29 January 2026 — Q&A Update
Q&A Part 2 (29 January 2026)
Q. The first two Mrs. Quarterhorse books, Mrs. Quarterhorse, and Mrs. Quarterhorse at the Masked Ball, are finally published.
A. Not without difficulties. I’ve only just returned to work on the third book, The Many Charms of Mrs. Quarterhorse, after two years away from it. It’ll take a dozen more drafts to get it in shape for the April deadline I’ve set for myself.
Q. That’s cutting it close.
A. I refuse to let my revisions get out of hand like they did with the first two books. Two years I spent polishing those things and I’m not sure they’re all that much better for the effort. The third story is essentially finished. Even the cover is drawn. There’s no reason I can’t have it published by mid-April.
Q. What were the difficulties publishing the first two books?
A. The Kindle versions look excellent on a Kindle, and the downloadable versions look fine on the Moon Reader app. On ReadEra, though, another popular reading app, the styles don’t appear as they should. The * * * asterisks that indicate pauses in the story are all scrunched up, you can barely see them without making changes to ReadEra’s default settings.
Q. Since when could you download epubs from the Kindle store?
A. It’s a new service. When you publish an ebook now at Amazon you have the option to leave it DRM-free so buyers can, if they prefer, read the book on devices other than a Kindle.
Q. So you can now read a book bought at Amazon on a Kobo?
A. If the book is DRM-free, yes. And as for the Kobo, I tried out the downloadable epub on my own Kobo and it looked exactly as it should. Except for the cover.
Q. What’s wrong with the cover?
A. It’s not the right size. Takes a few page turns to get through it.
Q. Not the end of the world.
A. Still, it’s annoying. And there’s nothing I can do about these little glitches. Hopefully readers of ebooks are familiar enough with html peccadilloes to overlook them. My own epubs, the files I upload to be published, they are very clean code, lean and simple. These little flaws I’m whining about are truly not my fault! Unfortunately, no book will ever look the same everywhere.
Q. What other difficulties have you been having?
A. Amazon briefly ruined the Mrs. Quarterhorse series page, replaced it with a portion of one of the book descriptions. And then the book descriptions had to be changed because of how they appeared elsewhere without their html, squashed into blocks of text impossible to read. The new descriptions are shorter, simpler, and able to be de-html’ed without becoming incomprehensible. You’d think basic html in 2026 should be stable, wouldn’t you?
Q. If the bold tags on these Qs and As work, that’s good enough for me.
A. And then my old placeholder ASINs of the Quarterhorse books that I’d created years ago and subsequently deleted started rising from the grave. Please don’t make me explain them again, those phantoms have tormented me enough.
Q. Have you read the AI-generated summaries of your books?
A. They are currently curdling my milk. Thankfully they only appear on small mobile devices. I hope readers understand that writers do not write those summaries. They describe my stories about as well as the word “shoe” describes Jesse Owens at the Munich Olympics.
Q. Back to DRM. Digital Rights Management. You’re against it?
A. Yes, it’s stupid.
Q. Isn’t it meant to protect artists from being robbed?
A. It doesn’t matter what it’s meant to do. In reality DRM does the opposite. People buy digital books, albums, and movies not just to be able to read, listen to, and watch them. They also want a sense of ownership of the thing. Anyone can illegally download any book, album, or movie they want. They’ll then possess it, but there’ll be no corresponding sense of ownership. Ownership comes only when you properly buy something. But what DRM does, by telling the buyer that they can only read a book, or listen to an album, or watch a movie on a certain device or on a certain app, is compromise the meaning of ownership so thoroughly it no longer has value. People want to properly own things, and DRM makes that impossible.
Q. So, no DRM for your books?
A. DRM can go suck an egg.
Q. Strong words.
A. As strong as they get.
Q. Your stories don’t use bad language. Why not?
A. Because my mum’s ghost would smack me if I used it, that’s why.
Q. So, no bawdy talk to look forward to in the next book in the series, The Many Charms of Mrs. Quarterhorse?
A. The word fink is used at least once.
Q. Scandalous.
A. Are we done here?
Q. First tell me again when The Many Charms of Mrs. Quarterhorse will be available.
A. I won’t know for certain until I’ve finished the next draft, but I’m aiming to have the pre-order page at Amazon up by the end of next week, with the book to be published on April 16, 2026.
