TRANSPARENCY

AI & Authorship

AI is deeply integrated into how I develop The Failing Light. I use it to challenge my thinking, test structure, track continuity, research craft and psychology, compare alternatives, find contradictions, manage a large body of worldbuilding and story architecture, and help diagnose problems in existing prose.

I also use AI during revision. It can suggest cuts, alternatives, or replacement wording after I have written the material and established what the scene is supposed to do. I decide whether those suggestions belong in the book, and I apply every manuscript change myself.

There are boundaries.

AI does not write my first-draft canon chapters or originate the core emotional scenes of the novel. It does not decide what is canon, determine what my characters truly feel, establish the meaning of the story, or invent new lore and mechanics because they would make a scene easier to solve.

The manuscript is mine. The creative decisions are mine. The final judgment about what becomes true is mine.

AI may help me see the book more clearly, but it may not decide what the book is, what the canon is, or what the heart of a scene means.

I am not interested in pretending AI had nothing to do with this project. It has become an unusually powerful part of my writing process.

I am equally uninterested in outsourcing authorship to it.

The Failing Light is an experiment in how much leverage a writer can get from AI without giving it authority over the work.