This week, I signed a contract for the second book in the Monster College Chronicles series, Monsters Play the Field. It incorporates friendly reader feedback from Book 1, Snakes in the Class. Readers wanted a monster homecoming and football game, swamp creatures, and trouble at the nearby fertilizer plant. I’m going to give it to them.
How did I come up with this series? When an editor at City Owl Press made a request for a monster romance set on a college campus — Monster High but at a college –I took up the challenge. Colleges and monsters and romances are all in my realm. Not only have I been a professor for decades, my grandparents were a college football coach and a college librarian. Some of my first memories are on a campus, although they are of buildings and vending machines, not lofty ideals.
My novels don’t feature student romance—it seemed too voyeuristic given my role as a professor. I decided that faculty-staff romance was more appropriate, although—disclaimer—I’ve never had such a romance. I decided that, at least in my first book, I would stick with heterosexual monster-monster romance. It features two lonely faculty/staff monsters kindling a relationship within the satirical backdrop of unfriendly humans, punishing demigods, and budget cutting administrators. You can think of this series as the monster version of Abbott Elementary at a college level.
Monster romances feature a love interest who isn’t fully human. There are different criteria for monster romance readers and reviewers. Some only want a human plus a monster, some only want monsters that don’t look human (a lizardman or minotaur for example). What’s the appeal of this genre? Monsters are a type of “other” which allows readers to explore their feelings for an unfamiliar love interest.
The idea of an “Other” is common in gothic romance, science fiction, and fantasy. The “Other” is an unfamiliar or-nondominant social group such as an alien or robot or different type of creature such as an elf or a vampire. The “Other” concept allows readers and authors to explore in-groups, outgroups, colonization, racism, differences, and diversity without directly appropriating any people the author might not understand emotionally. What better way to do this than to explore it through a romance? Perhaps monster romance can undo a little of the harm done by politicians who use “the Other” to motivate people to vote for authoritarians, who are prone to finding an “other” to demonize. It’s been said before: love is the most powerful force in the Universe. And I’d like to add, education might be the second most powerful force.
Microsoft word has upgraded to include an AI program called Copilot. Since I potentially will be teaching Short Story Writing next fall, I tried it out to see what I’ll be facing.
As if on cue, the AI suggested a love scene set in a bustling coffee shop. She imagined two characters, both engrossed in their books, colliding as they reached for the same caffeine fix. Their eyes met over a spilt latte, and laughter bubbled up despite the mess. He offered to buy her a new drink, and soon they were deep in conversation, discovering a shared love for obscure sci-fi novels and bad puns. By the time their cups were empty, they had planned their first date to a quirky bookstore downtown. It was a charmingly chaotic start, fitting for a pair brought together by a combination of coffee stains and serendipity.
Next, I asked it to complete a scene in the novel I’m working on. I’ve been quite slow about writing this one, Book 2 in a series. I asked it to write about two characters resistant to taking off an article of clothing. The program captured details from the previous scene, in which the main character, Gormley, is sent to work at a fertilizer plant as a clandestine spy. She meets a worker with his jaw covered and suspects it has much to do with the poison and attempts to get a closer look.
Co-pilot came up with this:
His eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“This isn’t about trust,” I sighed, frustrated. “It’s about your health. Isn’t that more important?”
He shook his head stubbornly. “Not if it means exposing myself to you. I’ve got my pride. I won’t compromise my dignity.”
It’s stock, uncreative, and clearly favoring the enemies to lovers trope, but it did give me an idea of expanding the scene. Again, it’s sparse, like Hemmingway, and standard but I’ve read things like this. For someone wanting to stay in the “familiar” it’s okay.
Next, I asked it to add humor. Here goes;
He hesitated, then slowly, as if it pained him, he tugged his collar down to reveal his jaw. The sight was shocking. His skin was red and inflamed, with patches of what looked like chemical burns.
I winced, trying to keep my reaction to myself. “That looks serious. How long has it been like this?” I asked, reaching out to examine the area without touching it.
“A few weeks,” he admitted, his voice a mix of embarrassment and defiance. “I thought it would get better on its own.”
“Clearly, it hasn’t,” I said, frowning. “You need more than just salve. This looks like a reaction to something you’re exposed to regularly. Does your work involve handling chemicals without proper protection?”
He nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, you could say that. But I can’t afford to be picky about jobs.”
“Well, you need to be careful. This could get worse,” I said, my concern evident. “Have you tried using any protective gear?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes, but it gets in the way.”
“Not as much as this,” I pointed out, gesturing to his jaw. “You need to take care of yourself. Your health is more important than any job.”
