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This week on Brave New Bookshelf, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite sat down with the prolific author and AI enthusiast, Kevin McLaughlin. Known for his insightful perspectives on the intersection of AI and authorship, Kevin has published over 100 novels over the past 13 years, spanning both indie and traditional publishing. As a moderator in the AI Writing for Authors Group, Kevin is a voice of reason and an advocate for understanding the facts before forming opinions.
Meet Kevin McLaughlin, Sci-Fi Author and AI Enthusiast
Kevin McLaughlin is a seasoned author with a deep understanding of the publishing industry. Since going full-time in 2017, he has written over a hundred novels, primarily in the science fiction and fantasy genres. With 52 of his books traditionally published through small publishers, Kevin has a wealth of experience in both indie and traditional publishing.
Kevin’s approach to AI in publishing is both cautious and open-minded. He began exploring AI tools early on, recognizing their potential to impact the industry significantly. Despite an initial existential crisis over AI’s capabilities, Kevin has embraced AI for its potential to enhance his workflow, particularly in areas he finds less enjoyable.
Finding Joy in Writing: Kevin’s Approach to AI
Kevin’s journey with AI has been about finding the balance between using technology and maintaining the joy of writing. While he appreciates AI’s capabilities, he prefers to write his books himself, as drafting is the part of the process he enjoys most. AI, for Kevin, is best suited for tasks that do not bring him joy, such as transcription and research.
Kevin’s experience highlights a important lesson for authors: use AI for the parts of the process you don’t enjoy, but keep the parts that bring you joy. This approach ensures that writing remains a fulfilling and enjoyable endeavor.
Using AI for Covers and Marketing
Kevin has long been a creator of his own book covers, utilizing AI to enhance the quality of his designs. By using AI-generated images as stock, Kevin can create unique and compelling covers that better align with his vision. This approach has also extended to his marketing efforts, with AI-generated images converting better in ads than traditional stock photos.
Kevin’s use of AI in cover design and marketing demonstrates the versatility of these tools, providing authors with new ways to engage their audience and enhance their brand.
AI in Research and Brainstorming
In addition to cover design, Kevin uses AI for research and brainstorming. AI tools help him explore new ideas and gather information, acting as a valuable resource for developing new storylines. While cautious about the accuracy of AI-generated research, he finds it a helpful starting point for deeper exploration.
Crafting a Balanced Perspective on AI
Throughout the conversation, Kevin emphasized the importance of understanding AI’s role in the publishing industry. He advocates for a balanced perspective, recognizing AI’s potential while acknowledging its limitations. For him, the key is to use AI to enhance the creative process without compromising the quality of the final product.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Use AI for tasks that do not bring you joy, but keep the parts of the process that you love.
- AI can enhance cover design and marketing efforts, providing unique and engaging visuals.
- Approach AI with a balanced perspective, recognizing its potential and limitations.
- Understand your audience and tailor your writing to meet their expectations.
- Continually explore and experiment with AI tools to find what works best for your process.
Resources Mentioned
Kevin’s Book Covers
In the YouTube video, Kevin showed off some of his AI enhanced covers. Check them out!
Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.
Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone, and welcome to an episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m Steph Pajonas CTO of Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. This is the third interview we’ve done this week, and we are on high having all these guests in to talk to them and talk about AI and publishing and writing and all the good stuff. And this is what I love to do, talk to my friends and colleagues about all this cool stuff that’s happening in our business. And I’m of course joined by my lovely co-host, as always, Danica Favorite. How are you doing today, Danica?
Danica Favorite: I’m good. I’m good. Yeah. So it’s funny [00:01:00] you’re like, yeah, this is the third one we’ve done with this week, obviously.
We released them weekly, so you’re not gonna get three in one week.
Steph Pajonas: No,
Danica Favorite: but it is nice because all this work we’re doing now it’ll hopefully be nice to stagger it out later so that we might have some breathing room and that would be fun, but. Like Steph, I love talking about this stuff. So it doesn’t feel like work.
It’s all the stuff after the interview that becomes the work.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors and publishers at every stage of their journey from formatting the manuscript to getting the perfect metadata and book descriptions as well as book covers and then distributing their books and then finally helping them split royalties.
So a lot of cool stuff we do. And then we’ve got people at the FFA who are teaching people how to write the book. So between both of us, we have all the things to be able to get you to get those stories out there into the world. And [00:02:00] speaking of getting people out into the world I have to tell you, we’ve got Kevin McLaughlin here today.
He is out of this world. Look at that cool spaceship behind him. I’m just gonna be real honest. I’m gonna say speak for both of us. He’s one of our favorite people. We both love Kevin. We have been trying to get him on the podcast for a while, and it’s taken forever to get schedules to mesh.
If you’re in the AI for Authors Group, he is also one of the moderators with us. And I just always really appreciate Kevin’s perspective. There are times when I’ll see something controversial. I’ll be like, wait, what would Kevin say? So Kevin is our voice of reason.
We absolutely love and adore him and he’s got some really great things to say about AI in publishing. And honestly, I’m gonna just tell you straight up, if you were ever looking for that more balanced view and looking for someone who’s going to search out the facts before coming up with an opinion.
