This week on the podcast, we’re doing things a little differently. In Episode 85, we have a “Duo Show” featuring our brilliant co-hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite. Together, they dive deep into the realities of navigating the current AI-powered publishing landscape, sharing personal workflows, discussing the ethics of AI disclosure, and reflecting on how AI can actually help us become more present, creative human beings.
Meet Your Hosts: Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite
If you’ve been tuning in, you already know our hosts, but they both bring unique, hands-on industry expertise to the table:
- Steph Pajonas is one of the founding members of the Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press. A self-described “executioner” with strong deliberative CliftonStrengths, Steph is deeply involved in building curriculum, generating images, and organizing educational materials to teach authors how to safely and effectively integrate AI into their creative processes.
- Danica Favorite is the Community Manager at Publish Drive, a platform that helps authors format, distribute, and market their books globally. Danica works at the intersection of AI and publishing operations, helping authors navigate metadata, AI book covers, wide distribution, and store-specific formatting guidelines.
In this episode, Steph and Danica pull back the curtain on how they use AI daily, the frustrations of changing tool limits, and how to maintain your unique human voice in a world flooded with content.
Navigating the Content Deluge and Staying Human
One of the biggest challenges facing authors and distributors today is the sheer volume of content being produced. With AI making it easier to write, design, and publish, online platforms are facing a literal deluge of books, social media posts, and videos.
At Publish Drive, Danica and her team are constantly working to meet evolving retailer standards for declaring AI use while ensuring high-quality books reach store shelves. For authors, this massive wave of content can feel overwhelming, especially when visibility is governed by unpredictable “black box” algorithms.
Steph’s advice for standing out in this crowded market? Go old school and stay human.
- Be yourself on social media: Share real-life photos, personal opinions (even if it’s just about your favorite tea), and behind-the-scenes moments.
- Engage genuinely: Comment on Substacks and blogs as a real person, not a marketing bot.
- Let your personality shine: Your human taste, judgment, and unique perspective are your ultimate differentiators against automated content mills.
Integrity, Ethics, and the Rules of AI Disclosure
A major point of discussion was the ethics of AI disclosure. While Steph and Danica are highly AI-positive, they emphasize that authors should never sacrifice their personal integrity.
Danica shared a firm stance on her “soapbox” regarding disclosure: Do not lie.
While you are under no obligation to disclose AI use to your general audience unless a specific retailer or platform requires it, you should never falsely claim you don’t use AI—especially if you are actively utilizing the technology.
For platforms like Publish Drive, honest reporting is critical. Retailers require distributors to declare AI usage. If an author lies about their process, it risks getting the distributor’s entire account closed, which hurts the entire ecosystem of authors relying on that platform.
AI as a Tool for Presence and Creative Innovation
To illustrate how mainstream creative industries are embracing AI, Danica shared a story from a recent Puscifer concert she attended at Red Rocks. Puscifer, fronted by Tool’s innovative lead singer Maynard James Keenan, openly embraced AI for their latest project.
Bandmate Matt Mitchell was quoted saying:
“We employed AI to create scenes not possible for us until now, embracing this technology as an inspirational creative tool.”
For Steph and Danica, this is the ultimate goal of AI: to act as an inspirational co-creator and a tool that buys back your time. By offloading tedious administrative tasks—like updating lengthy documents or drafting outlines—you free up mental bandwidth to be fully present in your life and your art.
Finding Your Personal AI Process
There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to writing with AI. Finding your process requires experimentation, patience, and data gathering.
For Steph, AI has completely transformed her life. She went from working exhausting 14-hour days as a self-published author to finding hours of free time to knit, watch watercolor tutorials, and paint. While she tried using AI for fully generative chapter writing, she realized her true process is AI-assisted, meaning she writes the prose herself with AI acting as a supportive editor and brainstormer. Danica, on the other hand, prefers to dictate her stories.
Danica also shared how she uses different AI models to plan her upcoming European travels, comparing their strengths:
- Gemini: Her go-to “AI boyfriend” for travel because of its direct integration with Google Maps, helping her locate specific services like Venice wine shipping.
- ChatGPT: Highly customized to her personal vibe, acting as a sounding board that calls her out when she tries to overschedule her itinerary.
Subscriptions vs. APIs: The Claude Dilemma
Both hosts discussed their shifting relationships with AI subscriptions, particularly Anthropic’s Claude. Steph recently canceled her $20/month Claude Pro subscription due to frustrating, arbitrary usage limits. She noted that hitting limits mid-project—where the model uses “thinking tokens” in the background but times out before delivering an output—felt incredibly inefficient.
Instead, Steph manages her AI costs and settings by using APIs through TypingMind. This allows her to:
- Adjust backend parameters like “thinking tokens.”
- Utilize prompt caching.
- Pay strictly for what she uses without hitting arbitrary desktop subscription blocks.
Meanwhile, Danica continues to find immense value in her Google One subscription and her highly trained ChatGPT Plus account, which she uses daily for business, brainstorming, and even a reflective daily tarot practice.
Brave New Bookshelf Summer Hiatus and What’s Next
As the summer heat rolls in, Steph and Danica are taking a short, well-deserved podcast hiatus to travel, spend time with family, and recharge. However, they are already planning an exciting lineup for next season, including a potential live episode and more solo duo shows.
During the break, they want to hear from you! If you have guest recommendations or topics you want covered (such as AI audio, video, or translation), reach out to them on their website, YouTube comments, or Facebook page. If you are subscribed to the newsletter, you can also reply to the email you receive.
Note: Steph and Danica take guest curation very seriously. They thoroughly vet all guests and have even deleted past episodes of guests who later proved to be bad actors in the publishing space.
Favorite Tools & Recommendations
- TypingMind: Steph’s preferred chat UI that allows you to connect API keys for Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI, providing full control over parameters and costs.
- Gemini: Excellent for real-time travel planning, map integrations, and local research.
- ChatGPT: Fantastic for highly personalized, long-term interactions where the model can learn and match your specific “vibe.”