He sighed, the weight of my words sinking in. “I know, but it’s not that easy.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever is,” I said softly. “We’ll start with the salve and see if it helps. But you need to promise me you’ll be more cautious. Deal?”
He nodded, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Deal. Thanks for the salve. And for the advice.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, relieved. “Now, let’s get you patched up.”
As I applied the salve to his jaw, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope. Maybe this was the first step in helping him turn things around. Only time would tell.
I highlighted a part which resembles something I might have written it on my own, minus the part about nodding. Nodding, shrugging, sighing, and smirking are overused gestures, small smiles. They are, it seems, part of AI writing.
I asked Copilot to add setting details. It reads as if Copilot has taken in a lot of steam-punk but it does add some vague and foreboding details of setting, which is good. It also adds more head nodding and it is really fixated on the “time will tell” line. In other words, AI brings about a sense of conformity to writing. One problem is, young writers often dwell in the land of conformity as they seek to fit in with their peers. Conformity lessens disagreement, or in the case of an author, lessens the chance of a bad review. As with Copilot, conformity teaches social expectations. Conformity can teach social norms. It can lead to a polarized society with an in and an out group, and in the case of Copilot, dampen aesthetics and bring about a certain dullness. Where are the figures of speech? Where is the originality?
We stepped outside the small clinic, the harsh midday sun beating down on us. The air was heavy with the unmistakable odor of chemicals, a constant reminder of the fertilizer plant nearby. The plant’s towering silos and sprawling pipelines dominated the landscape, casting long shadows over the surrounding area.
A group of workers in worn-out overalls and stained gloves trudged by, their faces etched with fatigue. The rhythmic hum of machinery filled the air, punctuated by the occasional hiss of steam or the distant clang of metal.
“You work here, don’t you?” I asked, breaking the silence.
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the plant. “Yeah, it’s not the best place, but it’s work. And work is hard to come by these days.”
As he walked away, disappearing into the sea of workers, I hoped he would take the advice to heart. The plant loomed behind him, a symbol of both livelihood and hazard. Only time would tell if he could find a balance between the two.
I fully subscribe to the Edgar Allen Poe school of fiction writing, in which you embrace some strangeness. Fortunately, my genre also embraces strangeness. However, I’m sure I’ve already been reading AI generated content in the news especially when it comes to tips such as how to paint your bathroom.
We’ve got a saying in analytical chemistry: an experiment can’t be any better than the sample itself. AI takes samples of writing from on-line content. Meta’s AI has taken two of my novels. For all you thinkers, keep putting out quality thoughts, keep thinking. AI can’t be any better than you are but it can be worse. It can make mistakes and push bad ideas.
Will the conformity of AI make us all less unique and more dulled? Only time will tell.
One of my favorite monsters is Frankenstein’s monster, the guy created by the scientist Victor Frankenstein from assembled body parts and brought to life by a spark of lightning. The careless scientist was hoping to bring his dear mother back to life. You can’t blame a guy for trying. But he violated a rule of science–he worked alone. The hapless creature he made was created in secret. Only alchemists work in secret. Although alchemists came up with some still used techniques such as distillation, their results aren’t reliable, reproducible, or even understandable. Some of their ingredients included “thoughts and prayers.” They’ve failed “peer review.” They weren’t necessarily mad scientists, just bad scientists.
The rules of new science are:
Never work alone in lab.
Keep a carefully detailed lab notebook.
Share your results with others so they can be verified and reproduced.
Thus, to work in secret is to bring about all sorts of trouble. In 1818 when the novel Frankenstein was published, scientists in Mary Shelley’s native England and in other countries close to them culturally were just beginning to move away from alchemy. Understanding electricity was the new hot topic. Batteries made from two metals and an electrolyte were a breakthrough in Italy. In the US, Benjamin Franklin established that lightning was a huge static charge and that it was attracted to tall pointy objects. No more would people see a lightning strike as being the hand of an angry God. It was Mother Nature.
Inspired by electric eels and frog legs jumping between the poles of a battery, humans hoped that electricity could “reanimate” dead things. Shocking executed people to see if they would revive was tried unsuccessfully.
As for Frankenstein’s creature, he turned out to be intelligent and sensitive, but without parental guidance. He resorted to menacing his creator once he had been firmly rejected and had no companion to turn to. Like all great writing, Frankenstein says something about the human condition. The novel makes a statement on nature and nurture and the cruelty of judging and rejecting someone based on their appearance.
Yet here we are, facing the same kind of science that made the creature and made him lose his mind.
You could say that science in the hands of politicians and loyalists is akin to an unsupervised child. It could become a monster or maybe just make a mess. We’ll see.
Catherine Haustein 