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This week, we’re exploring the exciting frontier of AI-driven series writing and the birth of a new “operating system” for authors. In episode 74, we welcomed back Coral Hart, who was joined by her lead programmer, Phil. Together, they shared the journey of building Authorythm, a powerful engine designed to take an author from a single idea to a fully drafted five-book series.
Meet Coral Hart and Phil: The Creative and the Coder
Coral Hart is a familiar face on Brave New Bookshelf, known for her deep expertise in craft and her “chaotic creative” energy. However, this episode introduced us to the man turning her vision into code: Phil. With a background in high finance and investment banking, Phil might seem like an unlikely candidate for the publishing world, but he views software development as a deeply creative process.
The partnership began when Coral expressed her frustration with the fragmented nature of AI tools—specifically the “password fatigue” and the lack of a cohesive workflow. Phil accepted the challenge, and in just a few months, they developed the core engine of Authorythm, a tool that marries Coral’s ADHD-friendly workflow with high-level technical architecture.
The Vision: A One-Stop Shop for Authors
One of the most relatable moments in the discussion was Coral’s explanation of why Authorythm exists. She wanted to move away from “wrappers” and disconnected tools. Her vision was a single platform where an author could:
- Brainstorm and Outline: Use guided wizards to layer tropes and character arcs.
- Draft Entire Series: Generate drafts for up to five books at once that remain consistent and don’t “run off the rails.”
- Manage Business Data: Track royalties, ROI, and marketing benchmarks in the same place the books are written.
Phil describes Authorythm not just as a tool, but as an “operating system for writers.” The goal is to provide a mechanism that handles the heavy lifting of the first draft so that authors can focus on other parts of the process they love most.
Bridging the Gap Between Tech and Craft
A fascinating part of the conversation centered on how Phil translated Coral’s “chaotic” process into a structured engine. He watched screen recordings of her interacting with AI to understand the nuances of the writer’s craft.
Phil emphasized that while AI is a great accelerator, it isn’t the total solution. To avoid “lifeless” prose, the engine is designed to keep the human in the loop. The system uses “rails” to keep the AI on track, preventing the dreaded “memory loss” issues common in large language models (LLMs). By providing finer-grained controls over story beats and frameworks like Save the Cat, the platform aims to make the author a better writer through the process of collaboration.
Eliminating the “Editing Stew”
For many authors, the “middle” of a book is where a project dies. Coral noted that her brain moves a thousand times faster than her fingers, leading to procrastination. Authorythm solves this by generating that first draft rapidly, allowing the author to jump straight into the “fun part.”
They also discussed the “stew”—that period of high anxiety when an author sends a manuscript to a human editor and waits weeks for feedback. Coral and Phil are working to introduce immediate developmental editing features into the engine. This immediacy prevents authors from “stewing” in self-doubt and keeps the creative momentum moving forward.
Navigating the Changing AI Landscape
Danica and Steph also touched on the broader industry context. Danica shared updates from Publish Drive, noting that while some retailers remain anti-AI, others are becoming more nuanced. The key, she noted, is the distinction between “AI garbage” and “AI quality.”
With communities like the Writing with AI subreddit growing to over 100,000 members, it’s clear that more authors are using these tools—even if they are still hesitant to admit it publicly. Tools like Authorythm are designed to bridge that gap, providing a professional, system-based approach to AI authorship.
Favorite Tools & Recommendations
Phil and Coral shared some insights into the tech stack and resources that power their workflow:
- Authorythm: The primary engine they are developing for series drafting and business management.
- Claude (Anthropic): Used extensively by Coral for her initial “vibe coding” and creative brainstorming.
- Dynamic LLMs: Phil mentioned that Authorythm uses a combination of mainstream and non-mainstream models, choosing the best tool for specific tasks (e.g., one model for logic, another for prose).
- Publish Drive: Recommended by Danica for distribution and managing royalties across multiple global stores.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Systems Beat Chaos: Moving from a “writer who publishes” to a “publisher who writes” requires repeatable systems and consolidated tools.
- AI is an Accelerator, Not a Replacement: The human must remain the “head writer” to provide the magic sauce and keep the AI from losing the plot.
- Solve for Your Own Friction: Authorythm was born because Coral hated remembering passwords and managing multiple tabs. Identify your own friction points to improve your workflow.
- The “Stew” is Optional: Immediate AI feedback can help you bypass the anxiety of the editing process and keep your production schedule on track.