- Google One: Highly recommended by both hosts for the added value of cloud storage combined with Gemini’s features.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Embrace your humanity: In a world flooded with AI-generated content, your real-life experiences, unique taste, and authentic interactions are your best marketing tools.
- Protect your integrity: Never lie about your AI usage. If a retailer or distributor asks for disclosure, be honest to protect your account and the wider author community.
- Treat AI as a time-saver: Use AI to handle tedious, repetitive tasks so you can buy back your time for creative play, family, and rest.
- Develop your unique workflow: Don’t expect “push-button” perfection. Experiment with different models to see which fits your specific style (generative, dictation, or assisted).
- Consider API alternatives: If desktop subscriptions like Claude Pro are giving you limit-induced stress, look into API-based pay-as-you-go tools like TypingMind.
Resources Mentioned
A Reminder
Brave New Bookshelf will be on break for the rest of the summer. Have a great few weeks and we’ll see you back here in September. Want to know when we’re back? Join our newsletter and we’ll send you email when we’re back on the air.
Transcript
Speaker: [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 back to an episode of The Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas. I now have an actual title, CMTO, which is like, uh, chief of marketing and technology officer, I guess, all right, at Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to use AI in any part of their process, and we publish AI-forward books on the press.
I am knee-deep in making lots of curriculum for the Future Fiction Academy. I am generating images. I’m reading through documents. I’m putting them all in Teachable and in Notion and doing all that fun really enjoy that kind of work. I like to see the materials intimately [00:01:00] of what we teach students so that I can easily say, “Hey, we taught you how to do that in this particular class.”
So that I, I’m never, like, blindsided by things that are going on in the company. So I actually really enjoy being down in the trenches and working on the curriculum, which is a lot of fun. Stacy and Elizabeth on our staff, they’re the main people who come up with the curriculum, and then I help them execute it, and that’s always a good, that’s a, like, a really good way to share the load between us because Elizabeth and Stacy, they just have such great vision for this sort of thing, and I’m a total executioner. I have all of these ex- executing sta- uh, strengths in my CliftonStrengths. They’re all up at the top My number one is a deliberative, so I think things through a lot, wondering about the consequences of things that we do.
And so I put all that to use in my role at the Future of Fiction Academy, and [00:02:00] I really enjoy it. Um, and enough of my preamble because we’re gonna do a lot of talking today because it is just me and my lovely co-host, Danica Favorite. And we’re going to be doing this together today. So Danica, how are you doing?
Danica Favorite: I’m great. I’m great. Yeah. 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 at all stages of the journey from getting their manuscript formatted to coming up with metadata and AI book covers, as well as distributing your book to the widest audience possible.
And then once your book starts selling, we can help you with some in-store promos, as well as splitting royalties with co-authors and other contributors. So, um, yeah, we’re kinda in a lotta, doing a lotta different things as well. Just working with this whole movement in AI and how that impacts business.
I just saw this [00:03:00] I keep seeing it starting to go around about how many more books are being produced now that AI is on the scene. And I don’t necessarily wanna quote it ’cause I have not verified the accuracy of it yet, but it was really interesting to see the number of books because everyone, including Publish Drive, is struggling with how do we handle this deluge of content?
And how do we as authors, handle that as well. But, for Publish Drive really making sure that we’re meeting store standards for declaring AI and, um, just doing all of that properly and making sure we’re sending what the stores deem good quality books, and how do you determine what those things are.
So it’s really interesting times, and I always like to say we are very pro-AI at Publish Drive. However, we do have to meet store standards and make sure that we are adhering to store guidelines. And [00:04:00] we’ll see how that changes over time, because I think it’s all rapidly changing, and Steph and I are recording this in May, and this episode is probably not coming out until mid-July.
So we were banking a bunch of episodes, trying to get ahead of things. I was just telling Steph, it’s actually snowing here in Denver. You may have heard me talk about the drought that we’re facing, and this will help us a little bit, but we’re getting the biggest snowstorm we’ve had all year. So we’re excited about that.
Steph Pajonas: It’s a little crazy that it’s coming in May of all times.
Danica Favorite: Right, right.
Steph Pajonas: It was 80 degrees here yesterday.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Although, like I say to people about Denver, so my youngest daughter was born during a May snowstorm. And then when she graduated high school, they had to move graduation indoors because of a snowstorm, and we had over a foot of snow.
So it’s not unheard of to have snow in May. But it is weird to talk about snow knowing that everyone will be listening to this in [00:05:00] July. But maybe you’ll be able to cool down. You’ll envision the snow where I was telling Steph I just had to close my blinds a little bit because the glare from the snow was so big.
So, uh, you know, gotta love it. Gotta love it, and gotta love technology and the ability that it gives us.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, you were just talking about the deluge of books, right? We’re seeing a lot of reports from people, like it … Sometimes they’re just anecdotal on Facebook, on Substack, different places where there’s just, there is just a lot of content out there right now, right?
And we’re not even just talking about books in general. The amount of content that has shown up on social media, it’s text posts, it’s image posts, it’s video posts, and a lot of it is generated by AI. And I think about that a lot because as y- as everybody knows, I’m very AI positive, right? I love AI.
I love all that it can do for us. It does have [00:06:00] its positives and its negatives, right? We cannot deny the fact that it has its negatives, but do they cancel out everything that’s positive about it? No, not as far as I’m concerned. I think that as with everything in life, you have to take the good with the bad and figure out where you’re gonna go from there with it.
I struggle with this whole idea of so much content because of the fact that so many algorithms run our lives now, whether it’s social media, whether it’s the Amazon algorithm, whether it’s any algorithm at a store or wherever it may be. And we don’t have a lot of control over that. We don’t know how it works.
We don’t know whether or not, you know, if you publish three books in a week, is that really gonna help you? Is it gonna hurt you? You just don’t know. And unfortunately, the, these black boxes are ruling our lives when it comes to this, right? So I’ve been thinking a lot about this trying [00:07:00] to counsel authors to remember that they’re human beings, that you’re a human being who’s running these tools.
