Good morning from The Hoxton Holborn in central London. It’s the location for a dramatic event in Chapter 12 of ‘The Half-Life Girl’. 

Central London is quite small. It’s a relatively short walk from Holborn to either Fleet Street, where my imaginary Temple Tavern stood or Billingsgate Market, next to my imaginary Turnmill Factory. Both of them appear in ‘Beyond the Shining Portals’

If you’ve read the first book in my Portals trilogy, you’ll remember that the protagonist, Jack, suffers a facial wound during a scuffle in a side street next to Billingsgate Market. 

It’s a wound that never heals. I am currently working on the third book in the trilogy, and Jack’s wound has still not cleared up.

Curiously, this week, as I was writing about him and his inflamed cheek, I was struck down by a similar affliction. 

In my case, it was toothache. The same pain as I imagine Jack’s would be in my upper right cheek.

So, just as I was able to look around and describe the Lobby at the Hoxton Holborn for Chapter 12 of ‘The Half-Life Girl’, I can detail Jack’s pain from my own experience.  

I’m taking antibiotics, and the pain has eased, but now is a good opportunity to revisit those places in the book when Jack was suffering and do a little rewriting. 

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I discussed today whether AI could write a better book than a human.

Within a short time, you, as a reader, will be able to ask AI to write the exact book you want to read: J.R.R. Tolkien meets Neil Gaiman, featuring a blind heroine and a cosmic spider, and AI will do it instantly and flawlessly.

This will change the entire writing landscape. 

Is there still a place for human authors in this world?

Even a perfectly crafted AI story lacks one vital element: lived experience.

Humans write out of suffering, love, loss, hope, and mystery.

The best stories resonate because they express something ineffable about being alive — something the author earned through living.

AI doesn’t feel or risk anything. It recombines patterns of emotion, but it doesn’t bleed.

Readers may admire an AI book’s craft, but they are unlikely to say, “That book changed my life.”

So, I will keep on writing. And anyway, I enjoy it!