I made Gordon crescents today. These are a super quick breakfast treat. Unroll a can of Pillsbury crescents, put two slices of salami on each triangle, put half a stick of mozzarella or some cheese of your choice on top of the salami, roll, bake as normal.
As we took the crescents out of the oven, I told my husband, “These are really hot. Let me get a little shovel.”
Spatula. I meant a spatula.
This tells you everything you need to know about my current state of mind. And I had broken my routine even and drank a cup of coffee instead of my usual tea this morning.
We are continuing with website adjustments, so today I bring you some random art, since so many of you liked the frozen heart. While Midjourney and other AI still cannot be used commercially from the legal and ethical standpoint, I found that Midjourney is excellent at playing with cover concepts. Instead of waving my arms nebulously or spending a lot of time in Photoshop to get my view of the image across, I can let Midjourney do some heavy lifting and give that to the artist with the idea, “This is the general layout/idea I want, could it be something similar to this but better?”
So for fun, I made some alternative Hidden Legacy covers.
Also, for funsies, I fed the description of the Questing Beast from our short story into Midjourney. According to Mallory, the Questing Beast has the head and neck of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and the feet of a hart. I added cute blue eyes consistent with the story.
Brace yourselves.
And that is why AI has a long way to go when compared with imagination of an artist.
Have a great Wednesday.
How did I miss this short story? I love the beast images though.
Here you go 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/2019/the-questing-beast-2/
Free Fiction is now hopefully easier to find, all in one convenient location https://ilona-andrews.com/free-fiction/
I’d adopt one of those. And I’m not much of a pet person 🙂
How ever they came to be, I love all of them, and I have a very stunted imagination.
I read somewhere that if you want to out a foreign spy, and they happen to be a woman, you should endeavour to make her pregnant- because no matter how deep her training goes, the pains of childbirth will make her native language come through.
I can’t speak on the spy training or giving birth, but I’ve found that exhaustion is a MUCH easier way to break my English 😀 . I asked Mr Mod R for the “fractal tomatoes” last week.
Mod R, what kind of tomatoes were you trying to refer to? I’m super curious because I’m envisioning a fancy heirloom tomato.
Plus mention of Crescent rolls, now I’m hungry.
The ruffled beef tomatoes type. I was craving a tomato sandwich with salt, pepper and mayo on crusty bread. Yummm, yummm.
Now I’m hungry too!! 😂
I thought I was the only person who ate this type of sandwich.
I learned of it as a very famous Southern staple 🙂 https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2021/07/25/classic-southern-tomato-sandwich-recipe/
That explains it. My mother’s family is from the Southern US. She’d fix these after the first tomatoes ripened. We didn’t actually spend much time there because Dad was a naval officer and we moved often. Most places I lived, people would ask me why there was no lettuce and bacon.
Oh my word! That brings back memories! My Mom loved her “‘Mater sammiches”, we had them every summer. She’d get these giant sized Beefsteak tomatoes and rye bread fresh from the bakery (she wouldn’t eat white bread nohow), and we’d just pig out. I had no idea it was a Southern thing till just now, I just thought it was a Mom thing.
Oh great, now you did it! Now I gonna have to go to the store and get me some tomatoes for sandwiches!
Thank you, Mod R, for reminding me of this!
Yes, a mom thing! My mom made us tomato sandwiches, too. One of the greatest joys of summer lunches! (Sometimes we skipped the bread and had heaping plates of tomato slices with the salt and pepper.)
We grew up in South Georgia eating mater sammiches too! We usually added a layer of crisp green lettuce. Basically a BLT without the B. Loved them.
This I have to try. All this talk of sandwiches has made me really hungry. I’m off to make one.
Will definitely try this one. Thank you for the recipe link Mod R
most everyone in the South eats mater sandwiches just like this, or maybe white bread. 🤔
Actually, here in Germany we eat tomato sandwiches, too 😁… sourdough or wheat, both possible, with mayonnaise, cream cheese or butter.
