Scratch my back!

Portugal (5) -- Don Quixote

We're on our way to Portugal again, and Chang had the brilliant idea to put in a stop at Campo de Criptana in the La Mancha region south of Madrid, where Don Quixote fought the windmills. Here they are (the windmills):

Yes, folks, really, at least in the sense that one local tourist guide blandly assert that the Don fought the mills, while a second tourist guide suggests that these windmills must have "inspired" Cervantes in writing the pertaining episode. You say. We may have another post about this soon; there is something funny about these mills.

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More quotes in Michael Ampersant's Green Eyes

Back home --- a report from the trenches of global warming

(Another tourist-laden cruise ship on its way to Cannes)

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More quotations in Michael Ampersant's Green Eyes

Just do it!

Back home

We returned to France today. This was Bürchen, kissed by the autumn, yesterday. Photography by Jason Yoon, as always.

In the meantime, Michael signed a contract for a German publication of the GREEN EYES.

The Fountain of Geneva -- now out as Kindle book on Amazon

Ever wondered about the Fountain of Geneva, the world's foremost liquid monument? Michael has all the answers you need, now out as quick read on Amazon:

"Click"

"Grab your copy of this fun, sexy, and very cheeky short story featuring our dear Emperor Hadrian." --- JP Kenwood

"This is a really fun look at an aspect of the Roman Emperor Hadrian's time in Geneva, which amounts to one of the most zany sexual conquests I've ever read. Michael Ampersant delivers the story mostly through dialogue, which provides a very casual feel as if an eccentric neighbor is telling you this crazy wild happening in history while you were just minding your business. Grasping some of the surrounding details may require some Googling or a passion for history, but the core is very clear and concise. Well worth the buck just so you can know the story and can tell it to others!" --- James Beamon

This Is Heaven -- for the record (2)

For context see previous post. He're another ad:

More quotes in Michael Ampersant's This Is Heaven

This Is Heaven -- for the record

We've started some sort of add campaign for This Is Heaven on LustSpiel, much of which is NSFW. He's one post that's OK (dunno why it's blurred here):

More of this in Michael Ampersant's This Is Heaven

Inkitt (3) --- Bestsellers, Amazon sales rank, and much more

James Beamon has already reacted to our letter of yesterday about Inkitt, and here's his answer:

Your theory and discussion on Inkitt's underlying drivers with their touting of AI is definitely worth merit, to the point that I may write a follow-up post covering your analysis.  Oh, and to fill in some of the gaps of where their "bestsellers" lie, I present to you the Kindle Sales Rank Calculator:

https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-kdp-sales-rank-calculator/

As long as you don't put in commas, this thing will convert the current sales rank to how many books they're selling per day.  Virtually EVERY book I put into from Inkitt's best seller rank was selling less than 1 per day.  To put it into working context, anything higher than a Amazon rank of 100,000 will be less than 1 book.  One book, Eric Olafsson: Midshipman, is at 407,416.  Egan Brass, the guy I interviewed for "The Bright Side of Inkitt", has a series called the Esper Files and the first one is at 321,238, the second is at 650,597, and the third is at 891,640.  At that rate I imagine Egan hasn't sold a single copy of Book 3 in months.

James Beamon

Now I haven't looked at every book in their lineup, but the one book I did see that was doing worthwhile numbers was Chosen by Lauren Chow.  Her rank is 55,707 which translates to her moving about 5 books per day.

Inkitt (2) --- Inkitt and AI---are Inkitt's sales so bad that they have to keep their numbers under wraps?

Inkitt has defined itself as a publisher "without an acquisition department." It invites willing authors to put their manuscripts on its platform and promises to publish the best-performing ones as fee-yielding books. Performance, it claims, is measured by an AI-inspired algorithm. 

James Beamon

In January this year, James Beamon, one of these authors, engaged in a dialogue with the platform about said algorithm which yielded little but obfuscation and gobbledygook Inkitt-wise. I thought about this and sent him the following letter (mildly redacted): 

I have posted two or three stories about Inkitt and had a chance to observe the phenomena that you describe in your post (regarding the relationship between reading behavior and their analytical engine).
Before I started to write fiction, I taught Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam, the discipline whose name Inkitt invokes as its unique sales proposition (“our algorithm is AI”).