Kevin is your guy. So without further [00:03:00] ado, I would like to introduce our good friend, Kevin. Kevin, tell us about yourself.
Kevin McLaughlin: It’s great to be here with you folks. First off like I was really embarrassed the last week when a couple people in the 20 Books group said they were gonna print up buttons that said, what would Kevin say?
And start passing that at conferences. So please don’t do that. Actually. My secret around that stuff really is that I don’t talk about something unless I’m fairly sure I know about it and I usually look it up and I, I find out everything I can first, I, then I try and pass out the right information to folks.
I think that information empowers all of us, and if we can get good, solid information about the full story of something, then that helps every author, and that’s why I do it.
Me though, I write science fiction fantasy, you can see from the background. And I’ve got 108 novels published over the last 13, 14 years now. I was one of the early indies, so I wasn’t the first wave, but I was like right after them. Took me about six years to go full-time.
And I’ve been full-time now since 2017. I’m still writing a whole bunch of books. I’ve had, about [00:04:00] 52 of those 108 books were trad published through small publishers like LMBPN and Shadow Alley.
But the majority of my stuff is indie and I’m, doing mostly indie these days too.
Danica Favorite: That’s awesome. I love this variety of authors that we have on our show in terms of that variety of where you’re at in your publishing journey and How long you’ve been publishing because I think it’s really interesting to see, you’re not the new kid on the block.
You’ve been doing this a while. Trends come and go, and so like you’ve been able to spot, okay, wait, is this a trend or is this something we should take a look at? And I think AI in publishing is one of those things. So that is great for me to ask my very first question that I like to ask people.
And how are you approaching AI in publishing? What’s been your approach since it’s come on the scene?
Kevin McLaughlin: I heard about AI really early. Like I, I heard about how the AI was gonna impact publishing from Joanna Penn, I think back in 2016 or something like that. She was on the ball really early on, and [00:05:00] I was like, oh my gosh, if she’s paying attention to this, I should probably pay attention to it too.
So I started like watching for more information as it popped up. And so when the very first chat bots were coming up, I was like, okay, let’s get in there. Let’s test this stuff out. Let’s find out what the scoop is. Let’s make this stuff work. When Midjourney opened up, I was in there trying to figure out how to use it, how to make art, what can we do with this tool?
That’s the question I’m pretty much always going to ask is, where does it fit into what I’m doing? But also where does it fit into the overall picture? Because any major change to publishing is gonna impact all of us in some way or another. No matter how we end up personally choosing to use something, understanding how it impacts the overall industry as a whole, that just that sort of education just improves things for everybody, I think.
Steph Pajonas: And so when you got in and you were like, Hey, let’s check out Midjourney, let’s check out these new tools what was your first impression of them and how did you feel like they were gonna fit into your processes?
Kevin McLaughlin: They were weak and terrible [00:06:00] and they couldn’t do very much. But oh my gosh, I had an existential crisis because I knew it wasn’t gonna take long for them to improve.
So I was looking at those early mid journey images that I made. Some of them are really beautiful. This is actually a fairly early mid journey. And it’s gorgeous. So I actually keep it around because I really like it. I wouldn’t use it on a cover. It’s not quite that good, but it’s pretty, I like it.
But. As midjourney improved. As all of these apps improved, I, I realized this is definitely going to have a long-term impact. This is definitely gonna change the way I do things. So I need to study this stuff as much as possible. The more I saw, the more I realized that this was something I couldn’t ignore.
No matter how I decided to end up using or not using it, it was definitely going to impact my job. It was definitely gonna impact my profession, and I couldn’t not pay attention to it. And then Michael Anderle invited me to help play around with some of his stuff and, Tanya with the AI Art for Authors first.
And then Ai Writing for Authors came up [00:07:00] like right afterwards. But I wanted to get involved in this stuff because it is cutting edge. It is gonna impact all of us in a variety of ways. So I, I wanted to understand
Steph Pajonas: I had that same existential crisis that you did. I’ll crisis. I’ll never forget it.
I will never forget it and my existential crisis happened in Sudowrite when I tried it for the first time. And I saw that when I gave it a whole chapter and I was asking for help with stuff that it understood context and it understood everything around it. And that was my moment.
I think my, like my soul may have receded from my body for a moment and I was like, oh no. Oh. Crap. Like I could not believe what I was seeing. And it was just that moment, I feel that moment in my life where I knew that this was [00:08:00] going to be world changing technology and that things were going to change significantly after that.
And I remember going to Facebook and being like, guys, guys, I just saw the most amazing thing. And nobody else had the same reaction I did. And I’m still like, I still look back on that and think, whoa, whoa. That was a big point in my life. And I, I’m right there with you. ’cause it was a crisis. It was an absolute crisis.
Danica Favorite: I faced it earlier because I was working for a publisher doing their marketing. And my boss hands me this AI tool and says, great, now you can start writing all your marketing copy and stuff with it. And I’m like, oh crap. And this is this is like even years and years before this all came up for authors and I’m like, oh crap, this is actually good.
Now I look at it, I’m like, oh, that was garbage, but it was good. And I’m like, I’m going to be out of a job. [00:09:00] And it, it is, it’s, it’s, it’s. Amazing.
