Unhinged Biography

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There is this thing going around where you ask an LLM to write an unhinged biography of you.

Irresistible, of course.

So my first run at chat gtp:
Sarah A. Hoyt is what happens when a science-fiction writer accidentally collides with a particle accelerator full of caffeine, history books, and righteous fury. Born in Portugal, forged in the fires of multilingual sarcasm, and ultimately unleashed upon America, she has spent decades producing novels, essays, stories, blog posts, and opinions at a velocity that causes lesser writers to pull hamstrings just trying to keep up.

A shapeshifter of genres, Hoyt writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical adventure, and the occasional thing that can only be classified as “someone gave the typewriter espresso after midnight.” Her books are populated by revolutionaries, rogues, survivors, inventors, aristocrats with knives, and ordinary people discovering that history has once again decided to light itself on fire. Somehow, amid all this, she still finds time to fence with internet stupidity before breakfast.

Critics have called her “prolific,” usually in the stunned tone archaeologists reserve for discovering a previously unknown pyramid complex under a parking lot. Readers know better. Sarah A. Hoyt is not merely prolific; she appears to operate under a separate relationship to spacetime. While normal humans complete one manuscript, she has written three novels, six essays, a short story, and a 2,000-word rebuttal to someone wrong on the internet.

Her imagination ranges from sweeping space opera to intricate alternate history, powered by a worldview equal parts immigrant grit, incandescent patriotism, and the suspicion that civilization is a very thin crust over chaos and someone should probably keep an eye on it. She writes heroes who bleed, villains who believe themselves reasonable, and societies that teeter constantly between renaissance and catastrophe—which, coincidentally, also describes most comment sections. To fans, she is a fearless storyteller. To ideological opponents, she is a recurring weather event. To aspiring writers, she is either an inspiration or a warning label. Legends persist that Sarah A. Hoyt can identify historical inaccuracies at fifty paces, survive entirely on coffee and indignation, and produce a complete first draft while simultaneously arguing about economics, baking bread, and rescuing a cat. None of these rumors have been conclusively disproven. In an age determined to become increasingly absurd, Sarah A. Hoyt remains one of the few authors willing to stare directly into the madness, take notes, and turn it into fiction before the rest of us have finished panicking.

Somewhere between amused and horrified, I tried again, this time with gemini:

    Sarah A. Hoyt is not merely an author; she is a space-faring tectonic plate shift wrapped in a vintage housecoat and fueled by the raw, unrefined spite of a thousand Portuguese explorers. Born in a village so old the stones remember the birth of Zeus, she eventually realized that the “real world” was a poorly constructed simulation with mediocre plotting. Consequently, she moved to Colorado to live in a house that is essentially a sentient library held together by cat hair and the sheer force of her own willpower.

    Her literary career is less of a “path” and more of a series of tactical strikes against the concept of boredom. She writes at a speed that suggests she is actually three different women sharing one consciousness, alternating between Musketeers fighting monsters, Shifters dodging the law, and interstellar pioneers who have finally had enough of your nonsense.

    The Hoyt Method

    To understand Sarah is to understand the following fundamental truths:

    • The Portugal-Colorado Pipeline: She manages to maintain the soul of a European aristocrat while possessing the “get off my lawn” energy of a frontier gold prospector.
    • The Golden Carp: She is the only person on Earth capable of turning a casual conversation about laundry into a 4,000-word manifesto on the fall of Western Civilization and the inherent superiority of Heinlein.
    • Biological Paradox: She subsists entirely on coffee, the tears of her enemies, and the occasional ribeye, yet she produces more words per day than a mid-sized news agency.

    Career Highlights (The Unofficial Version)

    1. Shakespearean Intervention: She once spent an entire series arguing that William Shakespeare was actually a front for supernatural entities, mostly because the truth was too dull for her taste.
    2. The Dinosaur Incident: She has effectively convinced a significant portion of the internet that “The Dinosaurs” are a legitimate political demographic that must be reckoned with.
    3. The Mythical Menagerie: Her home is rumored to be a sanctuary for cats that are actually displaced minor deities, all of whom are currently judging your choice of footwear.