… and yep, now I’m soooo hungry 🤤
You are not alone! My mother loves tomato sandwiches. I love them too, if the tomats are vine ripe and fresh from the farmer’s market. I also like to add some cheese and then a bit of balsamic with a touch of olive oil slap on the fresh baked bread roll (the square artisan rolls from Costco in a pinch), but yum. Even without the cheese and balsamic and oil…
We don’t get those up here in the Northeast until August. But there is nothing better than going outside to pick a fresh tomato and make a sandwich and if one is being deeply indulgent, an ear of corn.
Yes! There’s are NE staples for sure – all the more precious as we only have them for such a short time.
Fractal is a great description! I didn’t run into the tomato sandwich until I moved from Texas to Virginia for work. It was a revelation, they had so many wonderful tomatoes. I fell in love with the summer sandwich! That was eons ago now and fortunately the heirloom tomato craze moved into Texas about the same time as I moved back. So I can still indulge. My current favorite for sandwiches is the black Cherokee tomato, it’s luscious.
tomato sandwiches are great.!!
i just leave off the mayo( it doesnt like me) and put cheese in its place
Avocado works as a mayo sub too, should you have a ripe one that “ must go”.
Well, that is kind of a fractal tomato…
It’s the tomato that keeps on giving! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🍅
Alas, I cannot eat raw tomatoes. I’m allergic to the citronella wax in them. Give me cooked tomatoes, and I’m fine.
Enjoy your tomato sandwich, Mod R.
Jedi Master Mod R you escaped the Galatic Empire! Obi-Wan will be looking for you to help him push back the Horde for wanting more books. 😁😂
I think it was in the Soviet novel and TV series based on it, “17 Moments of Spring”. Stierlitz, a Soviet spy in Germany, warned Katherin, his radio operator and pregnant at the time, that she would be screaming in Russian during childbirth and thus compromise the whole spy operation. Anna Filonenko, a former Soviet spy who consulted on the movie, shared her experience of delivering her babies while undercover in other countries.
On the exhaustion: I recently asked to get me a “carpet spanker”…
Hope you get to relax and unwind soon, dear Mod R!
Oh no. Stierlitz, the man who looked great while silent and shattered the illusion the moment he started speaking. Heh.
I think Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith (The Man in High Castle) delivers it better.
He is also good in Victoria and The Diplomat.
Southern????
Definitely not! As a 70 something northerner, when in season, tomato sandwiches were often to be had. Also you can substitute cucumbers for the tomatoes. And if you want really fancy try cream cheese or my most recent discovery a layer of humus. But you still have to have the mayo on the other side of the tomatoes.
Ohhh! For a good sun warmed tomato. Mod R, you are too cruel!
Not seeing the serpent front end. Perhaps AI is touchy about serpents, being compared to them a lot, these days?
+1 Immediately noticed the lack of a serpent head/neck, so I missed the missing hart’s feet. This is the kind of cutesy-vs-authentic cover art that could make me walk past that book in a store. Yes, the AI art must be tempered by a human artist!
The hart feet also seem to have gone missing, now that I look! Cats on the brain.
I’m guessing the AI is unfamiliar with the term “hart.” It hasn’t exactly been in common use in the time since AI joined us.
I fully intend to call it a little shovel from now on. 😂
The Beast looks weirdly cute, just where is the neck and head of serpent tho lol. The alternative Hidden Legacy covers though? Gorgeous, absolutely stunning. Oh, if they existed and it was feasible importing six hardcovers *sighs*
Either I have no concept of what the head and neck of a serpent look like, or something has gone wrong. Do serpents have super cute ears and short necks?
The questing beast is incredibly cute in these images.
Very interesting . . .
LOL. I still tell the story about when I went to see my sister and her husband play in the bell choir before their Christmas service. I am a long time community theater person and when the usher kept trying to seat, me I heard myself say, “I’m sorry. I’m not actually here for the show, just the pre-show music.”
Unsurprisingly, she left me alone after that.
Ha! I completely understood!
Such fun! The questing beast is gorgeous in all its variations.
beautiful 😍
No matter how much AI progresses, I will always be more impressed with art (pictures, writing, etc) born in a living, breathing person’s talent and imagination.