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| Amazon's terrible AI-generated book descriptions; I did not write these! |
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| How the optional downloadable epub looks on Moon Reader (top) and ReadEra (bottom). |
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| Showing how the * * * breaks are squished by default on the ReadEra app; changing Text Align from "Original" to "Justify" will make the breaks reappear, although still not as they were meant to appear. |
Q&A Part 1 (2025)
Q. Why this ridiculous Blogger page instead of a proper website?
A. Because it's good enough.
Q. But it doesn't look professional.
Q. Sheen.
A. Why?
Q. So it will be taken seriously.
A. Anyone unable to overlook a lack of sheen is not worth being treated seriously.
Q. Isn't your ultimate purpose here to sell the Mrs. Quarterhorse books?
A. Yes, I suppose so.
Q. Then you shouldn't alienate potential customers by denying them the professional sheen they expect. Do you not want their business?
A. People who judge content based on sheen are also the sort who buy books, read them, then return them for a refund.
Q. Fair enough.
A. Furthermore, I'm opposed to sheen for its own sake. I'm sick of sheen. Website templates, stock photo libraries, generative AI, all there to effortlessly give the same professional sheen to absolutely everything everywhere.
Q. Just because turds are now presented with professional sheen is no reason to dismiss sheen itself.
A. I disagree. I now fully associate professional sheen with turds. To be clear, I'm only dismissing professional sheen, not professional content or functionality. As I've already stated, this website, mere blog though it may be constructed upon, is simple and clean, qualities rare among sites with professional sheen. This website functions as it should, and the content, while meagre, is at very least interesting.
Q. You mentioned AI. I was just about to bring it up.
A. It does churn in the belly like an imminent puke, doesn't it?
Q. I take it you don't use AI?
A. I often pose questions to Copilot or Gemini.
Q. To do what?
A. I'm currently using Gemini to navigate through promoting my books. I have no head for this sort of thing, and am more than happy to be walked through it. Unfortunately, since Gemini is a habitual liar and nothing it suggests can be relied on, it's not really very helpful! I continue with it, nonetheless, in fits and starts, because I can't bear to watch any more of those excruciating self-publishing how-to videos. The only thing more grotesque than the self-publishing ecosystem is the how-to self-publish ecosystem. I'd rather be lied to by a robot, thanks, and dragged down to financial ruin.
Q. Do you use AI to improve your writing or artwork?
A. No!
Q. Not at all?
A. Not one dot, not one word! Look, I've been using grammar checkers for as far back as I can remember. I use them to find mistakes that I've overlooked, like a their instead of a there, an its instead of an it's, stuff like that. Sometimes, no matter how often you proofread a text, a mistake that should stand out is somehow invisible. So, I'm grateful for grammar checkers. I'm more than happy to have troublesome phrases pointed out. But that is all I want from a grammar checker, a simple prod. I have no interest in suggested changes. I have never, not once ever, used grammar suggested by AI, and I never will! If a writer is letting AI write for them, even just to tweak the wording of a single phrase, that writer has crossed a line!
Q. So you're saying that if I write a 300 page novel, but use a grammar checker's suggested rephrasing of a single sentence, I have crossed a line?
A. Yes.
Q. That's a bit extreme, don't you think?
A. No. Look, if your job is writing pointless memos, then by all means let AI write them for you. After all, the people you're sending them to will likely be using AI to read them. But if you're working as a creative professional for living breathing humans? Forget it! If AI writes one single word for you, you've crossed a line.
Q. AI is just a tool, isn't it? No different than a hammer.
A. Yes, a hammer that will build you a house entirely on its own. Furthermore, keep in mind that AI is just a big averaging machine. AI text that you judge good enough for your book is also being judged good enough for millions of other books the world over. Everything will soon look and sound exactly the same.
A. Here's one they should try: "Find me a line of work for which I'm actually suited."
Q. If an artist is at least open about using AI, that's okay, don't you think?
A. It might be if AI weren't trained on stolen data! Any creativity in its output is already there in the stolen input. So, an artist being open about using AI is only admitting they steal from other artists. Confession is good for the soul, I guess.
