Is it possible to produce a novel using AI software? Probably not in its entirety, it is unlikely 80,000 words will magically appear on the screen of the author’s PC followed by ‘job done, I’ll just email this to your editor’. However, after ‘Three Journeys into the Labyrinth’ failed to provide the answers I was looking for there seemed no harm deconstructing and dissecting it using the AI functionality of a computer program my company had just released. Although the three ‘journeys’ were markedly different the software discovered similarities between scenarios in each. With the help of software the triangulation attempted when writing the first book proved far more effective.

Fahrenbrink is recursive: the subject of the book is the creation of the book itself with myself, the author, interrogated by characters in the story. A great deal of effort to achieve a distant, detached and objective view of one’s life. Ground-breaking in the 1990s but common place now we submit our lives for scrutiny by the algorithms driving social media. The difference is today we never get to read, or glean insights from, books created using this information: instead, these AI created biographies are stored in the ever-growing reference libraries owned by Meta and Twitter.

For myself, Fahrenbrink proved a turning point, a destructive but, nevertheless, liberating one. Closing the door of the building constructed as a backdrop for ‘Three Journeys Into The Labyrinth’ was much like bringing the curtain down at the end of a performance. The AI software used to create ‘Fahrenbrink’ ended its days deciding which adverts to display on lottery terminals. The abandoned Steinkrug Hotel, in which the second book was set, has now been renovated: I returned, just once, to write a short story called ‘The Ghost and The Refugee’ purely to lay that ghost to rest. The person who entered the Labrinth disguised as Ariadne and carrying a noose instead of a thread, her l make every effort to avoid.

The book is available from third party sellers on Amazon.

Alternatively hardback copies can be purchased in the UK from Steinkrug Publications Ltd for £9.50 plus £1.80 post and packing.