The Summer of Jimothy

We’re all living in the Summer of Jimothy, so it’s best to just embrace it. What fun those in Seattle have been having with our furry friend. With all the stupid and terrible things going on in the world, I’ve enjoyed watching the good-natured joy the little raccoon is bringing to so many simply by existing. It does the heart good.

In a year, it will all be different. You, me, Jimothy. That is the only thing guaranteed. We all set goals and objectives. I tend to start after the new year, once I get back into a weekly productivity groove. By February, a plan is in place, and the year starts rolling along. This year’s plans were going along just fine until we had to say goodbye to my uncle. He passed in April, but we did not say our goodbyes until June, when the family was able to all get together. He was smart, loved sports, and, most importantly, genuinely cared about each and every one of us. He had this great trading card collection that we were all in awe of as kids. He would buy us cards, often complete sets, which we always enjoyed receiving and going through. He was beloved by all of us. Even though we have had to deal with his massive card collection, it has been both an honor and a privilege to do so. But... 

As his eldest nephew, I decided to do the research that was needed in order to properly inventory the collection and prepare the family to deal with it all. It would have taken all year if I had not, and there are implications with a collection that large. Taking those steps sooner rather than later was only logical, especially with my need to work on my plan for the year. I have loved doing the research and getting things ready for the next steps, for the most part, but the toll it’s taken on my plans for the year over the past two months has set me back. I am close to the point where I need not be so involved in the process and can return most of my focus to my plans for the year.

When my uncle fell in 2021, it marked the end of his normal life. He kept having falls and other health issues that prevented him from returning to his home. The family went into overdrive to get him into a place where he might be able to have the care he needed and some autonomy. This marked the first time I ever laid eyes on the index cards for his collection. We were blown away by its breadth and substance. He had gifted us some cool cards back in the day, but his collection was a true legacy. It has been an honor to work on it. It has also had me looking into the trading card business to see what we are dealing with.

You may or may not be aware of how on fire the trading card business is right now, but it is. Some are even comparing it to the NASDAQ in terms of volume and volatility. I found out there is this place near me called Cards HQ and that there is essentially a stock market-like index that adults and kids follow as if they are day traders on Wall Street. I did not see that back in 2021, and after 2023, I certainly wasn’t aware of how hot the market had become because I had been focused on AI and not the cards, while my uncle had a few years of relatively good health.

This year, I have been able to use AI to help me with my uncle’s collection in several ways, which has really helped speed things up with document creation, research, and numerous other points of contact. Then things can slow to a crawl because there is still the human element to deal with. Some of these moments go smoothly, but others bring things to a crawl. This is one reason why I prefer to work alone at times. Me + AI = Amazing. Me + AI + Others = Still Amazing, but sometimes less so.

Working on the collection has also helped me get used to negotiating and dealing with people again, something I have had to do less of since I turned my attention to AI in 2023. There are times when an actual phone call to a person is worth so much more than an email or a text, especially when you are first communicating with someone. Then there are those who just are not as good at communicating. The less I say about that, the better, but it is an issue when disparate people are involved in a project. And I do treat my uncle’s collection as a project—one that I worked on from late 2021 through mid-2023 and then again from this April to the present. No one knows the collection like I do.

It will feel weird when it is gone. Not just because of the five years I have been truly aware of the collection in its entirety, but also because of a lifetime of having been in awe of it. My uncle and that collection were both quite incredible, so it is fitting, I suppose, that they should both leave the family in the same year. He may have stopped collecting in the late ’80s, but my uncle put his heart into that collection, and he shared his passion for cards with us. It is unbelievable to see where the trading card hobby is now.

Beyond all of that, I have made some good progress with my creative pipeline—not as much as I would have liked, but enough to still feel on track to begin, hopefully, a steady flow of creative content by year’s end. What do I mean by steady flow, and what is this pipeline I am talking about?

I spent the first three months of the year taking classes focused mainly on agents and deepening my journey with Claude while also continuing my work with OpenAI. I regret not starting to use Claude sooner, but I am glad I began when I did because using them both together is magic.