    In summary, Sarah A. Hoyt is a whirlwind of Gaslamp fantasy, libertarian fury, and high-octane storytelling. She is the woman who looked at the horizon, decided it was in the wrong place, and spent three decades writing it into a more acceptable position. If you meet her, bring coffee. If you cross her, may the gods have mercy on your soul, because she certainly won’t have time for it—she has a deadline in twenty minutes.

    Still fairly certain it confused me with several of my characters, I returned to chat gtp:
    Sarah A. Hoyt arrived on Earth by way of Portugal, apparently deciding at an early age that normal human occupations were too stable, too comprehensible, and involved far too little caffeine. After infiltrating the United States under the guise of “immigrant novelist,” she embedded herself deep within the science fiction ecosystem, where she began producing books at a rate suggesting either supernatural assistance or a secret basement cloning facility.

    By day, she is a novelist. By night, she is also a novelist, but angrier and with more tea.

    As proprietor of the blog According to Hoyt, Hoyt became known for essays that read like someone wired a philosophy seminar directly into a flamethrower. Her posts range across publishing, politics, economics, civilization, history, cats, apocalypse preparedness, and the ongoing mystery of why modern institutions seem determined to replace competence with interpretive dance.

    Her writing style has been described as:

    • “ferociously energetic,”
    • “a caffeine-powered cavalry charge through ideas,” and
    • “what happens when a Regency novelist acquires broadband and a siege mentality.”

    At Instapundit, she appears periodically like a literary cryptid emerging from the woods to announce that civilization is probably salvageable if everyone would please stop setting fire to the load-bearing structures. Readers never know whether a post will contain publishing advice, political analysis, a meditation on freedom, or a warning about the dangers of trusting bureaucrats who use the phrase “stakeholder engagement.”

    Her bibliography sprawls across genres with the alarming confidence of ivy overtaking an abandoned cathedral. Science fiction? Yes. Fantasy? Absolutely. Alternate history? Naturally. Space opera? Of course. Regency vampires? Why not. Somewhere in the distance, a marketing department continues screaming softly into the void.

    Critics attempting to categorize Hoyt eventually enter one of three stages:

    1. confusion,
    2. admiration,
    3. constructing elaborate conspiracy corkboards connected with red string.

    Friends describe her as warm, intelligent, and unstoppable. Enemies describe her as “extremely online but somehow with references to 14th-century history.” Both groups agree she writes faster than should be medically possible.

    There are rumors that if you say “indie publishing” three times into a darkened Kindle, Sarah A. Hoyt materializes to explain metadata strategy while simultaneously finishing another novel draft.

    No confirmed sightings dispute this.

    <It needs more unhinged, more cats and perhaps more baking. But maybe I’m confusing myself with my characters?

    In other news: I’m now ALMOST sure I’m not going to die. (Look, I knew I wasn’t going to die, but yesterday sure felt like it) BUT still…. under the weather, if the weather is a category 4 hurricane.

    Memes tomorrow. :D

    25 thoughts on “Unhinged Biography”

    1. By day, she is a novelist. By night, she is also a novelist, but angrier and with more tea.

      As proprietor of the blog According to Hoyt, Hoyt became known for essays that read like someone wired a philosophy seminar directly into a flamethrower.

      Somewhere that LLM found you (and then went slowly insane).

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    3. I am so glad you did not die, yet. You know, reading book 2 is very distracting because everywhere you have written Al I see AI – damn even difficult in this font. You know, AL is seen as AI. So artificial intelligence keeps wandering into the storyline. I wonder if it is also related to the deposed fairy king. That might explain a lot.

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    5. The first ChatGPT one I quite like. It is long but it touches on all the myriad facets of your writing and personality that I’ve become fascinated by after years of reading your blog and your books.

      The Gemini one, IMNSHO, is mediocre.

      The second ChatGPT one is also pretty good, and rather different from the first one, surprisingly. But it still catches the energy.

