There's a lot of talk about generative AI hallucinating, but what kind of hallucination has to happen in a human brain for them to think it's right to take someone else's work, slap their own name on it, and put it up for sale (aye, and here's the rub) at more than the price of the genuine article?

The question isn't purely rhetorical. While creating links for the Fabled Lands bookstores (US here, UK here) I came across some of my own gamebooks on sale on Apple Books under different titles. Well, nearly different -- whoever pirated them was dumb enough to leave "Critical IF" in the name, which is why they popped up on a Google search.

As you can see, one rip-off edition wasn't enough for them. And that time could have been so much better spent teaching themselves English. And, I dunno, ethics. Others have pointed out that they've also ripped off images owned by some big hitters, who might well come gunning for them with more than a rusty cannon. Happily, Apple's legal department has now deleted the books, though I suspect the same piratical individuals will just upload them again under new titles.

If you think all that is bad (and I hope you do) you should hear what happened to my wife. A company offering online courses ripped off the entire contents of her Nail Your Novel books and spent years selling "their" writing course for considerably more than the cost of the books. She only found out about it because the company had lazily cut-&-pasted everything from the books including a mention of her name, enabling one of their customers to track her down to ask if she'd be doing any more courses. (In fact she does have a bona fide online course, Become a Ghost-Writer.) She found a lawyer, but after months of effort all she got was a desultory payout -- a fraction of the money the company had made off the back of her work. Sadly, often crime does pay.

Anyway, on the principle that one has to rise above such knavery, I'll just point out that you can get the most up-to-date editions of the Critical IF books for less money from legitimate sources. Don't let the hornswogglers win!

Critical IF e-books are available on Amazon US and Amazon UK from $0.99 to $2.99.

I don't particularly regard Frankenstein as a horror story myself, or even science fiction, distrusting as I do the facile taxonomy of genre labels. At the same time, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and still less a gift kelpie, so the fact that Apple have chosen my interactive Frankenstein novel as one of their Halloween picks on iTunes is surely cause to rattle dem bones in celebration. And as an extra fillip, I just heard that FutureBook has shortlisted it for their 2012 Innovation Awards. Oh, the dizzying brew of critical acclaim, even here in the humble vestibule of fame that is British digital publishing.

Frankenstein was launched as an iOS-only app in April - much to the ire of many who chose a digital path other than the one marked out by Apple. If your e-reader of choice is Android-based, or a Kindle, you won't have long to wait for the ebook versions. They'll be released too late for Halloween, but after all Christmas Eve is also a time for spooky stories.

And in any case, Frankenstein is more a tragedy or even a thriller than it is a horror tale - if we have to pigeon-hole it - and it's a story that is powerfully compelling whatever the season. Here's a little taste:


It isn’t hard to track the official. He leaves heading north and you find his horse at the first inn on that road. Hidden in the hedge, you wait until the last drinker staggers out and the lights are put out. Creeping up to the window, you see his two guards stretched out on wooden pallets in the common room. With the aid of an apple tree you climb up to the next floor and look in. The first room has two figures – the innkeeper and his wife, probably. In the next window, you see the official's floppy red cap.

The catch yields to the pressure of your hand. You ease yourself into the room. In the bed lies the man you seek. You hear his breathing change, sense the stiffening of his body.

‘You’re awake,’ you say to him. ‘Don’t try to cry out.’

‘Who are you?’ He is trying to speak loudly, you think, both to assert himself and to rouse his guards. But fear has made his voice a dry whisper.

‘Today you threatened friends of mine.’

‘The De Lacys?’ He sits up, reaches for a taper beside him.

Where's this scene going, do you think? Towards a calm discussion à la Voltaire's salon, or into the gory excesses of the Grand Guignol? The monster's moral development is entirely in your hands.

After all the recent posts about the writing of my interactive Frankenstein book app, you may like to try it out. And now you don't even need an iPad or iPhone, as development wizards Inkle have put a Frankenstein web demo up on their site. Pop over and have a conversation with Victor about what he's got in that tank - just click where you see the words "Give it a try."

This demo is the sort of thing that publishers ought to be putting up on their websites too, incidentally, not just leaving to developers. But we're only in 2012. Softly, softly.

Meanwhile, if you are iOS-enabled then you can buy the book here.

I'm cross-posting this from the Mirabilis blog because Leo and I are just too darned excited to keep it under our hats. Mirabilis - Year of Wonders has been in the App Store for four days now, which is pretty fantastic as it is. But the really great news is that we just nudged into the Top 100 grossing ibooks at #99!

You can get the first instalment of the story completely free, then other chapters cost $1.99 each. So it was dizzyingly good news when we rose to #13 in UK iTunes books, but to actually be in the top-grossing charts too shows that new readers are following through with the story after they've been astounded by the fluid interface, easy in-app issue management, eye-popping zoom and page flip (courtesy of demon coder Simon Cook), magical colors (by wizard of the digital rainbow Nikos Koutsis) and stunning art (by maestro of the Wacom tablet Leo Hartas).

And don't feel left out if you don't have an iPad. You can read the first chapter on BookBuzzr or buy the trade paperback on Amazon. Next stop: the Kindle. And in the meantime, if you haven't got the Mirabilis iPad app yet, you can find it here in the USA and here in the UK. Spread the word!

My big news this week is that Mirabilis - Year of Wonders launched in the App Store for iPad. You can pick up the reader and issue #1 for free (US here, UK here) and subsequent issues are $1.99 each. We've styled them to be complete facsimile comic books, right down to the cover and letters page.

The zooming, page flipping and navigation is a dream - better, for my money, than you'll see in any other iOS comic book reader. And obviously I'm going to rate the content higher, seeing as it's written by me with pencils and inks by Leo Hartas and colors by Nikos Koutsis. Well hey, don't take my word for it. You can check it out for free.

The app quickly rose in the UK App Store book charts this week, reaching #13 (that's seventeen places above The Walking Dead and just two behind the DC Comics reader) and getting flagged by Apple as "New and Noteworthy". We'll be releasing new issues from February next year, so get iPadded now.

Not to forget print entirely, though, there's also a fabulous trade paperback edition on high-quality silk finish paper stock that you can buy for $19.99 on Amazon. That's volume one, which collects the first four issues, and volume two will be available by January. And UK readers might want to hold out for the large format harback editions that are due out from PrintMedia Productions in the spring - but those are only going to be available in Britain and Ireland.

This is a cross-post from the Mirabilis Year of Wonders blog, but I feel justified in squeezing a snippet about my personal projects before some more bits of big news from Fabled Lands LLP over the next week or two.

The Mirabilis Year of Wonders e-comic book is going to go live in only a few weeks now. But I just had to share this pic with you because I've been playing the ad hoc build and it really is a dream. Lush magic lantern colors, razor-sharp graphics, and an interface that's as stylish and smooth as an Irish coffee poured by George Clooney. If you're used to struggling with existing comic reader apps, you're going to be blown away by what our resident iOS wizard has conjured up.

Don't wait. Really, you should go direct to your nearest Apple retail store (look here for Apple in the UK or Apple in the US), buy yourself an iPad for Christmas, and you will then be able to get the reader app and the first chapter of Mirabilis free, with the other chapters available via our nifty in-app storefront. The Mirabilis graphic novel on iPad is our way of telling you that the Year of Wonders has arrived.