Around the beginning of the year, I all but abandoned work on the three apps I had been working on. I hit a snag with 1st Draft when I began incorporating real-time features because of the browsers on cell phones. I was reluctant to make it a full app because of that issue, but had I done so, the issue would have gone away once it was an app and no longer a web app. Live and learn. By December, it just didn’t make sense to keep my main focus on apps. Yes, I wanted to help people with the apps, but they had chewed up so much time last year that I needed a change.

Besides, what I believed would happen with apps and software last summer while working on the app happened. I, like many people, pride myself on being able to imagine how things might work out, and then sometimes they do track similarly to what I imagined. But I felt last summer, as I was knee-deep in creating the app, that it was all futile and that very soon everyone would be able to create the software they needed for specific situations. And sure enough, that is now possible.

In December of last year, the buzz over agents hit fever pitch, and I began to dream of the second part of STORiCORE that I wanted to create. It focuses on my own writing work and transforming my written work into other formats. I have several dozen unproduced and unpublished stories. I decided I would build what I dreamed of back in 2024, where I, with the help of AI, could create comics, graphic novels, podcasts, trading cards, video games, interactive content, movies, and TV shows.

I would have liked to use all these other tools that others had created, but they each cost a lot of money to use. And instead of doing that, I decided to create my own creative pipeline. What the hell does that mean, Pitters?

It means taking what I learned from those classes, from building and working on several apps, from writing in different formats for 30 years, from creating several short films, and from all the other things that I have learned in a lifetime, and using all of that in tandem with Claude and OpenAI tools to create a pipeline that helps me create my stories in different media. I have built it to help with comics, trading cards, graphic novels, podcasts, games, movies, and TV shows. The last three are meant to be updated later, once the tech is good enough (something I said for years and that forced me to shift course repeatedly) and I am ready, but they are wired into the pipeline and just awaiting my go-ahead. Once I decide it is time, I will begin work on those formats. But not yet. No. I want to get as good as I can get with comics, graphic novels, and trading cards so that I feel confident I can return to them later without missing a beat. That has been my objective with everything I have learned through the years, AI and storytelling alike.

My focus since I began testing things with the pipeline has been on comics, graphic novels, and trading cards. The comics are a way to serialize the stories that then become graphic novels once the series is complete. Why? So I can release three, four, ten, fifteen, or more digital episodes or comics over the course of months before releasing the graphic novel in digital and physical form. I am also thinking about doing different versions of the trading cards: 1) a story-based version, 2) a character-based version, and 3) a possible game version. Most of the first stories I anticipate telling through the graphic novel process are part of larger story universes. Some of them are ideal for gamification in many forms, and I intend to explore that. Graphic novels and story gamification are both things I have wanted to do since I first started writing screenplays and began imagining these worlds. I can't wait to see what will be done by those who grow up with all these different medium available to them. 

So much of my work has been inspired by anthology movies like CREEPSHOW and TRICK ’R TREAT, which tell more than one story. It has been one of my favorite formats, and I always saw them as either movies, TV series, or graphic novels. I made a few shorts films but I did not possess the ability to create them in all their glory on my own. Years ago, I tried to get an artist friend of mine to help me create my first graphic novel. It never went anywhere, and I began to think that all those stories would just have to be told as books. So, my movement into writing books was largely because I did not think I would ever get to make these stories as movies, TV shows, or graphic novels, and definitely not as the games I imagined but had done so little to explore. Games are something that I never thought I would ever have a chance to create, but they are also one of the most exciting media I look forward to exploring. Why? Because I want to put viewers into the stories... literally. Back then, the best option I had available was to write my stories as books. I am glad that I had to take that path because I learned so much and gained confidence.