Steph Pajonas: I think we all have that crisis, and that’s okay.
Kevin McLaughlin: It’s a crisis that’s ongoing in a lot of ways for a lot of people. I hit a critical point really last summer where I was going to do a series of books, a trilogy, using AI to write them. Wrote the first chunk of one of the books, realized I was being miserable with it.
I wasn’t enjoying the revision, the cleanup work that I was gonna have to do. So I dumped it entirely. I rewrote the book from scratch, wrote the entire trilogy and for just from scratch and I realized what was happening was that every time I was using the AI, the creating the stuff was really fun.
But for me the drafting, the art of creating the work is always the most fun part of things. And I spent several years in several million words learning to draft well enough that I didn’t have to do much revision, if any. And so what I found that AI was doing was it was.
Adding all of this tons of [00:10:00] revision time, it was shortening the part that I loved and adding a whole bunch of the stuff that I didn’t. And so for me, it just wasn’t working. And I hit the point last summer where I almost quit writing. I almost just gave it up. I almost just stopped. And I was like this isn’t fun.
So if I have to use the tool in this way, then I’m gonna quit because it’s just not fun for me anymore. I ended up deciding not to. I ended up Nope, I’m gonna just write this. I’m just gonna write the books myself. I’m gonna use AI in a variety of other ways too. But I’m gonna just write the books.
My, I’m gonna do the words myself because that’s the part I love. That’s my fun. And the revision wasn’t. Will that always be that way? I have no idea. Yeah, the thing about all this stuff is it’s an evolving process, so we’ll see what happens next year and the year after that. But for now I do things my way.
Danica Favorite: And I love that.
And I think that is one of the main reasons I wanted you to come onto the show. Because you have tried AI writing, you know how to write with AI. You don’t [00:11:00] like it. You prefer writing the word yourself, and I think that is one of the points Seth and I are constantly trying to drive home to people is use AI for the parts that you don’t like to do, but the parts that you love keep doing it.
You love to write, so keep writing your books because that is what you love and that’s what brings you joy, but all the other stuff that you’re like, eh, I don’t wanna do this. Okay, cool, AI, do that for me. And I really love and appreciate you being really open about that and saying this is where my existential crisis led me and why I really struggled as a writer, wondering if I could even write.
And here you are, you’re writing again and you’ve accepted, this is what I love and this is what I’m gonna do. But I also love that little caveat where you’re like, but it could change and that you’re open to whatever comes your way.
Kevin McLaughlin: Everything evolves, and I’m never gonna say, no, [00:12:00] I will never use AI in this way, or No, I will.
I’m never gonna hand write another novel again. I once said that I did, I once said I would never hand write another novel again. But now I have AI and I can hand write in a notebook and take a photo of it with my phone and load the photos into ChatGPT and it transcribes it automatically for me.
It’s almost flawless. It’s amazing. My handwriting is horrible and it’s really good at picking up my handwriting. So you know, now I’m back to the point where I can write by hand in a notebook again, and I can just have AI transcribe it automatically for me. I love that because everything old is new again.
In some ways.
Steph Pajonas: I love this because you’ve managed to find like all the different parts of your process that were causing you pain, right? Transcribing or any dictation or any of those kinds of things. And then you let AI take those parts and then you kept the ones you enjoy for yourself. And I think that’s where it needs to be.
Absolutely.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And me too, like I have to say, I learned a lot from you, [00:13:00] Kevin. Kevin, seriously. He’s my sensei. He doesn’t really know that, but seriously, I do seriously value Kevin in my life, and that was one of the most transformative things I learned about from Kevin was this idea you could take a picture of your handwriting and it would upload.
Because we were joking about this before we came on, so like right here, this is like my, it’s actually full and I’m stressed about it. I had to start a new notebook because everything I do is handwritten and I love handwriting my books. There are pieces I like to hand write, and so I’ll hand write parts, I’ll dictate parts and I do all of this messiness and that, that’s my process that makes me happy is it’s messy. It was really stressful for me trying to figure out how to transcribe my handwriting.
And when Kevin was like, yeah, just take a picture with and put it in ChatGPT, and it worked because Kevin, I have terrible handwriting. I was like, oh my gosh, Kevin, you’ve changed my life. Because it is, it is finding, what’s old is new [00:14:00] again and. All those things you love. I’m one of my projects that I’m gonna do.
You guys can’t see this, but in the bookshelves behind me you see the size of each shelf. I have two of them full of handwritten notebooks of books I’ve worked on and then haven’t done anything with because I hand wrote them.
Kevin McLaughlin: That’s awesome though. Now you can, that’s terrific. Right?
Danica Favorite: Right. Yeah.
Kevin McLaughlin: I just bought these, I just bought a couple of new notebooks because although it’s slower. Than, than typing and certainly slow than dictation. It’s different and it means that I can leave my computer and my phone at home and go sit someplace and just sit there with a notebook and pen and I’ve got no distractions and no notifications popping up or anything else. And I can just write, and even if I’m only getting a thousand words an hour versus 2,500 from typing or more than that from dictation. That’s okay. It’s not all about speed.
