The paperback edition of Finding Meaning, Making Sense – An Anthology of Short Stories and Poetry – 2022-2025 has been published. The E-book was previously published on May 1, 2026.

This graphic was created by AI from the synopsis I provided. Am I the only author that finds this new technology utterly amazing? It’s also incredibly seductive – I mean, some of the metaphors it comes up with at too good to, well, at least adapt. I have and am currently participating in a few (human) critique group and I find AI is at least as good or not better at constructive criticism. The response is immediate and I don’t have to reciprocate. 

Since many of the works in this anthology have been previously published, the majority of publications will not accept them. If I want them to continue to be read, self-publishing was the only option.

I suspect most of the opposition to AI is coming from industry professionals, editors and marketers who are, if they’re not already, becoming redundant. Marketing is especially susceptible as indicated by the dozens of spam emails I receive daily. I’m using AI to help launch FMMS, though it didn’t make a difference in the relaunch of my five-book Mattie Saunders Series.

This anthology consists of 52 works, 27 poems and 25 short stories, and to make it easier for readers to navigate to a specific work, the table of contents of the e-book edition provides a direct link to each work. Simply click on the title and you’re transported to that specific poem or story. Currently the e-book is tracking at #296 in Poetry Anthologies (Kindle Store) and 10,938 in Short Story Anthologies on Amazon.ca. What that means is irrelevant since my only benchmark of a book’s success is sales–and there have been none.

Navigating publishing the paperback edition proved to be more challenging than the e-book. Having established page numbers in the table of contents, late edits that added to the length of some works threw them out of order. When I went in to correct this, I discovered that the Kindle Create file the book had been formatted on had disappeared!

I have subsequently (painfully) discovered that the KCB (Kindle Create Book) file is your only editable project file. You can only open and edit this file inside Kindle Create. If you save it to your hard drive, you’ll find you can’t open it and furthermore, you’ve inadvertently deleted the KCB editable file.

If this is not enough to drive you crazy, you’re a better/stronger/more patient person than I am. Rather than re-import and reformat the entire manuscript, I capitulated. Halfway through the paperback edition the page numbers on the table of contents no longer correspond to the beginning of the story or poem. It’s close–a page or two, but not bang on.

Somehow, I don’t think this will make or break the success of the book.

Both the e-book and the paperback are now available at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU