The Midas Protocol
- Details
- The Midas Files
In 1983, brilliant Unalco researcher Dr. Lawrence Bingham and his wife are murdered, and Bingham’s greatest...
It was one of those weekends that seemed to disappear almost as soon as it started.Friday turned out to be a lot of fun. The rain held off, and I made it down to Canonsburg for the Oktoberfest celebration in Washington County. Saturday brought another good time as we celebrated a milestone birthday for a close friend we affectionately call Hollywood.
My editor Dean recently finished reading The Midas Protocol. He did much of the heavy lifting on Call of the Minotaur, and I had assumed he had read the first book years ago. Apparently, he had not. His reaction was interesting: compared with Call of the Minotaur, The Midas Protocol almost reads like a prequel.
Labor Day always feels a little bittersweet to me. Around Western Pennsylvania, it is the unofficial last call for summer — one more long weekend to fire up the grill, sit outside with friends, crack open a beer and pretend we are not already noticing that the evenings are getting shorter. Today, I plan to do exactly that.
This past weekend reminded me why I build any of this in the first place. It was the kind of weekend where there were never enough hours in the day, but somehow that did not feel exhausting. It felt energizing. I bounced from football to old friends, from Across Pittsburgh to Scratch Writing, from tinkering with editorial workflows to sitting down behind a microphone and reading another chapter of The Midas Protocol. None of those things, taken by themselves, qualifies as some monumental life event. Put them together, though, and they reminded me of something I have probably known for a long time and occasionally forget: the joy is in the doing.
One of Hank Raglan’s favorite expressions in The Midas Protocol is, “Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?” Lately, I have found myself asking essentially the same question about artificial intelligence, particularly as I experiment with using it to expand the world of the Midas Files. My answer is increasingly that AI is neither inherently a good thing nor a bad thing. It is a tool, and like most tools, what comes out of it depends heavily upon the intent and skill of the person using it.
Last Sunday night, I finally did my first live reading of The Midas Protocol on YouTube, and the biggest success was simply that I did it. I staged the office, put the Midas Files poster in place, set the tesseract on the table, got the Yeti Nano working through OBS, mounted the phone on its tripod, and then sat down and read an entire chapter for better or worse.
Last night was supposed to be the night. I was finally going to sit down in front of a camera and perform my first live reading from The Midas Protocol. Nothing elaborate. Nothing professionally produced. Just me, Chapter One, and whoever happened to wander into the livestream.
Step into The Midas Files, a techno-thriller series where quantum mystery, ancient power, corporate ambition, and otherworldly secrets collide. Start the journey with The Midas Protocol: Midas Files Book One by Matt De Reno.
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