Letter From The Mausoleum — Fall 2024

Come, dear read­er, and join us in the Mau­soleum! I have some­thing very close to heart to dis­cuss this time, so please for­give me.

For our first issue, released back in March of this year, I con­tract­ed with an artist who shall remain unnamed to work up some art for the cov­er and each of the sto­ries in that issue. Part of this whole Mau­soleum endeav­or is to give a place for artists to pub­lish their bril­liant voic­es, and this includes more than just authors. Writ­ing is great and all. I mean, it’s how I began and how I con­tin­ue. But when it comes down to it, writ­ing is just one of a vast array of art. I rec­og­nize that. And I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent that in what­ev­er ways I can. So, yes, I hired an artist to illus­trate our first issue.

There are a cou­ple of things wrong with this state­ment though. The sec­ond issue had no art, and the first issue was com­prised of AI-gen­er­at­ed art. What went wrong? What­ev­er hap­pened to sup­port­ing art? How can I, in the posi­tion of a writer, sup­port such meth­ods, which I rec­og­nize deprive REAL HUMANS of their oppor­tu­ni­ties to pub­lish REAL ART? I mean, I’m a writer, for god’s sake! I know bet­ter than any­one the val­ue of real art and the detri­ment that AI can be to my val­ue as an artist. How could I?

Well, please, allow me to explain the sit­u­a­tion that pre­sent­ed itself to me.

As I set out on the jour­ney to secure real art for Issue 1, I felt great. Enthu­si­as­tic, even! But as time went on, the art kept being increas­ing­ly delayed. I con­sid­ered switch­ing to a new artist, but when I voiced these con­cerns to the artist, he swore that he would have the art fin­ished in time for the issue to go to print. Against my bet­ter judge­ment, I allowed him to continue.

One week before send­ing the issue to print, it became appar­ent that the art was­n’t going to come in on time. By that point, it was much too late to hire a new artist. Here is where my biggest mis­take hap­pened. I pan­icked. This whole project was so impor­tant to me, sup­port­ing writ­ers like me, that I had a momen­tary lapse of judge­ment. In my pan­ic, I turned to AI.

Fast for­ward to Issue 2. I real­ized the error in what I’d done. It was bet­ter to have no art than art that stole the voic­es of oth­ers. Hence the lack of art in the sec­ond issue.

Let me be clear. I am firm­ly against the use of AI to gen­er­ate the images you see in this mag­a­zine. I, like many oth­ers, believes that it usurps the art of oth­ers, the cre­ative spir­it of oth­er far-more-tal­ent­ed artists, and cre­ates art which you could then essen­tial­ly claim as your own. This is unfair to the orig­i­nal artists.

It＊s not that being inspired by art that came before is inher­ent­ly bad. All art is inspired by what came before. But AI art is so much more than that. Rather than draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from oth­er art, it lit­er­al­ly takes the oth­er art and algo­rith­mi­cal­ly gen­er­ates art using that. It’s steal­ing, is what it is.

I regret the deci­sion I made in my moment of pan­ic. I am com­plete­ly against that, and am sup­port­ive of oth­er artists, so how my brain jumped to AI as a solu­tion to those cir­cum­stances, I don’t know. The mis­take will not be repeated.

Let me be clear again. We are against the use of AI art in pub­li­ca­tions, and it will nev­er be used in the cre­ation of this mag­a­zine mov­ing forward.

I am tak­ing a new approach with this issue. The first thing you will notice is that art on the front cov­er. This art is my own cre­ation, a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of pub­lic domain images for which I have the right to use and mod­i­fy. With­in the issue, you will notice each sto­ry has now been pref­aces with a more the­mat­i­cal­ly designed title.

These are the types of deci­sions we want to make going for­ward. And please be aware, we lis­ten to your voic­es. If there is ever some­thing you would like us to hear, don’t hes­i­tate to let me know direct­ly at mail@maxblood.pub.

Now, I hope you enjoy the evolv­ing design, but more impor­tant­ly, I hope you enjoy the sto­ries con­tained here­in. A lot of great work went into these sto­ries by a lot of great authors! Until next time…