Danica Favorite: it’s about, again, that finding that joy in, in what you’re doing and finding that happiness and so many people are in different phases of burnout and things like that, and.
Honestly, [00:15:00] when I’m in those exhausted states, I’ve read a lot of studies about this, where actually that process of the handwriting actually is really calming to your nervous system, and it actually does really cool things with your thinking and your thought process. And so I love that we have all of those options.
I’m really grateful that you showed me. Wow, this is super easy and God help the world once I get all of those notebooks into the computer because people are gonna be like, oh my gosh, Danica has a thousand books out. How did that happen?
Kevin McLaughlin: That’ll be great. We’re looking forward to it.
Steph Pajonas: I’m super jazz about the fact that there are all of these ancillary sort of out of the box tools that authors can use now for their writing, for brainstorming, for editing and whatnot. Including doing lots of stuff with art and whatnot.
Just yeah. I love your Midjourney background there. I love the spaceship. And I know that you use you use some to make your own covers too, don’t you?
Kevin McLaughlin: I do. Mm-hmm. I’ve always made [00:16:00] most of my own covers. I’ve hired some artists sometimes and I’ve got some great artists who’ve done amazing work, but I’ve also always done most of my own covers, and I’ve usually used like a bunch of different stock art, put ’em together, merge ’em into something new and make a cover out of it.
I’m not the best painter in the world or anything like that, but I’ve learned over the years enough to do a decent job at it. What AI does for me is it lets me create stuff with much better stock than I had before. So before I used to buy models, 3D models off model sites, and then I would render those in Photoshop like a 3D model of a Starship, and I would render it in Photoshop and I’d put in the background and I’d overpaint it with some other stuff and make it into a cover.
If you look at my Satori covers, all of those the old Satori covers were, are, are like that. But now though, instead I am. Using AI as stock. So this piece here you won’t be able to see it in the podcast, but for the video part, this piece here is a composite of several different images that, we’re created by Leonardo, the Leonardo Phoenix model, and [00:17:00] I compiled those into a complete image, and then I did a little over painting to make them match. If you look closely enough at the cover, you’ll probably see the spots where I didn’t quite perfectly merge the image together and that happens, but it’s a good cover.
And I can make these covers faster and they’re much better quality than the ones I used to make because the stock is just so much better than the old style stock that I used to have access to. So for me as a cover designer AI is an amazing contributor.
Steph Pajonas: I love the fact that we can. We can really get like our vision now. Whereas in the past it was just sort of like, oh, that’s close. Or and even now we can still like. Things can be off just a little bit, but we’re just getting closer and closer and closer to the visions that we have for our characters and our worlds and all that kind of stuff.
Are you also using AI art on things like your website and you have a subscription service too, don’t you?
Kevin McLaughlin: I do. There’s, I’ve got a Patreon that I’m using. This is the full cover for the book for that [00:18:00] one right now. Again, AI images. But I’ve also got smaller clips of that that are being used for the Patreon.
I use AI images pretty much exclusively for my Facebook ads at this point. ’cause they just convert way better than old school stock did. I write spaceship adventure stories for the most part. Obviously that one. The one I just show is the fantasy one. I write fantasy two sometimes.
But if I wanna throw a good spaceship up there that’s not Starship Enterprise or something other elsewise, obvious and copyright protected, then I need to have a good source for those images. And stock just has a very, very slender selection, and all of them have been used really heavily over the last decade.
So by using AI to create new images like the one behind me, I’m able to create brand new spaceship images that look great as an ad. And they’re, they’re just more effective. They’re converting much better.
Danica Favorite: I really like that because I’ve heard that from actually Malorie Cooper says the same thing, is that the AI images just convert [00:19:00] better.
And it’s so interesting because again, we hear all of this, people don’t want AI art, people don’t want AI art. And clearly that’s not the case. You may have some vocal people who say they don’t like it, but the proof is in the conversion. And those ads are converting for you. So I think that’s really fascinating to see that conversion is actually higher for you as well.
Kevin McLaughlin: I think there are some things that people prefer to have bespoke and carefully created by a human, and there are some things that people don’t care about, so I don’t need my notebook to be handcrafted. This was made by a machine, I’m sure of it. On the other hand, I might really value. Give you example.
I have a piece of, I have the very first piece of stained glass art that my daughter made, the first piece that she ever made, and that’s still framed. And that’s special because it’s my daughter and she made it and it was carefully crafted by a human. These are things that add up to have it to creating meaning for me. And so I have extra meaning for that thing. That has more [00:20:00] meaning than anything me by a machine could possibly ever have.
So things like that’s a place where, where human never goes away, but in other areas we just don’t care really. If this mug that I’m drinking out of was made by a machine or a person, I could have bought something that was made by a potter on a wheel.
And I actually have one like that that I really like a lot. But I also like this mug that was made by a machine.
Danica Favorite: I love that differentiation because I think it just shows there’s still an important place for everything. And those things still have meaning and are purposeful and are important, and that craftsmanship, there’s always gonna be a place for it.
