Perplexity Just Nuked Alot of Goodwill

They apparently very discreetly pushed a Terms of Service update back on 1/23/2026 stating that you couldn’t use its output for commercial purposes on the Free or Pro plans, and any stuff you uploaded to it “are belong to us.” the Nerdy Novelist has a good summary here. (If you don’t have time for a 12-minute video, the meat of the discussion starts around 1:30-1:40, and goes for maybe 3-4 minutes beyond that. A lot of the second half is him reflecting on his previously good experiences with this tool.)

This is a bummer for me because if Claude is my secretary and alpha reader, and sometimes my pet fanfic writer, Perplexity is (soon to be was) my research assistant and tech support. At least I don’t use AI for first draft fiction work, so there is that.

Greetings, insta-people and other visitors! I recent-ishly published the third book in a trilogy, so feel free to check that out as well.

Fanficcing With Claude.ai: Bollywood Edition 

Digging around on my cloud accounts, I found a couple of fanfics that had survived the Great Purge mentioned in a previous post. Both of them were a bit longer and more carefully executed than the quick-hit  fanfic I discussed in that post, and both were for a heist movie from India which I saw about twelve or thirteen years ago, and was briefly obsessed with.  

Continue reading “Fanficcing With Claude.ai: Bollywood Edition “

Video Thursday: What’s in the Box? Edition

https://youtube.com/shorts/R4meKyRdvYU

Maxim offers Chloe a box, and asks her to keep the artifact inside safe. She holds up the necklace inside and wonders “what has he gotten me into now?” Their relationship isn’t built on grand gestures. It’s built on trust forged while fighting monsters side by side. A romantic moment from Undead Flight, Book 2 of the Hunter Healer King trilogy. Which, by the way, is on sale now as part of Hans G. Schantz’s Spring Book Sale!

Pride and Planetoids: First Draft Complete

This is the official title of the space regency, first draft just completed at 58,000 words. I had the basic idea for this a long time ago. I skimmed down a list of lost Jane Austen tv adaptations. I spotted a name I knew very well, from a couple of non-Austen contexts, in the cast for the 1952 Pride and Prejudice. And I thought to myself: “What if Mr. Darcy went around exploding planets?” But I only started brainstorming the idea somewhere in the past three years or so. I started writing it sometime in late 2024, around the time I wrapped up Undead Flight. It continued as a background project in 2025, while I was writing Dragon’s Teeth. It picked up speed when I finished that book.

Pride and Planetoids has been a guinea pig for many of my experiments in using AI, including playing with the trial periods of Sudowrite and Novelcrafter. It will soon be a guinea pig for some automations I built to help with revisions. The actual prose and storyline are human creations, as with my other works.

Video Thursday: Vampires on an Airship Edition

https://youtube.com/shorts/LiePsSvFpqo

Maxim and Chloe face a blood-drinking leech, a horrifying monster created by the most dangerous type of dark sorcerer. Inspired by a scene from Undead Flight, Book 2 of the Hunter Healer King trilogy.