Introduction

What is this?

Think of this as a “Director’s Commentary” that you used to get on DVDs before streaming.

Ahead of the publication of “A Healing Love,” I posed a question in the SOL forums: How would people feel about the author offering this perspective on the events of each chapter in the comments of the story as each chapter is posted? The general consensus appeared to be that the comments section of the story may not be the most suitable venue for this, simply because it is not how they are intended to function.

But, I’m genuinely intrigued by the idea of sharing my thoughts on my work. Yes, I have a blog for that, but blogs are, by their nature, transient things. I could, I suppose, place this kind of content on my website, and I may well do that, but I feel that’s less accessible than a straightforward eBook that readers can download and read at their leisure.

So that’s what this is. It’s my thoughts on “A Good Man,” chapter by chapter, for you, dear reader, to explore at your leisure as you read the actual novel.

I felt that if I was going to do it for “A Healing Love,” then I probably needed to do it for the other three books in the series as well, and it’s always best to start at the beginning.

I’m also taking this opportunity to refine and revise the text of “A Good Man.” I’m a better writer than I was fourteen years ago, so hopefully, the exercise will improve the novel in general terms. I’m not changing the plot or the characterisation, but I will “retcon” anything I find that doesn’t fit with developments in the following books, and I may also take the opportunity to add to the narrative or add dialogue if I feel it will enhance the experience.

These corrections and refinements will initially appear on SOL, before being uploaded as a completed eBook to the bookstores.

So, What’s the AI Thing about?

I’ve been using Gemini, Google’s AI app, for about nine months now. I find it very helpful when I’m writing, as it helps me identify which parts of what I’ve written work well and which areas need refinement.

What I’ve done here is ask Gemini to analyse “A Good Man” chapter by chapter, to accompany my commentary. Below, you will find the prompt I used to obtain this analysis. I have Gemini Pro, which has a huge context window of 1,000,000 tokens, equivalent to about 750,000 words. That’s more than sufficient for me to conduct this analysis in a single Gemini thread, allowing it to hold the context and “follow the story.” It ought to be capable of tracking not just the plot and subplots, but also character development and world-building. I’ll be posting this analysis to SOL as I conduct it, so I guess we’ll see.

I haven’t edited any of the Gemini responses. They are just copied and pasted from the chat window.

I do hope you find this analysis interesting and insightful. I know I did.

Instructions to AI

I’m planning to write a ‘companion’ to my Novel, A Good Man. This will be published as a separate eBook for free, so that readers of the novel can dip into it and see my thoughts about the book, chapter by chapter. I’d also like to include an “AI Analysis” of the book, which you will help me with. I will share each chapter with you and then ask that you analyse the following: