What’s the present?

Radha's dad Rion picks them up from school unexpectedly. Rion tells Radha that he got a present for them and thought it might be fun to walk home together and along the way Radha can guess what the present is. Radha has some pretty wild guesses! A steam train that delivers fried chicken? A barracuda with a briefcase? An albino moose with a cello? None of Radha's guesses are correct—not exactly anyway.

Hardback

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Paperback

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You can get the paperback on Amazon, but Lulu nets me more money.

Copyright

All rights reserved. For now. The copyright for this work will become more permissive over time and will be in the public domain 48 years sooner than is typical. For the first 10 years of publication, please don’t steal this book and try to make money off it. Buy lots of copies for friends and for your local library. See the URL at the bottom of this page for the latest permissions.

This book is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Please review this book and thank you for supporting independent authors.

Do me a favor: take good care of yourself today.

~Matthew.

This story was created while residing on the lands of the people of the Multnomah. It is clear that genocide made this story possible and while I wish that were not the case—and I know that I am not directly responsible—I do benefit from centuries of terror, abuse, and lies by people who look exactly like me. I don’t know how to address such an inhumane outcome, but addressing it must begin with acknowledgment.

Art generated with the help of DALL-E https://openai.com/api/policies/sharing-publication

First edition October 2022

ISBN 979-8-9868545-0-2 (hardback) —October 2022

ISBN 979-8-9868545-6-4 (paperback) —December 2022

Thoughts on AI (2025)

I wrote this story many, many years ago and sat on it. Then along comes DALL-E and I’m all, “Wait. I can illustrate my book with this. I don’t need anyone else!” Except, of course, I did need other people because DALL-E base model was trained on stolen work—which isn’t how it was being promoted of course.

So I used it. And I do like the outcome. But, a few years have passed and I know more about how these “AI” tools work. If I was an artist and trained a base model on my own work, I have no ethical issue with that. But I’m not. And I didn’t.

Why is it still for sale?

Being a self-published writer with no marketing skills, I’ve sold 23 copies of this book. Which means I’ve made about $100. I really wanted to sell 25 copies before I pull it. So I’ve been waiting for that to happen. Which means I’ve bent my ethics to meet my personal desires. As every human does every day. (Explanation, not excuse.)

The plan is to some day have a real, live someone redo the art. Not a 1:1 copy—I want it to be in their style while matching the subtle intent of the book. I look forward to finding that person. I mean, I know people, but I can’t pay them (I split sales with the illustrators I work with) and there’s a lot of illustrations in this book.

So, someday. But I figured I’d let you know the level to which I’m being intentional about this now, where I wasn’t being as intentional in 2022.