Also, not sure what it says about me, but when I read ‘little shovel’, I immediately pictured a spatula in my mind! I am finding more and more lately that I have to dance around the correct name of something and finally impatiently describe it as “you know, the thing I use to [insert usage such as remove crescents from a hot pan]”!!! The joys of aging!!!! 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
I pictured the small coal shovel that used to be a part of our fireplace tools.
The wok gubbins that Spouse uses. It is a minature version of the fireplace ash shovel with a thicker handle.
Little shovel reminded me of the cobra chicken AKA a goose.
Surest way to find out if someone speaks more than one language (or just Isn’t From Around Here), ask them what they call something.
(You mean what is the name? Don’t know about you but I don’t name my tools…)
Lately my brain has been using cable needle instead of circular needle. I’m taking it as a sign to finally get the broken cables on three of my circular needles replaced.
Well at least todays wordle should make you laugh.
Hehehehe, I just did it (in 5, I’m not good, but I’m fast). Made me chuckle.
Yeah, not one of my better ones either. Went down the alphabet, heh. Forced, gorge then finally horde. Sigh. But at least it brought the BDH to mind!
Loved the three seals with the stones. So pretty.
Terminally cute Questing Beasties!
I get that little aphasia under the influence of antihistamines. It’s why I don’t take Zyrtec anymore. Benadryl does it too, but the Zyrtec gives me full-on brain fog.
I like the top right image most, but the vibes are more cat-frog than head of a serpent.
In Vedic Hindu tradition, we have Yantras, small metal rectangles with geometric shapes drawn within a circle. They’re essentially for the same purpose as in Hidden Legacy—each shape is designed to invoke a particular energy and amplify it (they’re placed in rooms where you pray or meditate for that reason). Ancient people were believed to have actually drawn these huge circles on the ground. I’m curious, was any of the Hidden Legacy lore inspired by this?
Love the Three Covers side by side!
Also, just met Doolittle in Magic Burns Graphic Audio – it’s a beautiful accent! Thank you for introducing it to me (I know you mentioned it in a previous post, but I didn’t want to jump ahead, and as I’m listening to it in 15-minute commute bursts, it took awhile to get to Doolittle!)
I can relate to the little shovel/spatula renaming. When I am immersed in data, and then I have to type or speak in English, my brain does not want to think in English. I’ll stare at something until the name pops in my head. 🤦♀️
I want a questing beast!
love those covers! would look beautiful in hardcover (which I wouldn’t be able to afford anyway, so never mind… it can join my imaginary bookshelf)
It did not follow the description, but they are all adorable. And the cover options are stunning!
All of the Questing Beasts are cute, but they don’t really look much like the description you post.
Groovy!
While I’m not sure that’s what you were describing, they are all super cute! 😊
I can relate! I need all the coffee today.
I guess the AI really prioritized “cute” over everything, ha ha.
Well now, that is an animal I would not mind having as a pet. Know when you have time could you get s pic of the pets from Hidden Legacy. Sorry can’t remember the pet names. Have a great day. Hope you are adjusting to a house with no construction roof noise.
I called those brain farts. I’ve had numerous wins lately. I’m getting ready to go to Scotland for three weeks (leaving today) and it seems like no matter how much preparing I do, there is so much I’m forgetting. What’s worse is that I don’t know I forgotten it because I think I’ve done it. Where is my 30 year old brain when I need it?
You’ll remember them all on the plane ride over.
So true
Or a couple of days later.i am currently ending a trip in which i had to buy a night gown, because I forgot to pack an extra.
Top row, right, and second row, left, are my top 2 faves.
When I am tired, all the vocab I ever learned from every language goes in a blender and a melange comes out.
My dad said it took him years to do math in his head in English. I can only do mental arithmetic in English. So make those spies solve equations out loud 😀
The questing beast(s) are adorable. I’ve always thought of it as rather elusive and, within the original Arthurian context, a bit more sinister.
Stress or sleep deprivation can cause a slight aphasia. And no one ever talks about baby brain. Pregnant women should get a warning!