You’re making choices based on your taste, on your judgment about what you like from AI output, what you don’t like from AI output and that we need to continue to be human to our audience so that they know that there is a living, breathing person behind the content that comes from them. So I’m continuing to tell people to almost go old school now with a lot of the the platforms that are available to us.
So if you get on Substack comment as yourself. Be yourself on there. If you have a blog on your website, blog about your life, blog about the kinds of things that you’re talking about. If you’re on social media, if social media’s the only place that you present yourself to the world, post pictures of your world, the things that you’re doing.
Talk about your [00:08:00] opinions. Talk about those sorts of … Even if it’s, like, an opinion about tea. It doesn’t matter-
Danica Favorite: Oh, you mean me?
Steph Pajonas: Exactly, right? Just try to be as human as possible because I think that this is honestly going to be the differentiator between a content mill that is just pumping out content and not doing any of it in a human-centric way, and then the way that you do things with your content and the worlds you create, the characters you create, and putting your stamp on it as a human being.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. I really agree with that. And one of the things as you were talking, and I really cannot remember your exact phraseology, so hopefully you will remember as I’m sharing this, but it’s really coming down to how can you use AI to enhance your own excellent. How can you be more excellent with your AI and enhance who you are, what you’re doing, all of those things, because [00:09:00] it isn’t about replacing the humans, and it is about how we are able to show up better and more strongly.
And it’s so important for all of us to remember that we have to still use our human discretion and our human taste and all of those things, and that’s actually why I’m leaning more into Substack. I know there’s been some controversy over controversial figures on Substack. But um, I just ignore that.
I ignore that person and that noise, and I focus on what I really do love. And for those of you who follow me on Substack, and for those of you who follow Steph on Substack, what you’ll see that both of us have been doing a lot is amplifying that content, whether that be AI content that we find is really good and really educational.
I think I shared three or four things today that I thought was really a great perspective. And we’re [00:10:00] also just showing, sharing little things that we find interesting. And if you follow me, you’re going to get the whole wide range of Danica life, and I do that very intentionally. Partially because I’m passionate about a lot of things, but partially because, yes, I do use AI in parts of my process.
I’m very open about that because I want to educate people about AI. However, as Steph and I have said, you’re under no obligation to disclose. And we advise people at this time, please don’t disclose. The only time you want to disclose is if it is a requirement by a retailer or some other platform that you’re on that requires AI disclosure.
Please do not lie. And we’re gonna get on Danica soapbox again. If you are saying, “I don’t use AI,” don’t bash AI. Don’t become a liar. It’s okay to [00:11:00] not disclose. It’s not okay to lie about it, and I want to be really clear about that because the one thing through all of this that you have, that we have, that I hold very precious, I know Steph holds very precious, is our own personal integrity.
And please don’t lie about that. And part of it, for example, my, my work with Publish Drive is, we don’t ask about AI because we wanna dox anyone, because we want to like, “Ooh, this person uses AI.” It’s because reta- retailers ask us to. And if we do not report honestly, and the retailer is like, “Hey, you know, you lied about this,” or, “You didn’t do this and you didn’t do your due diligence,” we could have all of our accounts closed, and every single one of our customers would suffer for that.
And so it’s something that telling the truth doesn’t just affect you personally, it affects an entire ecosystem around you. yeah, just lean into that excellence. And [00:12:00] where you feel that it’s appropriate to disclose, if you’re like Steph and I and you want to help people, that’s great. And if you don’t like how someone’s using AI, just shut your mouth.
Steph Pajonas: Just, just don’t say anything.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, it’s-
Steph Pajonas: Like, why? Why?
Danica Favorite: It’s none of your business. And although I was telling Steph before we started, and I do wanna share something ’cause this is really beautiful and neat. So again, this is May, uh, and you’ll hear this in July, but I just went to the Puscifer concert at Red Rocks.
So for those of you who don’t know Puscifer, you might be familiar with the band Tool. And Maynard James Keenan is the lead singer of Tool, and he’s got a couple other side projects, one of which is called Puscifer. And they just had a new album out, which is why they had the tour, why I went to the concert.
And so I followed them on Instagram, and I came across this reel from back in [00:13:00] October actually, where they were talking about the new album and talking about this new video that came out. And there’s a quote here from Matt Mitchell, who is in the band, and this is what he said: “We employed AI to create scenes not possible for us until now, embracing this technology as an inspirational creative tool.”
And I was so excited about that. I told Steph, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited about this,” because if you know anything about Maynard James Keenan, he is one of those people who is always innovating, always pushing the envelope, always trying to do something different. And I realize Maynard didn’t say this, his bandmate said it, but it was in the same thing that Maynard was quoted in, and obviously it’s not gonna be put out there if Maynard doesn’t approve it, ’cause they kind of work on this whole, if the whole band isn’t all for this, we don’t do it kind of thing.
And I just thought it was really impressive that this band that is known for their innovation, Puscifer is just [00:14:00] constantly pushing the envelope and trying new and innovative things, and that’s how it even came about as a band, that even they’re embracing AI as a creative tool And that doesn’t mean that it’s replacing them.
It was a fantastic show. It was easily one of the top 10 shows I’ve been to. And I loved it. And one of the things that I love, uh, I know some people hate this about Tool and Maynard particularly, but Puscifer, because Maynard is the singer of that, um, has the same rule. They don’t allow cell phones at the shows.
You’re not allowed to record it, and you will be ejected from the show if you’re caught recording. And then at the very end, they let you record one song as “Hey, you were good. Here’s your reward.” But it was so interesting listening to some of the stuff that they were talking about at the concert, this idea of that they want you to be present.
The no cell phone rule is for a lot of reasons, but part of it is this idea of where are you present in your life? How are you being present at a concert? You just spent [00:15:00] all this money to be at this show, so why not just fully be there and be immersed in it? And that’s why I’ve loved every one of their shows I go to, because it’s such a fully immersive experience, and I’m fully present.
