Isabelle Drake

After a faculty discussion on the invasion of AI, Chat GPT in particular, I did what I'm assuming many other writers have done these past few days. I asked Chat GPT to write me a story. Specially, I asked it to "write a 500 word story that reads like author isabelle drake."  It gave me a story. Yes, there is some satisfaction in knowing that Chat GPT can find me online and form a concept of what I write. But, can it write like me? In short, I don't think so. I have to admit, I like the story's final two paragraphs, the concept of them anyway. But the actual writing is pretty poor. Here's something I am sure of: readers prefer good writing over bad. So, I'm not worried about AI replacing me any time soon. The first paragraph is OK. But the literary wheels fall off pretty quick with the excessive filtering. In the story below, I highlighted the filtering by italicizing  it. Filtering is bad writing because its telling rather than showing  or describing. It...

 The Clandestine Classics, a collection put out by Totally Bound , combine the romance readers' love of classic literature with modern writing. My contribution to the line is DH Lawrence's 1922 novella The Fox.  My task: take his original novella and enhance and intensify the writing. Readers of erotic romance, read between the lines. Everyone else read that as: steam the story up. To prepare for the writing, I did research on DH Lawrence in general and that story in particular. Much of the scholarly literary criticism examined the 'love-triangle' between the three characters. I was unimpressed with that perspective. It didn't look like a love triangle to me, so I downplayed the triangular relationship and instead, in my enhanced version, emphasized the gothic elements of isolation, obsession, and coercion. I enjoyed the writing process as it gave me the opportunity to get inside another author's head and 'borrow' their voice. I added and expanded thro...

  Hit here for the February Newsletter

  I bought myself a bright yellow, velvet couch for my birthday. Naturally, I needed a place to put my feet, my laptop, or maybe a snack, so I bought this furry footstool.  There are more changes coming, but my work space is coming along...

I’m not good at following directions. I know this about myself. So as soon as someone tells me not to do something, or that something can’t, or shouldn’t, be done, that’s pretty much an engraved RSVP ASAP invitation to me. When that inability to do what I’m told and my insatiable curiosity intersect all kinds of wild things happen. In this case, the thing is, Make Me Blush, a warm-your-winter-up-read anthology of stories I’ve been told were too sexy for publication. Here’s something I know: women like to read stories about dedicated partners in sexually-charged situations. In my other life, I teach freshman composition. We write essays, the standard sort that college students have been writing for years. Thesis statements, MLA formatting, research. All the usual. One place where I get to mix things up is in the prompts. A while back I was wondering what my students thought of the 50 Shades phenomena, so I included a prompt about the widespread popularity of the series. The prompt e...

  hit here for the January newsletter Last spring and over the early part of the summer, I wrote the third book in my Tribe of the Undead series . The task was both exciting and intimidating. I've never written a book 3 before. (!!) I wanted to produce a story that would satisfy readers, of course. The story needed to continue on from the end of book 2, of course. The story needed to be similar in tone and vibe to books 1 and 2 but also different. Some of what I wanted to accomplish with the first 2 books had already been achieved. One of the main character's story had concluded yet the other main character's story had not. This sounds simple now, but it took me a while to 'get' that. In the beginning of the project, I did what I usually do, simply started writing. I created a new main character and wrote several chapters. Then, also as usual, I got stuck. This is where I understood that writing a 3rd book in a series, while challenging, also has perks. Many element...