Kevin McLaughlin: Going to the movies didn’t kill Broadway, having the movies didn’t kill Broadway. We still go to plays. We still love the immediacy of seeing somebody up on a stage right in front of us. That hasn’t gone away. These other things are added on. And they do change the overall picture, but they don’t delete the old, they just change the way we, we interact with it.
Steph Pajonas: We don’t have to [00:21:00] divide up our love of things. I love to listen to audio books. I’m a big fan and I have a love of audio books that are narrated by humans and I still love audio books that are AI audio books because they’re giving me information that I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise because that author didn’t have the opportunity to have a human read audio book or whatever it may be.
I can appreciate both. I don’t think that it has to ever be one or the other, and I think that that is where people Like us, like all of us here are moving forward into the future because we’re okay with doing either or, or both, and it’s fine, right? if you wanna check out and use the AI tools for brainstorming and maybe editing, but you’re gonna write your whole book because that’s what brings you joy or, somebody like me who I really do not enjoy that first draft process, like at [00:22:00] all. And I love to edit. I love it. So where our situations are almost completely reversed, Kevin. So I enjoy that.
Kevin McLaughlin: I love that for you, I love that you’re able to get that tool that takes away more of the part that you don’t enjoy as much.
I think that’s terrific.
Steph Pajonas: This is where it gets exciting for all of us because there is something for everybody here. Mm-hmm. Yeah,
Danica Favorite: that is really the exciting part because, I imagine that they still do this. I am not in those spaces anymore, but I can remember when I first started writing, there was this war of, are you a plotter or are you a pantser?
And one is better than the other and, it isn’t, it’s what’s better for you and, and what is the process that works for you? And in my opinion, the beauty and the gift of AI is that it has brought augmentation to processes for everyone should they choose to use it in however they need that additional help.
And I, I think that’s beautiful because [00:23:00] everyone can use it in their own way, and we can all learn from each other and appreciate each other, even though it may be different. But I love that a tool that works for me isn’t gonna work for someone else, but a tool that doesn’t work for me is gonna work for them.
Kevin McLaughlin: My personal statement of ethics as far as writing goes, and this is just for me, is that if what I am doing is producing the best possible experience that I can reasonably provide for my readers, then I’m doing it right. if what I’m creating and passing on to them is my best work that I can reasonably produce at that time, then I’m doing it right. I find, I feel like I’m disrespecting the reader if I hand them something that’s not my best work. So I always strive to give them something that is the best that I can possibly produce right now. But I think that if we’re all doing that, then that’s what matters at the end of the day.
Respecting the reader and giving them our best work. Whatever tools or processes we use along the way, pantsing and plotting, both can get to the same goal. They just get there [00:24:00] differently. Does that make sense?
Danica Favorite: It does. It does. And I feel the same way about using an AI tool. It’s that same principle of, as long as you’re giving the reader the experience you want to give them, it doesn’t matter.
We were talking about handwriting. If we hand wrote it or we dictated it, or we typed it, or we told the AI to put our thoughts into something coherent. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that ultimate end experience we’re giving the readers. And is that something that we as individuals who produced it, are proud of?
So we talked a little bit about some of your workflow, like how you were originally creating some of these images and things and how you did some of your covers. And I know you use AI in all kinds of different pieces of your process.
What do some of your AI workflows work look like?
Kevin McLaughlin: So it depends on the day and depends on the project really a lot. I actually want to get back to doing more handwriting of books again. See notebooks. That ha I haven’t done very much of that yet.
I’ve just been playing around with a little bit. So I want to do [00:25:00] more. That’s definitely gonna become a bigger part of things. I am still a wishful thinking dictator. But I, I’m not very good at it, but I like doing it mostly because it lets me take long walks. So I take a break over the cold winter.
But now that it’s warming back up again, I’m expecting to start taking two mile hikes. And I love just being able to get 4,000 words done in my two mile hike and, maybe not quite that many words. I think I have to walk more for that, but whatever. I love getting some words in. And then I’m getting my fitness in at the same time as I’m as I’m getting the words completed.
So then I have the AI transcribe it. It’s easy enough. Whisper is amazing. I use Mac Whisper for transcription. At this point it’s far more accurate than Dragon. And it’s a $40 onetime fee. No additional fees and stuff. It’s great. Does it right on my computer. It’s not sending anything to the internet.
I can even do it. You can even use it with the internet turned off. So yeah, I use it for transcribing text. I use it for transcribing voice to text. I begun using it a little bit more for research than I was for a [00:26:00] while. Research was really iffy on the LLMs because they would make stuff up and I’m still cautious about it because if I want to really know the truth, if I need the absolute correct information, I’ll use the AI as a mile high source, like a Wikipedia type source.
It’s probably in the same ballpark of accuracy as Wikipedia at this point. So it’s not flawless, but it’s fairly good. And I’ll ask it a question, it’ll give me an answer, and then it’ll also give me links. So the links will let me follow up. ’cause then I can just go to the links and see what those pages say, and I can then get a better idea for whether or not the AI was picking a good source or a bad source.
And whether I need to, dig deeper or whether I’ve got good information.
I was just using it to research zero point energy creation a couple weeks ago because I completely forgotten the theory. It’s a science fiction, theoretical way of generating power zero point energy. And I did not remember my quantum theory enough to remember [00:27:00] exactly how it worked, but I needed a little bit more information and the AI helped both give me the initial information and give me sources that then I could go do more reading at, which is terrific.
