Anne: hello and welcome to this week's episode of Asynchronous and Unreliable, a weekly podcast where we discuss the latest ideas and concepts in technology. I'm your host, Ann Curry, co-author of Building Green Software and author of the science fiction panopticon series, which is the more relevant book to the discussion that I'm gonna be having today. So because Although mostly I talk about technology, sometimes I talk about the applications of technology. And this episode is very much about the applications of technology. So and today I have the great pleasure to welcome one of my favourite thriller writers, Catherine Patak, the very human author behind the best selling Scottish Noir Danny Bevan series, and whose news book, Red Red Rose, comes out soon. So welcome to the show, Kat.
Katherine Pathak: Thank you for having me.
Anne: I I did mention on the show that I'd I'd love to have more people coming onto the podcast to announce books, new books. And now I think you're the fourth person who'll be coming onto the podcast to to announce a book. So do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
Katherine Pathak: Yes, so I've got a new book that's the second book in my third series of detective thrillers. So this one has come out of it's a spin-off from the DCI Danny Bevan detective series, which has 14 books in it. and D.I. Alice Mann is the detective who felt like the natural successor to Danny.
Anne: so so you are a ridiculously prolific author. You have written how many books?
Katherine Pathak: think this one will be it's the twenty-third sort of standard detective thriller and that's in thirteen years now.
Anne: So the topic of the the thing that I want to talk to you about, and the reason why I introduced you as a human author, which might seem as a l a little bit of a as of a a redundant description normally, is that AI is completely changing the The the publishing industry. And in the same way, well, in a totally different way, actually, to the way that it's completely changing the the tech industry, the software engineering industry. And I've talked loads in the podcast about the res about the changes to the to the tech industry. but I'm quite interested in your thoughts on the changes to the the publishing industry and and the industry of writing novels. writing fiction stuff. Because actually AI is surprisingly good at it in a particular way. what's your thinking on on where we are with AI's writing, writing fiction.
Katherine Pathak: Well I I know because obviously a part of the the writing community, a lot of authors are very frightened by it, in the same way that all creatives are frightened by the idea of ide of AI writing creative material. I think if AI wrote books from now onwards Course that would be the end of my career and and the careers of many others. I can't see that happening in the immediate future. I don't think that the public has an appetite. I might be wrong, but I think there will always be a market for I can see you think I'm wrong, but I I think there will always be a market for saying this was written by a human or this is read by a human. That will create a market, I I hope. I can see lots of possibilities from it. where I could see it really being helpful is AI text to speech to produce audiobooks. I think
Anne: Mm. Mm.
Katherine Pathak: that's on its way. I've already signed up to that on Amazon. I had a a fantastic voice actor who Read my first three books on Audible, and he's a lovely guy, very talented, but it's an extremely time consuming process. Huge numbers of person hours are required to read an audiobook. plus in this stain, I we used to have audiobooks used to be abridged for. putting onto a CD or a a tape or whatever. And that meant you're you're listening, I don't know, max about four hours to a book. Now they are verbatim. And in my experience, and I like listening to audiobooks a lot, they're too long. You
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: you are not meant to listen to all the bits where you say, He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. And she said as she scuttled into the room with her, you know, these these are all things we do to paint a picture in a novel, but you you wouldn't have that on a radio play, or you wouldn't be sitting for six hours to listen to the story. And I think that AI could abridge your book. and that would be a very good. use for it. I also think that AI could turn your book into a TV script or a play script
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: because that that would take again weeks for you to to do yourself and it doesn't require any extra creative input. It's purely about formatting and editing.
Anne: Yeah, I mean it's so it it's interesting. So so you're saying there that and and I think you're right that that so one of the interesting s things is that I've read all all of your books, and I read you sent me a pre-released version of Red Red Rose, and I read that and I enjoyed it. It's very good, as I always do. one of the interesting things that so I could a hundred percent tell that you wrote it. Because I use AI all the time and I love AI. I don't use it in my any of my writing because it's it's it's a very distinctive style. And although it is getting much, much better. and so I'm because I can see how much it's getting better, I at the rate at which it's getting better, then then I'm I'm I'm less sanguine than you that it won't be writing the novels in future, especially as you know, early so early versions of ChatGBT. were trained very heavily on fan fiction because it was it was copious and it was not so not did i say chat GP GPT the GPT model were trained on fan fiction because there's loads of it and it's all generally available with no copyright because it's obviously massively copyrighted bridging because it is so so fundamentally they could do loads and loads of training on that and which is why AI so one of the reasons why AI sounds like it does which is quite like fan fiction. And fanfiction is actually very, very popular. I don't like fanfiction because I find it a bit it's a bit fanfiction y, if you know what I mean. But a lot of people do. And so what you might be thinking, well no one will want to listen to Chat GPT write novels because it all sounds like fanfiction. A lot of people read fanfiction. And in fact a lot of the major novels
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, I agree. fifty shades of grey started out as a twilight fan fiction.
Anne: no, yes, no, I was wrong. it. So fanfiction does sell. And and the chatbots basically do produce fiction.
Katherine Pathak: Absolutely.
Anne: But I I totally get what you're saying about about audiobooks, because they are crazily hard to do. and they are they are not really the the wheelhouse of writers, you know, to be doing that themselves. I mean So especially independent writers. I one thing that's very interesting is that your really best selling author bo books series, the Danny Bevan series, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It was a top UK, top world best seller in crime fiction. and it was and you were an in you independently published that. You didn't you didn't use a publisher to do that. And it's not not clear that you would have sold more. If you'd had a a trad publisher. but one of the things I did get from a trad publisher was. that they did outsource that to a company that did an audiobook version. and it was quite it was quite entertaining listening to the audiobook version because we really couldn't tell. John and I, when we're listening to it, we couldn't tell whether it was actually narrated by a person or someone who spoke in a very AI like the word. I had to actually, I found her on LinkedIn and then I chatted to her. And I thought you're real. But you've clearly one thing, as things often do, that the products have evolved t t towards one another. I mean she obviously uses AI for some of the stuff that she's doing. So she's had made her own voice sound more like AI so that she can munch together the AI bits and her bits, which means that you need everybody to sound more like AI.
Katherine Pathak: Yes, w which is very that that is sad, I I think. And and I I was really privileged to have my audiobook actor, who's a who's a really wonderful Scottish actor, to read those first three books, because it's quite a different experience when an actor reads the book, because I don't have a Scottish accent. I have got Scottish heritage. which is why the books are set in Scotland. but to have the book read by a Scottish actor who could do all the characters and it just brought them alive. And we all know that from listening to audiobooks, it's a whole different experience. I've listened to ones where yeah the the the narrator is very good but they aren't reading a book. And there are other narrators who are performing the book and they are telling you the story, they are giving you the you are immersive in the story. And that's quite a different experience. And will AI be able to do that in five years? Probably. And you know, I hate to be talking about this because I know that the audiobook community, the readers, the narrators, the actors. will not be happy about this. and
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Pathak: probably think it's it's a betrayal to say that that AI is a welcome addition to this part of the industry. And I I completely sympathise with that.