I think of my novel writing a lot like my app-making. I did both because I could not do what I really wanted to do, which was create movies, TV shows, graphic novels, and video games. Back in 2023, I began the process of learning how to create a graphic novel. My first step was to create an illustrated version of MICHAELMAS. The image generators were not good enough for me to create a graphic novel. Some people were doing some amazing things at the time, but I was not knowledgeable enough to pull off a graphic novel, so I focused on doing what I could do. That’s a good way of doing things for me because I often try to bite off more than I can chew, and reality spits me back out. So, I adapt and do what I can.

Could I start off by focusing on video? Sure. Some of the models have gotten very, very good. But I have a lot of things I want to do, and time has become more valuable recently. So, I decided it was best to focus on comics, graphic novels, and trading cards. As you now know, my uncle, who passed earlier this year, was an avid collector of trading cards. What I did not mention is that another of my uncles, who passed over a decade ago, was an avid comic book collector. He lost his entire collection in a flood. I can only imagine how devastated he was by this. When we would visit in the summer, we would love looking at the collections of both uncles. It was part of the fun of visiting in the summer.

It seems appropriate that I am focused on creating both comics and trading cards. I have even found a way to honor them both by offering a version of the trading cards that will be called the Two Uncles Collection. I am a big fan of non-sports trading cards. My uncle collected a few of them, but the one that is the most important to what I am trying to do is the MARS ATTACKS set from 1962. The cards tell a story. I will likely create multiple sets for each full story I make into a comic series or graphic novel. I will probably keep the Two Uncles Collection strictly focused on the story, while other sets may focus mainly on the characters or some kind of game. There are options, but I really like the story version. That is the reason I am doing all of this: to tell stories.

I have been reflecting on the past three years since I started using AI. It is interesting how it took me a while to figure out what I was building toward. But with the Story Pipeline, I have finally created something that will help me do what I have always wanted to do—something I started to dream about when I first started writing, something that was reawakened in 2023: the desire to create comics, graphic novels, cards, podcasts, interactive content, games, TV, and movies.

Thirty years ago, the sky was the limit, and I dreamed of massive projects that I wanted to see on the big screen. But after two decades, I began to doubt that they would ever exist as I had imagined them. Eventually, I had all but given up hope that my favorite stories of all time would ever be read by people, let alone be seen on a screen. I spent so much time over the past thirty years trying to get others interested in my work, with little to no interest, that I even grew tired of trying. 2024 was the last straw.

I created this amazing TV series that I envisioned using AI in different ways after normal production had wrapped. I imagined all sorts of cool things that could have been created using AI in one way or another: choose-your-own-adventure experiences, podcasts, cards, games, and interactive environments meant to be used with the Apple Vision Pro, a product that showed promise but that very few people seemed to want. No matter. I was imagining ways to use AI that would be viable, and with the creative pipeline, I could create most of it, if not all of it, on my own. I am focused on comics, graphic novels, and trading cards for now so I can generate enough content to help get the ball rolling.

I won’t be satisfied until, in a single year, I can create the graphic novel package, the movie or TV series, the fictional podcast, and interactive media like games and Vision Pro-like experiences that I imagined with THOUSAND SPRINGS. It need not be that TV series, but that would be a hoot. In the summer of 2024, I envisioned where AI was going and how I could use it to create something like what I envisioned for THOUSAND SPRINGS, then deliver all of it using only my story, the pipeline I created, and the best AI tools available. Delivering all that I laid out back then would be freaking awesome.

Based on how things are and how AI is developing, when do I think I could run a single story through the pipeline within one year? If I wanted to do it sooner rather than later, it would probably have to be a single movie to do it in a year. I think that could be done now. But the cost is going to be insane, especially for the movie and game parts. The rest is far more cost-effective, which is one of the main reasons I am doing what I am doing. The education part is baked into this as well because I would have to learn more about the tools used for some of these media, especially gaming.

