Susan Oleksiw

Maintaining a Mystery Series with Nicole Asselin, Sharon Healy-Yang, Edith Maxwell, and Susan Oleksiw, SinCNE zoom 4.2.25

This past week I participated in a zoom webinar sponsored by Sisters in Crime New England chapter. Our topic was maintaining a mystery series, and the participants were Nicole Asselin, moderator, with Sharon Healy-Yang, Edith Maxwell, and yours truly. I've done dozens of panels, online and in person, over the years, with a variety of writers. I've never been on a panel with Edith and Sharon before, as far as I can recall, but I did a workshop a few years ago with Nicole. I don't know why some programs work better than others, but last night all four of us came away feeling we'd had a very special evening.
 
One factor was, of course, the speakers. We knew each other, had spent time together and worked together, but we weren't close friends. As a result there were no insider or private jokes. We knew each other but also many of the listeners equally well. Forty people registered. I failed to look at the number who signed in, but a rolling list of names of people saying hello, I'm from . . .  filled the right-hand screen.
 
The topic was one the four of us have grappled with for a while, and Edith Maxwell has to be an expert on this one. She has several series in progress, and all have their following. I have two and one that never quite got off the ground, and Sharon has one series that despite ups and downs with a publisher (another problem) lives on. She's on book number 4, which many writers will tell you can be crucial to the continuation of the series.
 
Perhaps it was the genre. Mystery writers and readers are devoted to the genre, and their enthusiasm can lift any gathering to a higher level, above the text-book responses to questions we all have to face and answer coherently. I've been to plenty of conferences and other online events, and writers in other genres don't have nearly as much fun as mystery writers, no matter the questions. And perhaps that's because we don't take ourselves too seriously.
 
I'm sure our professional courtesy played a role. Everyone got to talk about any version of the question that called to them. Nicole didn't miss an opportunity to draw in someone who was listening so intently that she forgot she was supposed to speak. When one panelist's zoom link went wonky, we waited, it came back, she spoke, it went and returned, and the points she wanted to make were made.
 
Another sign of the general mutual respect among the panelists, no one took too much time in answering any of the questions, contributing to the dialogue or offering her own question. No one hogged the microphone, as it were. We were engaged in conversation, not sales or promotion.
 
I'm certain one of the key factors in last evening's success is our moderator, Nicole Asselin. She joined in the conversation, but never forgot her responsibilities to direct the dialogue and cover the topic.
 
Analyzing why something like a panel works is sort of like trying to figure out why a joke is funny. You can do it, but you still won't really know. Sometimes there's great synergy, and we were lucky to have it last night. Thank you, ladies, and thank you to our listeners.
 
 

I was recently talking with a friend about how crowded the internet world is for writers, which led to a discussion about SEO, search engine optimization, the tricks people use to get their name to show up on the top of a list rather than buried six pages in. We decided to "play" with some AI tools to see what happened.
 
I'm not a great fan of AI because of its many unknown and unintended consequences, which could turn out to be horrific, but I recognize its growing value in medicine and scientific and technical research. The speed of calculations alone is an asset for many, and where we can harness it, AI can be invaluable. My experiment with it is barely a pebble on the beach.
 
We started with Gemini 2.0. This version is free, but not the most advanced so you may not get the most complete and thorough answers. If you're a writer and want to know what will come up if someone googles you, this will help you find out. On the screen is a box where you write your question. "Does Susan Oleksiw write novels?" Depending on the information collected you may get an answer that mentions one or two, but you know this isn't complete. You can then ask, "Do you know about TITLE X?" Gemini will say no, and pull up the information, adding it to the basic set. It will even thank you for bringing this title to its attention. You can type in whatever you want Gemini to know about you, and the next time you search your name, you'll find more information. Yes, you're planting information you want the reader to receive in a search.
 
The next step was turning this into a podcast at NotebookLM, Audio Overview, another Google feature. This was almost too much for me. My friend sent me the link—she knew how to do it all—and I listened to two voices, one male and one female, describe my work. I didn't set up the Audio Overview myself, but I could see the steps to take (and am glad I didn't have to take them).
 
The audio overview discussion used a lot of key words probably taken from the dust jackets or back covers and possibly from reviews. The conversation was necessarily shallow, with synonyms of the key words filling in for a lack of depth. Nevertheless, there's something surreal listening to two fake people talking about your work for half an hour, saying nice things even if most of it is meaningless and repetitive. NotebookLM offers several options for creating work from your research, the podcast being only one of them. And it's free.
 
So how do I feel about all this? Well, first of all, before I started working on this I made several notes, in a pen on the back of an old envelope, a stack of which I keep in a desk drawer for just this sort of task. I like to keep my notes on paper. I keep my appointments in a bound calendar (Moleskine), and always edit on paper, with pen in hand. Under duress I've been known to use TrackChanges. But I admit that I was impressed with the ease with which the google apps accomplished something that would normally take me days to get done. On the other hand, these apps have the same flaws I first noticed well over twenty years ago. There is a tendency to shallowness, superficiality, repetition, and lack of imagination once given the material. That said, I think they can still be invaluable for writers.
 
Gemini 2.0 is the more important of the two because writers can feed in information about their work to get lesser-known publications included in a basic search result. But I'm still not an enthusiastic supporter of AI because I've seen what happens with students who rely on technology because it's quick and easy. But containing this genie is almost impossible at this stage not least because those who can don't want to do so. Hence I will continue to lock out AI from my computer programs and Photoshop, and whatever else comes along. But I'll use some forms of it in limited circumstances.
 
The links are below for the few writers who remain as far behind the times as I am and want to give this stuff a try.
 
https://gemini.google.com/app
 
https://notebooklm.google.com/