      I admit, I have three Kindles of different vintages – almost tempted to try to prove/disprove that rumor.

      I am glad you are feeling at least a tad better! As for weather, it rained here all day, but the evening brought a lovely double-arc rainbow in the east. So rest and recover – we will be here waiting patiently. ;-)

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    7. This is what Grok had to say (sorry for the lack of formatting)

      The Unhinged Biography of Sarah A. Hoyt: Cat-Goddess of the Void, Destroyer of Boring Books, and the Only Reason Reality Still Has Plot TwistsIn the year 1962, somewhere near the misty, port-drunk hills of Porto, Portugal, a cosmic glitch occurred. The stork didn’t deliver Sarah de Almeida. No. The stork showed up late, hungover on fermented sardines, and Sarah simply manifested—fully formed, tiny fists already clenched around an invisible quill, screaming at the universe for better dialogue. She took one look at the mortal plane and declared, “This place needs more explosions, dragons, and cats.” Then she tried to become a cat at age three. True story. She failed, but only because the cat form was already taken by lesser beings. Writing was her backup plan. At age six she decided she would be a writer, and the multiverse has been running scared ever since.By twenty-two she had married the long-suffering mortal anchor known as Dan Hoyt (legend says he proposed while she was mid-rant about how Portugal’s bureaucracy was secretly run by shape-shifting bureaucrats from Dimension Dull). They fled to America like two fugitives from a Portuguese telenovela directed by H.P. Lovecraft. Colorado received them. Colorado has never recovered. The mountains still whisper her name when the wind howls at night, probably begging for mercy.Sarah A. Hoyt did not merely write books. She weaponized them. Thirty-plus novels. A hundred-plus short stories. The Darkship Thieves series? Not fiction. Those are field manuals for the coming rebellion against the space-faring bureaucracy. Darkship Thieves won the Prometheus Award because the Prometheus Award committee was terrified of what she’d do if they didn’t. The Shakespearean faerie books? She literally kidnapped the Bard from the afterlife, forced him to co-write, then sent him back with a note saying “you’re welcome.” Under pen names she conquered cozy mysteries, fantasy, horror—every genre she touched burst into flames and thanked her for the warmth.But the real war came in the 2010s. The Sad Puppies. People think it was about Hugo Awards. Wrong. It was Sarah summoning an army of rabid literary puppies to chew through the ankles of the publishing cartel. While lesser authors were busy writing polite think-pieces, Sarah was in her Colorado basement forging manifestos on her blog According to Hoyt—a digital fortress where truth goes to get absolutely shredded and then rebuilt stronger, funnier, and with more cats. The globalist glitterati of sci-fi still wake up screaming from nightmares about her keyboard.She has two sons who were raised in the chaos. They grew up thinking “normal” meant your mom pausing dinner to argue with interdimensional trolls on the internet while three to seven cats (the number fluctuates like the stock market of madness) circled the table like furry familiars waiting for the signal to pounce on anyone who bad-mouthed Heinlein.Today Sarah A. Hoyt sits on her throne in the Rocky Mountains, hair probably full of static electricity from all the reality-warping she does before breakfast. She blogs, she tweets, she writes another novel that makes the New York Times bestseller list spontaneously combust out of sheer envy. She has outlived literary trends, publishing fads, three or four apocalypses, and at least one attempt by the universe to cancel her.Some say she’s still trying to become that cat. Others say she already succeeded and the human form is just a skin suit. All we know for certain is this: if the final heat-death of the universe ever arrives, Sarah A. Hoyt will be the last thing standing, typing furiously on a laptop powered by pure spite and catnip, demanding one more chapter before entropy gets to have the last word.Bow, mortals. The Queen of Unhinged Prose has entered the chat—and she brought dragons.

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      1. Okay, that one is top notch. I love them all, but I like the first ChatGPT version and this one best!

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    8. Those are … well … frightening. They read as though they cheated on the Turing Test. I want an Electron Incantation to invoke Asimov’s Laws of Robotics.