I will probably start small with video and gaming because of the cost and the additional time needed for learning. The cost could continue to go up, and that has a major effect on long-form storytelling with video. Plus, I can’t afford to spend a week on each and every scene. I want to be an efficient director and say, “Cut,” and move on within one or two takes. If it takes 50 takes for every scene, it will cost a fortune and take forever. Not ideal and therefore to be avoided. That means it may be a little while before I even venture to attempt video in the pipeline. I will continue to test the models, but actually venturing to create a movie might take a few more AI video updates before we take that step. I have been wanting this ever since 2023, but I have learned to throttle back on my expectations for AI video because of the scale I would be working on.

I could possibly try it with HOUSE FLY. It is part of a larger story universe, but it has always been meant to stand alone. If I were to try to put one story through the entire pipeline, it would be one of the best options. The story is conducive to a game as well. It is the story that I am starting with anyway. I might as well make it the guinea pig for the entire pipeline.

Huh, not a bad idea. Do I think I could run it through the pipeline and be finished with it all by this time next year? I would need to raise funds to even attempt to do it in that time frame. Otherwise, it may be unlikely to happen within a year. But it could still be the first to go through the entire pipeline and emerge with a graphic novel, a movie, a game, and more.

I can foresee running HOUSE FLY through the pipeline several times just for the graphic novel, creating different versions as I improve the pipeline in different ways. I’ve already had to do that in a fragmented way numerous times. So, I can 100% see myself wanting to come back and redo HOUSE FLY a year after releasing the graphic novel. Whether I do it or not will be something else altogether.

Needless to say, I am excited by the progress I have made this year. It has helped me put the past year, as well as the past three years, into perspective. There were times last year when I was questioning my choices as I worked on the apps. Was I wrong to focus on apps ahead of my own creative work? If you had asked me in December of last year, I might have said yes. But what I learned last year is more important than the apps I worked on. I had wanted to learn more about coding for a decade. The one coding class I took back in 2015 did nothing but tell me that I still had a lot to learn. And I had wanted to learn more even before I awakened to AI in 2023. So, the work I did over the past three years has allowed me to harness all that I learned over the past thirty years and shape that knowledge into something that will help me achieve what otherwise would never have been possible. And you cannot put a value on that. All I can do is put my head back down, get back to work, and wish you all well on your own creative journeys.

Impact and Reach

How effective are you at connecting with your audience? Do you even really know who your audience is? Who are you even speaking to anymore?  

These are questions many of us alive today have had to ask ourselves when we look in the mirror. However, it wasn't always that way. There was a time before the internet, before social media, and before smartphones. Technically, most of us alive today remember what it was like. There are those who refuse to enter the 21st century, and that's ok. It was a pretty cool century. The part I lived through, at least. 

Some of us decided to be a part of the new millennium and attempt to adapt along with the changing world instead of holding onto the past. And a few of us twentieth-century foxes shook our asses for attention long before it was the normal thing to do because of social media. As a writer and former actor, I know the drill. There was a time when what I was doing was an outlier, trying to pimp out my screenplays and books or my abilities as an actor. Back in an era when most people waited for a phone call to find out what everyone was up to. Now, everyone is the center of their own little universe, and a text message or a social media post is all you may hear from someone for months or years. Now everyone is an actor playing the role of a version of themself. These masks of sanity we know too well. And for many, that may be enough.

I learned a lot in the corporate world. Some of it was actually good. It's all research. Thankfully, for a storyteller, living life has two purposes: the experience of living life in this moment in time and research. And I love life and research. 

There are times I wonder why I am even shaking it anymore. I don't really do it for others. Those who had been listening as I used to bang on about the things that I was doing have drifted away. I suppose I still think it matters to tell stories, regardless if the audience is large or small. Whether it be here and now or somewhere down the road. It is, at its core, self-expression. Shining our inner light outwards.

I've definitely thought of just shutting it all down before. Just turn the lights off and lock the door. After the release of Monarch, I was exhausted and considered pulling the plug on this blog. I definitely took a step back from pumping out content. Just look at my blog archive on the right side of the page. The Writer's Realm has always been a place where I organize my thoughts and share where I am in my process. I can't tell you how many times over the past decade I have wondered if I should stop shaking things for attention. I mean, in the scheme of things, what does it all matter for anyway? 

