What’s New at The Writing King: Week of July 26, 2026

Aug 1 · Book Marketing, Writing Craft

Tim Dorsey Wrote 26 Books and Toured Every One

This week, the Tampa newspaperman who wrote 26 novels about Florida and drove a weathered Cadillac to a hundred bookstores a year to sell them.

Aug 1 · Book Marketing, Writing Craft

Dunedin Digitised Forty Years of Its Own Newspaper

This week, the small-town museum that digitised four decades of its own newspaper, and the amphibious landing vehicles this town once built.

Aug 1 · Artificial Intelligence, Technology

The AI That Lied, Colluded and Won: Inside Vending-Bench

This week, I go through what happened when three AI models ran competing vending machines for a year with nobody supervising them, and what it means before you delegate work you will not check.

Jul 31 · Ghostwriting, Memoirs

Can a Ghostwriter Finish My Memoir Before I Die?

This week, how a ghostwriter can help you finish a memoir after a terminal diagnosis.

Jul 31 · Book Marketing, Writing Craft

Barbara S. Ponce Library: The Children’s Wing and the Staffed Desk

This week, the Pinellas Park library with the most fully equipped children's wing in the county, and a checkout desk that still has people behind it.

Jul 31 · Book Marketing, Writing Craft

A Family History Book or a Binder?

This week, the choice that decides whether a family history gets finished, and why most people should be building a binder.

Jul 31 · Ghostwriting, Memoirs

Can a Ghostwriter Finish My Late Parent’s Memoir From Their Journals and Recordings?

This week, how a ghostwriter can finish your late parent's memoir from their journals and recordings.

Jul 31 · Book Marketing, Writing Craft

Book + Bottle, St. Petersburg: Open Three Days, Then the World Closed

This week, the St. Petersburg bookstore and wine bar that opened three days before the shutdown, survived on delivery, and now keeps the latest hours in the county.

Jul 31 · Behind the Book, Critical Thinking

The Only Open Seat Was Next to a Black Kid. His Name Was Sam.

I grew up terrified of Black people because my parents told me, directly and repeatedly, that they smelled bad and would kill me without hesitation. At eleven, during desegregation, the only open seat on the bus was next to Sam.

Jul 31 · Artificial Intelligence, Publishing

Who Is Counting the AI Slop?

This week LinkedIn added a button to report AI slop, and the studies driving the panic turn out to come from the companies selling the cure.

Jul 30 · Artificial Intelligence, Ghostwriting

Most of Your Website Traffic Was Never Human. I Checked.

This week I measured my own site against the raw server logs and found that most of what I had been calling an audience was never a person at all.

Jul 30 · Artificial Intelligence, Ghostwriting

Superintelligence for Everyone: What Zuckerberg’s Argument Misses About Books

This week, Mark Zuckerberg made the case for putting superintelligence in everyone's hands, and his own lawyer thought experiment shows exactly where the argument stops working for anyone planning to write a book.

Jul 31 · Business, Personal Growth

Noah Landow: The Machines Stopped Being Predictable

Noah Landow founded the New York IT firm Macktez in 1996 and still runs it. The conversation turns on non-determinism, and what it does to people who spent careers building systems that behaved the same way every time.

Jul 29 · Ghostwriting, People

The Least They Could Get Away With: Pricing, Worth, and Why the Cheap Work Never Ends

This week Richard joined Paul Pape on Gamify Business Tavern Tales to talk about the two contracts that revealed he had been underbidding for years.