Anne: It's it's interesting because obviously I I I really like the the David Monteith's reading of readings of your books. And he's he's a really good actor. It does really it just does the voices. Frankly, you know, no author should ever attempt the voices. It's not what we were for, it's not what we're what we're any youth. Thank goodness I don't attempt the voices in any books. That would be disastrous. But the It has always you've always wanted to get him to do more of your books, and he's always wanted to do more of your books. It's just that he has such a backlog, and you write so many books, and he has such a backlog of other books, and his and your books do very well for him. I mean, so your book your audiobooks sell comparatively really well. That whole series sells sells like hot cakes. but he was a bottleneck, wasn't it? He was the classic bottleneck. that gets that can be removed by AI, which is you'd love to get do more books. You've been saying for years you'd want to do more audiobooks. but he's he he can't keep up.
Katherine Pathak: and and it's the same for me. it would be quite nice if I could
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Pathak: have I could say to another me, you you continue writing the the Danny Bevans while I write the new spin-off and then we'll see how they both do. And
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: it you know, that that would be very helpful if I felt that that might not completely make my role Obsolete,
Anne: it's interesting you say that because that takes us back to a topic which is always a fan fascinating topic to me. generally a fascinating topic in writing and publishing, which is that some series really take off. Really, really take off. your Danny Bevan series really took off, you know, hundreds of thousands of books sold. Things like Inspector Rebus, by Ian Rankin. that I was just reading, watching the Amazon Prime version of The Jack Reacher, which I love. They're really good. I don't I've never read the books, I've heard they're very good, but the the Tinkie show is good. and a lot of those folk, they eventually, like you, you you've moved away from the from your super best-selling one because actually you just got know I didn't really want to do this anymore. And Lee Child, the writer of the Jack Reacher series has basically said, you know, I don't want to do these books anymore. But at the same time, I'm aware that it's almost impossible you you've just like hit a giant jackpot by getting a series that that people want to read. So he's got his brother to he's his brother is the chatbot who is who is attempting to to keep the books going. I I'm a a a science fiction writer. I'm all obviously a giant fan of there's a writer called Anne McCaffrey who you may or may not have ever heard of. She's a she was she was a giant of sci-fi she wrote all these books that were about dragons that have been spun off in the loads of loads of copycat you know effectively fan fiction versions of that that's a not fan fiction. but she eventually well I mean she died sorry but it was still popular and now her son does them. So she did them together with the sun for a while. Now a sun does them. Because, you know, as Lee Child said, why would you why would you ever stop? You know? Like once you've got a character or a series, and it's very hard to tell which what is the thing that catches the imagination, you want to, you want to be able to keep, but you but as a writer, you can often get pretty sick of it. I mean, Agatha Christie is the case of points, isn't it?
Katherine Pathak: Arthur Conan Doyle, who hated
Anne: And Arthur Kandra, yeah. I it so I I
Katherine Pathak: Sherlock.
Anne: Did he hate Sherlock Holmes?
Katherine Pathak: But yes, he du he he was he what he that's why he killed him off. But
Anne: that's true, he did.
Katherine Pathak: but then public opinion demanded that he had to come back from the dead. So he was forced to bring him back. And it's you know you've almost you've created something, you've created a monster really, something bigger than yourself. And I don't know why he he disliked him, because I I absolutely I I owe an awful lot to my Danny Bevan series and I I have a lot of affection for it. And one of the reasons I did stop is because I felt the you you needed the early books. There was tension because of her relationships, how she she was fitting into her role. But then after 14 books, your character has to move on. They have to develop as a character. And something I really dislike about soap operas is if you have invested your interest in a character, they've moved on, and now things have settled for them, which is how the narrative structure works. at the end you reach equilibrium. Then they had to make it all get unbalanced again in order to write them into a new story. And then for me, I switch off and then I because I know then it isn't real.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: And I think the magic of a series is that people think it's real. People feel that care they know intellectually it's not real, but they feel that character is real. And people believed Sherlock Holmes was real. They went to 221B Baker Street to ask his advice about cases. They wrote letters for decades. and that is something that you want to that's the magic. That they I and I am very plot-based. I like novels. I can read a novel with characters I don't like hugely or particularly engaged with if the plot really grips me and I want to know what happens and I'm interested in the issues raised. Plot is huge to me, but I think character is more important when it comes to creating a best-selling series. And I feel like you're audience has to s has to believe that the character would still do these things for the the book to continue.
Anne: Yeah, it's it's an i it's an interesting one. we mentioned Agatha Christie. So the character that Agatha Christie was the most popular Agatha Christie character by Miles that she came to absolutely loathe was Aculpor. Fa famously. A bit like a bit like a bit like Arthur Coney Doyle. She f she killed him, but halfway through this his his the the books that she wrote. about him. About after about 30 years, she wrote the book in which he died. And then she but she put it in a safe only to be opened after her death and then she ploughed on
Katherine Pathak: thing that was interesting was and especially about that book Curtain so the the the book
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: she wrote when she killed off Poirot she left that I believe to her second husband so that he and she did that a lot so she she gave the rights to the mousetrap to her grandson because she was a a business she was an industry And
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: when somebody has a big name like Lee Child or Stephen King, you become an industry for more than just yourself. You you are
Anne: Mm.
Katherine Pathak: supporting other people. And you Agatha Christie had a an amazing foresight to know that her name and her brand had to live on when she was gone. And that's how she did it by leaving the rights to certain books, certain series. So basically, that's like life insurance. So she released Curtin not not long before she herself died, so that her husband would have the royalties from that book when she was gone. And I I find that incredible. And to know that your books are going to still be bought in. ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years time, she knew that, and she was right.
Anne: Yeah. Yes, and it's interesting, is it? So so what yeah, so you've made a a really interesting analogy there. Or there is a really interesting analogy there between kind of like getting your brother to take on the series or getting your son to take on the series, all these people who took on the series who or who didn't do. I mean, let's say none of these people who were who were who were relatives. And there are people who've taken on series who I think have actually done an even better job than the than the original. but the the f the family vote ne almost never do. So if you could train an AI to be that person who then takes that on, you would make I you say that it's effectively you're leaving a a a better bequest to your family than than trying to get them to do it when that they are not that person.
Katherine Pathak: You you'd have to create the brand first, wouldn't you? So
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: that's okay for those of us who have who've been able to create a human brand in real life. but once you've opened Pandora's box and AI is writing novels, then in a few generations' time there won't be any new humans to create a new brand. We'll just be using the old ones over and over and over again. And this will not I mean, I suppose that the the question is, can AI, because it keeps learning from previous things that it's read and it's kind of duplicating, it's kind of creating something new, has it got the creativity of a human to spark a whole new genre or create something really startlingly different? Can humans do that? I don't know. I think we're actually a lot of what's available. To people now is fairly generic and is based on not varying very much from the template that's been successful in the past. will AI take that away completely? Do we need that human spark to innovate? I'm not sure. You you will know more about that than me.
Anne: I I think it will. I think it'll take it away, no problem. cause I don't think 'cause I mean the interesting thing about about creating these new mega brands. I mean the the obvious mega brand it for at the moment, right now, for fiction is still JK Rowling. It's still Harry the Harry Potter series. the Harry Potter series was massively derivative. It was it which she did she did a perfectly reasonable job, but it's derived. So I could give you a a load of authors who wrote almost the same story before before that before that and she kind of just spliced it all together and did it again. That is totally within the capabilities of AI. So the Harry Potter brand could easily have been generated by AI. And and AI is so very good at holding the whole of human knowledge in its so you know in its model, in its head. And going, well, let's just jiggle around with that a little bit and splice it together in a different way. I think that it's more than capable of doing a JK Rowling. Now it the the the incredible the incredible brands of the right at the beginning of fiction, you know, things like Jane Austen, you know, Pride and Prejudice. Was she I don't really know enough about whether or not she was based on a an earlier brand. but at that point there can only have been at some point someone started this whole thing off. so there were new
Katherine Pathak: I think there
Anne: ideas then.