- Data-Driven Creativity: Combining your writing platform with your financial dashboard allows you to see which tropes and genres are actually performing, informing your next project.
Resources Mentioned
Here are the key links referenced during this episode:
- Authorythm – Join the waitlist for the AI writing engine.
- Plot Prose – Learn writing, craft, and how to run a publishing business with Coral Hart.
- Writing with AI Subreddit – A community of over 100k AI-assisted writers.
- AI Writing for Authors FB Group – A Facebook group with over 8,500 members.
Transcript
Speaker: 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 back to the New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to use AI at any part of their business. And we’re publishing AI forward books on the press, and we’re doing all of that and more, uh, it feels like I’m building something new every day, writing more things every day. So, uh, you know, we’re just working through the spring, trying to get to the summer where we can have a little downtime and enjoy, enjoy the sun here in the Northern Hemisphere. I know that everybody else will be going into winter in the Southern hemispheres, and we try to be as global as possible when I do these intros.
I don’t wanna leave anybody out, you know, but I’m looking [00:01:00] forward to summer because that means more time at the beach, more time reading. Maybe even some time creating, and that’ll be fun for me. Uh, here I am. I’m always like, is it the next season? Is it the next season? I should stop rushing through life.
That’s always like a recipe for disaster, but I’m here and I’m enjoying it, and it’s all good. And I’m here with my lovely co-host, as always, Danica Favorite. How are you doing today?
Danica Favorite: I’m good. I’m very good. Yeah, just crazy weather here. It snowed on Sunday. It is now Wednesday and 80 degrees in Denver.
Welcome to the crazy weather life and doing really good here. For those of you who don’t know me, I work for Publish Drive. I’m the community manager. And we help authors at every stage of their journey from getting their books formatted to to finding your perfect metadata, your book descriptions, and then distributing it to the widest possible amount of stores in the world. And then once your book [00:02:00] starts selling, we have author promos. And if you want to just to split your royalties between other authors, then we also have tools for that. And interestingly I know that we’re recording this a few weeks ahead of time, but we’re at the end of March and so we’re doing like our big quarterly planning staff meeting.
And one of the things I wanted to share is one of the conversations that we were having today is about AI. And distributing to the various AI stores, all of those kinds of things. And I always like to make clear that Publish Drive is a very AI friendly company. We are very AI positive. We’re developing AI tools.
We’ve had AI tools running on the backend since even before AI was a thing or at least that people talked about. And it was really interesting because a lot of companies, their response is just to say, no AI, and our response is that some of [00:03:00] the stores we work with, absolutely no AI. Overdrive, they do not want any AI, Amazon, a little more AI friendly. However, they are getting deluged with all of this AI garbage because there’s a difference between quality AI and AI garbage. We’re here about AI quality and so how do you address that at a corporate level that is able to handle AI at all levels?
And so it was a very interesting conversation and, all that to say that the retailers are figuring it out too. We are always going back to retailer of what you think. I, I just came across an old spreadsheet I had a couple years ago of what AI policies were and that’s changed and it’s constantly changing. We’re constantly updating, constantly revising because the stores are, and so this is still an area where people are still figuring it out. And [00:04:00] I just wanna share that because I think that it’s important for people to understand that everyone is figuring out there isn’t a boom, boom, boom. This is it. We’re trying. And I think that’s also encouraging. And what was encouraging to me is that today I also had a call with, um, Johaf, who is the, runs the AI for Writing Reddit. Or subreddit, I guess is what it is.
Steph Pajonas: I think it’s Writing with AI subreddit.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. There we go. Writing with AI subreddit.
And it’s cool because Coral’s our guest today, as soon as she’s done recording, she’s gonna go do an AMA with him. And we had a great conversation. He’s gonna be coming onto the show at some point, but I want you all to hear one thing that came out of our conversation, and I’m trying not to spoil too much of what he and I will talk about.
They have over a hundred thousand members of people who are writing with AI. Please understand that this is a huge number. And one of the things he shared with me [00:05:00] is the exact same thing Steph and I share every week, is that people are using AI and they’re terrified to admit it. And so he’s got a hundred thousand members there, plus the people who are anonymously talking to him privately and saying, Hey, I’m not willing to share yet publicly that I’m doing this, but this is what I’m doing.
I really want. To encourage you all, I want you all to know that this is changing and it’s rapidly changing. And I’m very excited. Today we get Coral Hart back and when we were talking to her, she hinted that she was working. She talked about her Authorythm stuff that she’s working on.
