Anyone interested in speculative fiction might want to check out my upcoming sci-fi novel, Rise, Tomorrow Girl, which I'll be releasing as Cara Martin. In the near future seventeen-year-old Canadian Leanne Khoury watches a second twenty-first century global pandemic—this one highly fatal in young adults—steal the life of her best friend. When Leanne is stricken ill too her affluent parents have her cryogenically frozen in a facility performing experimental procedures. Reanimated and cured of virus years later, Leanne isn’t the same. Her awareness intermittently ‘disconnects’, stalling her body and mind. But it’s more than that. Snatches of memories from evolutionary ancestors bleed through her consciousness, leaving her feeling as unnatural as Frankenstein’s monster on the inside. 

Nearly 1.5 billion people perished during the pandemic, decimating a generation, and when Leanne's released from the cryo facility she struggles to integrate into a Canada and world that has technologically and socially moved on without her. Although the virus is no longer a threat, Leanne is far from safe. In the United States organized extremists threaten legitimate government, regularly committing attacks on U.S. soil. Then radical American expansionist soldiers invade parts of Canada and Leanne must flee Toronto, along with others not accepted by the radical invaders, to ensure her survival.

Book release date: June 21, 2024
ISBN-13: 978-1-7383458-0-9
EBOOK: 978-1-7383458-1-6

 

The below entry has been cross-posted to my www.justlikeyousaiditwouldbe.com site. With Microsoft Designer in free preview I recently fooled around with the software—purely for fun—and ended up falling down a rabbit hole generating AI photos of Amira and Darragh from Just Like You Said It Would Be. I'm not going to tell you how many images I ended up with (a completely wild amount! Also, a bizarro image of a 60s glam rock band fighting off a bunch of shark men but let's leave that aside). The first problem was that Dall-E didn't know what Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge looked like and in response to my description continually offered up a slew of other bridges that sometimes weren't even footbridges instead. There were also a few issues with unusually large, weird-looking eyes and the well-known problem that AI often has generating hands. Other times the couple (or sometimes half of them) simply didn't match the images of Amira and Darragh I have in my head. 

If you've read Just Like You Said It Would Be you've probably formed your own images of the characters which might be a little different than mine, but here are some of what I consider to be the best Amira and Darragh on Ha'penny Bridge photos generated by Dall-E. You might notice I relocated the couple to Grafton Street for several of the below images. I'm also going to thrown in a few solo examples of each of the characters where Dall-E got Amira right but not Darragh and vice versa.

 

 

A and D on Grafton Street:

 

 

 

 

The faces are good but check out the hand freakiness in the one below!

 

Not sure what the deal is with the roof on this bridge but it's interesting:

And here we go with some successful AI generated photos of Amira:

 

 

 

 

 

Now for the Darragh offerings. There's alotta hair in this first one but it works.

 

 

 

Supposedly on Grafton Street but there's actually no curb on that street since it's pedestrian.
 

 

 

 

Finally, I described Amira and Darragh on Grafton Street separately and ended up with results I was pleased with, although Dall-E once again failed to understand that Grafton Street is pedestrian. It also placed a London bus than a Dublin one in the background (Dublin's city buses aren't red). Other than that the general architecture of the setting has the right look.

 

 

 

I wouldn't use these professionally in any capacity for ethical reasons concerning AI's impact on the arts, but it was a fun experiment for sure and I'll be posting a few other photos relating to Shantallow on my Instagram soonish.