I routinely use it to make up names for me. Now, what is the name for a male surgeon? About 45 years old who’s gonna become the villain of this book? Give me 20 ideas and then I’ll pick and choose. I won’t pick the same one all the time. I won’t pick the first choice. I want choices to choose from. And I’ll also sometimes pick one first name and one last name, and then go with the combination. So I use it in that way.
And what was I just doing the other day? I was I was brainstorming out some ideas. It’s for a story idea that I’m not even writing. This is something for 2026 or 2027 probably. It’s something that’s in the initial brainstorming process. And I’m like, okay, give me 10 ideas for… I want to do a superhero story, but I don’t know if I want it to be science fiction or fantasy. So I was asking it for, how could I do this? How could this person get powers and how would this create the world if it was science fiction versus if it was [00:28:00] fantasy? Give me 10 ideas for each. And it did great. And I’m still not sure which way I’m gonna go yet, but it gave me some more food for thought. And so now I’m gonna chew on that for the next year or so before I’m finally around getting around to writing the story. And when I do get around to writing the story, I’ll have had the additional material to work through.
I make a lot of my covers with AI at this point, AI stock. That’s a dominant way of making covers for me at this point. I will still probably use stock sometimes, but gonna lean toward AI stock more than the purchasable stock. I have 500 credits in Deposit Photos that I’m probably never gonna use.
Steph Pajonas: Do you outline your books before you get started with the writing or do you just go straight from research into writing?
Kevin McLaughlin: I sometimes outline them, but usually don’t. I usually do more discovery writing. It is like semi directed discovery writing, so I’ll be like, I’m discovery writing this, but I know that I want to start here and I [00:29:00] want to end here, and I know that I want to hit these four points between the along the way, so it’s kinda like a trail of breadcrumbs and then I connect the dots.
Steph Pajonas: I’m familiar with that process. I’m a big fan of James Scott Bell. I talk about him all the time on here and I understand his super structure.
So whenever I’m discovery writing, I’m just writing towards that next signpost. I know what I have to hit along the way, and then I just. I write that, but I’ve been trying to get my ideas out for the story using AI ahead of time, just to give me some sort of outline to work towards. Of course, I usually throw it out by chapter four, but it gets me started. Right.
Kevin McLaughlin: I find that, for writers in general that a lot of folks, early on for the first, when you’re in your apprentice period, the first like 10 or 12 books plotting in advance will make things faster. If you discovery right, you’ll probably have a lot more cleanup to do afterwards. A lot more revision afterwards.
The more skilled you become as a writer, the more you understand craft and the [00:30:00] more you understand how plot and structure work, the more you study that like study. Study Save the Cat, study the Harmon Story wheel, study Story by McKee, study Vogler, learn all that you can possibly can about how plot and structure work in story.
And then as time goes on, you’ll find yourself needing to do less and less of that. I think I find that at the end most people who have hit a very high level of mastery and have a hundred plus books out are probably leaning toward more discovery writing than plotting. It’s not universal even then. I know it’s not, but I think that it’s easier to, once you have that sort of studying behind you, so if you want to do a real better job as a pantser, study plot, ironically.
Danica Favorite: I pantsed my first book we talked about this in another episode, but I decided to use AI to pants a book and oh my goodness, the structure was terrible, but part of it was also, I intuitively give it the structure. Even, when I’m plotting something, I still [00:31:00] intuitively have that structure and I realized, because it’s intuitive for me, I didn’t think to tell the AI, oh, you have to use a structure. So it’s, it’s funny, like what you learn about writing, and I think at every stage of being an author, you have to study the writing and learn about structure.
And even if you know you don’t use it, I love that Steph quotes James Scott Bell all the time because early in my writing career, I took a lot of his classes in person and I remember he promised me an endorsement. And so I remember I published my first book. I was like, Hey, gimme my endorsement. And he’s I endorse Danica. It was all a joke. I won’t ever forget that because for me, even though I like the plotting and I like the structure because I do have to know what happens next. I have to know what I’m leading up towards because I don’t wanna be surprised. And I know for the discovery writers, they’re like, no, I want the surprises. I’m like, no, don’t surprise [00:32:00] me.
Steph Pajonas: I wanted to make sure that I asked Kevin about what he does with his post-process besides covers with AI tools. Are you using it to help you with things like blurbs and Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff?
Kevin McLaughlin: I have tried with the blurb end of things. I find that I, it’s usually faster for me to just do it myself ’cause I’ve done so many of them at this point. I did most of my trad blurbs too, so I’ve done hundreds of blurbs at this point. Then is I’ve done a hundred like well over a hundred book descriptions at this point. And it’s just, it’s faster for me to do it than it is for me to clean up the AI’s work.
The AI’s getting better at it, though I don’t know that that will always be the case. Now that we can feed it an entire book and get a synopsis and then feed it the synopsis and get sales copy, that’s one I will not be sad to hand off once I’m at the point where I can press a couple of buttons and it spits out the sales copy for me, I’ll definitely be letting the AI assistant handle that, that end of things.
