The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.
Today marked two things: The first time that Emma and I were joined by Bill AND Mike for drinks, but also the return of some persnickety wi-fi issues. But who cares? The ground we covered more than made up for any small tech issues.
Here’s what we talked about in this episode:
Emma talks about joining a group called Future Fiction Academy and playing with AI tools. This devolved (ahem - Evolved - into a larger discussion of the use of AI for authors and creativity.
Bill asked about whether it’s wise for authors to subvert a genre’s usual tropes. This sent me down a rabbit hole about my book Dead City, which subverted tropes so hard, we had to move it into a different genre (biological thriller instead of zombie novels).
Emma informed us that brains are actually not very tasty. Silly zombies.
Should we insert pop culture into our books, or does that date them? I described my “blue jeans” philosophy of using timely references to answer the question.
We talked a bunch about when authors or filmmakers “futurize” stories in dumb ways. Nobody need an explanation of how everyday things work, people!
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