Enemies to lovers is a popular trope in romance and all its spin-offs, most notably romantasy. Who doesn’t enjoy a rival romance? But I think an underdeveloped aspect of it will be drawn out over the next few years, that of the vengeance or punishment element of a nemesis. People want retribution stories as well as a redemption arc.
So, we’ll have nemeses to lovers as a growing trope with the initial conflict, the bitter frustration, the resentment of their own feelings, and then, the decision to choose mercy and hope and move forward.
Justice is a complicated subject. Fiction has a powerful role to play in providing ways of seeing the world and emotional frameworks for processing it.
Nemeses to lovers is a trope that doesn’t require us to defeat our enemies with violence. I’m eagerly anticipating how authors will find a path from fury and grief to healing, hope, and love.
One of my problems with AI is how organisations are using it to avoid blame. This is an extension of how they’ve been using their systems for a while. It is HARD to find a person who’ll take responsibility for a problem. From blame to solving the problem, the organisational system is designed to shrug it off. AI is now the perfect excuse.
But in my focus on systems I’ve overlooked the individual experience of AI.
As a novelist I’m constantly analysing characters’ motivations. I forget that for a lot of people understanding and working on themselves is terrifying. And what’s the best thing to do when you’re scared? Run away! (I’m kidding).
But AI really is a tool for escaping the self.
Instead of writing a heartfelt best man’s speech, or a sympathy card, or finding the right words (from a place of love and respect) to end a relationship, people are avoiding confronting themselves, their situation, and their emotions. and simply prompting AI for a response.
We are obscuring ourselves from our own gaze by using AI.
Because I tend to frame my world verbally, I’ve used examples from verbal communication. But visual artists are furious at AI partly because they learn themselves and their world through visual art. Same with musicians. Our stories emerge from confronting our selves.
If we mask with AI we will be individually, as well as socially, poorer.
Do you remember the idea of the Great Reset that swirled around in 2020? The World Economic Forum presented it, and a ton of conspiracy theories spawned.
I’m riffing off its name to claim another shift in the zeitgeist: the Great Retreat.
Everywhere I look I see people stepping back, hunkering down, and retiring. The causes are varied: anxiety, exhaustion, confusion, and even coercion.
Health crises, cost of living pressures, job insecurity, and a broader sense of uncertainty, nationally and internationally, politically and economically, are all contributing.
People are retreating from substantive engagement in public social media as governments (and contracted private companies) are mining social media as part of a broader surveillance agenda. What they’ll do with that data is open to conjecture.
People are retreating, often unwillingly and out of frustration, from engagement with government welfare programs. Dealing with bureaucracy (including private corporate sector bureaucracy) is increasingly frustrating. Some of this frustration is caused by legacy systems. Software is decades old and layered with inefficiencies. Regulations pile up. But it could be that there isn’t enough pie to go around and the more people who drop out, the longer the system can stagger on. In other words, pushing us into retreat could be a feature and not a bug.
People are retreating from public life as attacks against them increase. And I mean all people, not just celebrities. The use of AI to generate repulsive images is a new weapon of online violence.
The challenge is to determine where you draw the line. What will you surrender, where will you compromise, and when will you fight?
We don’t have the luxury of reserves anymore. Think of the human body. In good times, it adds a little fat. You grow comfortably pudgy. In hard times, the body draws on that reserve of energy. For many people, those reserves are gone. We drew on them hard in 2025, and now, we have to choose where we put our remaining energy.
I have a note on my computer. It says, “don’t step back”. I can’t resist everything. I can’t fight for all the social causes I support. But the core of my identity is where I can’t step back.
I’m an author. I write stories of hope. That is what I won’t compromise on.
Everything else, including supping with a long spoon with the devil that is Amazon, is negotiable.