So that’s not part of my joy.
Steph Pajonas: I recently [00:33:00] created a AI agent that will read a book and use my blurb sort of formula that I have to give me a blurb. And I called it the Blurbinator. I was like, Kevin is his own Blurbinator. He doesn’t need the AI blurbinator that I have. That’s awesome. You’ve written so many books.
I’m not surprised that you’re really good at blurbs at this point. I wish I had that skill.
Danica Favorite: It is really a hard skill, I think mostly because authors just can’t sometimes see the forest through the trees. They have this part that they really love. I, I was just talking about this with somebody yesterday because I was teaching her how to use Publish Drives tool to upload your manuscript and it writes your blurb for you.
And one of the things I told her that when I do my own stuff, and even when I was sending pitches to editors, my problem is as a romance author, I actually lean more towards women’s fiction. So I always forget to include the romance. And so that’s always my big like post-it note, where is the [00:34:00] romance. I have a hard time picking that out ’cause that’s actually my favorite part is the women’s fiction part. That might tell me something about my author path right there. But it was interesting because I think a lot of authors have that problem. So they think their book is about this, when actually it’s about this.
And I think that goes back to what Kevin was saying about that experience as a writer. The more experienced you are doing it, the more you know, okay, let me help figure out these different pieces. And so even though I’m still bad at it and I don’t like it, I at least recognize I’m not good at picking out the romance in my own stuff and I need to work harder to draw that out.
That’s really important for somebody who isn’t necessarily as skilled at figuring those pieces out. The AI can do it for you, and it’s so nice.
Kevin McLaughlin: I think it’s really valuable for a writer to understand who their audience is before they sit down to write. Who are you trying to write this for?
Are you trying to write this for, in my case, if you like Star Wars and Star Trek, you’ll [00:35:00] probably like my science fiction books. If you like either of those, I fall into that same wheelhouse. It’s adventure escapist, science fiction. It’s fun action with a lot of heart and a lot of strong characterization.
But ultimately it is like center mass of the Hollywood science fiction market. And, that’s good because then I know exactly who I’m aiming for and I know what they like because I like that too.
It makes it easier to create for that stuff for them. I do see authors coming up every once in a while saying, I’ve got this thing that I wrote that’s YA and Adult and historical and a romance and it’s got some time travel, so there’s a little science fiction too, and I’m like, okay. So which of these markets was it written for though?
Because that’s the ultimate question and you might have something that’ll appeal to many audiences. That’s a good thing. Shakespeare, the reason why we still read ’em today is because he was able to appeal to so many different audiences at the same time. But that’s a masterwork should be able to appeal to multiple audiences.
But especially in [00:36:00] our early craft, it’s better to focus because then we can try and create something that’s deliberately designed to appeal to that specific audience. A standup comedian is gonna tell a very different routine for a group of Cub Scouts than he would at an adults only nightclub.
Danica Favorite: I love that analogy. That’s a really good analogy, because you’re right. I can get away with straddling romance in women’s fiction because they’re adjacent enough, but when you’ve got 10 different genres and you’re like, it’s a bit of this and a bit of that, a bit of that. Okay, but what audience are you targeting and who do you really want to read those books?
And that’s really important because unfortunately, none of us are Shakespeare but like we still do have those skills and we still have the ability to tell a really good story. But it is figuring out what that story and what that story audience is.
What’s great about talking to you about writing is this idea that Steph, and I also always go back to, is that the AI is [00:37:00] never going to replace craft and craft knowledge and understanding your market and understanding what writing skills are and how to apply them, because that’s just the basic core of being a writer, and until you’ve mastered that writing core, all of these other tools aren’t going to get you to where you need to go.
Kevin McLaughlin: That’s I agree completely. Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: The craft is so important. We say it over and over again. We can’t use these tools without knowing some craft.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, yeah. And I love that. That’s the joy of what we do here. And getting to talk to writers. And I know I could sit here and talk to you about craft and about AI and writing and intermingle all of it here for hours.
So our final question is, what’s your favorite AI tool?
Kevin McLaughlin: Ooh, my favorite AI tool. Shoot.
Danica Favorite: It’s okay if you can’t pick favorites.
Steph Pajonas: You can have more than one. It’s [00:38:00] okay. It’s okay.
Kevin McLaughlin: I’m gonna. Okay. Two yes. Chat GPT and Leonardo. Those are my, if I had to dump everything else I could get away with just those two.
Chat gPT is a terrific research tool. I like Claude too, don’t get me wrong. I, I know, but I had, I had ChatGPT first and so it’s the one I keep on tending to go back to. It is a great research tool. It’s great for helping me come up with ideas. It’s great for looking things up. It’s terrific for turning my notebook pages into text. It is just good across the board.
And Leonardo’s Phoenix, I really enjoy working with that model. The style really resonates with what I’m trying to achieve on my covers. And like every image AI has its own sort of baseline style that it veers toward. And that for me, that particular one’s really nice. There’s other great models too. Ideogram is superb. It creates covers that are a little bit more realistic and a little bit less illustrated look. And I like the illustrated look better myself. Those two.
