I hope you’ve all been enjoying the Spring weather. I’m a keen gardener and I love this time of year when you can see everything pushing through and expanding by the day. I’ve planted up all my pots and sown a few lettuces (the only veg I attempt to grow), mown the grass once and started hanging washing outside. I always have lots of new ideas in the Spring and it’s a perfect time to start a new book, but I have to finish my latest first!
Book news
So my latest book was bought by an American publisher – can’t report the details yet, but will do soon. They naturally had notes on the book and so I am working away on them now, with a deadline of May 1st. They were brilliant notes and not altering the structure or feel of the book, so they have in fact been a pleasure to get stuck in to and I’m on track to deliver on time.
Film news
Filming is due to start on Imperfect Women in LA on May 7th. I can’t believe it’s so close. There have been some exciting cast announcements in the last week or so: Joel Kinnaman is playing Robert (Joel Kinnaman Joins Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington & Kate Mara In Apple’s ‘Imperfect Women’) and Corey Stoll, Howard (Corey Stoll Joins Apple Limited Series ‘Imperfect Women’). They’re joining Elisabeth Moss as Mary, Kerry Washington as Eleanor and Kate Mara as Nancy. Crazily excited for this!
What I’ve been reading
My two favourite reads this month were Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor.
I love everything Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes and Dream Count is as brilliant as all her others. The story of four women during and post covid, wrestling with the choices they made, the men they’ve loved and a sexual assault case that affects them all.
As a writer I’m lucky enough to be sent advanced copies of novels. Notes on Infinity is Austin Taylor’s debut and is sweepingly good. It’s the story of two Harvard science prodigies who create a billion dollar start-up that promises to help people live forever. But of course it’s really about the big questions of love and existence. Snap it up when it’s out in July.
Sunny days in Prague
My husband, Jamie and I spent three days in Prague in the week before Easter, which was so lovely. It was my first time there and the trip mainly consisted of walking and eating, plus a boat ride down the Vltava. We stayed at Le Palais Art Hotel, which I would highly recommend and I think the best place we ate was Mlynec, right by the Charles Bridge. There was a mini heatwave while we there, which wasn’t so great for walking through a city, but made everything sparkle. And I spotted One of the Good Guys in a local bookshop.
Being there made me think about how power ebbs and flows so much. Prague was once the centre of power of the Ottoman Empire and, reading about its history, it became very clear that the personalities of its dynastic rulers dictated its fortunes. We have always lived according to the whims of powerful men and so often those men are the wrong people to be in charge. So often they make terrible decisions or are just plain bad at their jobs. It all felt very pertinent to now and the caprices of leaders who damage our livelihoods and morale. But, also, Prague is an incredibly beautiful city, stuffed with culture that has survived the bleakest of times. We have to hang on to that right now, as our rights and believes are challenged and wars rage. We have to cling to that and remember that after the darkest nights the sun still rises and the world looks beautiful.
I was reminded of that sentiment when I went to see Gregory Porter in concert at the Brighton Dome earlier this month. He has a song called Ain’t No Love Dying here and he said that he expected we were all feeling weary, but that we mustn’t give up because hope is all we have. If we stop loving, we stop being human, he said and I thought of all the artists and creatives working away and spreading hope and it felt very beautiful.
Creatives against AI
I expect you’ve heard about how Meta has been using the work of authors to train it’s AI, Llama 3. There was a brilliant article in The Atlantic, in which they managed to get hold of an internal email chain between Meta execs discussing how they could obtain the rights to all our books. Because of our stringent copyright laws, they concluded that it would be too expensive and take too long, so the best thing would be to mine an illegal website called LibGen. LibGen has been operating for years and has, to date, stolen the work of around 7.5 million authors, by illegally uploading our work on to their site and then giving it away for free, without our permission. It’s been taken to court in America and lost, owing $15M in damages, which it still hasn’t paid because no one knows exactly who is behind it. But still, Meta thought it would be a good idea to ride on the coattails of this criminal enterprise. How sad that one of the world’s richest men condoned (we presume) stealing from a group of creatives who, on average, earn just £7,000 a year.
Brighton is full of writers and I’m lucky enough to be friends with quite a few. And as Peter Kyle, who is both the Technology Minister and a local MP, is on our doorstep, we thought he should answer our questions as to why he is letting Meta get away with this. So far we haven’t had much of a response from him, but we have things planned, so watch this space …
Read The Atlantic article here: The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem – The Atlantic