Just back from a Conference and book signing...

Warning… Longer post than usual.

I love attending the Superstars Writing Seminar, a business of being a science fiction and fantasy author conference. I’m just back from the annual seminar and their book signing event. The underlying theme of the conference was following your signal and not letting anyone deter you from knowing who you really are—and expressing your creativity.

Superstars just celebrated its sixteenth year. The networking and the professional development—learning the latest in publishing, best practices in marketing, techniques and practicing pitching to agents and publishers, and being introduced to the latest tools for authors makes it quite the experience.

This year I went with a number of goals in mind. I’m seeking a new editor—and think I have found two. I’ve also been working for years on a passion project, a children’s book, which I’m likely going to Kickstart in another year.

I’ve been looking for the right illustrator for years and think I’ve found a wonderful one at Superstars. The project isn’t for my normal reading audience, of course. It’s Middle Grade, after all, but I’ve been telling these stories to kids and families for over a decade and have always wanted to publish them and as Superstars promotes—I am following my signal—which is really powerful on this one.

Additionally, I’ve been considering my next project though I’m continuing to work on my Knights Tower books and Apocalypse Knot novels. You know I generally write in series, but this time I’m looking to do a standalone. What’s more, it’s an alternate history.

I pitched the idea to see if it was as good as I thought, based on a short story I wrote that was rejected for being, well, the beginning of a novel. I had a consultation scheduled with the editor who had rejected it due to that and thought, why don’t I use the time to discuss the direction of the novel to make it intriguing to a traditional publisher?

It was a great discussion and I’ve now a plan. I’ll be sharing more on what will be my next big writing project unlike anything I’ve tackled before as I begin writing it—and doing a bit more historical research... It needs quite a lot.

One of the most important sessions I attended at Superstars was about the Anthropic A.I. Copyright Settlement. If you aren’t aware, the Anthropic A.I. was trained on pirated books—more pirated books than you can imagine and many of them copyrighted. The authors affected, including me, were asked to opt-in or opt-out of the settlement recently.

There’s a great deal of misunderstanding about the settlement and a lot of authors haven’t realized how important participating in the settlement is—and how much money is involved.T There have been calls to opt-out and spend on the order of ten thousand dollars in legal fees to personally sue to an uncertain gain. This session cleared up a lot for me—including that the deadline for submitting my documentation to submit my claims is the end of March. I now know what I have yet to do. If you or an author you know was contacted and their books appear in the search—then they are entitled to be included in this $1.5 billion settlement.

One thing I didn’t know. A lot of authors may have more books under the settlement than they initially found in the database. Authors can try alternate spellings of their names, search by titles and ISBNs to learn if they’ve other books they need to submit documentation about. It made me realize I may have another book I can claim. Whether self-published or traditionally published, all authors should check to see if their books are part of the settlement—and if they are, pull together the information needed for submitting claims. Distributions from the settlement will begin in August 2026, with further distribution periods three months later, followed by another.

Books that are included in the settlement include even novels like Dune… This isn’t just about books published within ten years of Anthropic training their A.I.

I’ll save some of my other thoughts gleamed this year at Superstars for later.

Looking for free stories? My novella, Last Knight, a prequel story to my Knights Tower series, is featured this month in the promo, February Fantasy & Sci Fi Freebies, where you can find a lot more free stories to help enjoy a winter day.

Dare 2 Believe,

D.H.