Katherine Pathak: there was a the Gothic fiction brand, which she parodied in Northanger Abbey.
Anne: Northanger Abbey. Mm.
Katherine Pathak: and that that sort of started her off, but she took it more seriously. You know, she she her books aren't parodies, they're they're genuine books about relationships and and her personal experience. but she was not a brand in her lifetime.
Anne: No, that's true.
Katherine Pathak: her books only started Selling after her death, and then she became a massive brand. And actually, there there weren't a lot at the time. She's a pioneer, really, because there were very few. I think you've got Radcliffe Hall, who wrote some gothic books earlier. You've got Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, and she was a huge outlier for for writing that. You know, obviously, Mary Wollstonecraft was her mother, so she had a a kind of role model to push the boundaries. But not really until the mid to late 19th century do you get the female novelist having the the sort of brand recognition. But even then the the Brontes didn't write under their own name. And they needed to have patrons like Charles Dickens to promote them and without those patrons they wouldn't have had the success that they did. But the power of their writing in the end was enough to get them a readership. So you've got George Elliot was people really enjoyed her books therefore she became a great novelist. but people must have quite enjoyed the female voice. the female narrative. And can
Anne: Mm. Yes, that's true.
Katherine Pathak: AI create a female voice? A male voice? A non-binary voice? I I don't I don't know. Because
Anne: oddly enough I'm the opposite of you. I want because I write books on green software all about how to write code that's more that that's aligned with the energy transition. I want the AIs to just be able to take that and run with it and and just be me all over the place saying the kind of things that are in the books. So I I really I spend a lot of time going, read this, read this, read this, you know, replicate by and and actually it's not too bad if you talk about green software. It's really pretty good. I'm quite happy with it generally. but you're the opposite, because you don't want it to steal your voice. Well, I do want it to steal my vo my voice.
Katherine Pathak: Also, you know, dare I say it's AI's had a lot of very bad press this week and you know the sort of apocalyptic predictions about AI. would I want to be encouraging AI to say, right, okay, for this next book, you're gonna have to think of a really obscure, bizarre way of killing somebody, and you've got to think of you know, a really, really interesting new take on on. why somebody might want somebody else dead and why you know that we're as it is, crime writers, which, you know, it's a genre, it's the most popular genre in the UK. I looked it up this morning. It's still the most popular genre, crime and thrillers. I don't think it's because we're all psychopaths. I think it's because we enjoy mysteries and we like to know that people will come to justice in the end. And we enjoy the excitement of it. but you know, we have a conscience, don't we? We have a a sense of what's right and wrong. not all people do. I mean, we have had cases in the news recently of authors who have written books about how to kill your husband and then have gone out and killed their husband.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: So if we tell an AI to start learning about how to kill people and and why. people might do that and then what will they ultimately come up with?
Anne: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's so it's interesting. I had my guest on a podcast a few episodes ago was talking about the incredible amounts of effort that the AI companies, I mean, they are all they could do with doing a bit better at their DevOps and and sandboxing the their tests and doing that stuff, but they do put a lot of effort into reinforcement learning around don't murder people. Don't murder people for this reason. Don't mean and actually I I would consider my books to be part of part of the reinforcement learning on, you know, there are other ways than killing people. Killing people is not the right thing to do. but yeah, but yeah, so I want them to copy my books and do what go along with it, be my main character. Whereas you want them to not copy your get books.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I I read a lot of crime thrillers and I write them and a lot of people kill people who have slighted them in some way, in a completely disproportionate manner.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: And there'd be no crime fiction if this didn't happen. But we don't want AI to think that that's an everyday occurrence or that's the way that you respond to somebody having done something to you in the past that you didn't like.
Anne: Indeed, yes. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a there's a cr there's a thriller writer that we both like, actually haven't read in a few years, Minette Walters. and I remember that something that that she said in one of her books, I think some during a a criminologist or something was investigating something and they were saying, look, don't worry about motive, because in real life, there's no such thing as motive. Most people, no matter what happens, is not going to kill anybody. So the fact that there's a motive only applies if you're a psychopath. You the in ordinary people, there is no motive that would, you know, other than if you don't kill this innocent person, the whole world will blow up. That's not going to happen in in real life. So that's not a motive you really need to worry about. And it would be pretty apparent if that was the motive. Other than that, you know, why do people think about motive? Well, I guess it's oddly enough, it's because actually there are psychopaths out there. But then it's very difficult.
Katherine Pathak: I think it's psychological that
Anne: Yeah, but then it's very difficult. As as Manette Walters would say, there has to be something wrong with you to kill somebody. But if you do kill somebody, the motive that you would consider to be valid to kill that person. is ki completely incomprehensible to to anybody who is not going to kill people, which is the vast majority of people. it is one of the strange dirty secrets of crime novels that that doesn't really make any sense.
Katherine Pathak: No, well it's often very banal. And I I think that, you know, what people l enjoy reading true crime and and if you if you do look at sort of real case, genuine cases, it's often that somebody has killed somebody because they made too much noise. You know, they they were a bad neighbour or they they they just wanted to get rid of their husband or get rid of their wife because they were they wanted to run off somebody else. And the overkill, literally, to achieve that is mind boggling to the rest of us, but appeared to make sense to them.
Anne: Yeah. So actually the the the thing to cat to catch is not the motive doesn't matter. It's the person who is the site who is the c that kind of person.
Katherine Pathak: And this is also because with my other hat on as a teacher who's had safeguarding training and all the rest of it, we are always told to trust our gut. And usually
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Pathak: you know very quickly you can assess somebody and and whether they're they're really going to be a good person to be around vulnerable people quite quickly. but it's interesting because I think children are very good judges of character. And they can judge people and perhaps because they haven't yet got the layers of social conditioning placed upon them. And they they can tell when somebody is is not very genuine, is not very warm, or and it that that I find really fascinating and something I probably haven't looked at enough in my books, but I'm sure other people have have looked at that more closely in their writing. But I I do find that interesting. and you could also say the same about animals, you know. People say, well, that you know, my dog doesn't like somebody, that's that's usually and to be honest, our dog doesn't like anybody who comes in our house, so that's the that doesn't apply. But
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: But I w I was yeah, 'cause I
Anne: Ha ha ha.
Katherine Pathak: was thinking this morning about, you know, what what makes a bestseller. And
Anne: Hmm.
Katherine Pathak: yes, we we something that we didn't talk about was the celebrity writer because
Anne: celebrity writer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: that yeah, is is I can an AI I mean that that is I think at the moment that's the direction that publishing is going in. Certainly traditional publishing is selling books by people who are already a brand in another area. and that is how they are getting their initial sales. for those books. Obviously Richard Osman is a case in point. And I I know people who really enjoy his books. Obviously he got his idea from Agatha Christie. She had her Tuesday Mood Murder Club and he had his Thursday Murder Club. So AI could most certainly have got that idea and then based a book series upon it. But what they didn't have w was the celebrity name that went with it. And then all the interviews that he could go on to TV programmes and and do because of all his connections and the fact that he's already well known in the UK. and that's that is, I mean, that's at the moment, I suppose there are two areas that authors are getting upset about, concerned about. One of them is AI, and the other is celebrity authors.