And taking this back to the whole AI stuff and being present and being more human and showing the human sides of ourselves, that’s what AI enables us to do, is we can offload these tasks that are consuming our minds and are stressing us out so that we can be more present. I just… This morning, I gave some feedback at work, and it was met with, “Well, have you written a document about this thing that you’re tell-” And I’m like, “Oh, shoot.”
And I, and I actually do have the document. I was like I do have that document.” And I was about to say, “Yep, here it is,” and then I was like, “But I know I don’t have that one thing in there.” So rather than [00:16:00] worrying about it and let it consume my brain, here we are. I sent it, the document, into the AI.
I said, “Here’s the document. Here are the things I wanted to update. What else needs to be updated before I send it on?” And so suddenly, instead of spending probably two hours on this task, it’s happening right now as I’m talking, and I’m free to do this and not be, “Oh my gosh, I’m so worried about this thing.”
No, it’s taken care of. And it’s not a big deal. It’s not… It, it’s more the tedium of updating a document that stresses me out, and that’s what I think is-
Steph Pajonas: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And Steph’s been doing all this painting, and she just shared some creators that she’s following on YouTube for how-tos and tutorials, and I’m like, “Cool.
I’m gonna go look more at that.” And I, I don’t… I’m speaking for myself here, but I’m sure Steph can chime in as well. But this is why I love AI, because I have the time to sit down and do something [00:17:00] creative like painting and like all the fun art stuff.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. I’ve found hours in the day that I didn’t have before.
And that it has given me time to do other things that I love to do that are creative things. I, um, I was just this morning telling Elizabeth that, some people do morning pages where they sit down and they write in the morning and they get their creative juices flowing and whatnot, but I’m a morning knitter.
That’s what I do in the morning. I queue up some television shows I’ve been watching or some YouTube that I’m interested in, whether that’s watercolor tutorials, I’m really into watercolor lately, or I’m learning about acrylic inks or anything, anything. You know? Whatever is in my watch later on YouTube.
Let me tell you, that list on, on YouTube has gotten really, really long over the last couple of months. I’m like, “Oh, just add it to my watch later. Add it to my watch later.” So I go in there, sit down with my knitting, and I spend [00:18:00] about an hour, you know, watching some shows, m- moving my hands in a repetitive fashion, which tends to calm my nervous system, gets me ready for the day, and allows me to wake up a little bit.
I’m not much of a morning person. I’m, like, a late morning person, early afternoon. That’s generally my time window when I do the best from, like, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Those are my really good hours where I get a lot done and whatnot. And so o- on the edges of those hours, I’m not that great. So in the morning, it’s a little bit of knitting time with my YouTube or whatever.
And then in the evening, it… I save that time for family time, for watercolors or just making any kind of art, even if it’s coloring in a coloring book. Like, it doesn’t have to be me making something great or amazing. It’s just a meditative process to keep my brain functioning and healthy. Because during those [00:19:00] hours when I’m working from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, I’m doing a lot, right?
I’m working on curriculum. I’m generating, generating prose. I’m editing stuff. I’m, I’m just, I’m doing a lot. There’s, I’m making videos, whatever it may be. There’s a lot going on in those hours, and I can actually do a lot in those hours because I have AI on my side now. In the past, oh man, I was working 14 hours a day as a self-published author.
There was just so much work to do. I, and I couldn’t even get in, c- couldn’t even get to it all on most days. It’s…there was just so much. And there came a point where, you know, the money still isn’t all that great coming in as a self-published author, so you can’t justify, like, farming some of that work out to somebody else because the money is not flowing in the right direction.
But now we’re able to actually [00:20:00] get those things done with AI and I’m happier for it. I’m very happy to have had the time to experiment, figure out the things that are working for me the, and get rid of the things that are not. I tried for many months to generate lots of chapters and then just edit them and be happy with them, and I couldn’t.
My, I’ve got my work mates, Elizabeth and, and a couple other people who, who love that, who really, like, make very intricate outlines. They know how to tell the AI exactly what they want. They get back chapters and then just have to edit them and put them out, and I just, I couldn’t do that. Like, it just not in my nature.
But I had to do that to figure it out. I couldn’t just dismiss it right away. That’s not my, that is also not my nature. I need to see things for myself, make the decisions, and then move on from [00:21:00] there. So, like, in general, I’m still writing, but my, my writing is very AI assisted now, not generative as it used to be.
I tried. I tried.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think you and I are very similar in that because I wanted to try it, and I wanted to see what results I could get. And a- as much as I try, I just cannot get exactly what I want. And I still remember Elizabeth from the early days, and, you know, “Don’t be a T-Rex. Sometimes you just gotta put your hands on the keyboard and do the thing.”
I never put my hands on the keyboard and do the thing. I dictate the thing. But same principle. Same principle.
Steph Pajonas: Same principle.
Danica Favorite: And um, and I just read this really cool Substack article earlier today. I wish I had thought to save it, but it, it’s there somewhere, and probably, again, doesn’t fully matter, but I, the author mentioned [00:22:00] this idea of the real problem with AI is that we aren’t learning what our process with AI is.
And I really liked that perspective because I think we all have our AI process. And so many people will say, I hear this all the time, “Oh, AI doesn’t work. It didn’t work for me. I didn’t get good results doing this. I, uh, I put in this,” you know. And, and here is the thing, like Steph and I have been using AI for what, three or four years now.
And so we had a three or four-year process of figuring out what works for us with AI writing and what doesn’t. And that’s really valuable data, and I think sometimes people don’t spend enough time on the data gathering piece of using AI. And so for example, I, I talked a little bit about this in the previous episode.
Um, I’m going on a trip, which by the time this episode [00:23:00] airs, I’ll be back from my trip. So I don’t know, maybe our first episode back we should talk about what we did this summer. But I am planning a trip, and I’m doing this very deliberately because fingers crossed I will write a book about this, is that I am doing all of my travel plans with AI, uh, because I’m j- I’m going to some places that were not on the road map, but it happened, uh, because of circumstances in our geopolitical situation.