The beasts are cute, but don’t match the description. This AI is replacing good with cheap, which worries me that it will take over and be all we have in the future.
I have a tiny spatula I call the shovel. lol
And I’ll have to try that crescent recipe. I like to cut the crescent rolls into little strips and using cocktail sausages make teeny tiny pigs in a blanket.
You know they’re designing frozen food for us hopeless bachelor and bachelorettes when they premake pigs-in-the-blanket for you and you just heat them up. Although if you get them from BJ’s or Costco then I think they label them as hors d’oeuvres so if anyone visits and sees them in the freezer, you at least have cover for the purchase. “Oh, those aren’t for dinner. Those are for when guests come over.”
I completely love the little shovel comment! My favorite cooking spoons (hard plastic with metal handles) have a flat straight end. So they can double as a short spatula/shovel! So useful.
Dang, those are seriously cute critters. Of course I don’t see the head of a serpent on any of them, altho most are at least vaguely catlike in body hehehe. That was fun. Thanks for sharing!
Interesting. I didn’t know that about zyrtec. I’ve been taking it for ages. I attributed my aphasia to menopause. Seems to be happening less now! I used to always mess up the dishwasher and washer and dryer!
The little shovel seemed normal till I read spatula!
“I used to always mess up the dishwasher and washer and dryer!”
How many dishes did you break when you ran them through the washer? 😛
I love the hearts! (HL is my fav of your works, with Hughes I&M a close second)
Were you thinking the fire being Nevada / Rogan and ice being Catalina / Allesandro?
I really feel like Avon stumbled with the cover art of the first 3, but feel like you must have brough beat the publishers to get better art for the last 4.
I think the hearts are Burn for Me and White Hot, respectively 🙂
I love the art, but had to laugh at the spatula episode. English is our family’s first language, but my daughter and I both speak German, and it frequently pops in. Today she was trying to say airport and could only come up with Flughafen.
My Mom is Spanish, she always knows my boys are always ready to eat and asks them if they’d like a sangwish. My uncle also likes apple turnarounds , or beagles( bagels)😏
You also have a lovely day. The images are beautiful.
I’ve done this with asparagus rather than cheese. And I like you calling your spatula a little shovel – it basically is, after all.
None of those have a serpent……
Oh, never mind.
AI is *not* creative. It’s iterative and recursive…At least that’s the best I can think to phrase it. It just makes copies of copies of copies…all quilted together.
I always thought that forks were little shovels.
Have you heard about Adobe Firefly? It’s an AI art generator (currently in beta-testing) that is trained on imagery licensed from Adobe Stock, openly licensed, and public domain – meaning that the generated art would be ethical and safe for commercial use.
I’m still waiting for my beta invite so I can not vouch how well it would draw the prompts (compared to Midjourney and other AI generators). But once Firefly is out of beta testing, perhaps it could be a solution for you?
Oooo! But what are they going to do about the fact that Adobe stock is drowning in AI generated images? If we use those as the basis of AI training, then doesn’t that defeats the purpose?
That’s a million-dollar question, isn’t it? One would hope that Adobe folks are filtering content for training Firefly – to avoid that exact problem.
I don’t work for Adobe – I’m a corporate in-house designer/illustrator, and my employer strictly prohibits use of any AI-generated content (we still don’t know if or when our Legal would approve Firefly). Here’s all we know so far:
– Adobe added a filter to exclude generative AI from your search (which works with mixed results right now).
– They are trying to make contributors tag their content as AI-generated (or tag “Do not train” that would exclude these images from Firefly’s training).
– They also have a Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) that has tools allowing to indicate when AI was used to generate content.
– They are running these tools on content not tagged by contributors as generative AI.
Hopefully, we’ll hear more soon.
Some of the Questing Beasts remind me of painted wooden animals from Oaxaca.
I have a Chinese spatula meant for using with a wok. It has slightly raised sides and a bit of a curve on the lip so looks a bit like a shovel. It is wonderful and handy to turn my granola when I am making it. They are really cheap in a Chinese grocery store.
