I’m very tired of promotion, so today I bring you a new toy. It’s called Midjourney. It’s an AI that generates images based on prompts. You can refine the images and make variations of them. It is very simple to use. I played with it a little bit this morning and here are my images.
Here are the variations it gave me before I refined one I liked.
If you want to play, the free trial account lets you make a few images before you run out of tries. Here is a how to video.
Have fun and if you make anything from one of our universes, please feel free to post it in the comments. We ask that you keep the images size under 100kb to save our poor server space.
PS. It is not clear as far as rights goes whether this will ever be available for commercial distribution, so at this point we probably cannot include those images in our books.
Those are beautiful images. 12 hours to book birthday!!
Congratulations to everyone in the time zones where it’s already Tuesday!
We are not jealous at all 😀
Ok, maybe a little bit.
This. So much this! Mod R you speak for all of us where it is still flipping Monday!
Yes. Greetings from Germany…
1:40 left now…
Waves from Australia! <3
Ohhh…this is fun!
I especially like the Baja-char image. Sunny, subtly alien terraces.
+1!
Absolutely gorgeous, I really hope this is something that is commercially released because this would be beautiful to have in the books, for us to see the HA imagination in pictures.
12 hours … SQUEEEEEEEE!
And yes thanks to you and Patty Briggs, I have the day off work tomorrow!!!
That’s the problem. We will have an embarrassment of riches, yet I cannot take off. I will have to revert to the old tried and true method of a coon toss to see who gets read first. Why can’t publishers cater to only what I want and spread it all out a little. \s
Well, technically the Mercy book *was* supposed to be out in March, so they were originally spread out. I’m glad it moved to same day as Ruby Fever, because now I have twofer, and yes, I took the day off, too. Wheeee!
Baha-char looks prettier than I imagined. I love it!
I think it’s the section where Clan Nuan has their shop.
Can we please get more pictures in the books? I would hope that enough fan artists would give stuff away for a small fee that we could get some awesome pictures. I’ve loved pictures of places in the Innkeeper series and thought about how I would love to see that in the other ones. If not directly in the book have a gallery online or something. If this happened I bet we would have Cookie in ink already. Omg…the Tapis books Cookie should be in book one I think. Andddd I’m off
That is really cool! Off to play! (until the book drops)
9 o’clock here
Very cool images. Thanks!!
This looks absolutely amazing!!
Fun!
Beautiful, but not at all how I pictured either place.
Baha-char looks less crowded and less urban than I expected (but totally a place I would consider living) and Unicorn Lane is way prettier and less dangerous looking (NOT a place I’d want to live in or near even as pretty as this looks)
It’s not close to what I pictured either. I think I would have to mess with it for awhile and Innkeeper installments do not suffer procrastinators.
thank you for not being like me! procrastination is my middle name.
It looks like it is available for commercial publishing, as this entire controversy shows : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/20/ai-art-artificial-intelligence-midjourney-dall-e-replacing-artists
I would be curious to know Ilona’s thoughts on it.
That’s exactly I am going to wait a bit on that. Suppose we include the images, and then find out they are based on a particular artist’s style without that artist’s consent. Then we have a lawsuit. Then we will have to pull the images, etc. Besides, no AI can match human creativity. We are proud to feature human art work in our books. 🙂
Thank you for including art when you can and also supporting human artists. I do love the Baha-char one. It is unique and also pretty.
I wonder if it would be possible to use this to get something that lives in your mind out with a visual reference or inspiration point to then give to a human artist for creating things. Or create a series of them for a specific setting and be like here, these all fit in pieces but can you make them into one setting for us? As an author there is obvious talent and practiced skill in stringing together words in a way where someone can visualize what you are thinking of but everyone would have their own tweaks of how they as a person see it. Maybe a way of short cutting faster towards your version?
This is sooo cool and gorgeous but watching that vid I kept thinking of how much existing art it would have to have been fed to be so capable and wondering if that was properly sourced vs from the internet in general.
Check the Romance column in The New York Times book section for a glowing review of Ruby Fever as well as a lovely compliment on how well written the series is.
Cool
Nice!
Very Pretty!
wow! I love Baha-char! Unicorn lane is pretty neat, too, but I never had much of a mind’s eye view of that one. I’ll have to go back to the books and read the descriptions. I’ve never done a complete re-read of Kate, altho I’ve read all the other series multiple times, heh. Thanks for the info!
Finished reading Catalina’s books last week and am listening to the second one right now in preparation!! I will download Ruby Fever ASAP so it’s available for my work commute tomorrow and all day long, for that matter. My lab work is time consuming but requires rather little of my attention to be brutally honest.
These are cool!! I would like to visit Baha-char, but still hesitant about Unicorn Lane!
And I am always amazed and enchanted by the art work in all the HA series.
No art skills or athletic abilities, but always available to be in the cheer block section for both!
::waves colorful pompoms::
In the spirit of the old Jimmy Buffet song “ It’s five o’clock somewhere” it ‘s actually 5.46 amTuesday 23 rd here in Brisbane Australia and the book has dropped so no time to dilly dally. All I need is a cup of tea and my iPad.