My hunch is that this algorithm is mostly ballyhoo.

Why?

The algorithm supposedly links reading behavior to sales success, so it either (a) knows, or (b) has learned how reading behavior predicts book sales.

(Ad a) Imagine that you are the programmer, or the team of programmers hired to code the algorithm. You will have some hunches as to how the reading behavior re successful novels differs from reading behavior re less successful novels (and, perhaps not coincidentally, these hunches surface in the answers we get from Inkitt (“readers unable to put the novel down”)). There's some obvious plausibility to this, but initial hunches are not Artificial Intelligence. They represent the natural intelligence of a bunch of kids (mostly/usually), who spend their nights with a cold pizza on their lap hired to write the code. In other words, Inkitt’s AI-touting sales proposition does not hold, or at least: it did not hold at the outset.
If Inkitt has an advantage NOW over traditional (human) intelligence (agents, editors), it would be on the data side. Agents or editors don't have data about the reading behavior of a manuscript that hasn’t been read by anybody except them, whereas Inkitt, 2.5 years into its existence, can claim to possess such data.

In eigener Sache

Perry Brass

The eponymous Perry Brass shared the link to Death on the Beach, and wrote:

My friend Michael Ampersant's story "Death on the Beach" has just been published at a site called Transnational Queer Underground. Michael's work—his original language is German—has often reminded me of Vladimir Nabokov—they both have a pristine functionality to their English that opens up amazing vistas and places where forbidden desires become reality.

Well, hope springs eternally.

Death on the beach

By Michael Ampersant

We have a new story out in TRANSNATIONAL QUEER UNDERGROUND (whatever that means).  And like so many of our shorts, it's almost true (only the punch "line" is fiction). Serious first-time material, folks. NSFW. Here's how it starts:

Zeeland is a collection of islands nestled in the delta of the Rhine river. There are beaches, and the nearest one from our house is-—or was-—ten minutes on the bike. Zeeland was famously gereformeerd then-—prudish-Calvinistic-—and there was no animo for the naked beaches they had up north near Amsterdam. So, our seashore had changing facilities, clapboard cabins with a fore room, closet hooks, doors, locks, and a plank running along the wall of the main room serving as a bench.

Original illustration by Heather Sinclair

I had just turned twelve. Something had happened to me during the winter, and when I went for the first swim of the new season, something had happened to the dude--not always the same one--that was hanging out there. You would show up, he’d gaze at you, conspicuously, then disappear into the dunes. In previous years I had ignored him, but this time I couldn’t fail to pay attention. His gaze did something to me. It was like a loopy ditty in my ear that followed me as I biked home. And I knew I wouldn’t tell Mom.

Continues here. Give it a try!

Just sayin'

In the privacy of his bathroom, the prototype reveals his limitations...

A few days ago

(There's a surreal quality to these cows, isn't it?)

Yesterday evening

Jamie & Dex---Best Gay Erotica IV now available for preorder

David's Tiny Thing---or whatever the title will be---starts with a short story written by Michael for the anthology Best Gay Erotica IV, edited by Rob Rosen and published by Cleis Press. The book is now available for preorder, and here's a teaser of a teaser...this is how our story, "Renaissance Miracles" begins:

Luigi took me aside this morning and said that, however much he enjoys our leetle get-togethers, he can no longer—-despite his best efforts and my best efforts—-hide the absence of any payments towards Room 312 from the all-knowing reservation system of the Savoy Palace Hotel. He fussed with a drawer, and held up a credit card. Here, he said under his breath, go to the Via Tornabuoni, buy yourself a new outfit, and take up position on the steps of the Loggia della Signoria…that should solve your leetle problems, pretty boy that you are. But don’t forget to return the credit card first.

He then looked left and right the way Italian hotel managers look left and right before getting a blow job, waved me to his side of the reception counter, and there we went again: me squatting in the hollow space under the desk accommodating his Italian dick, while he accommodated a new guest, a Contessa, apparently. I’m a slut, fortunately, I can handle this.

So, that’s why I’m here on the steps of the Loggia sitting next to the marble statue of Cellini’s Perseus, me a wannabe hustler with a boyfriend who, suddenly, last month, discovered his passion for the Tuscan Renaissance and begged me to take him to Florence where he would study with a certain Professore Pellegrini, a mysterious art historian...