Anne: I suspect that Richard Osman did actually write his own stuff. I don't think he used a do you think he used a ghostwriter? Or do you think he actually
Katherine Pathak: I I think he I think he wrote his own books, yeah. I think he did, definitely.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. But loads of celebrity authors do actually use a ghostwriter. So is that really any difference to using an AI?
Katherine Pathak: Yes. Yeah. No. No, because we don't know who that ghostwriter is, do we? We we don't know anything about them. I I think that's no different than using AI and and putting a celebrity name on it on the because all he's doing is input they're inputting their ideas, they're inputting their their plot, and then they're saying off you go and write it. Well that's that's AI is as far as I could see it.
Anne: Yeah, that's a very good point. I hadn't thought about that. You're you're coming up with a lot of of of tweaks around AI use in the publishing industry that I hadn't thought about at all. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, you know, somebody slaving away, some nameless person or even team of people slaving away in the in in the dark room, ghost writing, the books of the of the famous book because let's face it, they don't have it's very time consuming to write a book. and it's not very many people have the skill to do it. It's a it's a skill. It takes years to learn that skill. And it's not unreasonable to say, well, if you're a famous song, you know, singer or pop star, then you're not gonna spend three years learning how to write a book and then write the book. That's you know, that's
Katherine Pathak: I mean I I think it must be very difficult because if I ha if I was a famous person and I had written the book, I would be wanting
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: to say at all times, I wrote this. I actually wrote this book. It's not ghostwritten. But they must be told by their publishers they can't say that because then it it suggests that that a lot of the books that are written by celebrities are not written by them. but obviously for a very long time you will have to say this is an AI. novel if you are a traditional publisher. If it comes if you can download it from somewhere the the that's all bets are off. But if you are a traditional publisher you are going to have to say this was produced by AI. And there will be a lot of consumers for a lot of years who will avoid that.
Anne: Yeah. I I will say none of my books were written by AI. I've I painfully wrote them all. And I know you painfully wrote yours yours because I recognise your your writing.
Katherine Pathak: And you can see your and it's interesting because I've been rewriting some of rereading some of the old Danny Bevons to remind myself of the of the characters and what they do and what they say. and it helps you to to write the new series. But I'm always chuckled at the repeated sort of phrases that I tend to use. And a a friend of mine said a an awful lot of people bring in trays of cups of tea in your books, and rereading them and I thought if somebody else drags their hand through their hair in frustration, then you know, nobody's gonna have any hair left. It's you know, we we have our phrases, we don't realise we've used them and that that we've repeated them, but they intersperse our books. And probably I mean A if we can pick that up, AI would pick that up in a second. You know, that those are your
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: kind of filler phrases to explain what's happening and and to not pad out but to create a context around your dialogue because you can't just have two people speaking. There has to be something else going on in the room while
Anne: No, they have to
Katherine Pathak: that's happening.
Anne: Yeah, they have to take a sip on their cup of tea or yeah, do something. Pace up and down or I have a lot of
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, right.
Anne: pacing up and down.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, pacing up and down or taking a deep breath. I think a a
Anne: Mm.
Katherine Pathak: lot of my characters were are pretty much hyperventilating during during the dialogue scenes.
Anne: They sighed. Mine are always sighing. I sighed.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, sighing heavily and grimacing
Anne: yeah, my my characters do grimace a lot. And quite often you think, what does grimacing even mean? So I ha I have an American reader. who who pointed out that in the UK when you say you frown that means you like you you you're you're like you're like concentrating you frown in concentration you you you wrinkle your brow but in in America if you say you frown what that means is that you're you know Turn that frown upside down, it means that actually your your you know your your mouth is is going down. You're sad if you're frowning. So in fact, you have to be quite careful not to, you have to bear that in mind when you're writing, because my characters are always frowning in common concentration. But in America, it doesn't make any sense.
Katherine Pathak: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely mine are always frowning. and their their brow is crinkling and and that that kind of thing. I've I always had a lot of readers in America for my books and I I think that American readers really like British crime fiction. so I expect they've got used to it. From read from reading
Anne: They probably have.
Katherine Pathak: all the British crime fiction that they read, along with all the cups of tea that get that the tea with sugar and that that get drunk in these books. like we do when we read an American book. You know, we we we get used to the the
Anne: Vernacular.
Katherine Pathak: the phrases, don't we? That the the Michelle Cornwell novels and the and it's part of the enjoyment.
Anne: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. I mean it's definitely something I never really appreciated that I mean one of the reasons why I mean you you there're loads of reasons why your books are massively best selling, all that kind of stuff, they're very good. But a the major reason is that they sell a lot in America. And America is just there are lots of people in America who buy books.
Katherine Pathak: Yes, and who like who read on Kindle and enjoy reading sort of book and and they like books set in Scotland and Ireland.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: and possibly Wales as well, because there's lot of Welsh crime fiction has really expanded in recent years. But certainly since I've been writing, I read a lot of Irish crime fiction, which I really enjoy. I think the setting is very significant. to the success. my books set in in Essex, and I'd say they're steady sellers, which is a different category that I would not turn my nose up at whatsoever. and people do enjoy the settings, but somebody in you know reading these books in the United States is not quite so familiar with the River Blackwater or the you know the Battle of Malden or or you know, these sorts of issues. it's not it's not Cornwall, is it, or Yorkshire or but it's it's somewhere
Anne: It's not
Katherine Pathak: that that I know very well better than I know Scotland. And it is true that you should write about the places that you know, because you will write better, you know, you'll have greater insight. And it might be somewhere that you want people to know a bit more about. You know, you want want to be a little bit more original. I mean, lots of people write books set in Scotland, but not so many are writing about the east coast of Essex. There are certainly a a few, but
Anne: No, because I live on the east coast of Essex. all my neighbours totally love your books because they're set in the east coast of Essex. Well, they're really good books and they're set in the East Coast of Essex.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, absolutely.
Anne: That's very interesting. So that's been a really interesting conversation, Catherine today. I I so we've learned an interesting thing. I wasn't really expecting, which is, yeah, may maybe AI has not got to the point, but it it may well do of re of writing all the fiction for us. but there are choke points that artists are definitely experiencing at the moment, like producing audiobooks. that actually it could really be quite helpful at doing. Maybe it wouldn't be as good as having it wouldn't be as good as having a human actor do it. But as you say, I mean you would you have been a human actor who likes doing your books and wants to do your books and you're still what is it? It's like 10 years you've been waiting for him to do another one. It's just that those choke points are not supportable. it's actually you you think it's about writing, but it's actually there's tons more stuff. that's that's is is kind of like is not writing or and in fact there and as you say there are loads of examples of things which are utterly and directly analogous ghost writers getting you know getting your friends and family to take over your successfully running series you know it's it's the you know the the silent person who continues the thing and tries to make it in your voice as much as possible. as humanly possible. let's see yeah it's quite interesting isn't it? I hadn't thought about that.
Katherine Pathak: Well yeah, there's there's a of blurred lines there.
Anne: So that actually that's a really really useful thing I've not thought of at all before. So thank you very much for coming in and talking about AI in the publishing industry for doing things that are not just writing books or even not primarily writing books. so thank you very much indeed.
Katherine Pathak: Pleasure.
