For plot-related reasons, I needed Wickham to be more competent than the short-sighted grifter who wreaked so much havoc in the original novel. Even so, he ends up working too many angles at once and having things blow up in his face. I can’t tell you more than that without spoilers.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Rest of the Cast from Pride & Planetoids “Category: Mel Dunay
Where Did That Come From? The Space Bennets
When I first came up with the idea for Pride & Planetoids, I decided that Elizabeth Bennet needed to be some kind of Parliamentary backbencher. Spending time in the remote work/zoom conference culture of the early 2020s made it more believable to me that she could live at Longbourn and still participate in the Parliament of Albion the Commonwealth, without having to travel to Albion, the asteroid which gave its name to the Commonwealth. There were a whole horde of supporting characters who were also believable as minor politicians in a large Parliament, which meant that Mr. Collins, Mr. Hurst, etc were all accounted for. I still had to figure out where the Bennet family sat in this society, and that meant figuring out the society itself.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Space Bennets “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.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? Mr. Darcy, Destroyer of Worlds”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.
Continue reading “State of the Author, Spring 2026 Edition”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:
Continue reading “AI as Writer’s Assistant: Marketing with AI “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).
Continue reading “AI as Writer’s Assistant: Revising with AI “Cedar Sanderson Reviews The Jaiya Series! Yay!
I’ve known Cedar for a while on Discord, and she has very kindly offered feedback on some of my book covers, but I woke up this morning, sore from moving furniture and number crunching for a replacement computer, to find that she had written a very positive review of my first series on her substack: https://cedarlila.substack.com/p/book-review-the-jaiya-series?publication_id=1528321&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=3l7wwi&utm_medium=email
Thank you so much, Cedar! This really made my day! I am including your Tomato Wyrm in a post of capsule reviews coming soon to this blog.
Video Thursday: Caffeinated Horse Edition
Maxim is a man of discernment. So is his horse. 🐴☕ This is what happens when you don’t ask Midjourney nicely. 🎬 Created with Midjourney + Suno 📚 Maxim stars in the Hunter Healer King gaslamp fantasy trilogy by Mel Dunay — steampunk monster hunting, slow-burn romance, and apparently a horse with refined taste in caffeine. 🎬 Also in the outtakes universe: https://youtu.be/XKpsAwKlKyM 📚 READ THE TRILOGY: Book 1 – Wolf’s Trail: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CR81P9QP Book 2 – Undead Flight: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNGWVPMH Book 3 – Dragon’s Teeth: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GB86H4N5 Complete series: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CR7ZL3S7 🌐 https://jaglionpress.com/blog/ #HunterHealerKing #AIArtFails #MidjourneyOuttakes #GaslampFantasy #AIArt #SteampunkRomance #IndieAuthor #HorseGirl #Espresso #CharactersWithAttitude
Ten Years Ago Today…
I put a short story with a lousy cover up on Amazon. A couple of months later, I took it down again. It was October of that year before I published my first novel. and now, well…
I would lying if I said I’d found fame or fortune doing this. But it’s been a fun adventure and I plan to keep on with it.
Book Quotes: Dragon’s Teeth
Jaglion Press 