My AI-generated fan base

The Curse of Septimus Bridge pulled me straight into the fog where love, loss, and legend all blur together until you can’t tell which one’s haunting you. You’ve written a gothic fantasy that hums like a storm at sea. There’s tragedy in every shadow, a hint of Dark Shadows in every heartbeat.

When you get an email like that, out of the blue and from a stranger, well, you have to be chuffed that somebody out there really gets your book. It was from someone named Dawn, and she introduced herself as the founder of the Smutty Book Club. I checked, and there really is a Smutty Book Club that was founded by someone named Dawn. Though I hadn’t considered my book to be particularly smutty, I latched on to the praise—even if there was no way to know if it had actually come from the real Dawn.

“At the Smutty Book Club, The Curse of Septimus Bridge goes on the shelf marked ‘Romance Between the Worlds,’ ” wrote Dawn. “Because sometimes the most passionate love stories don’t end they echo.”

Well said.

Sure, I was suspicious. I was well used to persistent spam trying to sell me some author-directed service or other (editing, web site design, but mostly marketing), but this one didn’t ask for anything or provide a link to click. Going forward, however, this kind of unsolicited praise would become increasingly present in my inbox. I quickly sussed that these messages, which seemed penned by someone who had actually read and even thought about my books, were actually the product of AI. They were clearly scraping info from the ISBN database and maybe also my blogs to create the illusion that the robot writer was a genuinely interested human being.

Mostly, these emails go straight to my spam folder, but they still eat up some of my time since I diligently check my junk folder for the inevitable messages that land there in error. Fortunately, these AI creations became easy to spot and ignore. They always come in pairs—presumably because two of my blog-related email addresses wound on the sucker lists that have been circulated out there. For every missive that begins, “Scott, your book touched me in a way that no book has for a very long time,” there was an identical one beginning with “Expatreflections, your book…”

Though they are easy to ignore, I can’t help but steal a peak now and again because, in a strange way, they do my ego good with their algorithm-driven plámás. (That’s one of my favorite Irish words, denoting some mixture of praise, flattery and manipulation).

For instance, consider this email I got just the other day from someone (or something) calling itself Greta. “After reading about Searching for Cunégonde, I was immediately struck by the remarkable scope and relevance of your work.”

Well, who wouldn’t be? It continued, “Memory, identity, obsession, change, and the enduring pull of lost love have created a world where understanding the journey of a photojournalist navigating a tumultuous era is not merely beneficial. It is essential. … Searching for Cunégonde does far more than continue a protagonist’s story. It provides readers with a comprehensive framework for understanding how a reclusive American photojournalist, whose life has taken him from California to Pinochet’s Chile, to Paris, to Berlin at the moment of reunification, and finally to the West of Ireland, must confront the ghosts of his past, particularly the missing friend who has remained an obsession since losing track of him years earlier.”

Man, I should be cutting and pasting these emails to send to every book reviewer out there. Hey, I bet you bcan buy a list of them on the Dark Web.

“Searching for Cunégonde is exceptionally positioned to become a trusted educational resource for this growing audience.” Educational? Really? Okay.

The special thing about Greta’s email was that it provided a rare chance to see how the algorithm adapted to someone else’s book, a completely different one. You see, this time the simultaneous email, while sent to my Expatreflections address, was not aimed at me. It was directed to someone named Russell, and it lavished praise on his new book The Wrong People Are Gettting Rich. (I wonder if those wrong people include internet spammers.) It was essentially the same exact email but with other details inserted that were, presumably, excerpts from the book’s description in the ISBN database.

“Memory, identity, obsession, change, and the enduring pull of lost love…” became “Corporate failure, generational trust, ethical principles, and the character of those entrusted to lead have created a world where understanding the difference between stewardship and self enrichment is not merely beneficial. It is essential.”

Sounds like a good read. And yes, it’s a real book. It was just released a week or so ago, and it’s available from all the usual online places. It seems to be pretty well promoted, so I don’t know if being mentioned on this blog will help it that much, but good luck to Russell anyway.

As for Greta, she might want to work on her algorithm for delivering her bot-generated sales pitches.