Cute pics! Would be amazing to see an artist’s rendition of what y’all imagined. Thanks for sharing!
So today it finally occurred to me to check out graphic audio version of Magic Bites.
Never really got into the dramatized audio because it gave me sensory overload, but I love KD so I went to listen to the audible sample and…
Corwin’s voice is scary 😭 I don’t think I can handle the rest of it haha.
I’ve bought all the Graphic Audios (dramatized) for Innkeeper & the one for Kate. I also had to stop listening to them because it was a little overwhelming. I’m going to try again and keep it to an hour at a time. 🤗
Surprisingly, not very good. Artists can keep their jobs yet, yay.
Yay is right. One of my nieces is an artist who teaches art at the college level. I’ve seen her drawings. They’re very, very good. No AI for her!
I absolutely love these images, I’ve got to try this app!
On another note, I just finished Sweep of the Blade audio book. It is my favorite story in the InnKeeper Chronicles. Kudos to HA, from the first chapter to the last it caught my imagination. I’m hopefully eager for more of Maud! I’m listening to it again, lol.
P.S. I want a little Helen of my own🥰
In the part of East Texas where my mother’s family is from we ate tomatoes straight from the garden with a sprinkle of sugar and cornbread crumbled up into buttermilk and Coke floats for dessert.
Ohh!! Fresh tomatoes and cornbread! Yum!!
(I had drive-thru food for dinner. A “happy meal”?? No, a *sad meal*….)
I just read something about the questing beast. I’d never heard of it. But apparently general consensus is that the questing beast is a giraffe.
Oooohhhhhh…… but I still love them! I want a little blue alien cat!!!!!!
The 12th beast image looks like/reminds me of a boss I used to have.
Weirdly, I can’t unsee it.
Nice post.
OMG 😂 I just gave google a workout, being sure I had the correct body image parts and animal to go along with what the AI produced. Most of those images I was not getting the head or neck of a serpent. It might have been the eyes so I just let it go. Then I got hung up on the feet of a hart, Because you know dear have hoofs. And to have the hunches of a lion fires and buttocks. It just seems ridiculous to think that you can have hoofs for feet. But maybe hoof like clawlife pads. With those combined abia lethal climber.
Most of those images are just too cute. I would eventually get mauled by trying to take it home.
A radio host I used to listen to told a story where she could not remember the word foal. She ended up calling it a puppy horse.
I will take one of each please! 😉
awww now I want to sculpt those critters in polymer clay. Adorable.
2,3,13,14 are really close to the image I had when I first read the Questing Beast story. so cool to see these pixs.
Wow.
The countdown clock to the pub date to Magic clams now is counting down in minutes and seconds.
failure to incorporate all the correct animals aside, those questing beasts are all adorable and I want them to be real (and also make good pets!) so that I can have them in my life 😀
Random thought. I am re-reading Magic Shifts & think it would be cool to have a Nick & Hugh scene somewhere 😀
Hopefully they haven’t buried the hatches in each other’s backs. Let the bellowing begin! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Kate & Nick visit Hugh @ his farm! Family reunion 🤗🤣🤪
Why can’t these be the final covers? A lot of us are looking at book covers on sites like Amazon. Goodreads, etc. and even on a laptop they look like fancy, colored, postage stamps. On a phone they are about the size of finger nails. (Why don’t they take my advise and call it what it is,
The iFab?) Most publishers have so much stuff on the cover that it looks like one big blur.
Anyway, one of my favorite covers ever was the place holder you made that was Blue with one big feather. It said it all, and was beautiful!
Oh, Ilona! Here, have a nice cup of tea and relax a bit.
I love you playing around with Midjourney: cool stuff. Finally some of these cute blue wee beasties need to materialise in some form: plushies, funko dolls, whatever. They are too cute!
For ModR
The free fiction link worked a lot better yesterday. Everything was split out into the individual series. Today when I went and looked it was all lumped together and seems to be a lot smaller.
Hi Penty,
The Free Fiction page is still split into series and as far as I can tell has not changed since yesterday 🙂 . Are we talking about the same place? https://ilona-andrews.com/free-fiction/?