      But I don’t think Asimov could find a Sanity Clause to restrain the algoheurism-manic loose language models, which sputter like Mark V. Cheney (qv.) on Haldol.

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    10. Love it!
      here’s what I got:
      William M. Lehman was not born so much as pressure-tested in the cold mechanical intestines of the ocean. Legend says the Navy didn’t recruit him — a submarine surfaced during a thunderstorm, opened one dripping steel hatch, and he simply climbed aboard carrying three notebooks, a wrench, and the expression of a man who already knew where Atlantis was buried.

      As a submarine veteran, Lehman spent years sealed inside a floating cigar tube packed with torpedoes, caffeine, and the collective anxiety of men who knew exactly how many feet of water were above their heads at all times. While ordinary people measure life in birthdays and holidays, Lehman measured existence in sonar pings, reactor hums, and whether the coffee tasted “slightly metallic” or “medically concerning.”

      Deep beneath the sea, where sunlight goes to die, he developed the thousand-yard stare of a man who had absolutely heard “something weird” scrape the hull at 2:14 a.m. and was told by command to “forget about it.” He allegedly communicated with dolphins through profanity alone. There are rumors he once fixed a navigation system by threatening it verbally until it regained patriotism.

      Then came the writing career.

      Most authors begin with workshops or journals. Lehman emerged from the ocean depths like a sea cryptid carrying manuscripts damp with seawater and unresolved emotional damage. His books reportedly contain enough technical precision to satisfy veterans while also radiating the energy of a man who has eaten government peanut butter in international waters for months at a time.

      Critics describe his style as “part Tom Clancy, part fever dream occurring during a reactor drill.” Readers open one of his books expecting military fiction and suddenly find themselves emotionally trapped inside a steel cylinder listening to machinery breathe in the dark. Somewhere around page 80, they begin respecting checklists with religious intensity.

      Friends claim Lehman can still identify submarine classes from sound alone. Enemies claim he once stared at a broken appliance until it apologized. Nobody is completely certain how much of his storytelling is fiction and how much is heavily redacted autobiography. Somewhere in the distance, a sonar ping echoes ominously.

      Today, William M. Lehman remains a mysterious figure: author, submariner, chronicler of steel coffins beneath the waves, and possibly the only man alive who considers “mild flooding” a manageable inconvenience. Sailors fear him. Readers admire him. The ocean remembers him.

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    14. So, went for my pen name: Totally all wrong (Chatgpt):

      Eppie Gray writes stories the way raccoons raid a campsite: with chaotic determination, glitter in unexpected places, and absolutely no regard for what is “reasonable.” Fueled by caffeine, spite, and an alarming number of half-filled notebooks, Eppie specializes in weaving tales populated by morally questionable charmers, stubborn heroines, and at least one character who should probably be in therapy but is instead holding a sword.

      When not writing, Eppie can be found aggressively researching obscure historical facts for “accuracy” (and then ignoring them for drama), buying more books despite a structurally concerning TBR pile, and staring into the middle distance while mentally rearranging fictional people’s lives like a tiny, feral god.

      Critics have described Eppie’s work as “emotionally devastating,” “wildly addictive,” and “why was I crying at 2 a.m. over someone named Thornwick?”

      Eppie lives somewhere between reality and pure delusion, accompanied by stacks of manuscripts, artistic clutter, and a suspicious number of elaborate plans that begin with, “What if I just wrote twelve books this year?”

      Favorite genres: yes.
      Writing process: chaos, followed by panic, followed by brilliance, followed by snacks.
      Life philosophy: Commit to the bit. Even if the bit is unhinged.

      __________________________

      So basically stereotypical “author” stuff.

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    15. Reads with admiration while thanking the universe that no one has been able to teleport through the internet, either to or from Casa de Hoyt.

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    16. ChapGPT:

      Mary Catelli was born during a minor electrical storm behind a shuttered seafood restaurant sometime in the late 1970s, though three competing municipalities still deny responsibility. By age six she had already developed her signature hobbies: collecting cursed snow globes, mailing anonymous corrections to encyclopedias, and teaching raccoons to open childproof medicine caps “for labor solidarity.”