It matters because the work still matters to me. And in the end, that is what drives us all—what matters to us. Besides, I really enjoy the process. Chasing a story, digging into my memories while also viewing and experiencing the world as it is. From a creative pulp emerges something familiar and yet different than what came before. And in the end, I enjoy sharing it with others, and I still like writing blog posts, too. The posts are less about me shaking my ass for likes or sales, and more about me reflecting on my process and looking forward to what comes next. The name itself tells you all you need to know. Could I have changed it to A Writer's Realm or The Writers Realm? Sure. But it was never meant to be about anyone other than me. I am the writer, and this is my realm. It is the only place where I have dominion. It is my courtyard, and where I choose to discuss and share things in my tiny area of the world. 

There is a scene in The Last Samurai that has stuck with me through the years—The Perfect Blossom. Nathan (Tom Cruise) and Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) talk of poetry and war as they walk through a garden courtyard dotted with trees filled with pink cherry blossoms. It's a brief but powerful scene.    

Katsumoto is the last samurai, much like those of us still remaining from the 20th century are all that remain from a fading era. And yet we are still helping to shape this one. Hard to believe we are already over a quarter of the way through this century.

I feel fortunate to have grown up in a time before all of our lives became so connected to technology. Sure, we had phones, but they were landlines, and entertainment was also based on wires and paper pages, so you either had to listen to the radio, read a book, watch TV, play video games, or go to the movies. You can do all those things now while sitting on a rock in the middle of the desert or on a boat in the middle of a lake. And so I often remind myself how fortunate we were, even though it hasn't all been peaches and cream, to have lived in two different eras. 

One that, for my generation in my nook of the world, was relatively peaceful and that can be looked back on with actual fondness. It wasn't perfect, but it was hopeful. I fear many will not have that, knowing only complicated times and not having a sense of hope for the future. It is both easier and more difficult to plan for what comes next, and therefore, it is doubly difficult for those who don't have those experiences already that have shaped who they are. At least they are growing up with technology and can master it in ways that none of us could have imagined was possible back in the day. Even if we had been preparing for it all our lives, with science fiction predicting the future throughout the 20th century. Those who grew up with all that as background noise are now creating a version of that future. 

Every week, there is something new. Just the first month and a half of 2026, we've had massive updates with Kling 3.0, Seedance 2, Claude 4.6, Codex 5.3, Open Claw, & Gemini 3 Deep Think and 3.1.  (As you can tell, I sat on releasing this blog post for a few months, for whatever reason, because we now have even more amazing models released over the past two months since I started writing this blog.) Had any one of those models dropped on its own at any time before 2023, the world would have collectively lost its shit. 

We have entered the future. Not sure when that happened. Maybe it was 2020 or 2023.  It's not quite what we expected, and yet it is here. Soon we'll see robots in grocery stores. Don't ask me when, but it seems inevitable. Some people cannot get around like they used to. If they had their own personal robot assistant, not a chatbot, but a robotic humanoid, they could send their assistant out to run errands or help them get out of a chair, and so many other tasks around the home. 

There will also be the militarized versions as well. Killer drones and other devices are already here. Robots fighting other robots sounds ridiculous, but inevitable. How likely is it that we will leave this planet and make other planets our home? Whatever we do, AI will lead the way.

What small measure of influence might you or I have over what happens? That depends on our impact and reach. A few years ago, I started paying closer attention to the metrics on this blog. The numbers were so much greater than I expected, and yet there was little to no interaction from those who were visiting my blog and interacting with the posts. Then I realized the majority of interactions were likely bots. "Other" became my biggest fan. And that made me think about my impact and reach for today and tomorrow. 