Anne: And thank you to our listeners and viewers of Asynchronous and Unreliable. I hope you enjoyed this episode. There was a little bit different on the usage of AI, the uses of AI, in industries that are not just the software engineering industry. So thank you very much and I will see you again on next week's episode of Asynchronous and Unreliable.
Katherine Pathak: Thank you for having me.
Anne: I I did mention on the show that I'd I'd love to have more people coming onto the podcast to announce books, new books. And now I think you're the fourth person who'll be coming onto the podcast to to announce a book. So do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
Katherine Pathak: Yes, so I've got a new book that's the second book in my third series of detective thrillers. So this one has come out of it's a spin-off from the DCI Danny Bevan detective series, which has 14 books in it. and D.I. Alice Mann is the detective who felt like the natural successor to Danny.
Anne: so so you are a ridiculously prolific author. You have written how many books?
Katherine Pathak: think this one will be it's the twenty-third sort of standard detective thriller and that's in thirteen years now.
Anne: So the topic of the the thing that I want to talk to you about, and the reason why I introduced you as a human author, which might seem as a l a little bit of a as of a a redundant description normally, is that AI is completely changing the The the publishing industry. And in the same way, well, in a totally different way, actually, to the way that it's completely changing the the tech industry, the software engineering industry. And I've talked loads in the podcast about the res about the changes to the to the tech industry. but I'm quite interested in your thoughts on the changes to the the publishing industry and and the industry of writing novels. writing fiction stuff. Because actually AI is surprisingly good at it in a particular way. what's your thinking on on where we are with AI's writing, writing fiction.
Katherine Pathak: Well I I know because obviously a part of the the writing community, a lot of authors are very frightened by it, in the same way that all creatives are frightened by the idea of ide of AI writing creative material. I think if AI wrote books from now onwards Course that would be the end of my career and and the careers of many others. I can't see that happening in the immediate future. I don't think that the public has an appetite. I might be wrong, but I think there will always be a market for I can see you think I'm wrong, but I I think there will always be a market for saying this was written by a human or this is read by a human. That will create a market, I I hope. I can see lots of possibilities from it. where I could see it really being helpful is AI text to speech to produce audiobooks. I think
Anne: Mm. Mm.
Katherine Pathak: that's on its way. I've already signed up to that on Amazon. I had a a fantastic voice actor who Read my first three books on Audible, and he's a lovely guy, very talented, but it's an extremely time consuming process. Huge numbers of person hours are required to read an audiobook. plus in this stain, I we used to have audiobooks used to be abridged for. putting onto a CD or a a tape or whatever. And that meant you're you're listening, I don't know, max about four hours to a book. Now they are verbatim. And in my experience, and I like listening to audiobooks a lot, they're too long. You
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: you are not meant to listen to all the bits where you say, He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. And she said as she scuttled into the room with her, you know, these these are all things we do to paint a picture in a novel, but you you wouldn't have that on a radio play, or you wouldn't be sitting for six hours to listen to the story. And I think that AI could abridge your book. and that would be a very good. use for it. I also think that AI could turn your book into a TV script or a play script
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: because that that would take again weeks for you to to do yourself and it doesn't require any extra creative input. It's purely about formatting and editing.
Anne: Yeah, I mean it's so it it's interesting. So so you're saying there that and and I think you're right that that so one of the interesting s things is that I've read all all of your books, and I read you sent me a pre-released version of Red Red Rose, and I read that and I enjoyed it. It's very good, as I always do. one of the interesting things that so I could a hundred percent tell that you wrote it. Because I use AI all the time and I love AI. I don't use it in my any of my writing because it's it's it's a very distinctive style. And although it is getting much, much better. and so I'm because I can see how much it's getting better, I at the rate at which it's getting better, then then I'm I'm I'm less sanguine than you that it won't be writing the novels in future, especially as you know, early so early versions of ChatGBT. were trained very heavily on fan fiction because it was it was copious and it was not so not did i say chat GP GPT the GPT model were trained on fan fiction because there's loads of it and it's all generally available with no copyright because it's obviously massively copyrighted bridging because it is so so fundamentally they could do loads and loads of training on that and which is why AI so one of the reasons why AI sounds like it does which is quite like fan fiction. And fanfiction is actually very, very popular. I don't like fanfiction because I find it a bit it's a bit fanfiction y, if you know what I mean. But a lot of people do. And so what you might be thinking, well no one will want to listen to Chat GPT write novels because it all sounds like fanfiction. A lot of people read fanfiction. And in fact a lot of the major novels
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, I agree. fifty shades of grey started out as a twilight fan fiction.
Anne: no, yes, no, I was wrong. it. So fanfiction does sell. And and the chatbots basically do produce fiction.
Katherine Pathak: Absolutely.
Anne: But I I totally get what you're saying about about audiobooks, because they are crazily hard to do. and they are they are not really the the wheelhouse of writers, you know, to be doing that themselves. I mean So especially independent writers. I one thing that's very interesting is that your really best selling author bo books series, the Danny Bevan series, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It was a top UK, top world best seller in crime fiction. and it was and you were an in you independently published that. You didn't you didn't use a publisher to do that. And it's not not clear that you would have sold more. If you'd had a a trad publisher. but one of the things I did get from a trad publisher was. that they did outsource that to a company that did an audiobook version. and it was quite it was quite entertaining listening to the audiobook version because we really couldn't tell. John and I, when we're listening to it, we couldn't tell whether it was actually narrated by a person or someone who spoke in a very AI like the word. I had to actually, I found her on LinkedIn and then I chatted to her. And I thought you're real. But you've clearly one thing, as things often do, that the products have evolved t t towards one another. I mean she obviously uses AI for some of the stuff that she's doing. So she's had made her own voice sound more like AI so that she can munch together the AI bits and her bits, which means that you need everybody to sound more like AI.
Katherine Pathak: Yes, w which is very that that is sad, I I think. And and I I was really privileged to have my audiobook actor, who's a who's a really wonderful Scottish actor, to read those first three books, because it's quite a different experience when an actor reads the book, because I don't have a Scottish accent. I have got Scottish heritage. which is why the books are set in Scotland. but to have the book read by a Scottish actor who could do all the characters and it just brought them alive. And we all know that from listening to audiobooks, it's a whole different experience. I've listened to ones where yeah the the the narrator is very good but they aren't reading a book. And there are other narrators who are performing the book and they are telling you the story, they are giving you the you are immersive in the story. And that's quite a different experience. And will AI be able to do that in five years? Probably. And you know, I hate to be talking about this because I know that the audiobook community, the readers, the narrators, the actors. will not be happy about this. and
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Pathak: probably think it's it's a betrayal to say that that AI is a welcome addition to this part of the industry. And I I completely sympathise with that.
Anne: It's it's interesting because obviously I I I really like the the David Monteith's reading of readings of your books. And he's he's a really good actor. It does really it just does the voices. Frankly, you know, no author should ever attempt the voices. It's not what we were for, it's not what we're what we're any youth. Thank goodness I don't attempt the voices in any books. That would be disastrous. But the It has always you've always wanted to get him to do more of your books, and he's always wanted to do more of your books. It's just that he has such a backlog, and you write so many books, and he has such a backlog of other books, and his and your books do very well for him. I mean, so your book your audiobooks sell comparatively really well. That whole series sells sells like hot cakes. but he was a bottleneck, wasn't it? He was the classic bottleneck. that gets that can be removed by AI, which is you'd love to get do more books. You've been saying for years you'd want to do more audiobooks. but he's he he can't keep up.