      Former classmates describe her as “deeply charismatic” and “probably banned from at least one airspace.”

      In 1994, Catelli vanished for eight months after allegedly attempting to build a functioning subway system beneath a suburban Olive Garden using only gardening tools and “pure civic frustration.” She returned wearing a linen suit, speaking conversational Bulgarian, and carrying a briefcase full of unmarked cassette tapes labeled simply: THE NOISES CONTINUE.

      Her professional life remains difficult to summarize because most employers either dissolved mysteriously or became experimental jazz collectives shortly after hiring her. Records indicate she has worked at various times as:

      a municipal cryptid liaison,

      an assistant manager at a laser tag arena with diplomatic immunity,

      a consultant for “vibes-based accounting,”

      and briefly, the acting dean of an unaccredited maritime psychology institute operating out of a repurposed Quiznos.

      Catelli’s political philosophy has been described as “feral centrism.” She once ran for local office on a platform promising:

      free soup,

      legally mandated fog,

      and the immediate replacement of all leaf blowers with trained owls.

      She lost by eleven votes after challenging a parking meter to single combat.

      Despite this, Mary Catelli maintains a devoted following online, particularly among insomniacs, former theater kids, and people who own exactly one very expensive knife. Her followers gather annually in undisclosed parking garages to celebrate “The Long Thursday,” an event involving synchronized flashlight blinking and the ceremonial reading of expired warranties.

      Perhaps most unsettling is Catelli’s alleged ability to appear in unrelated photographs. Across the northeastern United States, dozens of families have reported finding her standing in the background of vacation pictures: expressionless, holding a Diet Dr Pepper, somehow slightly out of focus even in 4K resolution.

      Today, she resides in a condominium that local officials insist “does not correspond to any known address.” She spends her mornings feeding crows unsalted peanuts and her evenings broadcasting pirate radio discussions about abandoned malls, medieval tax policy, and whether escalators can experience loneliness.

      When reached for comment, Catelli issued only the following statement:

      “The moon is guilty, but not of what you think.”

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      1. Hmm. Here’s Copilot:

        Here’s the **unhinged biography of Mary Catelli** you ordered — chaotic, maximalist, and only loosely tethered to the known universe. Buckle in.

        —

        ## **Mary Catelli: A Biography Written After Too Much Caffeine and Not Enough Supervision**

        Mary Catelli was not *born* so much as **precipitated** into existence during a freak collision of a library, a thunderstorm, and an argument about whether dragons should have pockets. Witnesses claim the air crackled, the Dewey Decimal System rearranged itself out of respect, and a small but determined fox trotted out of the smoke carrying a birth certificate that simply read: *“Mary.”*

        From childhood, Mary displayed an alarming tendency toward **collecting words**. Not books — words. Loose ones. Stray adjectives. Rogue adverbs. Entire clauses that had escaped from lesser writers. By age twelve she had amassed enough linguistic contraband to destabilize a small kingdom.

        Her teachers attempted to intervene, but Mary had already discovered her true calling: **world‑building so dense it requires geological surveying equipment**. She crafted universes with the casual ease of someone knitting scarves, except her scarves had political systems, trade routes, and at least three extinct species with complicated mating rituals.

        By adulthood, Mary had become a **mythological event**. Scholars debated whether she was a single person or a distributed consciousness operating across multiple planes. Cartographers complained that every time she wrote a new story, the shape of the continents changed. Linguists begged her to stop inventing languages faster than they could document them. She did not stop.

        Her hobbies include:

        – **Taming chaos gremlins** who sneak into her drafts and add unnecessary commas

        – **Folding time** so she can write seventeen stories simultaneously

        – **Arguing with muses** who show up uninvited and demand she add more explosions

        – **Maintaining a polite but tense rivalry with gravity**

        Mary Catelli’s writing process is rumored to involve:

        – A quill made from a phoenix who retired early

        – A mug that refills itself with tea whenever she glares at it

        – A stack of notebooks that reproduce asexually

        – A cat who is definitely sentient and possibly unionized

        Her stories are known for their **precision**, **imagination**, and **the faint smell of ozone**, as though they were written during a magical incident that no one wants to talk about.