She said she was gonna bring her programmer in. And yay. Here we are Coral Hart and Phil, who is her programmer helping her with this program. Coral, tell us about your Authorythm stuff you’re working on and Phil and all the good stuff because we’re really excited for you.
Coral Hart: I am, first of all, very glad to be back on the Brave New Bookshelf. [00:06:00] And Phil and I got connected ’cause I threw a temper tantrum one day.
I said I wanted an AI that could do everything and then I said, there’s no such thing. And Philip went, challenge accepted. As all good tech people do. I don’t speak code. I’ve been honest about that multiple times on, on chatting to you guys and like that is, I have zero desire to learn to do it either.
But when Phil and I connected, just magically, I think we both have a creative spark and he has learned stuff about books this year that he’s, he never thought he’d have to learn in his whole life, ever. But he is, I call him the genius behind the scenes of the Authorythm. I don’t even know, I don’t wanna call it like a tool or a software.
It’s to me it’s magic. Phil, what do we call it? It’s a machine.
Phil: It’s uh, yeah the, the engine. All three of them. Engine.
Coral Hart: The engine,
Phil: Yeah.
Coral Hart: And Phil’s taken my deep background [00:07:00] in craft and some of the AI work that I’d done and made Ninja. And turned it into something truly phenomenal.
So Authorythm can draft five books at once.
Steph Pajonas: Like five books in a series or just?
Coral Hart: A whole series. A series that makes sense and follows on and doesn’t run off the rails. And Okay. We still have the occasional Marcus Chen. We are really trying to kill him. We’ve been trying for a long time.
Steph Pajonas: Marcus Chen, it just keep, he keeps coming back. It’s gonna be one of those recurring characters that you keep killing and then they keep coming back. It’s like a soap opera.
Danica Favorite: It’s like Kenny on South Park. He just, you kill him, he comes back. Poor. I actually feel sorry for the real Marcus Chen.
One of these days. I want an investigative journalist to figure out who is this Marcus Chen and why.
Coral Hart: So that’s how I [00:08:00] connected with Phil and we’ve been working on Authorythm since last year. Our first beta started testing in December. And we’re slowly adding betas as we go. Phil was busy with a big update today of changes and things from their suggestions. But I’ll let to him tell you the technical things. But that’s how we met and we connected and it really has been like magical synergy since the very beginning. He just got what I wanted. ’cause I hate wrappers. I’ve yet to find one that I will use.
I hate them all. I don’t like the UI/UX, it doesn’t work with my ADHD brain, so Phil’s managed to get that right. That it works with my scrolls, which is a big thing for me. So yes, Authorythm is, we call it an engine between us. I don’t like, there, there are no real words yet for what we are doing. I find that with so many AI things, like there isn’t the real word yet for that thing.
Steph Pajonas: Tell us [00:09:00] about your vision for it when you wanted to get started. What was it that wasn’t working for you and that you wanted to solve with this product?
Coral Hart: It started because I couldn’t remember a password and I was crying, actually. I just said I want one tool. I don’t wanna log in and out of anything.
I want to start my book and end my whole process in one place. I want my marketing there. I want my writing there. I want my editing there. I want my newsletter there. I want my ad dashboard. I want my business dashboard. Everything must be in one place. I want to remember one password. ‘Cause even that’s a challenge for me on most days.
Okay? And I have a map that remembers them for me, and I still lose them. So that was the vision and we, we are getting there. We have the first draft machine that can draft a five book series, and we’re getting started and ready to introduce editing phases into that.
Danica Favorite: I think that is very [00:10:00] relatable because I too am a member of the, I can’t remember my Passwords club. And to be very fair, that’s one of the reasons why I love Publish Drive is because we can distribute to all the stores and I don’t need to remember a million passwords. I very famously joked with the Barnes and Noble rep sitting next to me at a panel where I was like, I gave up on Barnes and Noble because I am so locked out of that account, I have no idea how to even get it back. And she’s like, Danica, I can help you. I’m like yeah, I know you now. Um, But yeah I think that’s super relatable to be able to have it all in one place and have it easy to use.
And Phil, I wanna know, like when she came to you and said, oh, I’m trying to do all this thing, what was your response? Like, how were you looking at this going, you know, like, yeah, I can do that for you.
Phil: So maybe take a step back in time. So I started, uh, I went on a short sabbatical probably about [00:11:00] two years ago. And I took a couple of months, and I picked up a pen and paper and started writing for myself. No major aspirations about writing books or anything. Just writing about things and events in my life and dealing with some emotional trauma and all those wonderful things um. Sat in some various coffee shops crying my eyes out in front of my keyboard.