Katherine Pathak: and and it's the same for me. it would be quite nice if I could
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Pathak: have I could say to another me, you you continue writing the the Danny Bevans while I write the new spin-off and then we'll see how they both do. And
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: it you know, that that would be very helpful if I felt that that might not completely make my role Obsolete,
Anne: it's interesting you say that because that takes us back to a topic which is always a fan fascinating topic to me. generally a fascinating topic in writing and publishing, which is that some series really take off. Really, really take off. your Danny Bevan series really took off, you know, hundreds of thousands of books sold. Things like Inspector Rebus, by Ian Rankin. that I was just reading, watching the Amazon Prime version of The Jack Reacher, which I love. They're really good. I don't I've never read the books, I've heard they're very good, but the the Tinkie show is good. and a lot of those folk, they eventually, like you, you you've moved away from the from your super best-selling one because actually you just got know I didn't really want to do this anymore. And Lee Child, the writer of the Jack Reacher series has basically said, you know, I don't want to do these books anymore. But at the same time, I'm aware that it's almost impossible you you've just like hit a giant jackpot by getting a series that that people want to read. So he's got his brother to he's his brother is the chatbot who is who is attempting to to keep the books going. I I'm a a a science fiction writer. I'm all obviously a giant fan of there's a writer called Anne McCaffrey who you may or may not have ever heard of. She's a she was she was a giant of sci-fi she wrote all these books that were about dragons that have been spun off in the loads of loads of copycat you know effectively fan fiction versions of that that's a not fan fiction. but she eventually well I mean she died sorry but it was still popular and now her son does them. So she did them together with the sun for a while. Now a sun does them. Because, you know, as Lee Child said, why would you why would you ever stop? You know? Like once you've got a character or a series, and it's very hard to tell which what is the thing that catches the imagination, you want to, you want to be able to keep, but you but as a writer, you can often get pretty sick of it. I mean, Agatha Christie is the case of points, isn't it?
Katherine Pathak: Arthur Conan Doyle, who hated
Anne: And Arthur Kandra, yeah. I it so I I
Katherine Pathak: Sherlock.
Anne: Did he hate Sherlock Holmes?
Katherine Pathak: But yes, he du he he was he what he that's why he killed him off. But
Anne: that's true, he did.
Katherine Pathak: but then public opinion demanded that he had to come back from the dead. So he was forced to bring him back. And it's you know you've almost you've created something, you've created a monster really, something bigger than yourself. And I don't know why he he disliked him, because I I absolutely I I owe an awful lot to my Danny Bevan series and I I have a lot of affection for it. And one of the reasons I did stop is because I felt the you you needed the early books. There was tension because of her relationships, how she she was fitting into her role. But then after 14 books, your character has to move on. They have to develop as a character. And something I really dislike about soap operas is if you have invested your interest in a character, they've moved on, and now things have settled for them, which is how the narrative structure works. at the end you reach equilibrium. Then they had to make it all get unbalanced again in order to write them into a new story. And then for me, I switch off and then I because I know then it isn't real.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: And I think the magic of a series is that people think it's real. People feel that care they know intellectually it's not real, but they feel that character is real. And people believed Sherlock Holmes was real. They went to 221B Baker Street to ask his advice about cases. They wrote letters for decades. and that is something that you want to that's the magic. That they I and I am very plot-based. I like novels. I can read a novel with characters I don't like hugely or particularly engaged with if the plot really grips me and I want to know what happens and I'm interested in the issues raised. Plot is huge to me, but I think character is more important when it comes to creating a best-selling series. And I feel like you're audience has to s has to believe that the character would still do these things for the the book to continue.
Anne: Yeah, it's it's an i it's an interesting one. we mentioned Agatha Christie. So the character that Agatha Christie was the most popular Agatha Christie character by Miles that she came to absolutely loathe was Aculpor. Fa famously. A bit like a bit like a bit like Arthur Coney Doyle. She f she killed him, but halfway through this his his the the books that she wrote. about him. About after about 30 years, she wrote the book in which he died. And then she but she put it in a safe only to be opened after her death and then she ploughed on
Katherine Pathak: thing that was interesting was and especially about that book Curtain so the the the book
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: she wrote when she killed off Poirot she left that I believe to her second husband so that he and she did that a lot so she she gave the rights to the mousetrap to her grandson because she was a a business she was an industry And
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: when somebody has a big name like Lee Child or Stephen King, you become an industry for more than just yourself. You you are
Anne: Mm.
Katherine Pathak: supporting other people. And you Agatha Christie had a an amazing foresight to know that her name and her brand had to live on when she was gone. And that's how she did it by leaving the rights to certain books, certain series. So basically, that's like life insurance. So she released Curtin not not long before she herself died, so that her husband would have the royalties from that book when she was gone. And I I find that incredible. And to know that your books are going to still be bought in. ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred years time, she knew that, and she was right.
Anne: Yeah. Yes, and it's interesting, is it? So so what yeah, so you've made a a really interesting analogy there. Or there is a really interesting analogy there between kind of like getting your brother to take on the series or getting your son to take on the series, all these people who took on the series who or who didn't do. I mean, let's say none of these people who were who were who were relatives. And there are people who've taken on series who I think have actually done an even better job than the than the original. but the the f the family vote ne almost never do. So if you could train an AI to be that person who then takes that on, you would make I you say that it's effectively you're leaving a a a better bequest to your family than than trying to get them to do it when that they are not that person.
Katherine Pathak: You you'd have to create the brand first, wouldn't you? So
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: that's okay for those of us who have who've been able to create a human brand in real life. but once you've opened Pandora's box and AI is writing novels, then in a few generations' time there won't be any new humans to create a new brand. We'll just be using the old ones over and over and over again. And this will not I mean, I suppose that the the question is, can AI, because it keeps learning from previous things that it's read and it's kind of duplicating, it's kind of creating something new, has it got the creativity of a human to spark a whole new genre or create something really startlingly different? Can humans do that? I don't know. I think we're actually a lot of what's available. To people now is fairly generic and is based on not varying very much from the template that's been successful in the past. will AI take that away completely? Do we need that human spark to innovate? I'm not sure. You you will know more about that than me.
Anne: I I think it will. I think it'll take it away, no problem. cause I don't think 'cause I mean the interesting thing about about creating these new mega brands. I mean the the obvious mega brand it for at the moment, right now, for fiction is still JK Rowling. It's still Harry the Harry Potter series. the Harry Potter series was massively derivative. It was it which she did she did a perfectly reasonable job, but it's derived. So I could give you a a load of authors who wrote almost the same story before before that before that and she kind of just spliced it all together and did it again. That is totally within the capabilities of AI. So the Harry Potter brand could easily have been generated by AI. And and AI is so very good at holding the whole of human knowledge in its so you know in its model, in its head. And going, well, let's just jiggle around with that a little bit and splice it together in a different way. I think that it's more than capable of doing a JK Rowling. Now it the the the incredible the incredible brands of the right at the beginning of fiction, you know, things like Jane Austen, you know, Pride and Prejudice. Was she I don't really know enough about whether or not she was based on a an earlier brand. but at that point there can only have been at some point someone started this whole thing off. so there were new
Katherine Pathak: I think there
Anne: ideas then.