Speaking of Amazon. I am still trying to decide what to do regarding audio editions of the Caldryn Parliament series. If Amazon allowed Australians to access ACX (which supports voice actors and authors working together) I’d be all over it. But it doesn’t, despite years of promising that it was “coming soon”. For the moment, in the interests of accessibility, I’ve allowed Amazon to shove my books down the Virtual Voice path. As I discussed in an earlier post, I don’t consider these text-to-speech products audiobooks, but they do read the text aloud. As a stopgap they’re better than nothing, and since 2026 shows signs of being every bit as overwhelming as 2025, a stopgap is necessary while I take a breath. So, if you’re looking for audio editions of the Caldryn Parliament series they’re in Audible and clearly labelled as AI (i.e. Virtual Voice narration).
I am working on paperback editions of Caldryn Parliament. A proof copy of Stars Die is in the works and should arrive in early February. If it looks good, I’ll click publish and move onto Hexes Fly and Rogues Lie. I’ve enabled “expanded distribution” for these paperbacks, which means that if any other distributors choose to pick them up (something I can’t influence) then you’ll be able to buy them outside of Amazon (which still takes a massive cut of the sale price via production costs).
Finally with good news, my books are now available in all major digital library services. So, if you can convince your local library to buy a copy, they’re available for everyone. I am thrilled!
A few weeks ago I was listening to the Create Tomorrow podcast and someone on it mentioned absurdity as a trend in 2026.
So, I went digging. For a start, what is the psychological value of absurdity?
Jason Shimiale MD at Psychology Today has a great short article, well worth reading. “Absurdity, at its core, arises from the clash between our desire for meaning, order, and clarity and the universe’s inherent indifference.”
From a philosophical perspective, Jack Maden gives us Camus’s take on absurdity and the invitation to metaphysical rebellion. (Note: if you do click this link, it opens with mention of suicide) Albert Camus on Rebelling against Life’s Absurdity. To quote Maden, “Unable to tolerate an unease with uncertainty, we hand ourselves over to the consolation of dogma. Searching for an authentic life, we commit to inauthenticity…”
You can judge the power of absurdity by the media and marketing’s attempt to exploit it. Pauline Oudin, CEO of Gradient, talks of absurdism signaling authenticity, and thereby, engaging its audience. Laura Agricola, at Mumbrella, writes, “Absurdity doesn’t trigger the fight-or-flight response, but it does hijack the same early-warning systems that were meant to keep us alive and repurposes them to keep us entertained.”
In short, absurdity wakes us up.
The lesson that I’m taking from this, as an author, is that if you need to jolt people, add an absurdity. And because I have a diabolical mind, I’m also considering absurdity as a tool for distracting readers from a vital clue…
A hero is integral to most novels. We follow their journey. But “hero” has connotations that sometimes obscure the purpose and grace of the concept. Therefore, it can be useful to consider the role of the “protagonist” instead.
“Hero” links us to the word “heroic” and we expect the lead character to strive, perhaps to grow, often we hope to witness them triumph. A “protagonist” doesn’t carry such a heavy burden of expectation. A protagonist is freer to interrogate their world. What can they learn?
In real life I think we should all consider ourselves the hero of our own stories. However, if we push that notion of hero closer to protagonist then I think we have more agency. We can ask what are our goals? What experiences confront us or have shaped us? How will we change? Why should we change? Who will we journey with?
We don’t have the mythical hero’s burden to save the world. Our challenge as the protagonist-hero is to be more ourselves.
Yup. You’re the hero of your story when you’re you.
And when I say “you”, it can be a collective “you”. The hero can be a community, a nation, even a business; whatever entity that is challenging the world so as to be true to itself.
I think the temptation to inhabit the role of victim in your own story comes from this concept of the hero as a larger than life character who must triumph or else loses the right to exist.
A protagonist whose journey is one of internal and external discovery is far healthier.
I’m still hung up on the idea of Golden Age fiction and what characterises or defines such work.
I’ve decided that my Caldryn Parliament novels promise that all will be well.
After all, what is a Golden Age but one where we find inspiration from earlier heroes that impossible dreams can be pursued? They won’t always be attained, but the journey will bless the world.