People must have thought I was a bit crazy. But it’s one of those things and, um, we have a mutual friend that I lunch with once a week, and he got an SMS, um, a WhatsApp, um, from, from Gary saying, Hey, does he know anyone that could help him with the problem that Coral was was referring to?
And I said, yeah, sure. Let me chat to him. And we started talking and, and looking at a couple of things. Initially it wasn’t all three of them. There [00:12:00] was some other ideas. And then couple of months passed and um, I think uh, the uh, the, the, the crying started and Gary spoke to me about that and said, okay let me sink my teeth into this.
And, um. Yeah, just very quickly, I think from first conversation about it to the beta going live, it was probably about, in less than three months. Um, so it was, a very interesting challenge. My, my background is high finance, um, investment banking, mega corporation tech stacks and things.
But I’ve always felt that software development is actually a very creative process and that’s what I enjoy. I enjoy creating new things out of nothing. And then, it, it doesn’t end. So this was the ultimate sort of creative [00:13:00] outlets, and I think just came at the right time.
And yeah, just here we are now, couple of months later.
Steph Pajonas: I also love programming as well. I’m, I was a web developer before I became an author, so I love creating, like, I love creating websites and applications and all that kinda stuff because it is, it’s like creating something out of nothing and learning programming languages is, you know, very similar to like learning, learning another language in general, right? You’re gonna learn Spanish, you’re gonna learn Pearl, you’re gonna learn Python, whatever it may be, right? So it, it is, has so, such a creative element to it and people don’t realize it, that programmers are creative on, in a different way, maybe in a different way than maybe somebody who writes a book.
But I think that those skills are transferable.
Phil: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: Yes. Those skills are transferable between the two of them. You can be creative and really work [00:14:00] with code, or you can work with words and you can do both.
And I think that’s one of the fun things about AI too, is that you can just tell it what you want. You know, I want a logic statement there that’s going to run through these on and off switches. You know, if it’s this, you do this, but if it’s this, you do this right, which is if then statements. But you can just use it in plain language and it can just translate it to code.
And it’s always a lot of fun.
Phil: Yeah, AI today opens up a lot of opportunities and a lot of creative outlets to a lot of people. Without having to spend decades honing a craft, you can, you know, something you’ve been thinking about for years, um, bring it to life very quickly, and I think that’s wonderful.
Um, yeah. So, um, yeah, it’s very exciting times. And, um, yeah, I mean, Authorythm is a, the Authorythm platform has gone through several iterations obviously in a very short span of [00:15:00] time. Initially it took the, the sort of the seed from what Coral put together and what she had, um, uh, stitched together, um, with her experience and, um, got that working end to end.
And then started looking really deep at the, deeply at the writer’s craft and all of the tools that come with that, which is, um, you know, it, it brings structure, it brings, um, sort of the, the guides that you require through to to author a book. And what I found as I went along was trying to get to a place where it’s not just a fire and forget, and you get a book at the end of it. Um, because that inevitably, you know, misses that, that human el element, that magic sauce that you refer to just now. And the, you need the human in the [00:16:00] process. Not just to keep the AI on track, ’cause it’ll go off track very quickly, but you need it to give it that that human feel to it, and the inspiration. Otherwise it’s fairly lifeless. So the idea has been to keep it simple and in time, um, essentially provide more sophisticated tooling or not necessarily tooling, but unearth some of the things that are happening under the hood and make that available to the author and give them the finer grain controls throughout the process so that they can tweak the beats. They can reuse certain beat frameworks or come up with their own. They can develop their own arc, pro progression frameworks and various things and put all these things together. And what comes out is this very [00:17:00] unique and personal, book, I think, at the end of it.
And yeah, there’s some challenges getting things to stay consistent and deal with memory loss. Um, you know, I, I, you know, AI has got a very big memory issue, so it’s making new friends every couple of minutes, ’cause it doesn’t remember you, but yeah it’s it’s been a really awesome creative journey.
Danica Favorite: That’s so great. I really do appreciate that creative side and the creative problem solving that comes with it. Can you walk us through what happens with Authorythm? Okay, let’s take me through what the simple or the basic process of what Authorythm is doing for authors now.
Phil: Right now, like we said, we’re working on the core engine. So the bigger picture is to have essentially a operating system for writers. And what I mean [00:18:00] by that is that we give them the mechanism by which they can go from idea. So they can provide the seed for their stories.