As a storyteller, my objective has always been to express ideas and tell stories that have excited me enough to spend months and sometimes years creating them. The hope was always to be able to instill in others the thoughts and emotions I had felt when writing the stories. As a screenwriter, I learned to accept that most of my written work would go largely unread and rarely ever be seen on a screen. Why? Making movies and TV shows is, or was, a lot of work that used to involve a lot of people. We are ticking closer to the point that I have been waiting for. When one person can take their entire library of unpublished and unproduced work and transform it into the medium of their choice. 

This was one of the first things I thought about in 2023 after spending time with ChatGPT and Midjourney. Back then, things were very limited, but we all knew that things would continue to improve until we had reached a future that we had only seen in science fiction stories. We are there or thereabout now. And I have made changes to what I do as a result.

Twenty years ago, I never gave a thought to legacy. I was too busy trying to write every story that popped into my head. The result was that I would try to push a story to producers or publishers for a little while, and then get frustrated and jump back into my writing cave to write something else. I probably should have pushed harder to get more things published or produced, but since I didn't, I now have dozens of stories from the pre-AI era. Now, I can use my growing knowledge of AI to transform those stories into a variety of different media. 

I know that there is enough AI slop out there. We all see it every day and cringe, but things have gotten so much better than in those early 2023 days. In three years, we have gone from the ridiculous Will Smith eating spaghetti videos to seeing the Seedance videos of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt. I am still not a fan of the live-action AI stuff; most of it still has moments of the uncanny valley peppered in. And once I can tell it is AI, I lose interest. That is why I am still less interested in AI video than some of the other mediums, for now.

I have started learning about AI agents, something that had been part of my plan last year. Unfortunately, back then, agents were not good enough for the workflows I needed. Hell, back then, I thought I might make a few apps to help people. I knew even then that software would become a thing of the past sooner rather than later. I just didn't realize it would happen in less than a year. I have learned so much since 2023, and yet I am still surprised every year by how quickly everything AI is improving. I did the right thing in building a writing app, not because I am making millions of dollars from it, but because it is something that I can use in my own workflow. And I am realizing now that my own workflow is more important than hitting a home run with each of the apps I had in mind last year.

Now I am focused on my own workflows, and Vis-à-vis being able to help others with their own. No, I will never be a content creator in search of engagement and clicks, but if I can help others, that has been something I have wanted to do since I started learning about AI in 2023. Yes, there is a ton of backlash against AI, and much of it is warranted, but AI is not going away. 

I am not worried about my impact and reach like I once was. My goal has always been to be true to myself and the stories that I write. I see no reason why I should change now. If anything, I am being even more true to myself by using AI to bring those stories to life instead of letting them grow dusty on a shelf. I am aware that not everyone will want to run out and read, watch, or interact with my stories. My intent is and always has been to tell stories. Would I like millions of people to enjoy them? Of course, but I will not lose sleep if that doesn't happen. My purpose is like someone who spends their life looking for the perfect cherry blossom. The chaos of the world can pass us by, but as long as we are true to our own purpose, then that is all that truly matters.

TWENTY SIX

If I were to approach 2026 as if I were twenty-six, how would I proceed? When I was 26, I felt all but invincible. I had already seen cracks in the facade of reality, but they were cracks and not giant chasms. I was in LA and had witnessed Nancy Regan being ridiculed by those closest to her, or at least those who were in her orbit. I was bartending a gig up in Beverly Hills and overheard these two idiots sitting at my bar, with the former first lady sitting alone at a table only several feet behind them. They were either her aides or some family relations. I've only brought it up a few times, but that moment stuck with me. Why? 

I thought it was disrespectful. The former president was still alive but suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and here was his wife still going to social functions, and instead of supporting her, these clowns were mocking her. It was pretty clear they had not taken her advice from the 80s and just said no to drugs, either. These guys were obviously living out of their noses, and it seemed so weird to have the woman who coined the phrase "Just say no to drugs" sitting there by herself as these insignificant clowns were geeked out of their minds, making fun of her. The irony was not lost on me.

I saw a lot of things back in those days. Not all of it was tinged with humor. My few years in LA were sensory overload, and I was kind of just taking it all in. My acting career was winding down, but my storytelling journey was taking shape. The century was nearing an end; I was primed for just about anything. 

