Ryan Estrada

(That was supposed to say 90.)

My favorite line was "as you get older history comes at you faster. On the flight up here, I was excited to go to a Mexican restaurant I hadn't been to in a while, but I couldn't remember the name. When I Googled the area, it came up as 'a historical neighborhood that once existed in Seoul'."

I asked "who here has met an 80 year old?"

Every hand went up.

"They remember WWII. How many of you have ever met a kindergartener?"

Every hand went up.

"They DON'T remember the pandemic. For the rest of your lives, when they want to know about it, you're the historical sources they'll turn to."

I began jokingly swearing the kids to secrecy about the fact that I'm billed as a history writer.

"My book's about my wife! If I call myself a historian, she'll say 'so what am I, history??' and I'll get in so much trouble!"

But then I blew their minds by explaining how we're all living history...

For National History Day, every international school in Korea sent kids to compete in Seoul, presenting speeches about revolution, reaction, and reform in history.

I was the guest speaker, to explain how I turned rambling about those very topics into a career.

They said it's the "iPhone Adobe App" that was doing this.

All of my art apps are firewalled from accessing the internet, so they can never even think about doing anything generative, or upgrading to versions that include AI options.

Yeah, it looks enough like the book cover that folks who haven't spent 8 years looking at it wouldn't notice. It's just like how sometimes old Photoshop would default to "stretch to fit" except now it's "quickly train off of this image and generate a new version that is this shape"

I do this, and suggest others do too!
Here's what folks have to acknowledge before making an appointment with me on Calendly.

I absolutely do, they have to click to acknowledge it when making the appointment. This group is anti-AI, and is actively trying to figure out how to turn off whatever is doing this.

What makes me maddest is that it kept making the trans man on the cover more feminine.

They kept sending me posters and saying "is this the right cover?" until I just made my own.

Whatever Adobe app they're using is generatively rebuilding the image to fit in the given space (as opposed to cropping or letterboxing) while training itself off of our book cover without being asked to.

A book club has been trying all week to make a poster for my upcoming visit, but the app their using will not stop remaking our book cover from scratch with AI. It's adding random anime characters, giving existing characters vampire teeth and Thanos chins, converting Korean text into gibberish...

If you do pay, you do get featured, but the only people who read the magazine are other people who spent 499.80 on a box to say their own article and will never read yours. If you don't, your "free" interview will forever sit on their site, helping trick others into thinking it's legit.

The scam is they say they want to feature you in an issue of their magazine. They do an interview, post it on their website. Then they say "oh wow, our editor really loved this and is on the fence about putting it in the print issue. If you buy 20 copies at $24.99 each it'll convince him"

Authors:
I've talked around them before, but it you ever get a message to be interviewed by Author Essence, Reader's House, Novelist Post, or Mosaic Digest... mark as spam and ignore.

It's a Ponzi scheme vanity publishing scam, and even if you never give them a cent they'll be annoying forever.

Heck yeah! Congrats!

Politicians crying that they're just "protecting the children" while doing the exact opposite is nothing new, but if this becomes law it could effectively end the careers of some of you favorite queer creators (including mine!)

I hate Tik Tok speak.

I have agents, editors and proofreaders! I do digital contracts! I make ebooks!

Sometimes I legitimately have to talk about PDF files!

News I missed!

Recently, Korea banned ticket reselling.

If you try to resell a concert/play/game/event ticket for more than you paid, the fine is 50X what you tried to charge. Anyone can turn you in and collect 10%.

So long, scalpers.
(Apparently BTS tickets were up to 11k until this passed)

Luckily, there's a very simple way to avoid being scammed. If THEY come to YOU, that's the only direction money should flow as well.

Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit isn't too subtle because it actually shows my wife protesting at the US embassy due to Reagan's support of the regime. But The Silver City is more sneaky, it's a direct parody of This American Life episode about propaganda at the Reagan library.

I was about to make a joke about what US Presidents my other books are about, but then only just now realized that in the last three books I released, the unseen villain actually is Ronald Reagan.

The AI scams are easy for me to spot because the only thing the AI knows I wrote is Garfield: Family Style and the autogenerated praise for it never seems to know who Garfield is.

Hot dang author email scams are ramping up. Fake book clubs, paid interviews, fake agents, fake book promotion services... someone please tell the AI scambots we didn't make that much money BEFORE they came along. We certainly don't make enough to steal from now.

This was going to be a thread, but after typing 14 posts I realized that the stories are all too overcomplicated to explain and not funny enough to warrant it. But feel free to tell yours if you got 'em.

She came up to me, and I realized this was for people who'd seen her play, so just said "good job." She motioned for a selfie, but I felt guilty cutting in front of folks who'd paid to see the show so declined.

I later realized that from her perspective it was like "good job" "want a pic?" "ew, no"

With so many things in the world to worry about, my brain decided to spend the whole night hyperfocused on much more insignificant problems.

every time I've accidentally dissed a celebrity.

Like the time I was walking Broadway and wondered what the crowd around a stage door was for.

Laura Linney!

You got our Daeboreum book on Daeboreum! That is perfect timing! Read it under the first full blood moon!

Book covers: Good Old-Fashioned Korean Spirit and Loudmouth: Emma Goldman vs. America

Perfect timing! I put these books on hold at the library when they were first published, and they were finally available for pick-up today. Can’t wait! @ryanestrada.com