They can then say, Hey, I wanna write romance and I wanna write, um, you know, one of the sub genres and perhaps combine several tropes in that exercise and go through a, a guided process where they slowly but surely layer on additional details And, and interrelationships and between characters within a book with, across a series, you could have a a main, a lead character that develops over a series with recurring cast or the cast could evolve.
So there’s various options that we’re introducing and making available to authors where they can start creating these links [00:19:00] between things and applying best practice patterns Save the Cat or various others frameworks and so forth. And I think some unique things that, that I’ve come up with over the last couple of months. Interesting combinations of things.
Coral Hart: So slip some good things in there.
Phil: Yeah. So yeah, it’s it’s coming together nicely. Where you, the initial process is essentially six or seven steps where you define, your writing style, your preferences and then with each project that you kick off, you would say, I wanna write a series, or I just wanna write a standalone. So you’ve got the options and it’ll give you that, those rails to follow and add the sophistication and the detail all the way through. And at the end of it, you say, okay, generate me my first draft. And that could be one or two to five [00:20:00] uh, books in a series. And the vision beyond that is that we’ll be introducing um, you know, development, uh, developmental editing and the various other things and book cover generation, marketing, publishing and closing the loop by learning from the market data. So sales, what readers like, what they don’t like. So we wanna introduce things like before you publish it, you might wanna have a beta reader group that reads your manuscripts before you, you publish it and get their feedback and do those final touches and refine it.
Um. So, yeah, there’s, there’s lots of things that we’re planning and working on. Yeah.
Coral Hart: The big thing for me is like Phil said, all the data to the end, so at the end when you finish that series and all that business data is in that dashboard. Let’s be honest, as authors, we are allergic to finance stuff.
Don’t tell me to go to book report. I [00:21:00] don’t care unless it goes cha-ching on my thing. I’m not interested in it. I don’t. But that is informed, that data is now informed. So when I go back to start writing the next book, I know what trope worked. I know what series did work, what series didn’t work. Where the read through was, where the read through fell off which genre worked, which didn’t.
So you now have all your data from your writing through your edits, through your marketing, through your ROI in one place, and be able to just look at one thing. We’re really good at not looking.
Steph Pajonas: It’s a one stop shop for everything. Just put it all in one place. I mean, this is the, this is the holy grail that you’re, you’re building here.
This is a holy grail for authors, because there’s another friend of ours who has just posted that she was, um, building like a huge dashboard for stuff. And then another friend of mine, they were telling me that they were like replacing all of their tools with stuff that they’ve vibe coded themselves like in one website. It is, [00:22:00] it is something that authors really want and there are plenty of people who can’t vibe code or they think that they can’t vibe code, right? Or they’re just not, they just don’t think in those terms and they’re not interested in building those tools. They just don’t want somebody else to build it for them, and this is where you’re going.
I think it’s awesome because this is something that authors definitely need.
Danica Favorite: For sure. I was thinking about that when you were talking Steph, of how, you have this skill with coding and vibe coding and so when you’re like, oh, I need a tool for this, some of that stuff you can do, like, I was so impressed for those of you who don’t know Steph’s website, she’s got all of her books you can read for free on there and she’s got all this cool stuff and I’m like, oh, I wish I could do that.
And the reality is, I don’t have the patience to learn how to do that. I 1000% know I am capable of doing it. I’m smart enough to do it. And frankly, the tools and vibe coding are good enough that I could [00:23:00] get it to do it. But I don’t have the patience and I don’t want to do it in terms of like, it’s not not something I want to learn.
And sometimes we have to be honest about that. We just have to say, I love this idea. I want to do this so bad. And that’s just not something I wanna put the time and attention to. And so Coral is like me where she’s like, I want all this stuff, but I don’t have the time to do it. And she happened to meet Phil and it, boom, here it is.
And so I’m curious, Coral, like where are you finding that this is helping you in what you’ve been doing so far?
Coral Hart: So I, obviously I’ve been testing. My whole job was to try and break it. Okay? From the beginning. Every time Phil did something, it was, he sent to me. Try this, see if you can break it, does, is the book good? We pull the book out, test the book, check it, edit it. Everything. Where I’m using it. Now, I, you guys know I teach sort of [00:24:00] six to eight hours a day, right? So I have two hours between class. I can set up a series in that two hours. I can take my notes, what’s next on my publishing list.
I can go through that wizard, I can check the outlines, I can tweak them. I can set up my entire series in those two hours between classes and click generate and teach my class or go and have a nap or make a sandwich or do some of the admin that I really should get on top of. I come back to my first draft.
