On Process, Scale, and the Use of AI

On Process, Scale, and the Use of AI

I want to be transparent about my creative process, because I know it matters to many readers.

I use AI as part of my writing workflow.

It does not write my books for me. It does not create my characters, determine their emotional arcs, or generate the interior lives that drive my stories. Those elements come from me — from decades of lived experience, obsession with myth and psychology, and a lifelong habit of building worlds long before I ever put words on a page.

What AI does is assist with scale, continuity, and execution.

I am currently working across multiple interconnected projects: three primary series, plus a college-era series of seven additional books that link back into those worlds, and other work produced under distinct creative personas. These stories have lived in me for years — some for decades — held quietly while I prioritized my family and set my own creative life aside.

Now that I am finally telling them, I am telling them all at once.

That kind of output requires tools.

Before I write a single chapter, I need to understand my characters at an archetypal and psychological level: how they change under pressure, what wounds they protect, how they love, how they fail, and what they would rather endure than heal. I need to know the physical and metaphysical rules of their worlds — the source of magic, the logic of power, the histories that shape politics and belief. I build my stories from that foundation outward.

AI helps me hold that complexity: to track canon, manage continuity, test structure, and move efficiently through drafts without losing control of the underlying architecture. It is a collaborator in logistics — not in voice, meaning, or emotional truth.

I understand that some readers choose not to engage with work that involves AI in any capacity. I respect that choice. At the same time, I believe deeply that the medium is not the measure of authenticity — the expression is.

I have spent thousands of hours making things by hand: garments, accessories, objects born entirely from touch and time. I know the cost of artisanal creation. I also know that tools have always existed to extend what a creator can hold, build, and finish.

AI is one of those tools.

I stand fully behind the stories I publish. Their themes, their pain, their longing, their transformations — those are mine. If they resonate with you, then the method served its purpose. If they don’t, then no tool could have saved them.

That is the only standard I recognize.