Taking ‘Scions’ to a new platform
and my struggles with ‘The AI Debate’
My entire first novel, The Blighted Treasure, launches on Quibble tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. CST.
Quibble is repositioning itself not just as a hub for artists, but as a haven from AI slop for both authors and readers.
All Scions stories will remain on Royal Road for the foreseeable future. I’ll always be grateful to the community there and the admins are wonderful. If you are an amateur author of fantasy or sci-fi, I highly recommend them.
Personally, I’ve hit some growing pains there. While I hold no illusions about the chances of traditional historical fantasy on a site the caters to LitRPG and GameLit, AI-assisted and AI-generated content is starting to drown out human authors and dilute the overall experience there.
That said, I’m not about to take up a crusade against stories I suspect are written by generative AI but are not tagged as such. Most of posts on RR’s forums and subreddit that try this reek of some combination of self-righteousness, arrogance or even jealousy—and as someone who loves his em-dashes, it’s also in my best interest to keep my head down.
There’s nothing profound I could add to the AI debate other than these two things:
By now the average argument you see on socials about generative AI in creative spaces is a thinly-masked attempt at farming engagement;
Without an AI service, Claimable, my youngest son would not be getting the only treatment for his PANDAS that has ever helped him.
It’s not a black-and-white issue and, honestly, I hate that it isn’t. I struggled with it coming up with art for RR and Patreon. My family does not have money for me to commission a cover artist or character artist, and we haven’t for a while. So, yes, I’ve gotten elements from genAI and then spent hours in Affinity trying to turn them into something useful.
The Original
This was the first ever design for what would become The Blighted Treasure. Back when I thought I’d have the time to learn how to turn these character models into art.
My Patreon’s main goal is to raise money to hire a human for cover art, but it’s slow going. I may only get one shot at it, so I have to make it count. But I’m not going to get readers without a decent cover. Chicken and egg.
Still, there is where I draw the line. I don’t use AI as a copy editor, nor do I use it in my old- to middle-Irish translations (I cross-reference between 2-3 different sites). I scroll past the AI results at the top of Google and Brave when they “accidentally” re-enable their AI mode setting.
I do use ProWritingAid’s free extension, but not only do I keep them from rewriting my sentences, one-third of the time I wind up ignoring their suggestions. (Though it is funny to see PWA and Reedsy’s checkers argue.) And I make my own maps in Wonderdraft—because why wouldn’t I? It’s so much fun!
Let’s get back to Quibble. I don’t know what will happen come 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. What I can tell you is how my onboarding went.
(I’m not trying to spill any secrets. I’m merely describing a process I’d call deliberate and relatively discerning.)
I submitted an excerpt, a bio, an outline of the rest of the book, and a breakdown of the main characters on May 1. In a little less than two weeks, the team approved me for the next phase. I added blurbs, tags, metadata, and I converted my manuscript into epub format. They came back in a little over a week to let me know and I was approved for launch.
I’ve read they do come back with edit suggestions. I received none yet, but Treasure has been live on Royal Road for nearly a year and a half now, and it’s been corrected and tweaked quite a bit.
The approval process for Royal Road? Fill out the story information and choose your own tags along with a first chapter. Within two days it’s approved barring something egregious. I say that merely to provide context, not to levy judgement.
I do hope you’ll read The Blighted Treasure when it goes live on Quibble tomorrow. If not, I hope you at least check out Quibble. Not because all AI is bad. Check it out because the authors on Quibble poured themselves into their stories—their plots, their characters, their settings—and that means something, I think.