My first draft is always going to need editing. It’s always gonna be refined. It’s gonna go through a process, but for me, the first draft is always my hangup because my brain is a thousand times faster than my fingers, and then I get bored. And then I procrastinate, and then I stop doing what I’m supposed to do.
And then I clean the kitchen. And, if you’re an author, [00:25:00] you, you, you know, you know that first draft, like the first four chapters will fly through and then you get to the middle and you’re like, and then.
So this has taken that.
Steph Pajonas: I’ve been there, I’ve been there, I’ve been there.
Coral Hart: Like, what do you put in the middle? So for me, having those first drafts ready to edit when I’m done teaching at one o’clock in the afternoon means my productivity time is spent on the things I really like. I love line editing like, that’s where my favorite part of the process is. The first draft, the dev edit, you can have that. The line edit, that’s where I shine, that tweaking those little sentences, tweaking the dialogue, putting that those human nuances back in or that, so now I’m not slogging for six weeks on a first draft. It’s done.
I can jump straight to the part where I am, I’m gonna shine. That I love doing. [00:26:00] And what Phil didn’t say there is he made this magic by watching screen recordings of my very ADHD chaotic, Claude process that had, that, I don’t think there was a process. I think he probably thought I was completely mad for about two weeks.
But it’s given me a much more structured way of using, like I always used the style sheets. I always used my craft. I always used it, but like now it’s in one place, it’s in order, it’s structured, and I start it, and I finish it. ‘Cause I’m terrible at starting things. And how many books have you got started and not finished?
This doesn’t give me that option, because once I start it, there’s that like you finish the whole setup and you’re like, oh, now I need to know where it go… generate. Because then I wanna read it. I wanna know how it’s gonna come out. I wanna see those characters come to life and how many times Marcus can come back from the dead.
But I’ve, I’ve also loved the [00:27:00] process of seeing how the tech and the creative married, because authoring and publishing, this is our very own little ecosystem, right? We live in our own world and it’s very hard for people outside of publishing, outside of authoring to come in and under, understand or even try and understand what we’re doing.
Phil has been amazing. He has learned so much. I think he’s learned really fast about particularly romance authoring things. He, what he needed to know. But for me it’s streamlined my process. And, um, Chelle Honiker actually posted today a quote from a talk that she went to and I’d watched the same digital talk and it said, I have to remind myself that I am a publisher that writes, not a writer that publishes.
And I think for me, that mindset has always been there. This tool has made it easier to maintain that mindset.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think that’s a really great thing [00:28:00] to remember, and I was really fascinated by this. You did screenshots of your whole process to give to Phil because I do think that authors all have their own process and their own order of how they do things because, like we all have our different way of thinking.
We all have our different skills, and then for you to have all of that in one place, to just give to someone and say. Create a system for me because you’re right, the difference between an author and a publisher are those systems, and what systems do you have in place? And I’ll be honest, I’m the person that struggles with systems because I imagine I have some similar things to you, a little bit different because I will tell you what, I would rather go get a root canal, which I’ve never had.
I would rather have that happen than actually have to do line edits and dev edits. And I have probably 20, at least [00:29:00] 20 rough drafts on my hard drive that the blocker for me is getting them edited. Because every editor I’ve used, and I have no problem with human editors, but the ones I have had, have done such a terrible job that I’ve been like, I will just save up and get this super duper editor that everyone’s talking about that I can’t afford. And then I’m like, oh, but what if I don’t like them? And what if I don’t like what they do to my work and I have that anxiety. So I’m like, okay. It just sits there. And so I’m the opposite where I will vomit out my first draft and then it just sits there.
But recognizing that project and that problem and saying, what is your workflow? I actually am gonna do something similar tomorrow. I’ve got a friend, she is local and she actually writes the AI curriculum for the district. And she’s gonna sit down with me. She’s like, [00:30:00] Danica, we’re gonna sit down for an hour and a half.
I wanna see your process, and then I’m gonna create a system for you that’s scaled to you personally, so that you can stop your madness. And what this is, is just one way of stopping Coral’s madness that I think a lot of authors are gonna really benefit from. Because again, most of us get in our own way and are blocked from seeing ourselves as that publisher system. And honestly, I think once a lot of authors have a system in place, it’s gonna be awesome. So I’d love to hear more about what systematizing Authorythm would look like for someone walking into the platform and how to use that and create their own publishing system.