Steph Pajonas: Those are two [00:39:00] great tools and especially now Chat GPT, I feel like OpenAI is doing a really good job of innovating and coming up with new ways that it can be helpful. They just came out with a deep research, a while ago, and that is really great because you can tell it a subject to go give me information on and it will go and we’ll think about it for a while and then come back and give you a report with links and, it’s basically like a giant bibliography. You can go and find out where it got all of its information from and yet it still continues to be a good, very competent writer, like every single one of their new versions that they come out with. So I cannot fault either of these choices.
They’re both great.
Danica Favorite: They’re good choices. I also like what you were mentioning about Leonardo and the kinds of images that you like versus what the different image providers give you, because I think that is really important. We get this question a lot in the AI for Authors group where people say what’s the best AI for [00:40:00] images. There isn’t a best AI for images. There’s the AI that’s best for the images you want to create, and so it’s great that you have figured out which one that is and why. And I think that why is really important too.
Kevin McLaughlin: It doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to the others. I’ve got Ideogram on my phone also.
’cause this stuff changes. So I have my one that I really like, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t check out the other ones periodically too because I always wanna learn what else is out there.
Danica Favorite: Absolutely. I think that’s, again, people who have been listening to us for a while know that I have my ongoing love affair with Gemini that sometimes wanes and sometimes fades and others have their Claude love affairs, and that’s fine. And it is important to at least know what the other ones can provide. And when Gemini or Claude let you down, there’s somebody waiting in the wings.
Steph Pajonas: That’s me with Midjourney and ID igram ideogram. I don’t even know how to say it [00:41:00] properly. Anyway I go back and forth between those two. I get like the more moody, like artistic stuff from Midjourney and then if I want something a little bit more workhorse, for my blog or for a little other things that I’m making or even for a book cover, then Ideogram is where I go for that.
And I think that this is pretty average and normal for most people who use AI, they have a couple of different tools that they go back and forth between, a couple different LLMs that they like, and then, they tend to, we’ll try out something new that comes out and then if it just ,doesn’t work for them, they just go back to their favorites.
I love the fact that we have so many to choose from right now. It’s lovely.
Danica Favorite: I’m very pleased with this discussion because a lot of the things I was really hoping that Kevin would touch on, he did. I may have set him up to do that, but,
but seriously we really could have Kevin on here for several more hours because I really enjoy talking to him [00:42:00] and getting his perspective because it really is interesting to see he’s got such a different process from a lot of the other authors that we know who’ve used AI and he found what works for him.
And that’s always the point of what we’re trying to get across to people and let them know that there is something for everyone. If that’s what you choose. And if you don’t wanna choose to use it, that’s okay too. So I know we say that a lot, but I feel like people really, really need to hear it. And the more we can let you know that it’s okay to use AI however you want, the better.
Kevin McLaughlin: I think that’s a really important lesson. And I think that’s something that a lot of people have missed. They say I don’t want to write with ai. I want to write my own words. And then they’re like, and then they assume that means, but, which means I can’t use AI at all. That’s not true.
What I would suggest instead is to look at the parts of your work that you aren’t enjoying, the parts that are dragging you [00:43:00] down, the parts that you do not like, the parts that are wasting your time or taking time away from the parts that you do love and, and, and look at ways that AI could reduce or replace those things.
Because if you’re not enjoying them, why not hand it off to a VA or an AI? Either way.
Steph Pajonas: I agree a hundred percent. And I think that’s what we’ve gone over a lot in the most of our interviews and some of our shows, because we just want people to find the things that work best for them.
They’re going to address those pain points in the process and it’s gonna make this whole thing even more enjoyable because that’s what we’re, here for. We’re here for the joy. We’re excited about storytelling, so why not use these tools when we can.
Danica Favorite: Yep. Totally agree. Bring that joy back.
Steph Pajonas: Bring in the joy back.
All right, so we’re gonna wrap up here. Kevin, thank you so much for coming today. I love talking to you, so anybody who wants to learn more about Kevin and his processes and some of the [00:44:00] things that he mentioned today in the interview.
Drop on by brave new bookshelf.com. Read the show notes that we’re gonna put together. I’ll make sure to have all the links in there. And I’m even gonna snag some of Kevin’s book covers and put them on the page as well so you can see what he was holding up. If you are just listening in and not on YouTube.
And I’ll make sure that the full transcript is on the page as well in case you have any questions and need to search for something that he might have mentioned that I didn’t put in the show notes. Danica, why don’t you tell everybody what they need to do for us?
Danica Favorite: What do you need to do for us? Ask not what?
No, I dunno. Yes, please go to our Facebook page at Brave New Bookshelf. Please like and share our stuff. Please go to YouTube and subscribe and watch things on YouTube. Make sure you go look at the Future Fiction Academy stuff on YouTube as well. Subscribe and watch those videos. Check out Publish Drive on our socials, do all the things.
It really [00:45:00] is important to everybody here. And also check out Kevin’s stuff too. Because seriously, the more places you like and share, the more the messages of all of these great people and great companies can get out to the world. Please do that.
Steph Pajonas: Please do that. Okay, so everybody, we’ll see you guys all in the next episode and signing off from now.
Okay. Right. Bye everybody. Bye bye.
Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.