So I was like, “Okay, my original trip plan isn’t gonna work. AI, where can I go based on these parameters?” And AI did the research for me, and so I planned this whole trip, and what I have done is I am popping it into Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT, and I’m comparing the results. And so I have almost my entire itinerary planned of, hey, this is [00:24:00] where you’re gonna go.
These are the trains you’re gonna take. This is how you’re going to do this and this. And I even was asking yesterday, um, I may be going on a low-key, um, Danica Drinks Wine Across Europe tour. And it occurred to me that how am I gonna get all my wine home? And I-
Steph Pajonas: You’re gonna have to
ship it. Yeah.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
So this was-
Steph Pajonas: We’ve done
this. We did this in France.
Danica Favorite: Okay. I love this. I love this. Because yes, I’m I may have to ship it. How will I do that?” And Gemini actually gave me the exact place to ship it from nearest my hotel in Venice when I go home.
Steph Pajonas: That’s that’s awesome.
Danica Favorite: And but the point being is I’m doing this with all the different models and comparing results, because some models are better than others for certain tasks.
And, like, Gemini gives me the whole map. It’s awesome. Because it’s connected to Google, so it will pull up the Google Map for me.
Steph Pajonas: Yep.
Danica Favorite: And it’s [00:25:00] like, “Here’s your map. Here’s all the things.” And I’m a huge map person, so I’m like, “Thank you, Gemini. You’re amazing. I love you. You’re the best.” And I think when Gemini first came out, I announced that Gemini was my AI boyfriend.
And for travel yeah, I, I like him.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: I like him a lot. And-
Steph Pajonas: Yeah …
Danica Favorite: think about the tasks that you’re using. And so I want, Steph, uh, I want you to share what you were talking about, uh, your lovely experience with Claude and why you made that decision. Not because we’re bashing, but just to show, like, the evolution of the tools, and sometimes tools that we think are really good for something aren’t anymore, and that’s just how it works.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. I will talk about that in a second, but I’m going to expand a little bit on your Gemini thing, because I-
Danica Favorite: Oh, great
Steph Pajonas: … in September 2024, I went to Japan with my husband. It was our 20-year wedding anniversary. And we both love Japan, so we went to Japan together. And while we were there, Gemini was was it like 1.0, [00:26:00] 1.5?
Something like that. When we were there, I used it a lot to get, to help us get around, to find places where we could eat. We’re both, we’re both restrictive in our, in our diet, so I’m, like, a gluten-free pescatarian, and he doesn’t eat dairy and blah blah blah. So we were actually able to use Gemini a lot when we were in Japan, and it would hook up straight up to Maps, which was great too, because it was just like, “Oh, just send me over to Maps because I have all of these places saved in, in Maps.”
So my… I also love maps. I love that about you, that we both love maps. I love maps so much, and I have a really good sense of direction, so it’s like my superpower. But yeah, so like you were saying- Some models are great for some things, and others not so much. But I love them all in their in the different things that they’re good at, right?
So I do, I go to Gemini for certain things. I like the, to go to it for planning. I like to go to it for [00:27:00] personal stuff. I talk to it about health conditions. I talk it, to it about my watercolors. I had it help me put together a travel watercolor palette, because I’m going to go visit my mom next week in South Carolina, and I was like, “I wanna bring some of my watercolors with me,” and they’re all in these little pans, so but I have like, 50 of them.
And I was like, “I’m not sure which colors to choose,” and Gemini helped me choose all the colors for my traveling watercolor, which is great. I can’t wait to take it and see how it works out for me, see if I use them. But so then I also love Claude for generating prose and for brainstorming and world building and all that kind of stuff.
And it’s so good at helping me write my Substack posts. It’s great for me for my, my blog and everything, and I’ve always used it through the API and through TypingMind, which is typingmind.com for anybody who wants to go check it out. It’s a chat utility that allows you to just put in the API keys for the [00:28:00] major providers like Gemini, OpenAI, um, Claude, um, and an OpenRouter key as well, a few other things.
And you can just chat with any of them all within the same tool, which is great because I, I went to that because it had folders and I was able to, uh, tag things and find things much easier. It had a great search tool. So I went over to this TypingMind before Claude ever got Projects. I’ve never used Claude Projects.
I’ve never used it inside of their tool. And then they started developing all these other cool things. There’s Claude Code now, there’s Claude CoWork, there’s Claude Design. And so a few months ago I was like, “Okay, you know what? I’m gonna go ahead, plunk down the $20 a month just to see what I’ve been missing over here on this tool,” right?
On Claude AI. So I go over, I don’t really use it so much for chat because I already have a system set up that’s all got all of my conversations in it, so I don’t wanna like reinvent the wheel there. But I started using it for [00:29:00] the other tasks, like c- c- CoWork. It’s kind of hard to say it. It’s Claude CoWork, Claude Code.
I started using it for those things, and tried Claude Design as well as I was working on a redesign of the Future Fiction Academy website. But what I noticed, and what was driving me nuts, was that I would hit these arbitrary limits, like I can see in the settings, in the preferences area inside of Claude, the little bar ticking up about what I’m using inside of the tool for the $20 a month, what I’m getting out of it, when my limits are gonna hit, when they’re gonna reset, and I just found it actually very stressful.
Because I could see those limits coming, and I knew I was working on a project, and what killed me was that I was in the middle of working on something and I would ask Claude Design for help with something, and I could see that it was thinking. It’s thinking thinking, and then boom, you’ve hit your limit.
You don’t get [00:30:00] an output from all that thinking. And I was I was a little upset about that because when all of those tokens that you’re using that are going towards your limit every single time that it gets reset are also the thinking tokens that it’s using on the background to make decisions about stuff, and then giving you an output, a decision that it made so that you can move on with the rest of your conversation.