Coral Hart: So you spoke about I love line edits and you hate edits, right? And you work with an editor. So I learned something and they call it, in publishing houses, [00:31:00] they call it the stew. It’s the weeks from when you send your book off to dev edit waiting for it to come back, you stew in that anxiety of, what did I do wrong?
Because if I get edits back, I did something wrong. And that’s such a personal thing. And most new authors get stuck in that stew. So for me, the next step on Authorythm, where Phil and I have spoken to do edits, the dev edits are not going to stew. You’re going to go from first draft to dev edits immediately.
You are not going to have time anymore to stew and put it in the hard drive and leave it there. It’s not gonna stew.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, that’s a good point. I am, I’m working on a project right now in Claude Cowork, and that’s kind of the thing that I’ve got is, okay, we wrote the chapter now it’s gonna give me the dev edit of the chapter immediately and, and that immediacy, it is really nice. It is [00:32:00] really nice. So I think that’s interesting to hear that stew part, ’cause I’m definitely one of those people who gets in my head. Obviously I know you don’t have the edit part out yet. How long do you think it’s gonna be till you guys are able to do the edits?
Coral Hart: I’m not allowed to ask Phil how long questions.
I’m not allowed to say how long or when anymore. He’ll turn off and just leave.
Phil: As soon as possible. We’re working at breakneck speed
Coral Hart: He, we are literally working at breakneck speed. If you take from when I said, Hey, it’s me, I’m the problem, solve it, to where we are now. We have gone very fast for the output that we are getting.
The betas are loving it, they’re publishing books out of it already. Doing really well publishing books out of it, which has been the thing for me is seeing some of the rankings, seeing some of the books, knowing they’re succeeding, knowing that the reader reviews on those books as well are really good.
We are slowly increasing beta testers right [00:33:00] now, and when Phil allows me to say, when can we, then we’ll put a date on when we’re gonna, I learned that, like authors can say that to each other. We are not allowed to say that to tech people.
Danica Favorite: No, we’re not. That’s unfortunate.
Coral Hart: No
Steph Pajonas: You gotta wait for them to give you the go ahead.
Like the they’ll know when it’s time for launch. Yeah. I love this. I love this because it’s, it is hard to, it’s hard to bifurcate your system where it’s like you’re doing. You are doing some of the development work of these systems, like looking at your systems, trying to distill them down into something that can be repeatable and whatnot for other people, and then Phil has to like actually make that happen.
That’s sometimes the hardest part, right?
Coral Hart: The hardest part for me was telling him what I do.
Danica Favorite: Okay, Phil, so tell us is that true? What was the hardest part of all of this for you? [00:34:00] Was it translating Coral language or where was that hard part?
Phil: I think the, the, the hardest part was really, ’cause it’s a big problem to solve.
And honestly, AI is not the solution. Ironically. When you start building, when I started building this obviously there’s layers of complexity involved and as a software developer, as you evolve and build a system, you want to intro…make things simple and and extensible and really not build something that is throwaway in a couple of months.
You wanna continuously evolve it so that it just naturally extends into the next thing, which is a very difficult thing to do. In, even in the best of circumstance. So, um, that making sure that the next step sets you up for that constant evolution and growth of the system is probably the [00:35:00] most difficult thing, especially when you have, um, people saying, Hey, when, when, when, when are we going?
Coral Hart: Not me.
Phil: Hah. I fell for that in the beginning. Yeah. I gained several dozen or a hundred gray hairs. But um, yeah, it’s, it’s, um, I, I think that I ‘ve learned tremendous amounts about writing and the specifically the technical craft behind it and trying to combine that with the technical side of things and, not doing it in the way that everybody else is doing it. AI is a great accelerator. It’s a great component in your system, but it’s not the solution. And the magic sauce under… So the next version of Authorythm is, I believe, and not the next release, but the next [00:36:00] version of the engine, which will be the a fairly big evolution will, will, I think, make big waves in how any sort of writing occurs.
Currently. Coral doesn’t even know about this, but I’ve been playing with some new genres and, and, um, all on the same engine and it’s turning out to be pretty cool. I’ve written a couple of thrillers and…
Coral Hart: He doesn’t let me play with all the toys. It’s so unfair.
Phil: Not yet.
Not yet.
It’s coming.
Danica Favorite: I was thinking as you were talking, especially when you said new genres, some of this started for you when you were at the coffee shop, working through your own emotional stuff on the keyboard. So is this helping you get some of your own writing done or are you just so busy coding you haven’t gotten to get to it yet?
