Where Did That Come From? Mr. Darcy, Destroyer of Worlds

(Thank you, unknown internet person, for creating this meme. It makes the job of explaining the origins of my latest novel so much easier.)

Well, let’s start with the fact that I am a GenXer, who grew up with a limited selection of movies available to me, and more often than not the only thing my siblings and I all felt like watching was the 1977 Star Wars. For some reason, I was very amused to discover that Grand Moff Tarkin had once been an energetic middle-aged man who killed the Hound of the Baskervilles twice and Count Dracula over and over again. It tickled me even more to discover that he had once played Mr. Darcy in a now-lost BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, roughly a quarter of a century before Star Wars. I asked myself: “What if Darcy went around destroying planets?” And a surprising amount of Pride & Planetoids grew out of that single question. 

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State of the Author, Spring 2026 Edition

The State of the Author is…complicated. On April 9, 2026, I finished the first draft of a murder mystery, ran my DevEditor automation on it, and discovered that it really needed more physical evidence pointing towards the murderer, and more clues in general. The early chapters mostly just needed fairly modest rewrites for tone and emotional content, so I got to work on those right away, figuring that the subconscious would work on the complicated stuff next time I pivoted to one of the WIPs, either Space & Sensibility or HHK0.

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AI as Writer’s Assistant: Marketing with AI 

To the extent that I have a philosophy of AI use, it comes to this: I want AI to handle the tasks I don’t enjoy. Falling in love with a set of characters, following them through their adventures, figuring out how the world around them works…to me, those are the fun parts. If I care enough about a story to want to see it on Amazon with a proper cover and a nonzero chance of someone besides me reading it and caring about it, I want to draft it myself. Hunting for typos and logic fails and things I did wrong? Not the fun parts, which is why I have been using AI more in the revision process. Writing a fanfic nobody but me wants to read? Fun but not as fun as it might be, plus it takes mental energy away from writing things that I might be able to sell. Hence, the Fanficcing with Claude label that turns up in this blog. And then there’s marketing. 

Marketing does not come easily to some writers, and I am one of them. When I’m happy with my writing, my opinion of it sounds too egotistical to share. When I’m unhappy with it, my opinion is too depressing for words. As for keywords, blurbs, covers, search engine optimization, noun phrase optimization, my brain tends to lock up or go down unhelpful rabbit holes. So, I turned to AI, first for cover art and blurb help and then for other marketing tasks.  So, a quick rundown on what I’ve done: 

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AI as Writer’s Assistant: Revising with AI 

So, having gotten Pride & Planetoids revised, formatted, and up for preorder, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the use of AI in the revision process, both the automations (see here for the original post on this topic) and the chatbot(s). 

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Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 28 (Finale)

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Claude managed to leave Marianne – Mari. Fricking. Anne – out of the first draft of this scene. This is the second. I cut a whole two paragraphs of blah blah at the beginning and trimmed other bits throughout. My main takeaway from this particular ai fanfic has been that I do not remotely have the patience to ride herd on a book length ai first draft and make it good enough for publication. Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this fanfic. Stay tuned for The Rector’s Other Business, coming sometime in May.

Departure

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Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 27

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Claude has the reputation of being good at writing climactic scenes and rather overwrought for everything else. This was the kind of scene at which it excels. I trimmed a little bombast before and after the duel itself, and Claude’s persistant and unlikely references to cold January weather in New Orleans.

The Duel

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Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 26

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Not much to report about the drafting process. Claude was surprisingly gung ho about outlining this, arguing that this particular handling of the leadup to the duel would be the most cathartic for Morin and the readers. This is the AI’s first draft, with the usual human streamlining.

The Challenge

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Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 25

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Claude drafted this scene out of order, so I had to trim a fair amount to bring it into continuity with scenes that take place earlier but were written later. I did like Claude’s take on how Elise’s revelation affected Marianne. I also liked that it assigned Morin a rather skeptical opinion of Rousseau.

Marianne’s Recovery

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Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 24

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. Nothing exciting about this one, except that I had to shuffle things on wordpress a bit so that it came before tomorrow’s Marianne scene. First Claude draft below the cut; trimmed and tweaked.

The Proposal

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Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 23

For more information about this project, please see past posts under the “Sense and Sensibility and Placage” category. This is a tricky scene because it deals with sensitive issues. What we have below is Claude’s first draft, with more tweaking than usual by me, especially surrounding Elise’s big reveal to Marianne.

The Revelation

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