Katherine Pathak: there was a the Gothic fiction brand, which she parodied in Northanger Abbey.
Anne: Northanger Abbey. Mm.
Katherine Pathak: and that that sort of started her off, but she took it more seriously. You know, she she her books aren't parodies, they're they're genuine books about relationships and and her personal experience. but she was not a brand in her lifetime.
Anne: No, that's true.
Katherine Pathak: her books only started Selling after her death, and then she became a massive brand. And actually, there there weren't a lot at the time. She's a pioneer, really, because there were very few. I think you've got Radcliffe Hall, who wrote some gothic books earlier. You've got Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, and she was a huge outlier for for writing that. You know, obviously, Mary Wollstonecraft was her mother, so she had a a kind of role model to push the boundaries. But not really until the mid to late 19th century do you get the female novelist having the the sort of brand recognition. But even then the the Brontes didn't write under their own name. And they needed to have patrons like Charles Dickens to promote them and without those patrons they wouldn't have had the success that they did. But the power of their writing in the end was enough to get them a readership. So you've got George Elliot was people really enjoyed her books therefore she became a great novelist. but people must have quite enjoyed the female voice. the female narrative. And can
Anne: Mm. Yes, that's true.
Katherine Pathak: AI create a female voice? A male voice? A non-binary voice? I I don't I don't know. Because
Anne: oddly enough I'm the opposite of you. I want because I write books on green software all about how to write code that's more that that's aligned with the energy transition. I want the AIs to just be able to take that and run with it and and just be me all over the place saying the kind of things that are in the books. So I I really I spend a lot of time going, read this, read this, read this, you know, replicate by and and actually it's not too bad if you talk about green software. It's really pretty good. I'm quite happy with it generally. but you're the opposite, because you don't want it to steal your voice. Well, I do want it to steal my vo my voice.
Katherine Pathak: Also, you know, dare I say it's AI's had a lot of very bad press this week and you know the sort of apocalyptic predictions about AI. would I want to be encouraging AI to say, right, okay, for this next book, you're gonna have to think of a really obscure, bizarre way of killing somebody, and you've got to think of you know, a really, really interesting new take on on. why somebody might want somebody else dead and why you know that we're as it is, crime writers, which, you know, it's a genre, it's the most popular genre in the UK. I looked it up this morning. It's still the most popular genre, crime and thrillers. I don't think it's because we're all psychopaths. I think it's because we enjoy mysteries and we like to know that people will come to justice in the end. And we enjoy the excitement of it. but you know, we have a conscience, don't we? We have a a sense of what's right and wrong. not all people do. I mean, we have had cases in the news recently of authors who have written books about how to kill your husband and then have gone out and killed their husband.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: So if we tell an AI to start learning about how to kill people and and why. people might do that and then what will they ultimately come up with?
Anne: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's so it's interesting. I had my guest on a podcast a few episodes ago was talking about the incredible amounts of effort that the AI companies, I mean, they are all they could do with doing a bit better at their DevOps and and sandboxing the their tests and doing that stuff, but they do put a lot of effort into reinforcement learning around don't murder people. Don't murder people for this reason. Don't mean and actually I I would consider my books to be part of part of the reinforcement learning on, you know, there are other ways than killing people. Killing people is not the right thing to do. but yeah, but yeah, so I want them to copy my books and do what go along with it, be my main character. Whereas you want them to not copy your get books.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I I read a lot of crime thrillers and I write them and a lot of people kill people who have slighted them in some way, in a completely disproportionate manner.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: And there'd be no crime fiction if this didn't happen. But we don't want AI to think that that's an everyday occurrence or that's the way that you respond to somebody having done something to you in the past that you didn't like.
Anne: Indeed, yes. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a there's a cr there's a thriller writer that we both like, actually haven't read in a few years, Minette Walters. and I remember that something that that she said in one of her books, I think some during a a criminologist or something was investigating something and they were saying, look, don't worry about motive, because in real life, there's no such thing as motive. Most people, no matter what happens, is not going to kill anybody. So the fact that there's a motive only applies if you're a psychopath. You the in ordinary people, there is no motive that would, you know, other than if you don't kill this innocent person, the whole world will blow up. That's not going to happen in in real life. So that's not a motive you really need to worry about. And it would be pretty apparent if that was the motive. Other than that, you know, why do people think about motive? Well, I guess it's oddly enough, it's because actually there are psychopaths out there. But then it's very difficult.
Katherine Pathak: I think it's psychological that
Anne: Yeah, but then it's very difficult. As as Manette Walters would say, there has to be something wrong with you to kill somebody. But if you do kill somebody, the motive that you would consider to be valid to kill that person. is ki completely incomprehensible to to anybody who is not going to kill people, which is the vast majority of people. it is one of the strange dirty secrets of crime novels that that doesn't really make any sense.
Katherine Pathak: No, well it's often very banal. And I I think that, you know, what people l enjoy reading true crime and and if you if you do look at sort of real case, genuine cases, it's often that somebody has killed somebody because they made too much noise. You know, they they were a bad neighbour or they they they just wanted to get rid of their husband or get rid of their wife because they were they wanted to run off somebody else. And the overkill, literally, to achieve that is mind boggling to the rest of us, but appeared to make sense to them.
Anne: Yeah. So actually the the the thing to cat to catch is not the motive doesn't matter. It's the person who is the site who is the c that kind of person.
Katherine Pathak: And this is also because with my other hat on as a teacher who's had safeguarding training and all the rest of it, we are always told to trust our gut. And usually
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Pathak: you know very quickly you can assess somebody and and whether they're they're really going to be a good person to be around vulnerable people quite quickly. but it's interesting because I think children are very good judges of character. And they can judge people and perhaps because they haven't yet got the layers of social conditioning placed upon them. And they they can tell when somebody is is not very genuine, is not very warm, or and it that that I find really fascinating and something I probably haven't looked at enough in my books, but I'm sure other people have have looked at that more closely in their writing. But I I do find that interesting. and you could also say the same about animals, you know. People say, well, that you know, my dog doesn't like somebody, that's that's usually and to be honest, our dog doesn't like anybody who comes in our house, so that's the that doesn't apply. But
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: But I w I was yeah, 'cause I
Anne: Ha ha ha.
Katherine Pathak: was thinking this morning about, you know, what what makes a bestseller. And
Anne: Hmm.
Katherine Pathak: yes, we we something that we didn't talk about was the celebrity writer because
Anne: celebrity writer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: that yeah, is is I can an AI I mean that that is I think at the moment that's the direction that publishing is going in. Certainly traditional publishing is selling books by people who are already a brand in another area. and that is how they are getting their initial sales. for those books. Obviously Richard Osman is a case in point. And I I know people who really enjoy his books. Obviously he got his idea from Agatha Christie. She had her Tuesday Mood Murder Club and he had his Thursday Murder Club. So AI could most certainly have got that idea and then based a book series upon it. But what they didn't have w was the celebrity name that went with it. And then all the interviews that he could go on to TV programmes and and do because of all his connections and the fact that he's already well known in the UK. and that's that is, I mean, that's at the moment, I suppose there are two areas that authors are getting upset about, concerned about. One of them is AI, and the other is celebrity authors.
Anne: I suspect that Richard Osman did actually write his own stuff. I don't think he used a do you think he used a ghostwriter? Or do you think he actually
Katherine Pathak: I I think he I think he wrote his own books, yeah. I think he did, definitely.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. But loads of celebrity authors do actually use a ghostwriter. So is that really any difference to using an AI?