The other day I was listening, distractedly, to The Futurists podcast. Brett King and guest host Kevin J Anderson were interviewing Jeffrey Morris in an episode called, Filming the Future. Someone on the podcast said something about how the way aliens and monsters were imagined in 1960s movies was a product of the technology that existed to produce them as costumes or puppets or whatever. Now, with that physical limitation removed via CGI, AI, or insert-your-software-acronym-of-choice the possibilities are endless, and that it’s the same with the environment the aliens or monsters exist in.
But I have doubts about infinite options. I think humans always build cages, or at minimum, impose limits.
For something to be a commercial success you tend to have to trigger emotional arousal, whether by violence, fear, sex, or ambition. People like to see how they can triumph. Even the catharsis of tragedy can be a triumph (in the sense of achieving satisfaction).
So I don’t think just any type of alien or monster will appear. I think they’ll have to embody a key driver of our time (like fear linked to the necessity of responding to climate change) and be emotionally arousing with the temptation of triumph.
Think of Godzilla rampaging after the atomic bombs were dropped.
And once the movie studios see which monsters audiences respond to we’ll get more of the same.
As Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, and I’m quoting from memory so forgive me if I get it a little wrong. “People don’t want news. They want olds.”
CGI might offer endless possibilities, but we prefer the familiar.
***
I sometimes think how frustrated a newspaper or magazine editor would be if I submitted articles as short and incomplete as these posts. But I like sharing my ideas before I reach any conclusions. I like that I still have room to change my mind, add or subtract from my answers, and wander away down byways.
When you’re writing a novel (or a screenplay) everything your characters do has to serve a purpose. This is related to the idea of plants and payoffs in screenwriting. Readers (audiences) are investing their time and imaginative/emotional energy and they must be rewarded. If the writer shoves something in front of the reader to pay attention to, then that attention has to pay off.
In fiction clear lines are drawn between action and outcome in a way that real life can’t provide. Real life is like that biblical quotation, “For now, we see through a glass, darkly…”
Fiction takes the glass and polishes it clear (at least in spots) so that the reader can trace from action to outcome and be satisfied.
The reason I’ve belaboured the importance of plants and payoffs is because real life seldom rewards us with them.
We think that the kindnesses we do are seldom noticed, even more rarely rewarded, and what does it even matter?
But my life philosophy is that while kindness matters, our specific kind actions aren’t the point. We are butterfly wing flaps.
You know the old chaos theory of a butterfly flapping its wings and triggering a storm hundreds or thousands of miles away?
I believe that actions we aren’t even aware of taking are potential butterfly wing flaps. We never know what small thing we do may trigger a life-affirming outcome for a stranger.
Believing in chaotic kindness is a way to journey with hope and to feel connected even when we’re seeing through a glass, darkly. Those times pass. Our unrecognised, vital importance to others never does.
When you’re writing, one of the most effective things you can do is evoke something familiar, and then, compel people to question it; to confront it anew.
Light and darkness are common themes, dualities, in fiction.
Fiat lux! Let there be light!
But light as a metaphor loses its impact when it’s always accessible, available at the flick of the switch. Even if electricity goes out suddenly, most of us have our phones near us and they provide sufficient light for us to grope around and find a flashlight.
When I look at a candle I remember how, for most of human existence, darkness was implacable. Flickering flames were all we could summon to push back the darkness.
A well-crafted story uses what we take for granted and shakes it up.
Now, it is not darkness, but light, that threatens and intrudes. Satellites watch us from on high, security lights illuminate us, cameras track us. We are always visible, always on the record.
Fiat tenebris! Let there be darkness.
Frightened animals hide in the darkness, they sleep in their burrows. If all our lives are visible, where can we hide from ourselves?
Science fiction and fantasy both explore impossible worlds. With science fiction, elements of the world may one day come true (still waiting on my flying car), but fantasy is purely imaginary.
Some people argue that we should believe impossibilities (conceive of them) so that we can achieve them.
I am really tired of people turning entertainment into utility. We don’t have to be productive all the time. Neither do we have to pursue constant self-improvement.
Imagining the impossible—inhabiting the impossible—is about being free.
Is it impossible for us to have wings? Maybe. Should we still dream of flying? Absolutely.