Happy Reading!
Wooo!! The Unicorn Lane image is right scary! ????
Love the pics but my favorite is the Baha-char in the books.
Ooh forgot that two books were dropping tonight. Sqeeee!!
Is it just me, or did the baha-char one also evoke images of Shinar – Roland’s last (?) great empire? I kinda pictured something like that for Shinar as well – soft sand-stony structure & white buildings with lots of plants on bountiful balconies anyone? (This might be completely 100% different from what was described in the books for Shinar, so yeah. Reread incoming soon!)
I could see that! I thought it was from the Kinsmen universe at first.
I wonder when there will br AI written books… probably sooner than later….
Wow, amazing pics!
22 Aug 22, 9.13pm. Still patiently waiting ????
Ha! I was thinking about trying to make Innkeeper images with this the other day. MidJourney and Dall-E are all the rage. It’s pretty amazing what you can generate and is a great tool for creatives. So far, I used it to make RPG characters (since I have the artistic talent of a 5-year old).
Thank you, Ilona Andrews for the post. Interesting idea. Mostly I draw for stress relief not to make a specific picture .
I thought Baha Char was more deserty – like that first village/town in Star Wars.
How wonderful. I recognized Baha-char, but obviously I need to reread KD because Unicorn Lane eluded me.
I’m not sure I always envisioned Unicorn Lane more urban and less green. I love seeing your interpretation of it.
When I saw the main image I absolutely thought it was unicorns lane.
It’s freaking addictive. I love what you created. I used it for exactly the same thing for our books. Great images for inspiration at least.
Excellent! I love your 2 illustrations, especially the one of Baja Char.????????????
Fun and thanks!
Also, not sure where in Texas you all are, stay safe.
Fun; thank you for these images. I might go play around with that when an opportunity presents itself.
Cool.
Very cool images!
I’m enjoying reading TBATE in Tapas while waiting for both drops tomorrow! ????
Wow unicorn lane looks so much nicer than in my imagination xD
Somehow I always imagined it as some kind of city back street in newyork city. Grimy and nefarious and interesting all at the same time
I like Baha-char! I’d live on that street!
Immediately recognized Baha Char but when I saw Unicorn Lane…* holy sh..!*
Amazing what AI can do now…. @.@
wow Unicorn lane is… wow!
Midjourney results below. I got the most evocative fantasy results for the direct quote of “Those once human and those who had never been, seeking comfort in its magic and secrets”. I got the most realistic landscape results with the string “dark apocalyptic secret magic street”. I think you can probably tell which is which, lol.
Not sure what happened to the original image uploads? This is the second try. New midjourney image for string “cyberpunk secret magic street”.
O.M.G!! That is the kind of mental picture I got frequently when I started reading science fiction in jr. high school. I didn’t like scary movies but sci-fi was different. Especially Ray Bradbury. (I was a very odd little 7th grade girl….)
Loved these images, really gave Unicorn Lane its colourful but sinister vibe x Shall have to revisit Kate soon ????
MidJourney is such fun… I’ve been playing with it for a month or so. But I have the same concerns. It’s a great idea generation tool but I know (online anyway) two people who came up with very similar designs. Both from midjourney and they probably used similar prompts, but still… One of them only realized it when he was about to make the item to sell and then backed off because it was so similar. The licensing says you can use it commercially but none of that’s been tested out yet…
But I’m still going to use it to create ideas that I hadn’t thought of and use those as a jumping off point to inspire physical jewelry or paintings. I figure if you include enough of the human element it should be different enough from anyone else’s at that point. No different than being inspired by a human artist 😉
And it’s fun seeing what the algorithm will come up with… For example, it refuses to give me an image with red riding hood AND a wolf. I end up with a merging of the two… And a wolf in a red cloak, or a living wolf fur cloak with a tail are actually quite interesting ideas. 😉
Here was an attempt at Curran… It doesn’t seem to do animals as well but some really cool landscapes and scifi/fantasy images. It would be great for photoshop fodder… Create the background in one image and layer in the characters etc manually.
Two posts today so I get to thank House Andrews twice for a wondrous birthday gift. Thankfully my birthday this year fell on “Ruby Fever” Tuesday. Thank you House Andrews from a happy and loyal member of the BDH. ????❤????
I read Ruby Fever in one sitting and it was superb. Thank you.
I used up the rest of my Midjourney credits making pretty space fish. I have no regrets. #TeamJazzFins 😉
Aaargh. I swear I checked the file size this time. Mod R, if the images don’t post can you please delete this response?
It’s visible (and gorgeous!)
Thank you!
Lovely!!
WOW: it looks just as I imagined. that is absolutely stunning! Thank you so much for sharing. Dani
Ooo! I’ve totally submerged myself in Midjourney for the last week and been illustrating a visit to the Goblin Market… already have a bunch of keywords in for bazaars. Here’s my take on Baha-char:
…upload attempt take 2…