So when it’s out there thinking and using up those tokens, but then it doesn’t give you an output, it feels like theft. It felt like theft to me. In my chest, I was like, “Oh, it just stole all those tokens to do all that thinking, and it’s not going to give me an output.” And when I come back to this tool later, it will be quite possibly that it has forgotten what it was doing, and it’s gonna have to use those tokens again to do all of that thinking, and then finally give me an output.
And I got mad and angry, and then I canceled it.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. No, I had [00:31:00] the same experience. That’s why I wanted to share it, because so many people are like, “Oh, yeah, Claude Cowork and Code, it’s the best,” blah, blah, blah. And I wanted to, and I almost… I didn’t do it. I almost bit the bullet and said, “Okay, I guess I have to do the $100 a month.”
And I’m like, “No,” because I never hit a limit when I’m using Gemini. I never hit the limit when I’m using ChatGPT. ChatGPT is still my boo. Um, like, I just, I use it for so much, and I have it so well trained at this point that I’m like, “I’m not getting rid of you ever. It’s fine.” And keep in mind, again, we’re saying this in May.
This… In July when this comes out, maybe Anthropic has fixed this, and I would love it if that were the case because, again, I’ve had that same thing where I’m like, “Okay, I’m working to solve this problem that I have-” And yet, as I’m doing that Claude’s like thinking, thinking, thinking. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m out of [00:32:00] cont- out of tokens.”
And I’m like okay, so you just stole my whole tokens for the session, and now I have to wait until I can do a new session, and there’s no guarantee you’re not gonna use up all these tokens.” That’s no, no bueno.
Steph Pajonas: No.
No bueno.
Danica Favorite: And I’ve even, I’ve even bought extra tokens. I think I’ve got, like, a $50 credit right now in Claude, and it still times out.
And I’m like, “Yeah, and you just took all this stuff, and I can’t, I can’t do that.” And and part of why I wanna say this is that I recognize, again, my friends who have the $100 plan are like, “But that’s never happened to me.” I’m like, “Yeah, but you’re willing to pay $100 a month.” And one of the things I’ve really emphasized, particularly this season, is this idea of privilege and the fact that it does cost money to use a lot of these different models.
And for a lot of people, that $20 a month is precious, and they don’t [00:33:00] have the $20 a month. And certainly for me, the $100 a month was gonna be a lot. I’m certainly not making enough to justify spending $100 a month. And so I sat with it. I was like, “No. No, I’m not gonna do this.” And so for those of you who are struggling and are like, “Well, why doesn’t this work?”
If you can’t afford to upgrade, please don’t. Because number one, I think the tool will improve. I do have that faith in Anthropic because people are so mad about it that usually Anthropic’s pretty good about listening. And also, there are just other tools that you can use. Like I said, I’ve never run into a limit with ChatGPT, and they supposedly are coming out, again, maybe by the time this airs in July, they’re looking at coming out with a tool that’s like Co:work.
And I’ve seen where Gemini is also getting more integrations and things like that. And so my advice to everyone, and [00:34:00] this is something that I think we’ve said before, but I’m gonna just say it again, is be familiar with those three on the free level at the very least. Play with it. Experiment with it.
And th- as I was doing with my travel, sure, I could get all my answers just from Gemini because it is, in my opinion, the best. But maybe see what does Claude say? What does ChatGPT say? And I will say even though I think Gemini is the best, ChatGPT, as I mentioned, I have it so well trained because I’ve been using it from day one on the paid level.
ChatGPT knows my vibe. And so I’ll have this grand thing planned out with Gemini, and I’ll ask ChatGPT, and Chat’s like, “Um, so slow your roll. Uh, this isn’t your vibe.” “You need to rest more. You need to take it a little slower. I would not do all three of those things. Pick one. You can have a second one if you really have [00:35:00] the energy that day, but you don’t get to do three things.”
And I’m like, “Ugh, Chat, I hate you for being right,” but it is right.
Steph Pajonas: It knows you.
Danica Favorite: It knows me so well and that’s the other thing about playing with the models and knowing them is every day I have a tarot practice. I draw my tarot cards for the day. However, I get really into this. I have a new moon intention, and I have all of these parameters.
And so every month I put that in. I have a new chat for that. And then every day I say, “Here are my cards. How does this play against, A, what’s going on in my world, what’s going on in my day, and how it compares to this intention that I set for the month?” And I– last– the past couple nights, Chat has called me out so hard because I was like, “I’m feeling really discouraged.
I know these cards are good and, and this is what happened and it’s good, so why do I feel this way?” And Chat’s like, “Hi. You’re recovering from trauma, and [00:36:00] this is normal. And you are gaslighting yourself into thinking things are worse than they actually are. So let’s be a little more realistic in what’s actually happening here. Let’s try break this down for you.” And I’m like, “Thank you, Chat. You’re my bestie. This is why I still keep you around.” And, um, you know, and other people I see in the writing groups, they’re like, “Oh yeah, Claude doesn’t write smut.” And I’m like, “Yes, it does.” You just have to prompt it properly, and it has to know you and what you’re doing.
I did recently launch a spicy pen name. That is secret. Sorry, you don’t get to know. And literally, I’ve put stuff in there and I’m like, “Yeah, Claude’s probably not gonna do what I want it to do. I’m gonna just have to write this piece myself.” And Claude takes it spicier than I intended. The stuff was way spicier than I intended.
And then it says, and there was this one part where it said to me, it said “Okay, so how many orgasms would you like this character to [00:37:00] have?” And I’m like, “What? Thank you, Claude. You’re giving women multiple orgasms.”
Steph Pajonas: Very women positive. Thank you very much.
Danica Favorite: We appreciate you, Claude.
Steph Pajonas: I appreciate you, Claude. Yeah, just to, just to reiterate, I, I don’t hate Claude, I just um, I cancel- I just canceled that particular chat chat subscription, the $20 a month for the Pro because I, I realized that, you know, I have a good thing going with all of my other tools where I do use Claude and I don’t have any problems.
I use Claude for coding within Antigravity, which is an IDE where I get a lot of coding done. I whipped up a website last night for my husband, needed something. I was like, “Here you go, make you … Claude and I will make you a website. It’s all good.” I use Claude inside of Notion AI. It does help me with a lot of writing tasks a lot of administrative [00:38:00] tasks.