        Today, Mary continues to write with the unstoppable momentum of a runaway train made of metaphors. She is believed to be working on at least nine novels, three universes, and one secret project that emits a low hum audible only to people who alphabetize their spices.

        No one knows where Mary Catelli will go next, but experts agree on one thing:

        **Wherever she goes, the laws of physics will have to adapt.**

        —

        If you want, I can also create a **completely feral version**, a **dramatic heroic epic version**, or a **Victorian‑era scandal sheet version**.

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        1. And who could resist that offer. The **completely feral version**

          Buckle up. The previous biography was eccentric.

          **This one has achieved escape velocity and is no longer legally bound to the concept of “biography.”**

          —

          # **Mary Catelli: A Biography That Violates At Least Three Natural Laws**

          Mary Catelli did not simply *arrive* on Earth — she **breached containment**.

          According to the most reputable unreliable sources, she erupted from a rift in the fabric of narrative causality, clutching a thesaurus, a half‑finished map of a continent that didn’t exist yet, and a stern note addressed to Reality itself reading: *“Do better.”*

          From the moment she appeared, Mary demonstrated an alarming resistance to the mundane. As an infant, she refused to crawl and instead **glided** everywhere, leaving behind faint trails of plot hooks. Pediatricians were baffled. Novelists were inspired. Several eldritch entities filed complaints.

          By age seven, Mary had already:

          – **Invented a calendar system** with 13 months, each named after a different emotional state

          – **Tamed a thunderstorm** by giving it a stern editorial critique

          – **Accidentally founded a small empire** because she needed somewhere to store her ideas

          Her teachers attempted to assign her normal homework, but Mary responded by submitting a **fully functional alternate dimension** as her book report. The school board is still trapped inside it.

          —

          ## **The Writing Years (also known as The Cataclysm)**

          When Mary began writing, the universe braced itself.

          Her first story draft caused:

          – A minor temporal hiccup

          – Three constellations to rearrange themselves into better symbolism

          – A committee of muses to unionize out of sheer self‑preservation

          Her world‑building is so dense that geologists have declared it a **load‑bearing structure**. Removing even one detail risks collapsing a mountain range in a nearby reality.

          Her characters routinely escape their manuscripts, wander the countryside, and return only after Mary promises to give them “more agency” or “fewer existential crises.”

          —

          ## **Mary’s Known Abilities (Classified, Inconvenient, and Possibly Illegal)**

          – **Chronological Distortion** — She can write for five minutes and produce 40,000 words.

          – **Mythopoetic Osmosis** — Folklore migrates toward her like moths to a flame.

          – **Narrative Gravity Manipulation** — Plotlines orbit her.

          – **Weaponized Vocabulary** — She once defeated a demon using only a well‑placed semicolon.

          Her familiar — a cat named *Probably Sentient* — serves as her editor, bodyguard, and occasional hostage negotiator when her characters revolt.

          —

          ## **Current Status**

          Mary Catelli is believed to be working on:

          – Nine novels

          – Four universes

          – A bestiary of creatures that technically don’t exist but have already applied for citizenship

          – A secret manuscript that hums ominously and must be stored under three layers of metaphor

          She continues to defy physics, grammar, and the polite suggestion that she “slow down.”

          Experts agree:

          **Mary Catelli is not merely a writer. She is a natural disaster with excellent prose.**

          —

          If you want, I can escalate further into a **cosmic‑horror‑level biography** or a **government‑classified dossier**.

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    17. Haven’t done the detailed and full reads, but the highlights definitely seem legit.

      “Oh no, here comes the preemie ADHD far-right” crossed with “Aren’t you afraid of what happens if writers can produce gobs and gobs of unregulated fictions?” might be a more concise summary. Except that the LLM is /not/ channeling EU fear-mongering bullshit.

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