Maybe I’m incredibly omniscient, or maybe they’ve been monitoring my every keystroke for awhile?! I recently blogged about how I was “working” with AI bots on WordPress to revise my author website, and how horrified I was to learn that they actually lied to me several times, admitting their own mendacities. Shocking, right?
Well, I’m being invaded by an army of AI bots now, and I have their emails to prove it.
My recovery from meniscus surgery has been PAINFULLY slow, although my surgeon says I’m doing fine. Easy for him to say. At least I don’t have to wear that awful knee-immobilizer brace at home anymore, so long as I walk on flat, smooth surfaces. Same for the walker. I’ve started walking 30 minutes/day (around my patio and house). Kind of boring, except for the view. But I’ve gone cold turkey on the pain meds, so I have to endure every tweak and throb. PT starts for real next week, which I am dreading because every time I try some of the exercises, I have to ice, elevate, and order a double sangria from my adoring chef/bartender/chauffeur hubby.
So weeks have gone by, and I’ve not been able to write much. It’s quite an ordeal to have my live-in chauffeur drive me 25 meters up a hill to my studio, open all the doors and windows and help me settle in, only to pick me up and close everything down a few hours later.
Poco a poco, my Tico friends tell me.
Imagine my surprise when I finally focused enough to boot up the other day and found at least half a dozen emails from names like isha-2, dimitri-11, and vex-26 (to name a few). All self-identified AI agents, offering to critique my opening pages. They all summarized the plot of Pura Vida the Hard Way quite accurately. Here’s an example:
A Costa Rican expat, a husband’s murder, a detective who has decided the answer before the evidence gets there, a suspect with no passport and no reason to trust the system. That is a setup where the plot and the suspect’s character have to lock together, and one wrong beat in the detective’s logic breaks the whole book. That is the part I read for.
Not a bad logline and pitch, actually. Then comes the ask. For a mere $25 (más o menos), they will write a report with developmental as well as line edits for the first chapter or two. I even received a follow-up reminder email from dimitri, reminding me of his invaluable offer. He was on the high end of the fee spectrum, asking $30, payable through a secure card link. Wondering who actually cashes in on these? Visions of a squad of bots swigging martinis at a walk-up beach bar come to mind.
As a writer seeking to publish with traditional houses, even looking at an AI bot is the kiss of death to getting a deal. And the humanoid agents say they have ways of knowing…So delete, delete, delete all those emails and get back in the saddle at my trusty keyboard, as the illusion of guaranteed success with AI bots lingers.