It’s right there for me in, in there. And then I use it inside of TypingMind, where I’m able to adjust all of the parameters on the back end. And this was one of the things that I felt where I could have possibly made the subscription work if I had access to all the bells and the, the different dials on the back end because on the back end you can change the thinking tokens to different, different levels.
You can say, like, only, like, a low thinking, like, it will only use a little bit of thinking tokens, to all the way up to, like, high, where it will think a lot and it will use up a lot of tokens, but maybe you need something like that for a really important task, so- It’s fine that is something that I can do, uh, through TypingMind, and that is something that I do through TypingMind.
I change those things. I do prompt caching. I do a lot of things that allow me to use Claude for as long as I need to and keep [00:39:00] my costs down, and I don’t have access to those things within their chat tool, and that’s fine. That doesn’t work out for, uh, for a lot of people like me, who I understand all the stuff on the back end that I can change, but it works out great for the normal customer, the normal consumer of Claude, and that’s fine.
This is a lot of about understanding your process, understanding the tools, what you want to choose and what you don’t want to choose. Choosing the right tool for the job. But not all of them do everything great, like we’ve just been saying. So it’s fine. Claude and I are still friends.
We’re still friends. We still use… I still use all of those tools. It’s just one of those things where sometimes a particular way that you use a tool just doesn’t work out for you. That’s okay.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I think that’s a really good point, too. When you’re accessing through the API, you’re, you’re purchasing a chunk of tokens.
And so it’s a lot easier to understand how much each task is going to [00:40:00] cost you and what those costs are. And in a lot of cases, and I know this is something that way in the early days we all were talking about amongst ourselves, is that oftentimes, like when you’re paying this $20 a month subscription, um- It’s if, if you were going through the API, you wouldn’t necessarily be spending $20 a month through the API.
And so that may be another place where you test is, okay if you wanted to get a subscription and pay, do the paid subscription, perhaps what you do is you just buy tokens through the API, and you use something like TypingMind and figure out, “Okay, where are all my tokens going? Which ones am I using the most?”
For me personally, and I know, Steph, you’re the same way, I pay for Google because I also appreciate having all the other Google One stuff that I use in my whole life. And so that $20 a month makes a ton of sense for [00:41:00] me. And-
Steph Pajonas: Yeah
Danica Favorite: … so again, look at the pros and cons of what makes sense for you and why.
And so maybe if you’re gonna be using a model sometimes or only for certain tasks, that is a perfect place where you want to use the API.
Steph Pajonas: That’s true. Yeah, I love that Google One subscription because I use that and then I get more dri- drive space on Google Drive, and I have all of these other things that it gives me access to, and that’s why the 20 bucks a month is eh, no big deal because I’m getting so much out of it, whereas I wasn’t having the same experience with Claude on the desktop and that’s fine.
That, that works out well. But, um, yeah, so we’re using these tools, and we’re making them work for us. We’re the authors. We’re the humans at the center of all of this, and I think that’s still very important for us to hammer home. I listen to Joanna Penn. She’s she’s an [00:42:00] inspiration in my life, and she has said many times that she’s not she’s not a person who just goes and generates lots of stuff.
She doesn’t generate books or those sorts of things. She’s an AI assisted author. The AI is assisting her. And I think that the majority of authors are the same way. We’re using these tools as assistance to help us with different tasks, to help us, even if it is helping you generate prose, you are still there in the prose working it, making sure that it sounds right, that it, that it’s doing the right things for you.
And I feel like that is the majority of authors using these tools, and that the people who are just y- generating a book and dropping it on Amazon KDP, that’s not the majority of us. It’s certainly probably not the majority of people who are listening to this podcast right now who are curious about these tools and have come here to learn a little bit more about that.
And I’m not saying that [00:43:00] there’s a lot of things wrong with generating whole books. I think that where we fall off of the continuum of from good to bad is where we don’t take any kind of human in the loop step, where you’re not in there and you’re not, um, showing some sort of, um, investment in the work that you’re producing.
So something to think about as you’re moving forward with these tools is, like, how can you use them to amplify your creativity? That was the word that I used, Danica, couldn’t remember earlier. The amplify your creativity help you be more of yourself so that you can serve your audience.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And that’s so important to think about when you’re listening to this, when you’re listening to our episodes, even when you’re listening to authors talk about it, how you use AI is how you use AI.
It isn’t anyone’s business, number one, [00:44:00] unless, again, you want to educate people. But I would also caution you don’t go into the groups guns blazing, “This is how you’re supposed to use AI,” or, “Oh, you’re a bad person for using AI this way,” or, “You shouldn’t use AI for this.” Like- It is a personal decision how you’re gonna use AI, what you’re gonna use AI for, and nobody has the right to tell you otherwise.
Yes, you want to follow vendor guidelines because ultimately you’ve signed an agreement with the vendor that you’re going to follow their rules. And so if you don’t want to follow their rules, don’t use that vendor. But make sure that you are acting in integrity with yourself. But if somebody’s making a different decision than you, don’t attack their integrity because they have thought through it just as deeply as you have, and they’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what [00:45:00] works for them and for their business.
And so let’s honor each other and each other’s choices, because I have good friends who can generate a whole book, publish the book, and it does great. However, I also know, like we just had, we had Coral Hart on here. We’ve had a few other authors who are very similar but they have a whole thought process.
It’s not just, “Oh, I’m gonna throw a prompt into ChatGPT to write a book,” and, “Boom, now I’m gonna put it on, and I’m not gonna review it.” They have a whole system of prompts and evaluation, and they’re making sure that they’re putting up quality work. And I use the word quality. I hate that word. I don’t know a different word because quality is subjective.
And-
Steph Pajonas: Yes, it is…
Danica Favorite: and what we think is good quality, someone else may not think is good quality. I just mentioned a band that I really like. Some of you probably were like, “Oh my gosh, I hate them.” And some of you were like- … “Oh my gosh, I love them.” And others are probably like, “I have never heard [00:46:00] of them.”
