Book Title Generation

I clipped an Austrian version of this cartoon by the amazing illustrator Tom Gauld out of the Die Presse a while back (in the Austro-edition Cher has been changed to D.J. Ötzi). My original reason for saving the cartoon was to use it in a blog about popular science bestsellers, a genre that I refer …

A dash of punctuation

As a writer, I am always trying to improve my writing. As a Virgo, I have been told that I am slightly anal retentive. Regarding the latter, I think people are just using the stars to insult me. – Wait! I’ll be right back. The pencils on my desk aren’t properly aligned. – In any …

I’m back

It has been just under four months since my last post. I would like to blame my absence solely on the boatload of work I have had since early May: new contracts in our advisory business, multiple ghost writing and editing jobs, teaching responsibilities, and my own course work at the university. But truth be …

Can a robot write a novel?

Last week an article about the bestselling Austrian/German author Daniel Kehlmann caught my eye. Kehlmann is probably best known for Measuring the World (original title: Die Vermessung der Welt) a historical novel / buddy book about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and geographer Alexander von Humboldt. In his newest book to be released in March, Kehlmann …

What really matters in life

The corona shutdown eliminated our primary source of income, so we have turned to ghost writing to compensate for our shortfall – a natural option for a novelist and a philosophy student. Ghost writers are paid by the word. You receive a short briefing and an expected word count. Today, Astrid is writing a 3.600 …