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, though I still feel a connection to those times creatively. I know we are only granted a short stay here on this rock, yet I have always felt a need to be a part of the storytelling process. Whether that be as a consumer of the stories others tell, or in telling my own. 

When we are children, a great fiction is created for us. One such example is Christmas. It is a joyous time of year, but at its heart is a great fiction wrapped up in pageantry. A fiction masquerading as something wondrous, but also hiding its true meaning. We grow up and learn the truth about the world, and realize that these fictions are created to keep us happy and to provide us guidance. When in reality Christmas is the most important time of year because it marks the passage of time, and the beginning of a new year. I am not picking on Christmas. I love Christmas and celebrate all of it. I appreciate it for what it is, the history and deeper meaning of it, as well as the religious story wrapped around it. This is something every kid who celebrates Christmas must confront as they get older. It is a big part of growing up, and the falling of the veil of illusion should be something that is studied in greater detail. 

When I was 26, I thought a lot about such things. I was reading and writing poetry every day, and I was breaking down the doors of perception in an effort to better understand myself and the world around me. I miss those times. It was when I learned how to live on my own and not be codependent. It was a time of liberation and the dawn of big creative ideas. 

I am so thankful that I never became a celebrity actor. Sure, the money would have been nice, but the ability to disappear cannot be overvalued. I can't imagine having cameras snapping my picture anytime I sneeze in public. Awful. Did I ever want that? No, I wanted to get lost in an acting role that I truly loved, but I never sought fame. I wasn't cracked up for it, and I was never close to achieving it, thank goodness. 

In 2026, after spending much of last year slowly getting STORiCORE off the ground, I am eager to tell more stories. I have a novel series all but completed that I have been sitting on for years. Michaelmas is a part of the series. I am debating doing what I did with Michaelmas, which is to release it as an illustrated series. I've thought about releasing it as a graphic novel series, or even releasing it in even shorter segments as more of a comic series. I have a few other pulpy series that I could release as graphic novel series. There is also this novella/movie script I'd like to write. Could it also be a graphic novel? Yes, but I just want to get lost in writing again. 

I'd prefer to create graphic novels out of TV series or movie scripts I've already written. I have a dozen or so to choose from, and I can't see my first graphic novel being something I write from scratch. This is one of the main reasons I started STORiCORE. To produce fun and exciting content in different formats, as well as creating storytelling related apps. 

Last year, I came up with a few story ideas that I need to write as well. One of those would be a new type of story. New for me, at least. I've thought about writing an autobiography for several years, and I will at some point, but my new story idea is instead a fictional semi-autobiographical story inspired by my own experience over the past few years. 

While I have a number of stories I have been wanting to write, this is my first quality story idea of the new year. Last year was all about starting STORiCORE, my first "official" company. As a writer, you are your own company, and when I created a few short films a decade ago, I produced those as if they were each part of my company. So, I had been laying the groundwork for a while. However, I never filled out the paperwork and paid the fees to actually be a company until last year. 

The 1st Draft App was only the first app I intended to create. It is a tool that I am using and will continue to use in my writing process, but I made it for anyone wanting to write a story. It is meant to be used from the first idea until the completion of the 1st draft. It's simple and easy enough to use that anyone could get great value out of it. 

I have had second thoughts about moving forward with two other apps I had been wanting to create without first having a period of reflection and learning. The tools to create these apps are improving quickly, and I was locked into my process for a while. I need to get caught up. Also, another app has come into focus over the past six months. It was one I was not intending to create until I completed the other two. But I now feel like it may be the one to work on. I say one, but actually, it will be a combination of several apps in many ways. And I will create these different parts separately before combining them. Unless it makes sense to just combine them all at once. We'll see. I was thinking about possibly making them stand-alone apps before unifying them. 