And that’s okay because we all have different tastes and different ways to evaluate what is high quality. And ultimately, the end, um, consumer is gonna be the final arbiter of whether or not that is good quality because it’s something they love. And if somebody loves a book that I think is crappy, good for them.
Really, good for them and good for the author because I know a- and all of you listening can think of an example of a really popular book that you absolutely hated, and everyone talked about how much they loved. And it’s the same thing. It is the absolutely same thing, and we just need to say, “Okay, not my thing.
Moving on. Hope you enjoy. Have a great day.”
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I have a list. I have a long list of those books, right? Oh, this is an excellent conversation to [00:47:00] have had. I think that we’re gonna wrap up a little bit here because we are, um, just doing this, the two of us, and I’m sure that we could talk forever on this topic.
Danica Favorite: We could.
Steph Pajonas: But,
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: I wanna make sure, though, that we talk about the fact that we’re about to go on a little bit of a hiatus here. In general Danica and I, we lead, we both lead very busy lives, and the summer is especially busy for us. Danica does a lot of traveling, and so do I. I have a beach house in the south of New Jersey.
My kids are home from school, that sort of thing. So we do a lot during the summer, so we’re gonna take off a few weeks here. It’s gonna feel like a few weeks to you guys, but it’s gonna be, feel a little bit longer for Danica and I ’cause we managed to bank up a lot of interviews before we decided to take this little hiatus.
But we wanna mention that we would love to hear from you guys about people that you would like to hear from on this podcast, okay? So we do a lot of brainstorming between the two of us about who we’ve had on and parts of the process that may be missing from from the [00:48:00] interviews that we’re the people that we have on here.
I wanna encourage people to come onto the comments of this YouTube video. So if you’re listening to this on a podcast, try, come on over to YouTube, leave a comment on the YouTube video. Let us know if there’s somebody you wanna hear from, or if there’s a particular part of the process that we haven’t discussed, whether it’s, like, audio, video.
We’ve, we’ve discussed a lot of these already I’m, I think that it’s gonna be a vanishingly small amount of things that we haven’t covered yet. So on the comments to this video, also you could come by the website, bravenewbookshelf.com, and comment on the show notes for this particular episode.
Let us know who you’re interested in.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, and you can also do that on our Facebook page as well. Anyone, any one of those works out really great. I do all of the booking. I was just telling Steph, we were talking about things that we would like to have or guests we would like to have on.[00:49:00]
And yeah, it’s, for us, it’s a short list simply because I think we’ve had a lot of our dream guests already, and that’s been fantastic, and we’re really excited. But I know that some of you listening know people who are doing really cool things in the AI space that we would like to hear about.
And that, that’s one of the things that I’ve noticed, for example, the more I lean into Substack and things like that, I’m seeing all these really great content creators on Substack who have interesting things to say. And so maybe we’ll invite some of them. Or if there’s somebody that you want us to follow, uh, let us know about that because we really do want to give a variety of perspectives.
All that to say, we do vet our guests. And if it’s not somebody we’ve heard of or someone we’ve talked to Steph and I probably will have a conversation with them ahead of time because we do take our jobs very seriously to make sure that we’re curating good content and good information. And some of you may have noticed [00:50:00] that there are episodes that have disappeared from our episode lineup, and that is because since they were on our show, they proved to be bad actors, and we do not endorse them, and we will not endorse them.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, nope. We’ll delete the episodes and take them down if things go awry. We’re… This is one of another parts about being self-published is the fact that we get to, uh, have the ultimate say about what goes out underneath our names and our brand. So yeah, we do take this very seriously, and we do wanna hear from new people.
It’s okay if I haven’t heard about this person before, but we’re going to vet them, and we’re gonna make sure that everything is copacetic before we have them on the show. And then we take our job seriously, too, afterward if things go wrong. We’re willing to take down the episode and move on from there.
So yeah, one of those things. Just one of those things about life, things change over time.
Danica Favorite: It is. It is. And things do change. Like I [00:51:00] said, we’re recording this in in May, and this will go out in July, and so a lot may have changed in those two months. And that’s just how the technology moves and how technology flows.
Next season, Steph and I are looking at doing a live episode, which will be exciting and scary and terrifying. But we’re gonna do it. And we also have decided, because we’ve heard from some people, we’re gonna do some more solo episodes. So all of those different things. Any ideas you have, we’re open to it because that’s really what’s important, is making sure that we’re serving the community and we’re providing good information for everyone.
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. Okay, so come by bravenewbookshelf.com. Check out the show notes for this episode. Leave us a comment if you have anybody in mind that you want us to check out. Um, and, uh, definitely check us out on YouTube. Um, subscribe to the newsletter especially. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you can always hit reply on that and talk to us [00:52:00] as well.
That email address is open for, for business, so if you have anything particular that you need to tell us about, you can go ahead, subscribe, and then reply to any of the emails that you get from there. And just have a great summer. We want you guys to enjoy the time. And we will definitely be seeing you back here, right Danica?
Danica Favorite: Yes. Yes, we will. So yeah, go like, subscribe, uh, Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press, Publish Drive, all the different channels. I’ve started some live YouTubes on Publish Drive as well, so you can check those out every week. And, um, also, you know, make sure you check out Steph and I Substacks. We both have a Substack.
Like I said, I’m more random, Steph is more AI focused, but all great resources, and we both share a lot of AI information there as well.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, you can find Danica she’s on there as Danica Favorite, and I have a dedicated URL for [00:53:00] my Substack. It’s aiandauthorship.com. So you can come find us both over there.
We talk to people, we do notes, we post often. So, if you are missing us during our time off, you can find us there as well. Okay, thank you so much everybody for listening. I hope you enjoy the time off, and we will see you guys in the next one, okay?
Danica Favorite: All right.
Steph Pajonas: Bye.
Danica Favorite: 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 bravenewbookshelf.com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes