Book bloopers: when authors AI prompts are published in their novels

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Book bloopers: when authors AI prompts are published in their novels

26 May 2025

In the middle of steamy scene between the book’s heroine and the dragon prince Ash there’s this: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements:”

The excerpt is said to be found in chapter three of Lena McDonald’s novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2, although apparently it has since been removed from later editions of the book.

If you must use AI, especially in fiction work, remember the rules, whereby the first rule of using AI to write a novel, is not to be caught using AI.

For those wondering about the J. Bree reference, J Bree is a West Australian based author of fantasy and dark romance novels. The incident also indicates that Bree’s work has been appropriated by AI models, most likely without her prior knowledge, or approval.

Nam Le wins 2025 NSW Literary Awards Book of the Year prize

21 May 2025

Vietnamese Australian lawyer turned writer Nam Le has won the Book of the Year Award prize, with 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, a collection of poetry, in the 2025 NSW Literary Awards.

Earlier, Le was named recipient of the Multicultural NSW Award. Winners of the NSW Literary Awards, previously known as the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, which span eleven categories, including the people’s choice prize, were announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, on Monday 19 May 2025. The Book of the Year recipient is selected from the winners of the Award’s other categories.

Other recipients include Fiona McFarlane, who won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction with Highway 13, and Emma Lord, who took out the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature prize for her debut novel Anomaly. The full list of 2025 winners can be seen here.

The best books of the twenty-first century, so far, according to Kirkus Reviews

2 May 2025

Kirkus Reviews, an American literary publication, founded by teacher and editor Virginia Kirkus in 1933, has published a list of the best books — so far — of the twenty-first century.

It alarms me, as somewhat of a book reader, that I have not read even one of the fiction titles they list. I have seen a few of the film adaptations of some books though.

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The Emperor of Gladness, a new novel by Ocean Vuong

30 April 2025

The Vietnamese American writer’s second novel will be published next month:

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. Six years seems like a bit of time between drinks, but Vuong also published a book of poetry, Time Is a Mother, in 2022.

We Are the Stars, Gina Chick, tops 2025 Dymocks Top 101 Book poll

7 April 2025

We Are the Stars, by Australian author Gina Chick, has claimed the number one spot in the 2025 Dymocks Top 101 Books poll. We Are the Stars also enjoys the distinction of being the first work of non-fiction to top the the list in almost twenty years.

Notable fiction inclusions (being titles I’ve also read) in this year’s Top 101 include Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, and Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

Every year, customers of the Australian bookseller vote to determine their favourite titles of the previous twelve months.

Signs of Damage, a new novel by Australian author Diana Reid

5 March 2025

Signs of Damage is the third novel from London based Australian author Diana Reid.

The Kelly family’s idyllic holiday in the south of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She’s discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy.

Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south of France? And what’s wrong with her now?

I’ve read Reid’s 2021 debut Love & Virtue and have her second, novel Seeing Other People, published in 2022, on my (lengthy) TBR list. Signs of Damage will be published later this month.

Somebody Down There Likes Me, a new novel by Robert Lukins

19 February 2025

Melbourne based Australian author Robert Lukins returns with a new novel, Somebody Down There Likes Me, a follow up to his 2022 book, Loveland.

As with Loveland and his 2018 debut, The Everlasting Sunday, Somebody Down There Likes Me, is set outside Australia, this time in a town called Belle Haven, in Connecticut, in the United States, during the final years of the twentieth-century:

Against the backdrop of the last decadent gasps of the twentieth century, the Gulch family have led a charmed existence in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Belle Haven, Connecticut. Now, the empire they have built is on the edge of collapse, and as the decades of fraud and criminality that lie beneath the family’s incredible wealth is exposed, the Gulch children are summoned.

I read Loveland a couple of years ago, and look forward to Somebody Down There Likes Me. I must also get hold of The Everlasting Sunday as well.

Book publisher Simon & Schuster says no to celebrity blurbs

17 February 2025

Lucy Knight, writing for The Guardian:

[] soon we may not see so many of these author blurbs — Sean Manning, publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint in the US, has written an essay for Publishers Weekly explaining that as of this year he will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.

A celebrity blurb is where a well known author offers some brief praise for the work of a new, or not so well known, writer. Examples could be something like: “a veritable page-turner”, or “a forceful new talent”. But it’s not always clear whether the author offering the endorsement has even read the book in question. That’s one reason why I take a dim view of celebrity blurbs.

I’m more interested in a novel’s synopsis, and then — where possible — seeking out some consensus as to whether the book is good or bad, through a website like Hardcover. After all, life is too short to spend reading novels you might not like.

But what surprises, and irks me, is that blurb is an official book publishing term. It sounds like a colloquialism, which it very much is, but it seems like a word people use because they don’t know the correct term to use. Sarney is a colloquialism, but sandwich is what is meant.

Wikipedia defines a blurb as a “a short promotional piece“, and celebrity endorsements aside, are usually more a short, yet enticing, summary of a novel. Here is the publisher’s blurb for Christian White’s most recent novel, The Ledge, which I wrote about last week:

When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered. It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed. In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.

That’s more like a synopsis, or even a summary, albeit with a promotional bent. Films are marketed with a similar sort of write-up, but synopsis is usually the go-to term, even though people sometimes call them blurbs. But blurb sounds like the sort of word I might otherwise be, maybe with some trepidation, looking up on Urban Dictionary.

Henceforth, I shall do away with the blubbery blurb, and go with synopsis or summary.

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The Ledge, a thriller by Australian author Christian White

12 February 2025

A disturbing development in a twenty-five year old missing persons case sees a group of old school friends reluctantly reunite. All have reason to be fearful of the re-opened police investigation, and all are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure they are not incriminated. It’s not easy to be sure who to trust, or exactly who knows what about that tragic day many years earlier in 1999.

The Ledge wouldn’t be a Christian White novel if it didn’t feature a twist that leaves you breathless, and wondering whether you’ve been paying attention. White’s fourth novel will not let you down.

I read The Ledge in three days, a sprint compared to my usual glacial pace, often reading until two or three in the morning. Calling this a page-turner is an understatement.

I also suggest you read White’s earlier novels, The Nowhere Child, his debut, and The Wife and the Widow, his second novel, which in trademark style, are also set across dual timelines. I’m yet to read his third novel, Wild Places, published in 2022. I’ll need to catch up on some sleep before then.

The Shortlist for the Australian 2025 Indie Book Awards

20 January 2025

The Australian Indie Book Awards span six categories: fiction, non-fiction, debut fiction, illustrated non-fiction, children’s, and young adult, and last week the shortlist for the 2025 awards was published. My main interest is fiction, where Dusk by Robbie Arnott, and The Ledge by Christian White, are among contenders in that category.

I’m yet to read Dusk, but finished The Ledge in four days flat. Record time, for me, in recent years. White’s thriller/crime stories, with twists that leave you breathless, are verifiable page turners. That is was holidays contributed to the fast read. On that basis, The Ledge is my favourite in fiction. The winners will be announced on Monday 24 March 2025.

That might give me time to read Dusk, plus Cherrywood by Jock Serong, and Juice by Tim Winton, the other titles shortlisted in the fiction category, beforehand.

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