GoGo Storm's silver touch with A.I.

 

Many of us believe A.I. is a cheat on hard work. Gosh, I certainly use it as a teacher to plan lessons. We live in a society where time matters more than money, but at what cost do we trade our creative soul for a cheap alternative?

I've completed a novel titled GoGo Storm and the Umbra Man: Killing Beauty. My heroine is old, washed up, and trying to hold onto her soul and goodness. The images to the left are two versions of my cover ideas: 1. My illustration. 2. A.I.'s enhanced version of my cover. At first glance, A.I. does exactly what I need it to do, but it feels plastic and inauthentic. 

Things I love about the A.I. cleanup: 1. The silver streak in her hair is fantastic! 2. The holy water bottle is fine-tuned to the point where I can see my original marks enhanced. 3. The heart is a vibrantly pure color, which makes my heroine, who needs a pure heart to defeat evil, work out splendidly.

Things that subtract from my original drawing: 1. The plastic feel, which becomes too smooth, especially in the face of my protagonist. As mentioned, my protagonist is older, and the original drawing keeps the age I wanted. 2. The Umbra Man, the profile kissing the right side of GoGo's face, is completely obscured in the A.I. cleanup. The image was my interpretation of The Kiss, a Gustav Klimt painting that plays a big part in the book. 

In the end, I will most likely redraw the same image to get closer to my own vision, and then clean it up in Photoshop. Will it take hard work? YES. Will it cost me my soul? NO.

4 Stars for Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor

Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor was fantastic, but mostly because of my early fascination with the unlikable characters in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. However, Cantor spun the same story, eliciting sympathy for Fitzgerald's selfish, unlikeable characters. I loved the spin on Jordon Baker. She is by far the best character in the story. I even felt that Fitzgerald would have approved simply because, not directly "hard, jaunty body" but indirectly, Jordan's sexuality was questionable at the very least. Still, Jordon was also "aloof, cold," and unlikable because of her ability to avoid trouble. Cantor allowed the reader to see past the cold Jordan, placing one of the perspectives in her voice and giving real insight into her motives. I liked everything except the golf cheating twist. I felt like she was a girl who would always cheat despite her many charms. This does not make her less sympathetic; in fact, if she had owned it, her new character would have been perfect. That element fell too far from the original story to work for me.  Mrytle's sister's perspective was hit-or-miss for me, mostly because I wanted to hear more about the women's movement she was part of in the 1920s. I would have loved to see that as more of a theme than Fitzgerald's crumbling American dream theme. But, alas, this was glossed over, just a spark or two of meetings and whatnot. Daisy, well, "Daisy Daisy Daisy" as Mrytle said before her nose was broken in the original story by the brute Tom Buchanan. Daisy said she hoped her daughter was a "beautiful fool," that's all a girl could hope for. Daisy Buchanan was not a fool, but she certainly could never be as innocent and martyred as I felt Cantor painted her. I love the idea of a story playing off of Daisy's "beautiful fool" line, but innocence, please. Daisy definitely would have had an affair with Gatsby behind Tom's back, just as Jordon would have cheated at golf. Learning from these mistakes would have made both Jordon and Daisy much better characters and kept them aligned with Fitzgerald's original beloved story. As far as the character of Gatsby goes, bravo here, because Nick's perspective in the original story was told through rose colored glasses. Nick was in love with Gatsby - fact. Gatsby was a dirty bootlegger - fact. Gatsby would run over anyone, Mrytle included, to achieve his American Dream - fact. I really liked the new Gatsby in this story. I do feel, though, that when redoing a classic piece of literature such as this one, certain constants have to stay in place simply because we read The Great Gatsby every year.