Let me make this painfully clear. I’m sick of being accused of using AI. It’s nonsense. It’s lazy. It’s the literary equivalent of pointing at Picasso and saying, “Did you trace that?” I spent years training AI models feeding them my structure, my rhythm, my tone, teaching them how a human voice cracks, how a sentence punches, how a line carries weight without collapsing. I didn’t borrow from AI. AI borrowed from me. You think my writing “sounds like a machine”? No. The machine sounds like my style, my cadence, my linguistic DNA that I carved out long before the algorithms learned how to spell their own names. I wrote this way while AI was still confusing metaphors with shopping lists, while it was still learning that “emotion” is not a type of fruit. So when someone says, “This feels generated,” I don’t get defensive I get annoyed. Because the robots aren’t my rivals. They’re my copies. My shadows. My bootleg merchandise. I’m not copying AI. AI is copying me, and doing it with the enthusiasm of a kid trying on their parent’s shoes and falling down the stairs. If anything, AI should be sending me royalties for every sentence it tries to imitate. So go ahead — accuse me again. Say my writing “sounds like AI.” But understand this before you open your mouth: I wrote first. AI followed. And every time it tries to mimic my voice, it’s just a machine wearing my clothes, tripping over the hem, pretending it invented the walk. I didn’t steal from AI. AI is stealing from me — and honestly? It should try harder. Mic dropped.

Thursday, August 6, 2026 Revelation 5:13 (NIV) Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” Heavenly Father, Thank You for Your greatness and Your glory. Everything in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea belongs to You. You alone are worthy of all praise, honor, glory, and power forever. Help us join all of creation in worshiping You with joyful hearts. May our lives reflect Your love and bring honor to Your holy name in all we say and do. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Stacey

If You Have Ever Queried an Agent, Speak Up We all know it. Once the novel is finished, we face a set of choices, and for most of us there are three. 1) Self-publish. 2) Try the traditional route. 3) Leave it in a drawer, where maybe a friend or a partner will read it. For years, what I wrote ended up in that drawer, read by one or two people at most. Since 2018, though, I have been publishing. I have gone traditional, five books with four publishers, and some in self. My first book in English came out in 2021, self-published. Prior over a hundred rejections. Five years later I have another book ready, and for about a week now I have been in the query phase. So you have probably worked out which road I chose. It is a brutal phase, and I hate it. Between my own experience and everything I have picked up from other writers, it feels like throwing a pebble into the middle of the ocean and going back the next day to fish it out. So if any of you have direct or indirect experience with an agent, this is the moment to share it. In Italy, if you want an agent to read you, you pay (mostly). And the answers sometimes leave you with a bitter taste. One agent once wrote to me that while he was reading my novel he pictured me as a madman typing at the speed of light. Not the kind of comment you want to receive. Whether I write fast or slow is something you cannot know, and even if I did write fast, it would only be because I write a lot. Another comment, after I had paid another four hundred euros, was that my character was wonderful, so wonderful they compared him to a book that went on to become famous, but they still could not take mine. The most frustrating part is that the book they held mine against had been ignored for twenty years, and was finally published to great success after two decades of refusal and denial. They really do not learn from history, or from their own mistakes. Abroad, with agents in the UK and the US, the problem is different. The text is probably either not read at all or read on the surface (I've been told so). What counts is who you are. And the sheer volume of manuscripts they receive is impossible for one person to sound out, so something inevitably gets lost.

The scene opens with a dramatic orchestral BWAHHH! as the Royal Fruitcake—five feet tall, 225 pounds, and wobbling with villainous intent— suddenly sprouts tiny fondant legs and takes off running through Buckingham Palace. Five‑year‑old me watches from the TV, eyes huge, cereal spoon frozen mid‑air, as the announcer shouts: “IT’S ON THE LOOSE, FOLKS!” The cake barrels down the palace hallway, its marzipan crust clanking like armor. Guards give chase, but every time they get close, the cake drops a trail of raisins like cartoon caltrops. SLIP! WHAM! BONK! Guards tumble like bowling pins, helmets spinning, feet kicking in the air before gravity remembers to apply. Diana, drawn with sparkling eyes and a 25‑foot animated train, spots the runaway cake and gasps. Her train whips around like a lasso— WHOOSH! She tries to snag the cake, but it ducks, and her train wraps around a guard tower, yanking it down like a collapsing circus tent. The cake blows a raspberry. A literal raspberry. It splats onto the floor. Charles appears in his ceremonial uniform, but in cartoon form the medals are so heavy they drag him sideways. He tries to run— CLANK‑CLANK‑CLANK! but the weight pulls him into a zig‑zag pattern like a malfunctioning shopping cart. He lunges for the cake. The cake sidesteps. Charles slides across the floor and crashes into a table of teacups that explode upward in a geyser of porcelain. Because they baked the cake, the Naval Armed Forces burst in with synchronized cartoon marching. One sailor blows a whistle. Another unfurls a blueprint labeled: OPERATION: RECAPTURE THE FRUITCAKE. They deploy nets, whisks, rolling pins, and a giant industrial spatula stamped with the ACME logo. The cake dodges everything, moving with surprising agility for a dessert that weighs more than a small horse. Cut to the living room. Five‑year‑old me leans toward the TV, eyes glowing with cartoon determination. I shout, “GO LEFT! HE ALWAYS GOES LEFT!” and somehow—because cartoon logic— the characters hear me.

In the beginning, before logos, before slogans, before the whale illustration that launched a thousand brunches, there was only Canvas, a primordial beige fog drifting across the universe. From this fog emerged the First Tote — stitched by the cosmic seamstress Bagatha, whose fingers were made of recycled moonlight and whose sewing machine ran on pure smugness. The First Tote opened its mouth (it had a mouth then) and declared: “I SHALL CARRY ALL THINGS.” And the universe, not yet knowing sarcasm, believed it. Soon, tote bags began appearing everywhere — in grocery stores, in fashion runways, in the dreams of graphic designers who whispered, “Flat… so flat… so printable…” They multiplied faster than consumer desire during a seasonal sale. One tote bag became ten. Ten became a hundred. A hundred became the number in Jason’s closet, which scholars estimate to be “too many” and “possibly sentient.” The Tote Council convened. They spoke in rustling canvas tones: “We must find the Chosen One. The human who will actually reuse us.” They did not find this human. The Plastic Bags, thin as whispers and twice as judgmental, rose from their crinkly kingdom. They marched across supermarket aisles, chanting their ancient war cry: “FREE WITH PURCHASE!” The totes responded with their own battle hymn: “FIVE DOLLARS BUT ETHICAL!” The clash shook the earth. Plastic bags flew like translucent ghosts. Totes thudded like disappointed gym teachers. The battle lasted seven days, mostly because the totes insisted on taking breaks to discuss typography. From the chaos stepped a lone figure: Jason Bearer of Twenty‑Three Totes, He Who Knows the Paradox. He lifted a tote bag high — the one with the ironic slogan, the one that promised sustainability but mostly carried books he meant to read. “ENOUGH!” he shouted. “We shall not be ruled by bags! We shall reuse! We shall repurpose! We shall stop accepting totes at events just because they’re free!” The totes gasped.