ve read that kind of tale before; the Parker novels have spawned hundreds of imitators. I struggled with how to give the proceedings a new twist.
You probably see where I’m going with this: I figured out how to blend my work with GPT-3 into the novella, which is titled “Payback Is Forever,” and comes out today from Shotgun Honey (paperback is available on your favorite bookselling sites and the Shotgun Honey website, while Kindle is via Amazon). It’s not the first book at least partially written with the assistance of an A.I.—almost forty years ago, William Chamberlain used a software program called RACTER to write “The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed”—but I like to think I’ve stumbled on a particularly organic way to blend man and machine.
If you read it—and I sincerely hope you do—you’ll have to let me know which parts you think were written by me, and which were written by “synthetic me.”
The answer to that question turned out to be “yes.” However, the output was also surreal, dreamlike; as it turned out, GPT-3 could mimic my writing style and word choice, but it had no idea how reality, physics, or human beings actually worked. The result was sentences like this:
“To the kid he was the fat man, sometimes acting like a moron in the heat of battle, blasting what appeared to be nails and a pumpkin at civilians, helping the dead back into the truck.”
Interesting, yes… but I don’t think any writer needs to fear for their job quite yet.
While I was playing around with GPT-3, I was also in the midst of writing a novella that was an homage to Richard Stark’s Parker novels. It was set in the 1960s and involved a master thief named Miller fighting to survive in the wake of a botched amusement park robbery. If you’re a crime-fiction fan, you’ve read that kind of tale before; the Parker novels have spawned hundreds of imitators. I struggled with how to give the proceedings a new twist.
You probably see where I’m going with this: I figured out how to blend my work with GPT-3 into the novella, which is titled “Payback Is Forever,” and comes out today from Shotgun Honey (paperback is available on your favorite bookselling sites and the Shotgun Honey website, while Kindle is via Amazon). It’s not the first book at least partially written with the assistance of an A.I.—almost forty years ago, William Chamberlain used a software program called RACTER to write “The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed”—but I like to think I’ve stumbled on a particularly organic way to blend man and machine.
If you read it—and I sincerely hope you do—you’ll have to let me know which parts you think were written by me, and which were written by “synthetic me.”