Katherine Pathak: Yes. Yeah. No. No, because we don't know who that ghostwriter is, do we? We we don't know anything about them. I I think that's no different than using AI and and putting a celebrity name on it on the because all he's doing is input they're inputting their ideas, they're inputting their their plot, and then they're saying off you go and write it. Well that's that's AI is as far as I could see it.
Anne: Yeah, that's a very good point. I hadn't thought about that. You're you're coming up with a lot of of of tweaks around AI use in the publishing industry that I hadn't thought about at all. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically, you know, somebody slaving away, some nameless person or even team of people slaving away in the in in the dark room, ghost writing, the books of the of the famous book because let's face it, they don't have it's very time consuming to write a book. and it's not very many people have the skill to do it. It's a it's a skill. It takes years to learn that skill. And it's not unreasonable to say, well, if you're a famous song, you know, singer or pop star, then you're not gonna spend three years learning how to write a book and then write the book. That's you know, that's
Katherine Pathak: I mean I I think it must be very difficult because if I ha if I was a famous person and I had written the book, I would be wanting
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: to say at all times, I wrote this. I actually wrote this book. It's not ghostwritten. But they must be told by their publishers they can't say that because then it it suggests that that a lot of the books that are written by celebrities are not written by them. but obviously for a very long time you will have to say this is an AI. novel if you are a traditional publisher. If it comes if you can download it from somewhere the the that's all bets are off. But if you are a traditional publisher you are going to have to say this was produced by AI. And there will be a lot of consumers for a lot of years who will avoid that.
Anne: Yeah. I I will say none of my books were written by AI. I've I painfully wrote them all. And I know you painfully wrote yours yours because I recognise your your writing.
Katherine Pathak: And you can see your and it's interesting because I've been rewriting some of rereading some of the old Danny Bevons to remind myself of the of the characters and what they do and what they say. and it helps you to to write the new series. But I'm always chuckled at the repeated sort of phrases that I tend to use. And a a friend of mine said a an awful lot of people bring in trays of cups of tea in your books, and rereading them and I thought if somebody else drags their hand through their hair in frustration, then you know, nobody's gonna have any hair left. It's you know, we we have our phrases, we don't realise we've used them and that that we've repeated them, but they intersperse our books. And probably I mean A if we can pick that up, AI would pick that up in a second. You know, that those are your
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: kind of filler phrases to explain what's happening and and to not pad out but to create a context around your dialogue because you can't just have two people speaking. There has to be something else going on in the room while
Anne: No, they have to
Katherine Pathak: that's happening.
Anne: Yeah, they have to take a sip on their cup of tea or yeah, do something. Pace up and down or I have a lot of
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, right.
Anne: pacing up and down.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, pacing up and down or taking a deep breath. I think a a
Anne: Mm.
Katherine Pathak: lot of my characters were are pretty much hyperventilating during during the dialogue scenes.
Anne: They sighed. Mine are always sighing. I sighed.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, sighing heavily and grimacing
Anne: yeah, my my characters do grimace a lot. And quite often you think, what does grimacing even mean? So I ha I have an American reader. who who pointed out that in the UK when you say you frown that means you like you you you're you're like you're like concentrating you frown in concentration you you you wrinkle your brow but in in America if you say you frown what that means is that you're you know Turn that frown upside down, it means that actually your your you know your your mouth is is going down. You're sad if you're frowning. So in fact, you have to be quite careful not to, you have to bear that in mind when you're writing, because my characters are always frowning in common concentration. But in America, it doesn't make any sense.
Katherine Pathak: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely mine are always frowning. and their their brow is crinkling and and that that kind of thing. I've I always had a lot of readers in America for my books and I I think that American readers really like British crime fiction. so I expect they've got used to it. From read from reading
Anne: They probably have.
Katherine Pathak: all the British crime fiction that they read, along with all the cups of tea that get that the tea with sugar and that that get drunk in these books. like we do when we read an American book. You know, we we we get used to the the
Anne: Vernacular.
Katherine Pathak: the phrases, don't we? That the the Michelle Cornwell novels and the and it's part of the enjoyment.
Anne: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. I mean it's definitely something I never really appreciated that I mean one of the reasons why I mean you you there're loads of reasons why your books are massively best selling, all that kind of stuff, they're very good. But a the major reason is that they sell a lot in America. And America is just there are lots of people in America who buy books.
Katherine Pathak: Yes, and who like who read on Kindle and enjoy reading sort of book and and they like books set in Scotland and Ireland.
Anne: Yeah.
Katherine Pathak: and possibly Wales as well, because there's lot of Welsh crime fiction has really expanded in recent years. But certainly since I've been writing, I read a lot of Irish crime fiction, which I really enjoy. I think the setting is very significant. to the success. my books set in in Essex, and I'd say they're steady sellers, which is a different category that I would not turn my nose up at whatsoever. and people do enjoy the settings, but somebody in you know reading these books in the United States is not quite so familiar with the River Blackwater or the you know the Battle of Malden or or you know, these sorts of issues. it's not it's not Cornwall, is it, or Yorkshire or but it's it's somewhere
Anne: It's not
Katherine Pathak: that that I know very well better than I know Scotland. And it is true that you should write about the places that you know, because you will write better, you know, you'll have greater insight. And it might be somewhere that you want people to know a bit more about. You know, you want want to be a little bit more original. I mean, lots of people write books set in Scotland, but not so many are writing about the east coast of Essex. There are certainly a a few, but
Anne: No, because I live on the east coast of Essex. all my neighbours totally love your books because they're set in the east coast of Essex. Well, they're really good books and they're set in the East Coast of Essex.
Katherine Pathak: Yeah, absolutely.
Anne: That's very interesting. So that's been a really interesting conversation, Catherine today. I I so we've learned an interesting thing. I wasn't really expecting, which is, yeah, may maybe AI has not got to the point, but it it may well do of re of writing all the fiction for us. but there are choke points that artists are definitely experiencing at the moment, like producing audiobooks. that actually it could really be quite helpful at doing. Maybe it wouldn't be as good as having it wouldn't be as good as having a human actor do it. But as you say, I mean you would you have been a human actor who likes doing your books and wants to do your books and you're still what is it? It's like 10 years you've been waiting for him to do another one. It's just that those choke points are not supportable. it's actually you you think it's about writing, but it's actually there's tons more stuff. that's that's is is kind of like is not writing or and in fact there and as you say there are loads of examples of things which are utterly and directly analogous ghost writers getting you know getting your friends and family to take over your successfully running series you know it's it's the you know the the silent person who continues the thing and tries to make it in your voice as much as possible. as humanly possible. let's see yeah it's quite interesting isn't it? I hadn't thought about that.
Katherine Pathak: Well yeah, there's there's a of blurred lines there.
Anne: So that actually that's a really really useful thing I've not thought of at all before. So thank you very much for coming in and talking about AI in the publishing industry for doing things that are not just writing books or even not primarily writing books. so thank you very much indeed.
Katherine Pathak: Pleasure.
Anne: And thank you to our listeners and viewers of Asynchronous and Unreliable. I hope you enjoyed this episode. There was a little bit different on the usage of AI, the uses of AI, in industries that are not just the software engineering industry. So thank you very much and I will see you again on next week's episode of Asynchronous and Unreliable.