Phil: So I’ve taken some of my, the stories that I’ve written, um, and, and that by no means are they novels or [00:37:00] anything like that. There, there’s mostly short stories, some poetry, and and I’ve used those as seeds for some of the stories. And yeah they’ve been pretty interesting sort of variations of those ideas.
Definitely. Both my, my, my mother, when I told my mother about this a while ago, she said, oh, she’s got so many stories she’d like to bring to life and write about. And my father as well. He’s written quite a lot about his past and there’s some really interesting, I think political thrillers in there.
Yeah, definitely when we get to that point, I’m gonna spend some time with them and see how far we can get.
Danica Favorite: And see, this is always what excites me about AI and AI writing is the time we meet people who have a story to tell and they have no way of doing it, and you’re giving them the way to do it.
And I’m like, yay, I cannot wait for your parents to start telling their stories.
Phil: Yeah, it’s fantastic. I mean, [00:38:00] it, it wasn’t necessarily the, the, that there at the beginning, but the idea behind that’s come together for me is that the platform should make the author a better writer. It should, once they’ve spent a couple of weeks or a couple of months using the tool, they should know a lot more about writer’s craft.
They should know, Hey, this doesn’t look right, or this doesn’t sound right. Or here’s, um, uh, this will cause an issue. So they’ll develop that insight. So the idea is not to replace, again, not to replace the human author. It’s to amplify the the creativity and the craft that goes with that.
So, yeah, it’s, it’s been a quite a wild ride, wild ride so far. And I think, that’s gonna be get a lot wilder soon.
Danica Favorite: Yes. I’m excited to hear this. I do have one last question before we wrap things up, and that is, [00:39:00] what AI are you guys using? Are you using Claude? Are you using ChatGPT? Are you using some other thing?
Is it a combination? Just what are you finding is useful here?
Phil: It’s a combination of things and probably things that you wouldn’t. Um, some of them aren’t mainstream at all. And it’s different kinds of language models that we’re using for different purposes at at different times.
And the engine allows us to to make dynamic decisions around which ones to use. So it’s a combination.
Danica Favorite: That’s so great. That’s so great. Yeah. Before we wrap up today Steph, did you have any other questions?
Steph Pajonas: I would love to hear about where authors can go to learn more about Authorythm, get on waiting lists, anything like that, any dates you might have for them so that we can make sure to put it in the show notes when we put those [00:40:00] together.
Coral Hart: Authorhythm.ai for the waiting list. Once you’re on the waiting list, you will be on our newsletter list, which will give you updates on what Phil is, ninjing in the background and doing, updates. From the waiting list, our betas are being chosen, and at the moment Phil’s letting us allow them in 10 at a time because this one time he let a hundred in all in one day and then didn’t like himself afterwards.
That wasn’t a good plan. So they’re getting let in 10 at a time right now. As soon as we have a date, that is where it will be announced is to our wait list authors first. So Authorhythm.ai. It’s got one R, not two. Just because it looks silly with two. Authorhythm.ai and you can sign up for the wait list there.
I also post Authorythm updates on my social media and also Authorythm social media. Both of those you can find all the little updates and gems and things that we share over there as well.
Steph Pajonas: Perfect. [00:41:00] Perfect. Okay. I wanna make sure that I get all of that in the show notes. So I will, for all of the people who are listening, come on by bravenewbookshelf.com and check out the show notes.
Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter, and we will just send you those show notes the next day after the podcast goes live. So we would love to do that for you so that you don’t have to come to the website every single time we say this at the end of one of these episodes. Right? Um. Danica, did you have anything else that you wanted to remark on before we go?
Danica Favorite: Our usual reminder, please go and subscribe to Brave New Bookshelf on Facebook and YouTube. If you are listening to this you can always watch us on YouTube and see everyone’s cute faces and always appreciate that support and obviously make sure you’re going and liking and subscribing to Coral, Authorythm, and then Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press and Publish Drive. We wanna make sure that everybody [00:42:00] gets all the love. We’re all about sharing the love.
Steph Pajonas: We are. I love sharing the love. And I wanna thank you guys both for being here today, Coral, fantastic talking to you again, as always.
Coral Hart: Always fun to talk to you guys.
Steph Pajonas: Phil, it was so nice meeting you.
Thank you. All right, so we’re going to see everybody in the next episode. I’m sure we will talk more about awesome things just like we did today. Okay, everybody, thank you so much for being here. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye
Speaker 2: 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.