Q. Moving on. If this site's admitted purpose is to promote the author S. C. Marchere's novels, why no corresponding social media presence?
A. You mean, why are there no Georges Presse, Marchere or Mrs. Quarterhorse Facebook pages?
Q. Not just no Facebook, no nothing. Just this blog masquerading as a website.
A. Facebook and Twitter pages were set up once, I think, but never used.
Q. Why not?
A. Look, I'm sick of talking about myself in the third person. I'm Marchere, okay? I'm the one answering these questions. And the reason I'm not on Facebook, or X, or anywhere else is because I can't be. I can't do social media.
A. No, I'm the opposite of shy! I can't shut up is the problem! Long before Facebook I've chatted online in forums. I love talking to people. I could chat all day and all night. You know how conversations branch out. Furthermore, I carefully read every post and put as much care into my own, no different than if I were a proper Victorian lady at a desk with pen and paper, tending to my daily correspondences. I simply cannot use emojis or any sort of shorthand. Not even in messages with family and my closest friends! If I have to message someone that I'm going to be ten minutes late, for instance, I'll stop to work out a suitable phrase! Causing me to be twenty minutes late. Facebook would have killed me. I saw immediately how it consumed people in my circles, and knew that for me it would be infinitely worse. I'd love to spend every day just chatting with people all over the world, but if I want to ever get any work done, I can't. And since I am incapable of meeting social media halfway, I have had to exclude it from my life. Same with peanut butter. If there's a jar around, I'll empty it.
Q. Surely you could manage a simple Facebook page just to promote the Mrs. Quarterhorse books?
Q. Aren't your family and friends inconvenienced by your refusal to use Facebook?
A. Constantly. Whenever they've done anything worth sharing, they have to email or message me about it, attach pictures, a lot of work they don't have to do for anyone else. I'm a nuisance, I know it.
Q. It surely also means you are out of the loop regarding the news of the day.
A. That I am okay with.
Q. Not to get you all worked up again by mentioning AI, but it seems one of the problems with having no social media presence is that you might be mistaken for being AI yourself.
A. AI doesn't use as many exclamation points.
A. I use them, too! They're useful little things. Sometimes a comma, colon, or semi-colon just looks weird, don't you think? Em-dash to the rescue. And that reminds me of another legitimate use for AI. I once asked it to write me a macro so I could hotkey the em-dash.
Q. But back to my point, doesn't it bother you to be mistaken for a bot?
A. Just because I don't use Facebook?
A. I'm here, aren't I?
Q. So at least part of the reason for this interview is to demonstrate your corporeality?
A. Yes. I'm not overjoyed to be real, by the way.
Q. Let's talk about something real. The Mrs. Quarterhorse books. They're supposedly going to be for sale one day?
A. I'm aiming for the first two books to be ready some time this autumn. (Edited to correct: the first two books were published January 13, 2026 at Amazon.)
Q. When did you start writing them?
Q. And the other three?
Q. You've recently written some short stories as well?
A. Yes, I've been writing them concurrently with the novels. I can only work on the same thing for a few hours straight, so having several projects going at the same time just makes sense.
Q. Will the short stories be published?
A. They all conform to a theme. One of two themes, actually. Eventually they'll be collected into volumes. I've sent some of the stories to publications, hoping to perhaps direct interested readers to this site. (Edited to add: one of these stories, A Lost World, has been posted here in its entirety.)
Q. So then, someone clicks on a link and arrives here.
A. Yes.
Q. And then what?
A. They'll learn about the Mrs. Quarterhorse stories and consider reading them.
Q. How hopeful are you?
A. Not very. The books are really good, I wouldn't publish them if they weren't. I don't lack that sort of confidence! But the amount of competing material out there is overwhelming. Never in human history has there been such a steady, heavy flow of new fiction. Add to that the unceasing bulldozer dumps of low-content dreck and the ever-thickening AI gas-clouds, and the odds of being noticed are next to nothing.
Q. And if you're never noticed? Do you have a plan-B?
A. I barely have a plan-A!
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