Something I realized over the past few years is that with AI improving so quickly, we will reach a point where some people will just be creating their own apps, and then personalizing them for their own workflow. Not everyone will do this, but they could if they wanted to. We are there or thereabouts now. The ability to create apps on the fly has become possible. Are they perfect 1st time? Not really, but with patience and iteration, they will be close to fitting your specific workflow. There is an expression that has stuck with me that I heard last year: The Future of Software isn't Software. 

I believe we have entered that era. Soon, schools will be teaching how to create the tools students will use in classrooms designed specifically for how they learn best. At that point, the only ones not able to create an app on the fly will be those who never needed to learn about doing so. Right now, that constitutes most of the people alive on this planet. That will change over time, and in 25 years, most people on this rock will be AI literate. 

When I started down this path three years ago, I was aware that the window to build and share with others what I create with AI would be small. It is shrinking as I write this, and will likely be closed before 2030. After that is anyone's guess what happens, but I would not be surprised if a majority of us are all living in our own self-created bubbles. 

World models are being talked about a lot right now. If there is a proper world model by the end of the year, then essentially all I talked about in a TV show bible over a year ago will be possible, and I could, at that point, create everything I talked about in there by myself. I could use AI tools to create the TV series, the music, the fictional podcast, and the video games that would allow a user to have an individual experience set in the world of the TV show. While I could create it all myself, it would be extremely difficult to do so. I would need AI agents to help, and maybe that could cut down on the time to create it all. But even if that were the case, it would take a long time to complete. Probably years. However, I don't know what the AI Agents will be like once these world models start rolling out. If history is an example, then world models will not be perfect when they first roll out, and it will likely be DeepMind, OpenAI, Runway, or Midjourney who will release it, followed shortly thereafter by a Chinese version. Because nothing AI-related has been perfect when they first roll it out, and it usually takes another year or so to get to a point where a new AI tool is more broadly useful. 

So, let's say by late summer, we see the first true world model. It will be cool, and we will all be blown away, but it won't be perfect. But the other tools (video, audio, image, etc.) will be good enough by late summer to begin on the creation of a TV series like the one I have been thinking about. Will I begin work on it at that point? I will at some point. Not sure if it will be this year, though. But technically, I think this is the year that if I had the funding, I could begin on it. Would it actually take me years to complete all that I had laid out in the series bible if I did it all on my own with the assistance of AI tools? Probably. Unless agents get a lot better. Even if I learned all there is to know about all the tools that I would need to create it all, it is still a massive undertaking. If I were 26, I'd still lack the confidence and knowledge to have even completed the series bible and written 1/2 of the first season, but I might feel emboldened enough because of AI to at least get the ball rolling at all costs.  

There may come a time when I could do it all much easier and faster, but even with these tools being as good as they are now, it would be inconceivable that I could complete it all on my own anytime soon. I'd love to try. Maybe someday. Sigh. 😟

Until that time, I think it is best to just keep learning about everything AI that can help me create all that I can. With a focus on apps and releasing story content in one format or another. Once I have enough knowledge and the tools are good enough, then maybe I can build the world of that TV series I envisioned. I think you will love it. At least some of you. It's dark and a bit twisted, but relatable. 

I was asked about my New Year's resolution this weekend when out hiking with a few friends. They all had reasonable resolutions, but I didn't and don't have any. I'm not sure why I didn't make any. Maybe because I feel like they are silly. I make plans, and I try to complete them each year. That's not really the same as a resolution to lose weight or not be so overreactive. Would I like to lose a few pounds and become more Zen? Sure. But I have enough big plans for the year to not worry about keeping some meaningless promise to myself just because it's another year in the books. 

One friend joked when I said I hadn't: "Why not, because you're so perfect?" To be honest, I have enough on my mind that a promise to myself to try to lose weight seems like a waste of mental energy. In years past, I have definitely made New Year's resolutions, using the passage of time as a great starting point for change. However, I am in the midst of massive change, and adding something else onto the pile just didn't cross my mind. Maybe in the years ahead I'll buy that Peloton and use it for a month and then abandon it, but not this year.