How I Write
Since this is such a big topic right now, I felt like I needed to be honest about AI.
I’ve been publishing romance since 2008. That’s more than fifty books across several pen names, and a lot of late nights. Many of those books were written before AI tools existed. If you’re curious when a particular book came out, my timeline has the dates.
Keeping track of all those books and all those worlds has gotten harder as I’ve gotten older (hello, menopause). Organizing what’s in my brain alongside what I create isn’t as easy as it used to be. AI started as the way I sorted it all out, and it’s become part of how I write.
Readers have been asking how AI fits into the books they buy, and that’s a fair question. Here’s my honest answer.
What's mine
Every book starts with my idea. I decide what the story is, who these people are, what world they live in, what it costs them, and how it ends. I make the calls on every chapter, and I keep reworking it until it sounds like me and the story does what I want it to. Nothing goes out until I've signed off on it. I format every book myself in Vellum.
Where AI comes in
I use AI as a working tool throughout my process, the same way I use Photoshop for covers and Vellum for formatting.
- Development. I use AI to brainstorm a concept into a full story and to build out the world, its rules, its magic systems, and its characters.
- Outlining. Once the story is set, I use AI to help build the outline.
- Drafting. This varies by book. Sometimes AI writes a first draft from my outline, and I go through it a chapter at a time, rebuilding, rewriting, and strengthening it until it's mine. Other times I write the draft and use AI to help me expand what I've written.
- Revision. Every book goes through AI editing and beta passes first, then to human beta readers, then more editing to catch inconsistencies, and a final polish.
Covers and graphics
My covers come from a mix of sources: professional cover designers, my own work in Photoshop, and AI image tools.
Most of my ad and promo graphics come from flatlay packs I've purchased from Etsy sellers and Image Apothecary, finished in Canva or Photoshop, or made in Book Brush.
Some promo graphics for social media and my newsletter are made with Stratira, an AI marketing tool. Those are promotional pieces about the book, separate from the cover.
What I don't do
- I don't let AI decide the story.
- I don't use AI narration for my audiobooks.
- I don't feed other authors' books into AI to write mine.
- I don't ask AI to imitate any other writer's style.
- I pay for the tools I use and use them within their terms.
The bottom line
If a book keeps you up past midnight, that's all my doing, because odds are it kept me up past midnight writing it. If a hero makes you want to throw your Kindle, that's all me being wicked. (I do that sometimes.) And if a book gives you all the feels, I'm glad. I give myself all the feels with every book, and that's what I want for you too: to feel all the things with every one of my books.