Ahh I see what the issue is. If you click on the free fiction link here in the blog it goes to the old page at https://ilona-andrews.com/category/blog/free-fiction/
The link from here https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/
The one in the blog menu is a shortcut to all the blog posts tagged as free fiction 🙂 – it is specific for the blog.
I will bring it up with HA to see if the name can be changed to make it less confusing.
That makes sense. It’s my fault; my default page is to the blog. I almost never hit the front page.
It’s valuable feedback! But I do hope you take a look at the rest of the website once it’s done too 🥰
I fixed it! 🙂
Yay!
Did you ask for freckled Pikachu-smurf forest creatures?
I love all art, including the Questing Beast.
Now, I want one.
The feet of a hart, left me puzzled. That sounds a lot like our Dutch word “hert” which means deer.
So I asked Wiki
A hart is a male red deer, synonymous with stag and used in contrast to the female hind; its use may now be considered mostly poetic or archaic. The word comes from Middle English hert, from Old English heorot; compare Frisian hart, Dutch hert, German Hirsch, and Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish hjort, all meaning “deer”.
Yes! a hart is a hert 🙂
Sort of, because hert is the general word for the entire species, not just a male red one.
I like the pics in which the beast has claws the best. Even though harts do not have claws.
i just re-read the short story, loved it (again)
as for the AI-pics, cute but… it completely missed the mark on the first (and in the pictures the most prominent) feature ‘the head and neck of a snake’ with those big ears and short necks
What is happening with Innkeeper??? Helen will be able to see Olasard whenever!!
We will find out about all that and more in the next inn-stalment 😊
Your artwork and covers are captivating. Both the molten and the icing hearts layered over city skyscapes are visually intriguing and would translate well to posters/wallpaper/mousepad. I would also buy and read the trilogy of books with the medallions with their fire, ice, and lightening insets just because of the covers. The creativity of all of the covers promises an adventure that I could fully immerse myself in and if it’s a two book set, a trilogy, or more -that’s a bonus!
The Questing Beasts are each-and-every-one-enchanting creatures. I can’t match them to your description in my mind, and I happily celebrate the fact that these AI assisted creations are even lovelier than the creatures I imagined. You really do shine!
My son had an ultrasound at 8 this morning, also a blood panel before that. So what did he do? He went to bed at 630. I called him, then finally went up to his room and put my cold hands on his warm shoulder and woke him up. We did his appointments, had breakfast out, went grocery shopping, visited my sister, had lunch, brought the groceries home and put them away. Today his vocabulary consists of sentences like “the thing of the thing is over across the thing.” At least a small shovel is descriptive.
Well, now I want one and my husband and I had agreed ‘no more pets’.
My family says “I meant what you knew.”
Meaning that, yes, your words came out scrambled, but we still understood what you were trying to communicate. This, in a family with varying damage and cognitive issues, eliminates SO MUCH FRUSTRATION!
Yes, the words were scrambled, yes, they still understood me, no, I do not have to derail my train of thought for the next few minutes trying to find the exactly correct sequence of words.
I make homemade hot pockets with crescent roll dough. Use two triangles to create a square. Fill with leftovers, food over and press to seal. Bake as can instructions. I use up leftover roast and veggies this way.
Wow! I LOVE your covers!
These should be the covers instead
I was like omg its really close to what i imagined!! And then you said that it wasnt an accurate representation lol. It seems tht my english (2nd lang) is not as good. Googled the thins and hart is a deer it seems
Some of those’Questing Beast’ images look like prey and some look like they will pounce on prey! LOL!!!
Wow! I was very impressed. I need a pet! lol
I would absolutely love alternative covers for Hidden Legacy. Is that something that might be in the works?
Hi Denise,
The Hidden Legacy is traditionally published through Avon, so it’s them that have to take the decision 🙂. When anything becomes official, we will announce.
I loved all of the art work. I liked number 4 as it reminds me of a cross between a frog and antelope!
Oh my gosh. I want them all!
Now I want a short story of Conlan finding the ‘Beast’ and bringing it back for Kate to identify 🤣