What’s Up?
The new cover for TAKE THE EDGE OFF, by yours truly, is live now! I always loved the original one, but this looks pretty cool, whaddyathink?
I also think the paperback wrap looks CONSIDERABLY awesome.
Pupdate of the Week
Covers aside, I know what you are all here for!
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I could definitely rock one of those!
Storytime! I used to work over in Newcastle (Upon-Tyne, not the one down the road…which is what my whole family thought.) I used to go on long walks at lunchtime around the city and natter to my friend on the phone. I was writing Labyrinth of Stone at the time and as it turns out talking about murder, sex, creepy things, and ‘…so what you’re saying is that it’s one blow job short of a literary masterpiece’ absolutely WILL get you followed around Fenwicks by a security guard.
I love these articles. Usually it’s about food photography, but this is obviously a bit more dangerous.
That said… AI is going to do some disturbing things to this sort of advertising isn’t it? Like, probably not for the mass market approach where personalization would be too time consuming for the payout — for now — but imagine going to the doctor and they don’t just point out what’s wrong…
They point out what you’d look like if it was RIGHT. Like, they could just ‘show’ you the perfect face…like the bold glamor filter with cut lines.
(That filter messed with me! I suit lips!)
Inside Plastic Surgery’s Epidemic of Shady Before-and-After Photography
Surgeons get real about the rise in misleading post-op pictures — and reveal how to spot fakery.
Over the past six months, I’ve been receiving provocative DMs from a famous plastic surgeon. Most mornings, I open my phone to find images of perky breasts and taut tummies, straight noses, sharp jawlines, and the occasional rear end of enviable proportions, all surgically manufactured. The doctor sends each photo with an uncensored critique — not only of the work that’s been done, but how it is portrayed — and a clear aim: to expose the subterfuge that is rampant among aesthetics accounts on social media. It’s as if he’s building a case, with Instagram as his richest source of discovery.
Much of what this surgeon shares are unreliable before-and-after images, engineered to elevate the results they’re promoting. “Beware the surgeon who isn’t fastidious enough to take consistent photos,” he warns. “It shows they are lazy, not careful, or intending to manipulate you.” The tactics run the gamut, he points out, from sneakily irregular poses (“He compares standing to supine?!”) to more egregious offenses, like presenting intraoperative “on-the-table” shots as actual outcomes when, in fact, real results take months to develop (“That’s not an ‘after!’ It’s a ‘during.’ It is during the first minute of the healing process”).
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I love his voice.